Citibank American Airlines Miles Citigold Offer

I have some good news to share in regards to the 30,000 American Airlines miles promotion that Citibank offered earlier this year for opening a Citigold account. As I’ve mentioned previously, my plan was to wait until the 30,000 AA miles posted and then immediately downgrade my account to a Basic checking account to avoid any fees. In order to waive the $30 monthly fee for a Citigold account, you need to hold $50,000 in the account and that wasn’t an option for me.

The first bit of good news is my 30,000 miles have finally posted to my AA account on 5/14 (though they were backdated to 5/11 as I have been checking daily). I funded the account on 2/11 so it took a little over 3 months for the miles to post.

Since my goal was to get the miles as quickly as possible (again to avoid any fees), I completed the requirements which were $750 in debit card purchases and two months of bill pay pretty quickly. To do this, I loaded $750 to my RedBird card at Target (you can still do this with RedBird) and paid my wife’s car loan for two months. Below is my whole account activity for the 3 months the account has been open. As you can see, I did the bare minimum to meet the requirement for the bonus and I never was charged a monthly service fee. Citibank does automatically waive the fee for the first two months but I have no idea why I wasn’t charged for April.

The other good bit of news I have to share is that I was able to easily downgrade my account to a Basic checking account just days after my miles posted. In fact, I was able to do it in 7 minutes over secure chat with Citibank! I’ve copied my whole conservation (except for the 3 long statements the rep sent me) to show you just how easy it was.

My account is now a Basic account and as long as I keep $1,500 in the account, I will not be charged any monthly fees. Interestingly when I called in with a question on my Prestige card, I was still recognized as a Citigold account holder (which is expected for now per the rep’s comments). From what others have said, reps still see the account as a Citigold account even after this transition period lapses and I hope this remains the case. I’m curious to see what will happen next year when my Prestige is due for renewal as I would love the $100 discount on the annual fee again for being a Citigold account holder.

I’m very happy I took advantage of this deal as for just the tiniest bit of work I was able to score 30,000 AA miles plus another 2,000 Barclay Arrival points for funding this account with a credit card when I opened it. All of this came without any out of pocket costs so these were truly free miles. I plan on taking advantage of the 30k AA offer for my wife when she gets her next AA card (per Doctor of Credit both the 30k AA and 40k TYP offers are currently available so I could go for the 40k TYP now but I’d rather have the AA miles) and I will be much more aggressive in funding the account with a credit card (i.e more than just $1,000).

Have others seen their miles post and downgrade their account successfully?

I wrote about the most recent 30,000 American Airlines miles offer from Citibank for opening a Citigold account and last week, I signed up for a Citigold account. Even though I’ve had my account for little over a week now I already have a few good pieces of advice for those who enroll in this offer.

1. Make Sure the 30k AA Offer is Actually Linked to Your Account – I applied for my Citigold account directly through the email Citibank sent me with the offer by clicking the link in my email. The offer code pre-populated on the application form so you would think this offer would be properly linked to my account. Turns out, that wasn’t the case.

Citigold 30k AA Offer

Before I was going to bother with meeting the requirements for the bonus (which is quite easy with spending $750 on the debit card and completing two bill pays) I secure messaged Citi to confirm this offer was attached to my account. The rep was nice but couldn’t find the offer and had no authority to add it my account. I asked for the phone number for the right department except it turned out to be to the wrong department.

I called the number the rep provided and was promptly told they couldn’t do anything and I needed to talk to a “personal banker.” The rep had heard of this issue and assured me it was no issue once a personal banker got it involved. I called the number I was given by that agent which I think led me to the general Citibank customer service center and I was told personal bankers were not available at this time. I got a little frustrated at this point and asked for the direct Citigold customer service number, which in hindsight I should have called first.

Once I called the direct Citigold number (1-888-248-4465), I was able to make some headway as a very nice agent was able to add the offer to my account once I provided the offer code. She went over the terms of qualifying activity, asked if I had any questions and confirmed it was now definitely on my account.

You can consider this point 1b but Citibank’s customer service is frustrating to say the least. I’ve detailed my experiences above and I know it was a holiday weekend when I tried to rectify this situation (so maybe that’s part of the issue here) but I don’t appreciate a run around from incompetent agents. Now maybe this is my fault since I didn’t deal with Citigold customer service right away but you would think one of the first two agents would point me in that direction. In the long run this isn’t a big deal to me since Citibank will not replace Chase as my primary checking account and I plan to close or downgrade this account once the miles post.

2. You Can Fund a Citigold Account with a Credit Card – This should apply to all Citibank checking accounts (not just Citigold) but I was successfully able to make my initial deposit with my Barclay Arrival + card. I got this hint from Doctor of Credit but I only chose to make an initial deposit of $1,000 to be safe (this was before a commenter on his site verified Barclays would work). Before funding the account, I called Barclays and lowered my cash advance limit to a $0 just in case this would code as a cash advance to avoid any fees. With Citibank, you have to fax or mail in a credit card authorization form. I faxed the form over on 2/6 and on 2/11 the $1,000 posted to my account and was coded as a purchase on my Barclay Arrival + card. Success!

My Barclays Arrival + Statement

3. You Can Save $100 on the Citi Prestige Annual Fee – One of the perks of a Citigold account is a reduced annual fee on Citibank’s premier credit card, the Citi Prestige. The annual fee is normally $450 but is only $350 for Citigold customers. It appears the best offer on this card is 60,000 Thank You Points which can be redeemed at a value of 1.6 cents a point towards travel on American or US Airways. Additionally, Citi has just started adding transfer partners including Virgin Atlantic, Air France, Singapore and Hilton. I plan on applying for this card shortly and I’ll do a much more detailed analysis of the card at that point but this card looks very comparable to the American Express Platinum card albeit with much fewer transfer partners.

Anyone else have any issues or success stories with the 30k Citigold American Airlines offer?

PointsCentric

Points & Miles Travel Consulting

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