Good morning everyone, happy Father’s Day!  Before I go out for brunch with my family, I wanted to share a really bad experience I had transferring my Citi Thank You Points to my Air France / KLM Flying Blue account.  You may recall from a few weeks ago, I wrote about Transfer Times to KLM / Air France from Chase Ultimate Rewards, AMEX Membership Rewards, Citi Thank You Points & SPG Starpoints.  In that post, I said that Citi Thank You Points transferred to Air France / KLM instantly.  But what happens if your Citi Thank You Points do not transfer instantly… or ever?

It all started innocently enough with a 18,000 Citi Thank You Point transfer to Air France / KLM on May 29, 2016.  I was planning to book an Aerolineas Argentinas award ticket from Bogota, Colombia to Iguazu Falls, Argentina and needed ~18,000 more Flying Blue miles to book the award ticket.  But those Flying Blue miles never made it to my account.

I waited a few hours and refreshed my Air France / KLM Flying Blue account.  Still no points.  I checked again the following morning.  Still no points. I checked back later in the day.  Still no points.  I called the Citi Thank You Points customer service department to ask if there was a problem with the transfer and they said the each transfer can take up to 14 days.  I explained that my last transfer to Air France / KLM was instant, but that made no difference to them.  I was told to wait for the transfer to go through, which could take up to 14 days.

I took matters into my own hands and tried the “plunger approach.”  I made several small Citi Thank You Point transfers (ranging from 1,000 to 3,000 Citi Thank You Points) in the hope that they would push the large 18,000 Citi Thank You Points transfer through.  No luck.  The small transfers went through immediately and posted to my Air France / KLM account right away, but the 18,000 Citi Thank You Points transfer was still missing.

I went to my Flying Blue account and refreshed the transaction history.  All the small transfers went through instantly, but there was still no sign of the 18,000 Citi Thank You Points transfer.  I called the Citi Thank You Points customer service department again and asked them to look into the 18,000 Citi Thank You Points transfer that was still in progress.  I told them that I just made several small Citi Thank You Point transfers and they all went through immediately.  There *obviously* was something wrong with the 18,000 Citi Thank You Points transfer.  Nope, there was nothing they could do, I just had to wait the 14 days for the transfer to complete.

Side note: I did not want to wait for the 18,000 Citi Thank You Points transfer to go through before booking my Aerolineas Argentinas award ticket, so I transferred a few thousand Chase Ultimate Reward Points to Air France / KLM and booked the award ticket (the booking process is going to be in its own blog post).  Now the waiting game began for the missing 18,000 Citi Thank You Points.

Every day for the next week and a half, I logged into my Citi Thank You Points account to see if the transfer went through.  Nope.  Nothing changed.  I was in Yosemite National Park for the weekend, so I wasn’t able to check my account from June 11-13.

After checking my Thank You Points account on June 14, I called the Citi Thank You Points customer service department and told them that it was longer than 14 days and that I wanted to cancel the transfer.  The rep put me on hold for a minute and then told me that she would open a case for me to have the transfer cancelled and have the Citi Thank You Points redeposited into my Citi Thank You Points account.  The rep said that the case would take up to 5 business days to be resolved, but the case was actually closed by the next day (June 15).

I checked my Citi Thank You Points account activity and saw that the transaction was cancelled and that the 18,000 Citi Thank You Points were back in my account.

I actually called the Citi Thank You Points customer service department one more time to thank them for the quick resolution and to tell them that this was a horrible customer experience.  I manually checked my Citi Thank You Points account almost every day for 2 weeks, followed up with them several times, and had to initiate the case.  Citi was not helpful at all along the way and I told the rep that the system needed to be better.  As an apology, she offered my 1,000 Citi Thank You Points.  Personally, I think 1,000 Citi Thank You Points is not a fair trade off, but I took the 1,000 Citi Thank You Points and thanked the rep for her help.

Looking back at my emails, I wanted to see if there were any red flags that should have alerted me sooner to the problem.  When I wrote Transfer Times to KLM / Air France from Chase Ultimate Rewards, AMEX Membership Rewards, Citi Thank You Points & SPG Starpoints, I received 2 emails from Citi right away (order placed and transfer complete).

When I originally made the 18,000 Citi Thank You Points transfer to Air France / KLM, I remember getting some sort of error page after clicking the confirmation button.  When I checked my inbox for all emails from the Citi Thank You Points program (CustomerService@thankyou.citibank.com), I did not see a single email from May 29, 2016.  All of the small 1,000 to 3,000 Citi Thank You Point transfers generated 2 emails (order placed and transfer complete).

So what did I learn from this whole experience?

If you are worried that your transfer may not go through instantly, you might want to hedge your bets and transfer a few thousand points first to see how fast the transfer is.  If you can, you might want to transfer points from more than 1 transferable points currency (if applicable).  If those transfers go through instantly, scale up the number of points you transfer until you reach your goal.  I’ve never had a problem transferring points from Chase Ultimate Rewards, American Express Membership Rewards, or SPG, but if the points do not post within the stated amount of time on their website or in their confirmation email, follow up immediately with the transfer program.  They will not help you unless you alert them to the problem.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.  Have a great Father’s Day everyone!