Updated 8:30am PT on 8/12/19: I did another transfer, so I added the second data points to the bottom of this post.
Good afternoon everyone. 2 days ago, I read Frequent Miler’s post Forget email, book Turkish awards over the phone (7.5K each way) and decided to create a Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles account (the Turkish Airlines frequent flyer program). I wanted to test the transfer time and make sure everything was working properly, so I transferred 1,000 Citi Thank You Points to my new Turkish Airlines account on 7/30/19 at 1:46pm. How long would it take for the miles to post to my Turkish Airlines account?
A few months ago, AwardWallet introduced a new service called Balance Watch that you could use to track a program and be immediately notified when the miles or points posted to your account. I hadn’t had a chance to test out this feature yet, so I decided to check it out and see how well it worked.
To set up Balance Watch, I scrolled to the bottom of my Turkish Airlines account in AwardWallet, checked the Enable Balance Watch box, selected Transfer, selected Citi Thank You Points, entered 1,000, selected Less than 1 hour ago, and clicked the Update Account button.
A blue bar showed up under my Turkish Airlines account indicating that Balance Watch was enabled and showed a countdown timer (how long AwardWallet would continue to check on this account).
I also received a confirmation email and push notification from Award Wallet at 1:59pm.
The following morning at 7:07am, I received an email update and push notification from Award Wallet.
I used timeanddate.com to calculate the duration between the Citi Thank You Point Transfer and the AwardWallet Balance Watch email/push notification. Based on the timestamps in the emails, the transfer time was ~17 hours and 21 minutes.
I logged into my AwardWallet account and saw that my Turkish Airlines account now had a balance of 1,000 miles and the blue Balance Watch bar was gone.
I signed into my Turkish Airlines account and went to the Miles Transactions page. It said that my miles will expire on December 31, 2022, so I have ~3.5 years to use them before they expire. I also clicked on the Miles Statement Table to see more information.
Here is what the Citi Thank You Point transfer looked like. I’m not sure why the Date column shows July 29, when the points were transferred on July 30 and posted on July 31.
If you are not a Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles member, you can sign up here (my referral link – I will get 2,500 Turkish Airlines miles per referral – thank you!).
If you have any questions about transferring Citi Thank You Points into Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles miles, please leave a comment below. Have a great day everyone!
Second data point: I transferred 14,000 Citi Thank You Points on Sunday 8/11/19 at 10:43am and AwardWallet’s Balance Watch says the miles posted to my Turkish Airlines account on Monday 8/12/19 at 4:52am, which is 18 hours and 9 minutes later.
I hope this will be a standard time frame now.
My experience over the last 3 years was quite different – anywhere between 1 day and 1 month.
We’ll see.
Yikes, 1 month, that sounds painful. I hope this less than 24 hour turnaround time is the norm.
Can you keep these miles alive past 3.5 years ?
I’m not sure if any activity will reset the 3.5 year expiration date or if it is a fixed expiration date for those 1,000 miles. I suggest not transferring in more miles than you can expect to redeem in 3.5 years.
Four and a half days and counting for me….I had immediate need for those points….sigh.
Hi Alyn, I’m sorry the transfer from Citi TYPs to Turkish is taking so long. How many points did you transfer?
5 days and counting… Award I had on hold expired and the seats are gone now. This is fun.
I’m sorry Bob, that is really frustrating. I hope the Turkish miles post soon and you can find alternative flights to book with the miles.