Tag Archives: Citi Bank

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How to Combine Citi Thank You Points Accounts (Spoiler: Just Call Citi)

Good morning everyone.  Long story short, I have a Citi Premier Credit Card and 3 Citi AT&T Access More Credit Cards (I’m trying to spend $10,000 on each credit card every year to get the bonus 10,000 Citi Thank You Points every year).  I only applied directly for one of these Citi AT&T Access More Credit Cards (thanks for the $650 AT&T phone credit) and converted my old Citi Forward Credit Card and Citi Prestige Credit Card into additional Citi AT&T Access More Credit Cards.

But somehow one of my Citi AT&T Access More Credit Cards had a separate Citi Thank You Points account.  Why is this a problem?  Citi AT&T Access More Credit Cards do not have the same transfer partners as my Citi Premier Credit Card.  I will show you what I mean below.  In this post, I will show you why it is better to have all of your Thank You Point earning credit cards linked to the same Citi Thank You Points account and show you how easy it is to combine your accounts (spoiler: just call Citi).

To demonstrate why having 2 Citi Thank You Points accounts is not better than 1, I clicked the blue Select button at the top of the page that only had 1,480 Citi Thank You Points.

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Credit Card Benefits Goldilocks Zone: Too Popular vs. Underutilized

Good morning everyone, happy Friday.  I hope you have exciting Memorial Day Weekend plans.  I will be exploring San Diego with my girlfriend and staying at the beautiful Andaz San Diego.  Enough about me, let’s talk credit cards.  This thought has been on my mind for the last few weeks, but sparked my interest with Thursday’s post about the Citi Prestige Credit Card trip delay policy, changing from 3 hours to 6 hours (effective July 29).

It seems that some credit card benefits are too popular (like Citi’s trip delay policy or Chase’s price protection) that the credit card companies are losing money paying out claims or inundating the services that process these claims.  With several services that will automatically file price protection claims on your behalf (like Earny and Paribus) or automatically file trip delay claims on your behalf (like AirHelp and GetService), it’s no surprise that credit card companies are reducing or eliminating these credit card benefits.  (I don’t use any of these services.)

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Does Citi Really Know Where and When I am Traveling?

Looks like all the credit card companies are jumping on the bandwagon. A while ago, American Express told me I don’t need to alert them when I travel. Now I’m getting similar notices from Citi. The weird thing about this notice is that it says it’s based on my airline ticket purchases, but I don’t put airlines tickets on this card. I do put hotel charges on this card and save a big bundle each year  using the Citi Prestige 4th night free benefit. But I also cancel those and sometimes rearrange the dates on my hotel stays.

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Three Weeks in New Zealand – Without A Car!

Buenos dias everyone! Back in November, I was able to snag two economy tickets from San Francisco to Auckland, New Zealand for a jaw-dropping $395 per person roundtrip, nonstop on Air New Zealand. (My understanding is tickets twice that price would still be a good deal – right now, the lowest price I see for these flights through the end of 2018 is $1,150). I used Citi Thank You Points from my Citi Prestige Credit Card to book these tickets at a value of 1.25 cents per point (so a little over 63,000 points total).

At first, I avoided making any further plans because I thought the tickets might get canceled – but after a couple of months, I was pretty confident that they would stick. I eventually booked tickets from Mexico City to San Francisco (using American Express Membership Rewards points with the 35% AMEX Platinum Card rebate), and a few days before our trip, I finally started sketching out our plan.

A map of Tonei's route in New Zealand, as described in the article

Map created on Travellerspoint.com

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Travel Hacking Mistakes WE Still Make

In life, there’s always room for improvement, that’s for sure. And that holds true for the travel hacking world that each of us creates. Talking about mistakes we make is never an easy conversation, but Grant and I had it anyway. Whether the mistakes are the once-and-we’ll-never-do-that-again type, or those reoccurring mistakes that we seem to make over and over again, shedding light on the mistakes helps us think through what we’re doing and perhaps more importantly, what those mistakes might be costing us in the way of miles and points. After admitting our mistakes and deciding to share them with you, Grant and I had a good laugh about it all. Then he went back to enjoying his chai latte and I finished off my cortado, and of course we vowed to wipe the slate clean and not make the same mistakes again.

Let’s Take a Look at Our Mistakes

Grant felt that maybe searching and booking award flights and hotels too far out is a mistake because there are often good deals if you wait to the very last minute. Continue reading