Citi cards - major changes

[ermen]

Deleted....

 

[ermen]

Because we did so well I never asked for half priced annual fees but they did that for me one year. I still remember getting threatened and I transferred every last point out of my account over to SQ. I am glad I hung up on that dude who was saying he could "review my whole account back to the beginning".

What happened there?

 

[theblank]

The redemption value for Points to Travel booking today reduced from $0.0068 a point to $0.0058 a point.
for Gift cards the value is now $0.0048, dunno what it was before

 

[petejay]

Ok, so my strategy moving forward (mainly looking at KF/VA points, some CX perhaps):

- Cancel Prestige (may reconsider if they offer @ $350 - but $700 I cannot justify, even with my 4/3 hotel use).
- AMEX Edge/Explorer combo for local personal / international business spend (where Prestige shined).
- ANZ Black Visa for all local personal where AMEX cannot be used. This card is free as part of a loan package hence why not considering others.

Effective rate on ANZ to VA is 1:1. To KF it is 0.66 - but funnily enough (unless my math is wrong) - ANZ -> VA -> KF (@1.35:1) effectively works out to 0.74 KF per $1. (Or transferring during 15% bonus periods is 0.85 KF per $1.

So much better than Prestige on local spend then (i know there are monthly limits etc) and AMEX has it beat for all international spend, where I can actually use AMEX.

P

 

[cove]

Ermen that dude from Citi got verbally aggressive about one of our two Prestige credit cards. I had put lots of different taxes thru the card and he called when I was doing two different hospital visits for family. I am glad I hung up on him but then decided to clear out zillions of points over to SQ and VA just in case he tried suspending that card.
All ok now but the recent changes are unhelpful.
Hello St George might be sooner rather than later.

 

[ermen]

The tactical mistake that Citi Prestige made here was to chop the points awarded (and redemption rates) for overseas spend.

As i understand it, this segment is not affected by the recent RBA changes, and is also quite profitable for them due to the 3.3% FX fee...

Citi prestige was mainly used for me for overseas spend, but now, I will put 0$ through it overseas...

 

[PLANT]

Thought I would share the following from another forum.......I tend to agree with it all.......can anyone confirm the figures please?

I've been tracking redemption rates for gift cards (Citi's prepaid visa/mastercard, Coles and Woolworths options), cashback, Velocity and KrisFlyer.
After the redemption rate changes, all the gift card rates have gone up. Cashback + "Select and Credit" remained the same, although these are still the poorest value of points per dollar to redeem. Krisflyer rates went from 2 to 2.5 citi points were KF point; Velocity stayed the same.
Coles $250 gift cards are now the best value option from options that I track in terms of 'points per dollar', at 208.4 points per dollar value. Assuming this as a redemption target, on the Signature card the rate of return now is:

• 0.96% – Restaurants, Hotels, Flights + International Spend
• 0.72% – Petrol, Supermarkets, "major national retailers"
• 0.48% – Other
• 0.00% – Government

The rate on the higher tiers is good, but thwarted somewhat in that we depend on transactions being categorised correctly – personally I'm sceptical of this since there's very little transparency. International spend isn't really worthwhile if you foot the bill for the 3.4% surcharge – you'd be better using a card that waives international fees.
After all this, I'll be keeping my free-for-life Signature in use for domestic Visa spend. I'm concentrating a large proportion of my spend on AMEX where the returns are much higher; leftover domestic Visa spend isn't really high enough to make a card with an annual fee worthwhile, so a fee-free option is easy to justify (along with low expectations for rewards returns).

 

[ragingsheep]

More QFF pts related but if I cancel my card today, will I still get the QFF points on the spend I've made between my last statement and today? Or should I just hold off until I've got all my points first?

 

[cove]

Hold off to be certain you bag your entitlement.

 

[imipenam]

Great news from Citi .... NOT! Recent changes to Citi's s h i t t y system led to customers being converted back to the paper statement option. As a result, I received a paper statement out of the blue and got charged for it! What a joke Citi!

 

[carls888]

Just off the phone with citibank and they have refunded half the fee for Prestige, so $350 back in my pocket.

I also asked about the list of domestic retailers and their points earn on the new tiered system. I requested a copy and she took it to a higher manager, but I was told that they will tell me for each individual retailer if I called and enquired, but could not email me a confirmed list with the exact points structure.

She did note it on my file and the consultant actually wondered why it was not available.

When I asked about a fee free card, i was not told no, I was told that she can reduce the fee this time but to call back next year and see once the fee was applied as they were having many requests for this and she also noted that on my account.

I am going to keep it open for now, but have redirected spend to other cards. I do think from the conversation that they are feeling it a little as she was familiar with what I was wanting and why.

Thought I'd share. I have been a Citibank customer for 23 years and she did acknowledge this in our conversation without me mentioning it.

 

[michaelk]

Just rang and cancelled my Qantas Citi rewards card.

The cancellation staff member (the second person with whom I spoke after the greeter) was a really pushy person. It took over 20 minutes of repeating I would like to cancel my card for it to be done. I was asked at least 15 times if "I had gotten the card for the sign on points and I was always going to cancel after a year".
She did not like me stating the reduction in earn rates, the fact I have not used Priority Pass and I don't drink (dining program), thus not worth the reduced earn rate at the full fee.

As a marker, I was offered 10,000 points to keep the card at the full fee of $444 ($395 + $49) Qantas program.

Also like others, before being transferred to the cancellation team, I was offered another unnamed card fee free for life with a $10,000 limit increase above the limit I already had.

I'm in month 2 of the Qantas Premier card and now appreciating the period of time we have had with sign on bonuses being quite high the last 3 years, pre-RBA decisions.

 

[CaptJCool]

What's the phone number to call to cancel the card ?

As a long standing customer, I have been treated with disdain, with no rebates offered along the journey.
youre a day late once in 5 years, immediately slapped with a late fee and interest on last and current months purchases,
theres no fee free for life of the card offered like qantas cash and no transfer fees there either
and no sign on bonuses like what's in the market-place.
earn rates been a measly 1/2 a point for some years and now my local dining place on the free wine program has gone bust and closed - beside meal prices had been inflated to cover cost anyway, so I didn't use it often as I felt I was paying for the free bottle anyway.

 

[michaelk]

What's the phone number to call to cancel the card ? .

I used the number on the back of my card - 1800 818 008.

 

[Legoman]

I'm keeping mine as it's on the fee free for life deal and when they were handing out free money via BT, I managed to get my credit limit up to a stupidly high number, purely so I could get as much money as possible to dump in my offset account. If I cancelled it now I would be giving up a credit limit I would never practically be able to get with any other current credit card provider in the current market. In my case it's much better to keep my head down and stick with what I got when times were good. I suspect it will be a very long time (if ever) that I would be able to get a card like this existing one I have again.

For sure though, with the dramatic erosion of points, it isn't my default card to use anymore. In fact, I have no default at all anymore. I look at each bill and decide which card to use based around the due payment date and the point in the billing cycle I am in order to maximise the interest free days before it has to be paid with real money. In past years, all my council rates notices would have been paid with the Signature card for the points regardless of the billing period cycle. Today, there are no points payable on such bills, so they're being paid on a lowly 'classic' bog-standard, no-frills, fee-free HSBC card instead, simply because the billing period for that card is most favourable to the due date when the rates notices need to be paid by. I get 50 days interest free paid with the HSBC card, whereas I would only get ~30 days interest free if paid on the Signature. That's the difference that decides which one gets used these days. Sad.

 

[daft009]

Some council and utilities take PayPal or postbillpay so you can get the full earn via this method.

I've practically stopped using my signature, was doing 30k a month now $150 for the latest bill.

 

[Legoman]

Some council and utilities take PayPal or postbillpay so you can get the full earn via this method.

Yeah, that doesn't apply here. The only options are BPay (from account only), MasterCard/Visa via their own website or various cheque/cash in person + Australia Post options that are obviously aimed at the pensioner/retiree brigade with chequebooks and without without computers.

 

[petejay]

Cancelled my Citi Prestige after 3-odd years of well-into 6 figure annual spend, full fee paying..

They offered the 50% discount - was almost tempting for the hotel benefits, but not quite enough to justify - and also keep paying for a card I won't use. Also offered free-for-life Simplicity as a replacement, to retain credit line.

Off to Amex Explorer.

P

 

[mickto]

By now you would think Citibank executives would have taken notice that a lot of their customers are not using their credit cards. I am one of them.
One would assume a lot of loyal customers are cancelling their accounts. There has been a few reported on this post.
Instead of trying to stop people cancelling their accounts, why don't the executives take notice?
It takes years to build something up. Citibank has such a large number of premium customers. All its needs to do is to reverse the horrible point earn decision they made. Or maybe just start a double points offer to stop the bleeding. Otherwise this is corporate suicide and not fair for everyone working at Citibank.

 

[cove]

I scored a doubler.