Citi ThankYou Preferred Credit Card Review (2019.9 Update: Still Available via Product Change)

     2018-12-19     2021-05-25 974 Comments

Citibank

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Citi ThankYou Preferred Card Review

2019.9 Update: You can still get this card via product change.

Application Link

  • This card is no longer available to apply, but you can get it by converting from other Citi credit cards.

Benefits

  1. Earn 15,000 ThankYou Points after spending $1,000 in first 3 months. 
  2. We estimate that ThankYou Points (TYP) are worth about 1.6 cents/point, see below for a brief introduction. So the 30k highest sign-up bonus could be worth about $480.
  3. Earn 2 ThankYou Points per $1 spent on dining and entertainment, 1 ThankYou Point per $1 spent on other purchases.
  4. No annual fee.

Disadvantages

  1. It has foreign transaction fee, so it's not a good choice outside the US.
  2. Because of Citi’s new offer rule, if you apply for this card, you will lose the chance to get the sign-up bonus for Citi Prestige or Citi ThankYou Premier in the next 24 months!

Introduction to TYP

  • You can earn TYP with Citi Premier, Citi Rewards+, Citi Custom Cash, Citi Double Cash, etc.
  • You can add all these cards into the same thankyou.com account, and points that are about to expire will be redeemed first in the order in which they expire automatically.
  • In most cases, TYP never expire. But closing account, product change, or receiving points from other people may cause TYP on that account to expire.
  • If you have Citi Prestige or Citi Premier, TYP can be transferred to some airline miles. The best way to use TYP is to 1:1 transfer them to Asia Miles (Oneworld) or Avianca (AV) miles (Star Alliance). Other good options are: Singapore Airlines (SQ) (Star Alliance), Flying Blue (SkyTeam), Virgin Atlantic (VS) (Non-alliance), etc. If you use TYP in this way, the value is about 1.6 cents/point.
  • If you have Citi Prestige, you can redeem your TYP at a fixed rate 1.25 cents/point towards air tickets on thankyou.com. This is a common way to use TYP. Points+cash is available when redeeming for air tickets, so no need to worry if you do not have enough TYP.
  • If you have Citi Prestige or Citi Premier or Citi Custom Cash or Citi Double Cash, you can redeem your TYP at a fixed rate 1 cents/point towards cash.
  • If you have Citi Rewards+, you can get 10% back when redeeming TYP, up to 100k TYP per year. This feature further boosts the value of TYP.
  • In summary, we estimate that TYP are worth about 1.6 cents/point.
  • For more information about TYP, see Maximize the Credit Card Points Values (overview), and Introduction to TYP: How to Earn & Introduction to TYP: How to Use (very detailed).

Recommended Application Time

  1. [1/24 Rule] Bonus ThankYou points are not available if you have had ThankYou Preferred, ThankYou Premier or Citi Prestige card opened or closed in the past 24 months. Product change is treated as account closure.
  2. [8/65 Rule] You can apply for at most 1 Citi cards every 8 days, and at most 2 Citi cards every 65 days, no matter approved or not.
  3. Citi values the number of recent hard pulls a lot, we recommend you apply when there’s less than 6 hard pulls in the past 6 months.
  4. This is one of the most easiest Citi card to get, but we still recommend you apply for this card after you have a credit history of at least half a year.

Summary

Because of Citi’s new offer rule, if you apply for this card, you will lose the chance to get the sign-up bonus for Citi Prestige or Citi ThankYou Premier in the next 24 months! So we strongly recommend not to apply for this card, just treat this card as a downgrade option.

Related Credit Cards

After Applying

  • Call 888-201-4523 to check Citi application status.
  • Citi reconsideration backdoor number: 605-331-1698. This is a so called “Citi EO” (Executive Office) phone number. This phone number is not designed to make reconsiderations, but the representatives are really helpful.

Historical Offers Chart

This card stopped accepting new applications in 2018.12.

Application Link

  • This card is no longer available to apply, but you can get it by converting from other Citi credit cards.

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