Citi ThankYou Preferred Card Review
The Citi ThankYou® Preferred Rewards Card is here, and is offering a $250 gift card when you redeem the 25,000 bonus ThankYou® Points received after $2,000 in purchases within 4 months of account opening. How it works though, is that instead of straight cash back, they pay you in ThankYou points. Here’s a look at how they stack up.
How much is a ThankYou point worth?
Since this is the currency we’re dealing with, let’s see what we can get for it. Although they run promotions from time to time, in general it takes 6,000 points to redeem for a $50 gift to retailers like Gap, Banana Republic, Bed Bath & Beyond, CVS Pharmacy, Land’s End. At 10,000 points, you can get a $100 gift card. This gives a value of 0.83 to 1 cent per point in gift cards.
Want something closer to cash? For a check mailed to you, it costs 8,000 points for $50. For a statement credit, it’s 7,500 points for $50. For a prepaid Visa card, it’s also 7,500 points for $50. For a check mailed towards your mortgage payment or student loan (made out to your lender), is costs 6,400 points for $50. This works out to between 0.63 to 0.78 cents per point.
The card has other smaller perks, like 100 bonus points for signing up for online account access, 100 points for paperless statements, and a 1-3% bonus on your existing point balance on your annual card anniversary. More importantly, it has no annual fee.
By Jonathan Ping | Credit Cards, Deals & Offers | 5/11/12, 11:03pm
December 16th, 2010 at 7:02 pm
the best value for thank you points is Staples Gift card > Plastic Jungle. You end with 0.8% per point cashback or slightly above that for amazon gift card. (So 4% on the Citi Forward)
December 17th, 2010 at 2:19 am
no, the best value for ty points is to redeem for flights. 1 point = 1 cent for anything on expedia
December 19th, 2010 at 2:11 pm
TJ: I couldn’t find the Amazon gift card on the site. They still offer it?
December 20th, 2010 at 6:14 am
Of course the only problem is that you have to do business with Citibank. My history with Citibank is such that I will never again use a credit card issued by them, even if they have the last reward program on earth. I even stopped using my Home Depot credit card when I found out that Citibank does the processing for them.
December 20th, 2010 at 4:26 pm
Are you allowed to cancel the card in the first 12 months and not be subjected to the 125$ annual fee for getting the $200 gift card?
December 20th, 2010 at 5:59 pm
@Ryan – Yes, there is nothing in the fine print that says otherwise. The bonus is not linked to keeping the card for any period of time, and the annual fee is waived for the first year.
December 27th, 2010 at 8:44 am
@David
You would have to redeem the 10k for $100 Staples gift card at Thank You Network, then exchange it to PlasticJungle for a $84 check, or for a sligthly better return you could trade for $88-ish in Amazon gift certificate.
I don’t know a better way to turn thank you points into cash.
January 19th, 2011 at 10:55 am
That 1 point per mile seems like a huge bonus. Not sure more emphasis wasn’t put on it, or am I missing something? A flight from SF to NY would yield about 4800 points… or $48 in gift card money. Say the ticket costs $500 — that’s almost 10% back.
And what about that companion pass? Are those actually usable, or is it like getting miles or “award” tickets on airlines, where you can’t actually use them for any flight you’d ever want to take?
April 25th, 2011 at 6:53 pm
I’m testing out the card but based on what I know, it’s not really worth it. Yes, you get 1 extra flight point for every mile you fly by purchasing an air ticket with this card, however, you cannot turn flight points to thank you points unless you have equal amount of ordinary purchase points. This means that assuming each Thank You Point = $0.01, your maximum rebate is 2% (ie, if your ordinary purchase point is 20,000 per year, no matter how many miles you fly, only 20,000 flight points can be converted into redeemable Thank you points, you can only turn 20,000 purchase points + 20,000 flight points = 40,000 Thank you points eligible for redemption). In addition, the anniversary bonus point is based on % of Thank you points earned, which means that 40,000 Thank you points = 400 Bonus Thank you points the first year anniversary.
October 11th, 2011 at 1:49 pm
How do I look at my account activity on the web?