I could go on and on about the devious, infuriating and dishonest tricks I’ve noticed they use to make money. For example, if you want to avoid late fees and have your bank account automatically charged each month for your credit card bill, the automatic payment option does not deduct from your bank account until the last available second on the due date. This means that you receive a late payment warning each month and if *anything* gets delayed or goes wrong with the bank deduction you get slapped with a $40 late fee. In addition, you get to pay finance charges on your entire balance until the account gets paid… BUT you can no longer pay your account online!! The online account is frozen if you do not pay on time, which means that you either have to mail a check or call customer service, where it now costs $15 to pay your account off over the phone… This has all happened to me in spite of the fact that I had plenty of money in my bank account the whole time to pay off the bill in full. Now when this happens again, instead paying 13% interest on the amount that I owe, I will have to pay 26+% in spite of the fact that I could have paid the balance in full in the first place. I am sick of the risks and constant worrying about fees! Using a credit card should not have to be as risky and dangerous as betting with subprime mortgages, but these days it seems thats how it is. I only hope the other credit card companies are a bit less sharkish. Ive heard good things about AE and Discover…

Goodbye and good riddance. I hope the ThankYou Network shuts down as more and more people realize that it’s not worth the time and money spent.

Citi Forward
Up to 2% purchase APR reduction when you make a purchase, stay under your credit line and pay on time 3 billing periods in a row
6,000 ThankYou points after you make $50 in purchases within the first 3 months
5,000 points when you sign up for paperless statements within the first 3 months
5 points for every $1 you spend on dining, fast food and entertainment, 1 point for every $1 you spend on other purchases†
100 points each billing period when you pay on time and stay under your credit line
0% APR on Purchases and Balance Transfers for first 6 months†
No annual fee

I will take on any and all questions.

We are 2 peas in a pod. I’m glad you told me of your wasted efforts to contact citi. I was prepared to write a few letters and make some phone calls, but it appears that is a waste of time and breath. After I posted my prior message, I cashed out 20,000 points and cut up my Citi mastercard. It’s discover or an REI rewards card for me (we spend plenty there and it was a quick alternative). I’m surprised Citi is alienating valuable customers like you and me. I am through with them.

I am glad to see other good clients bailing on Citibank.

II logged in to check my balance as I am going to leave the account open but not use it. However, it is a good idea to have a back up card since the Chase Visa is now my main card.

I logged into the website and sent a secure email on 7-15-09 and asked for someone to look up my business and how much money I have made for CITI by them charging for each transacation. I told them that it appears they do not care anyting about their clients and why have a credit card with an Outrageous finance charge if the rewards are less than a standard cash back card.

The EMAIL STATUS IS UNREAD.

Citi states they will reply within 24 to 48 hours. It is going on a motnh and they have not even read it.

I sent another email and called Citibank but they just dont care. “We are sorry you feel that way,” is there anything else we can do? I asked if they could at least escalate my coimplaint or keep it on record. She said Yes but she didnt type and it was obvious the CS rep has been trained just to ignore these calls.

I have gotten more points with my new VIA in 2 weeks than I received in the last 3 months of my Citibank card.

The best advice I can give anyone is to avoid Citibank like the plague.

Dean

First the Thank You network got rid of the 5,000 points for a 50 dollar card. It became 6,000 points for a 5,000 card. They then got rid of the extra points for shopping at certain places. This pattern continued on with everything.

The bottom line is they now want 14,000 points for a $100 prepaid credit card which is 1% back and then asking for $140 dollars for a $100 card.

I also noticed what a ripoff their products are. I looked at the on sale section and they have the Tiger Woods Golf for the 360 on sales for 9800 points, They are asking $100 for a game that costs 49.99 in all stores.

I cashed all my points out each year in September or October to make sure none would expire.

For some reason this year, even though I have spent more money, I have less points and my balance went down.

I have received less than 0.25% of my purchases in points and no one at Citibank or the Thank You Network can explain.

I just cashed out $220 worth of points and got $150 worth of gift cards.

I cancelled my citibank card today and applied for an Amzaon Credit Card. The Amazon card supposedly offers a minimum of 1% on all purchases and 2% on gas, food, office supplies. They give you a $25 Amazon Gift Card every time you get 2500 points.

I am switching to this because it is at least fair at this point and time, Amazon does have low prices and I am tired of getting ripped off by CItibank.

I told Citibank that I hope they go bankrupt and they are ther worse credit company I have ever dealt with.

MY advice is to avoid them like the plague and find another reward card.

Dean

PS: I am NOT recommending the Amazon Visa. It just happened to appear to be a much better deal to me and cannot be worse than Citibank. Nothing can be worse than Citibank.

I went to redeem a bunch of cards for Christmas and most of the retail stores no longer have $100 gift cards. You have to pay 6,000 points for the $50 cards. I basically gave away $120 dollars worth of cash in getting cards for Christmas.

I called Thank you Netwokr and they said it was up to the Vendors. I called Citibank and they said they have no control since they outsource the rewards to Thank you Network. I explained that they may need to reconsider then. She was very rude and said Look “You can get an Omaha steak gift card” for 9,000 points and a Sharper Image for 10,000. You know Sharper Image is about double the prize of items you can buy in other retail stores.

I am keeping the credit card until I make sure all reoccuring billing is off there but I am switching away. I feel it was basically the bait and switch that Citibank pulled.

Dean

Upon arrival, I read the one sheet of instructions, which CLEARLY states that the recharger is NOT intended to be used with computers. I called Thank You Networks several times, spoke with a supervisor twice. They have informed me that I have no recourse whatsoever. They will not take the backpack back, though they admit that the advertising is incorrect. I cannot get my points (over 11,000) back. The only thing I can do is send the backpack to the manufacturer and request a new backpack! Why would I want another one?

Citibank tells me that they have no control or influence over Thank You Network. They did say they would spot me a few thousand points, but it will take “2 billing cycles” for that to show up. I requested a different reward program and intend to change to the dividend card, if I like that. Otherwise, I will cancel my Citibank card and find something better. I seldom fly, so miles points are of no use to me.

By the way, I did try the charger on an mp3 player, since it was useless for anything else I own. It caused the mp3 player to malfunction. Fortunately God heard my petition and we were able to get the player to reset itself several hours later.

I heartily recommend that no one order any “gifts” from the Thank You Network. They don’t check them from quality or even truthfulness, and they take no responsibility for any, ANY, defects or problems. They don’t even take returns.

Guess what, now that I want to travel it turns out I need 80k points for a ticket to Asia that would cost up to $1600, then 5k points for each $50 over that price, up to $2000. But it gets worse: they can only book through expedia and the cheapest ticket there is over $3000!!! What a deal. My friend just got a ticket for $1400 for the same destination/time through a travel agent… I’ve switched to this card specifically for international travel and now cannot use the points (have 120k)! This is such a scam. Their excuse: the rules have changed many times since I’ve signed up. Nobody notified me, of course…

Advise for others thinking of this card: get your specific offer in writing and test it asap, before accumulating points that may turn out to be useless.

The offers would sometimes disappear and reappear, but I haven’t seen any for at least a year or two, now. Wondering if I should try requesting that as a “custom reward”…

Wow. You are an excellent copy writer. How much is Citi paying you to troll blogs and add positive comments?

I recently ordered $250 dollars as Office Depot gift cards. I had to break it to 2x $100 and 1x $50 gift cards. While the $50 already arrived, the $100 cards are still “in progress”. It’s been about three weeks already. I call TYN and they say there’s a 2-5 weeks wait time for them to arrive. That info only shows up *after* you complete the purchase. Who waits for five weeks to get a gift card? This is really ridiculous.

I knew how much the Citi cards sucked, and thus I stopped using my Citi Rewards card a while back. However, I had ~ $250 worth of points so I had to deal with the Thank You Network to get some cash. I would get statement credit, but that is a bad deal – you get much less than when you buy gift cards. And they converted my Rewards card to Business card which doesn’t allow statement credit. Smart, eh?