The Citi ThankYou® Preferred Card from our partner Citi is a rewards credit card where the primary feature is currently an Intro 0% APR offer for 15 months. Here are the highlights:
- Enjoy 0% Intro APR on purchases for 15 months from date of account opening and 0% Intro APR on balance transfers for 15 months from date of first transfer; after that, the variable APR will be 15.49% – 25.49% based upon your creditworthiness*
- There is a balance transfer fee of either $5 or 3% of the amount of each transfer, whichever is greater*
- Earn 2X Points on Dining Out & Entertainment
- Earn 1X Points on All Other Purchases
- Points are redeemable for gift cards to popular retailers, restaurants, and department and home stores. 2,500 ThankYou® Points can be redeemed for a $25 gift card at thankyou.com
- No expiration and no limit to the amount of points you can earn with this card
- No annual fee*
I’ll be pretty frank here. The rewards program on this card is not great. There is not currently a sign-up bonus. You get double points on dining and entertainment, but nothing else. ThankYou points can be useful, but are not even easy to get a cash value of 1 cent per point. The good news is that there is no annual fee, so you can keep your ThankYou points account active without having to pay an annual fee.
Bottom line. Perhaps the card features will change in the future, but at the current time I would definitely recommend the Citi Double Cash Card over this card. The Citi Double Cash earns 2% cash back on all your purchases and the introductory 0% APR on balance transfers is for 18 months. Alternatively, check out the Citi ThankYou Premier Card which has an annual fee but a lot more perks in return.
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the best value for thank you points is Staples Gift card > Plastic Jungle. You end with 0.8% per point cashback or slightly above that for amazon gift card. (So 4% on the Citi Forward)
no, the best value for ty points is to redeem for flights. 1 point = 1 cent for anything on expedia
TJ: I couldn’t find the Amazon gift card on the site. They still offer it?
Of course the only problem is that you have to do business with Citibank. My history with Citibank is such that I will never again use a credit card issued by them, even if they have the last reward program on earth. I even stopped using my Home Depot credit card when I found out that Citibank does the processing for them.
Are you allowed to cancel the card in the first 12 months and not be subjected to the 125$ annual fee for getting the $200 gift card?
@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.
@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.
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?
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.
How do I look at my account activity on the web?