The online offer is going to change after today. We didn’t know what the nature of the changes will be, but maybe we now do. See, the in-branch offer has already changed since Saturday. It’s likely that what’s currently showing in-branch will soon show online.
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Current In-Branch Offer
Reader Pier stopped by a Citi branch today and sent me photos of the Prestige offer in-branch.
There appears to be two changes upcoming for the Prestige card, on relevant to card rewards and one relevant to the signup bonus.
Dining Category Dropped
According to the pictures from the new Prestige offer, it seems that they have dropped the 2x points category on dining.
Currently, the card earns 2x on both dining and entertainment. It seems that going forward the 2x category will be on entertainment only. No changes to the 3x category of Air Travel and Hotels.
Those who apply today online will still get the 2x on both dining and entertainment. It’s likely that they’ll change over existing cardholders at some point down the road, but for the time being you’ll get the 2x on dining as well.
For new cardholders (meaning, if you apply online today), the 2x dining should last for at least a year as they usually don’t switch anything for a year’s time due to legal reasons. For existing cardholders, it’s anyone’s guess when they will phase out the 2x dining benefit. Hopefully, it will last a while.
Update: The 2x Dining category is NOT being dropped for anyone. The flyer omission is apparently random.
Increased Spend Threshold
The other change that we’re seeing in-branch is that the spend threshold on the card is now $5,000 in place of the previous $3,000. It’s quite possible that this is the signup bonus change that was being predicted for online applications starting tomorrow, Tuesday.
I’d say this is more good news than bad since it means that overall the signup bonus is staying the same, and just the spend threshold is increasing. There’s also a chance that the online offer will be different, and we’ll have to wait to see for certain.
$350 Annual Fee
The other thing you’ll notice in the pictures below is the lower $350 annual fee.
Citigold members always get a lower $350 annual fee on the Prestige card, and sometimes you can get the lower fee in-branch even if you aren’t Citigold. This might even vary by the bank or banker.
I don’t expect that we’ll see any change in the annual fee; presumably, it will remain at $450 online for non-Citigold members.
Final Thoughts
We’ll only know for certain tomorrow, but I suspect that we’ll see this dining category change showing online tomorrow. And there’s also a good chance that the 50k bonus will remain online, just with the higher spend threshold.
Hopefully, this post help some people who are on the fence whether to apply today or wait it out. If dining isn’t big for you or if you have the Premier card which gets 2x on dining, then it’s quite possible that the only change tomorrow will be the higher spend threshold.
Of course, there’s also a chance that Premier will lose it’s dining category too, but that’s complete speculation. We’ll have to wait and see.
