Citi Credit Card News: 3x Everywhere Retention Offer & 50k Sign Up Bonus

It looks like Citi is continuing to aggressively push for a larger share of the lucrative prime credit card market. There are two pieces of news that I’d like to share about the Citi ThankYou Preferred & Premier cards.

50,000 Point Sign Up Bonus

The Citi ThankYou Premier typically comes with the following sign up bonus:

• Earn 20,000 ThankYou Points after spending $2,000 in the first three months of account opening
• Earn 30,000 ThankYou Points after spending $3,000 in the first three months of the second year of being a card member

The annual fee of $125 (soon to be $95) is waived for the first year, but because you need to spend $3,000 in the second year you’d be hit with the $95 fee. It’s possible to get the following sign up bonus:

• Earn 50,000 ThankYou Points after spending $3,000 in the first three months of account opening

The annual fee on this card is also waived for the first year. This is obviously a better offer as you get all 50,000 ThankYou points sooner, the minimum spend requirement is lower and you don’t need to pay a second year annual fee.

Unfortunately this offer is not public, you need to check for pre-approved offers with Citi and it might show up (this is the same way people are getting Citi Prestige 50,000 point offers, although you can get a 60,000 point offer on that card in branch with a lower annual fee). I didn’t receive this offer.

I recommend checking your pre-approved offers with all of the different card issuers on a regular basis, as you’ll often find higher than normal sign up bonuses. I typically check mine on a monthly basis, but I always recheck if I here about others being targeted. I put together this list, which gives you all the credit card issuers that offer a pre-approved/pre-qualified/targeted offer checker and how to use each one. That should make things a bit easier for you when checking for offers.

Thanks to Level1Engineer from reddit.com/r/churning for letting me know about this one.

Retention Bonus

A lot of people have the Citi ThankYou Preferred card, because it used to offer 5x ThankYou points for the first twelve months at the following categories: gas, grocery & drug stores. A lot of people have been calling and asking for a retention offer (hopefully in response to this excellent post on retention bonuses). People have been receiving some very generous retention offers, Frequent Miler & Miles To Memories both wrote about the offers they received and their experiences. I’d recommend reading their posts, but below are some of the efforts they and others have reported receiving on this card:

• Earn two extra points per dollar for 6 months, 35,000 point limit (some have reported not having this limit on their offer as well)
• Earn four extra points per dollar at drugstores, grocery stores, gas stations, commuter transportation, and parking for 3 months, 35,000 point limit
• Spend $3,000 within six months, get 10,000 bonus points

If you don’t have a lot of experience calling retention, then I’d recommend reading the following first:

• Retention Bonus Rules & Tips For Each Card Issuer – Get More Than One Bonus Each Year
• Frequent Miler’s experience getting these offers
• Miles to memories experience getting these offers

Here are a few basic tips a well:

• It’s not possible to call the Citi retention directly. Call the number on the back of your card and ask to be transferred to the retention department
• Be polite, respectful and kind. Making small talk and being a pleasure to deal with will increase your chances of getting a better offer. Just because an offer shows up on their computer doesn’t mean they have to extend it to you, if you are demanding and rude then chances are you won’t get an offer at all. CSR’s will go out of their way to help kind customers, because they have to deal with irate callers all day long.
• You can threaten to cancel your card or you can just flat out ask them if you have any offers on your account. Some people will swear by threatening to cancel, others report more success with just asking. Personally, I just ask. If you threaten to cancel they will typically try to convince you not to cancel by listing the card benefits, whereas if you flat out ask you get a response sooner.

Thanks goes to Julian from Devil’s advocate & Bet you didn’t know fame for hinting at this in his post “Bet You Didn’t Know: How to setup credit fraud alerts by text or email“.

Share what offers you received in the comments and your experiences calling Citi. Sorry for all of the Citi credit card posts recently, I’d love to share news and increased offers about other card issuers but none of them are really doing anything at the moment. As always, if you have any tips or there is something you think I should cover – let me know!