In late July Citi added the ability for Strata Premier, Strata Elite, Prestige Cards to transfer to American Airlines at a 1:1 rate. Citi has now added the ability for Citi Strata, Preferred, Double Cash & Custom Cash Cards to transfer to American Airlines but at a reduced 1:0.7 rate.
Essentially if you transfer 20k points to AA per year, you are better off paying the $95 for the Strata Premier
Correction 30k
I initially misunderstood the 1-/7 redeption. So Double Cash when Thank you points are moved to Strata Premium cashout at 1-1. It could be good when I have a very large stash of Double Cash points to get the Premier card. It does have a SUB which is 60K, so thats a good start as well. Surprised that Strata Elite for an expensive card only offers 80K.
i wanna see AA exec cards have special access to AA transfer bonuses. that could be a huge win for citi and card members. and would def bring in a lot of new apps too.
At least they don’t currently charge a silly ‘excise’ fee… *evil eye at Amex*
good overview:
thriftytraveler.com/news/points/amex-points-transfer-fees
“But only Amex – the pioneer of all things travel rewards and arguably still the biggest bank today – chooses to pass that cost onto cardholders. Representatives from Chase, Bilt, and Citi all previously confirmed to Thrifty Traveler that they simply eat the cost of those additional taxes instead.” Hmm…
Would doing this keep AA miles alive? For <reasons >I no longer travels much.
Cheaper method is doing milesforopinions.com to keep AA miles alive.
You can use the AA shopping portal once in awhile if you need to keep your AA miles from expiring.
Open Bask Savings account and put in $25. This will generate 1-2 miles per month thus keeping your miles alive until something changes in the future
Very clever strategy or those without activity.
AA award bookings are fully refundable. Easiest thing to do is to book a cheap award and cancel it. It counts as activity and extends the expiration date. I did it a few months ago and it worked.
my understanding was we’d be able to combine thank you citi points among cards similar to how chase lets us with their UR points (-ink biz premier)? so if for example we have both the double cash and strata premier, thank you points earned on the double cash can still be transferred to AA at 1:1 after calling cs to combine pts?
You don’t need to do anything, it’s already combined. You have ONE TY rewards account for all of your Citi TY pt earning cards. Everything is pool and goes into that TY account. If you have a Premier, the system automatically knows to transfer the pts at 1:1
This is incorrect. You get a separate ThankYou account for each of your cards. You have to call Citi to ask them to combine them for you. Every time I got a new Citi card I had to do this, and my wife as well. Jus be sure to combine them under your highest value card (Elite or Premier).
This 👆
I did not know there is a particular way we need to ask Citi to combine the accounts and I thought they would just combine and we would receive the better rate. If I’m trying to increase the cashout rate of Elite from 1:0.75 to 1:1 for direct deposit to my bank account and open up a Custom Cash card, I call Citi and ask them to add the Elite TY account to the Custom cash account? Thanks!
My apologizes. All of mine has been combined and linked together for years. I don’t remember ever having to do it myself.
Basically cards with an annual fee are 1:1. Cards without are 1:0.7.
It’s ok if you just need a top off for a trip, but if you have a lot of points you might as well do a Product Change to a Strata Premier, transfer the points at 1:1, then you can Product Change back to the no AF fee card after moving the points.
You’re basically losing 45% in value if you value AA miles at 1.5 CPP (conservatively) Highly don’t recommend anybody doing this.
I would still look at this for very very targeted transfers. You can get last minute domestic AA awards for below 10k miles in economy, or last minute TATL in J for below 50k miles. There are definitely a couple of use cases for this if you need to fly.
No matter how you value AA miles, the loss of value between 1:1 and 1:0.7 is exactly 30 percent.