Keep, Downgrade, Cancel: Citi Prestige

Now that we know what benefits the Citi Prestige will have on July 23th after they have finished adding and removing benefits I thought it would be useful to do another post in our series: Keep, Downgrade Cancel. The aim of this post is to help current cardholders decide if it’s worth keeping the Citi Prestige card and if it isn’t if they should downgrade it to another eligible Citi card or just cancel it outright.

Card Benefits & Annual Fee

I think it’s a good line to outline what the benefits will actually look like after July 23th as I’ve seen a lot of confusion regarding this. This also gives us a base to work with:

Keep

Deciding whether to keep the card should be a simple matter of deciding whether the benefits outweigh the $450/$350 annual fee or not. The most valuable benefits are:

  • $250 air travel credit. Keep in mind this is based on a calendar year, but in your first card member year you should have used it twice. This means card member year two onwards you will only be able to use it once. This always confuses readers so let me give an example. You signed up for the card in May of 2016, you immediately spent $250 on airfares and were reimburse. On January 1st 2017 the credit reset and you used it again. When the annual fee became due in May of 2017 you could pay it and use your credit again in 2018 before the annual fee was due again. In your first year you used it twice and second year onwards you’ll only be able to use it once for every annual fee you pay. I don’t think air travel credit is equal to cash, because it’s not as flexible and you could purchase discounted airline giftcards instead. It’s up to you to decide how much this benefit is worth.
  • Priority Pass Select Membership. This gives you + two guests + immediate family access to priority pass lounges for free. Lots of other premium cards also come with lounge access so for some people this is worth a lot and for others it’s worth nothing.
  • Fourth night free benefit. This is another one that can be worth a lot, especially if you have a job that reimburses you for hotels and then you get to pocket the fourth night rebate. Can also just be used for people with paid hotel stays of four nights or more.

The other benefits I either consider fringe or they come with other Citi ThankYou point earning cards. If you value the air travel credit at $250 (I like to value it at 90% of face value or $225 but work out your own number) then you need to value the other benefits at $100-$225 depending on the annual fee you pay as well.

Downgrade/Cancel

Before looking at downgrading or canceling it’s important to keep in mind the Citi 24 month family rule. This states you’re not eligible for another Citi ThankYou point bonus if:

Bonus ThankYou points are not available if you have had ThankYou Preferred, ThankYou Premier or Citi Prestige cards opened or closed in the past 24 months.

This means that cancelling your card will reset this 24 month clock. We still don’t know for 100% certain how downgrades are treated, but believe they also reset the 24 month clock. This means it might be worth keeping the Prestige open if you’re close to it being 24 months since you opened the card.

Downgrade

The rules for downgrading Citi cards can be found here. Some reps will say that you must downgrade it to another ThankYou point earning card, but that isn’t true. Just hang up and call again. In terms of the best downgrade options I personally think it’s between three cards:

  • Citi Dividend. No annual fee and earns 5% cash back in rotating categories. There is an annual cap of $6,000 in spend (that means you can spend the full $6,000 in a quarter unlike the Chase Freedom & Discover it). Good if you can manufacture spend in any of the categories they offer.
  • Citi Thank You Preferred: No annual fee and earns 2x points on dining and entertainment.
  • Citi ThankYou Premier: $95 annual fee, 3x on travel & 2x on dining (travel category is more broad than the Prestige card).

Cancel

In my opinion this should always be your last option, I don’t really see any point in cancelling if you can pick up a Citi Dividend for free.

Our Verdict

It’s really hard to give definitive advice on this card, it becomes even more complicated when you start taking into account whether it’s worth keeping the card open so you don’t reset your 24 month clock. I think a lot of people will find it is worth keeping the card open just because of that, for example let’s say you’ve had the card opened for 12 months if you keep it open for another 12 months you’ll pay another $350/$450 annual fee but then you’ll be most likely able to get another 50,000 point bonus (or even higher) on the Prestige or Premier plus you’ll get the $250 air travel credit. Whereas if you cancel/downgrade now you’d need to wait an additional year before that is possible.

The other thing that’s important to remember is that you should be calling retention to see what they will offer you for keeping the card (even if you plan to keep it, call anyway). I suspect Citi will be eager to keep their retention rates high (as American Express was when they announced their changes) so the possibility for outsized value is quite high. You can read our guide to retention offers here. What are your thoughts on the Citi Prestige, will you keep, cancel or downgrade it?

 

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AlwaysFlying
AlwaysFlying (@guest_495574)
October 17, 2017 13:51

Called to downgrade Prestige to Preferred. CSRmentioned twice that the number will change. Preferred showed up online with a new account number. It retained my $450 fee that per CSR will be reimbursed by credit within several days. Although I was Citigold, my fee was some reason was $450 from the start. Both cards are showing in my account at the moment. I believe my TYPoint clock has been reset.

dan
dan (@guest_477335)
September 15, 2017 05:16

opened a premier in 12/2015 & opened a prestige in 09/2016 without closing any…yet, will i be again eligible for TY pt sign-up bonus in 12/2017 or 09/2018? if the latter, not sure i want to keep the prestige til 09/2018. Advice/suggestion? TIA

Rahul
Rahul (@guest_454896)
August 7, 2017 21:56

Just called in and got the “$50/mo statement credit for spending $1500/month for 7 months” retention offer right off the bat. That’s $350 back. This makes a massive difference the decision to keep/downgrade/cancel. I think the retention caveat should be at the top of the post, not the bottom lol! For (effectively) a $100 annual fee, this card is totally worth it.

Story time: I missed a train connection in Paris, but it was a huge relief to know that Citi had my back with the trip protection. So I just went ahead and re-bought tickets at the counter and continued my journey. Filed the claim and was reimbursed in 2 weeks.

Some Guy
Some Guy (@guest_446399)
July 25, 2017 15:29

I applied for the Prestige June 2017. Approved.

I closed my Premier last week as a result.

Will my bonus be at jeopardy? I have a Citi chat saying that I am eligible, but would rather know now if I am going to be rejected so I dont put marginal spend on the card.

Thanks.

Jeff
Jeff (@guest_445467)
July 24, 2017 09:13

Trying to get the word out so others don’t get burned like I did. Converting a thankyou card to a double cash DOES COUNT as an account closure! I just learned this the hard way and was denied my 50,000 points.

Matt K
Matt K (@guest_445044)
July 23, 2017 14:52

This was I think 2 years ago around the world-> world elite churnability days…I had a Citi AA plat for over 24 mos at the time with an AF posting in which prior years was given a statement credit for the AF. But before calling to see what retention I was going to get I opened a new one first to stay within 24 Mo rules. Then after that, I called and asked for retention but nothing. So downgraded to Citi Div (by the way, having 6 Divs between my wife and I q2 this year sure was nice!). Month or so later my AA plat “upgrade” to World Elite came in mail on that new AA plat. I was nervous if that downgrade would jeopardize the churnability so I called and cancelled the downgrade to keep it as an open AA Plat hoping the open/close event wouldn’t be an issue. Signed up for new Citi AA plat but never got the bonus. so still not sure if either the original downgrade request or the fact I cancelled a downgrade reset my 24 clock. Just mentioning in case a helpful data point.

Kurt S
Kurt S (@guest_444295)
July 21, 2017 20:59

Annual fee due in September, looking at $350. Offered $200 for spending $4k per mo for 3 month. Refused that and was offered $50/mo for seven months with $1,500 spend per month. Seems like a no brainer to me…

Electric Wayfarer
Electric Wayfarer (@guest_444687)
July 22, 2017 15:16

That’s awesome and if my calculation is correct, that’s at the very least a 4.33% return on the $1500 monthly spend (more if you charge the $1500 to any of the 2x or 3x categories and end up redeeming them at the 1.25 cents for airfare purchases)

Jeremy
Jeremy (@guest_442676)
July 19, 2017 20:31

What do you think of the AT&T Access More card as a conversion option?

WR
WR (@guest_441971)
July 18, 2017 17:51

Well this sucks. I called again today to try to get retention offer, since anniversary was yesterday. I had $350 AF, so had no intention to cancel. I get transferred over to account specialist, and then call gets dropped. I immediately call back, but CSR says my account has already been cancelled, as is their policy when call gets dropped, and to reopen would require a hard pull. Ridiculous. So be careful, there is some risk when playing the retention offer game.

Frank
Frank (@guest_441798)
July 18, 2017 11:40

Can you get another Prestige card if you have applied over 24 months ago?

David
David (@guest_441954)
July 18, 2017 16:50

That’s my plan here in 2 weeks.

Julien
Julien (@guest_442076)
July 18, 2017 20:54

Most of the Citi bonus offers require you to wait 24 months from the time you opened or CLOSED any Citi credit card that earns TY points.