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Contents
The Offer
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- Citi Sears is offering some cardholders 15% back on online purchases until 4/31/22
Our Verdict
Some people have smaller bonuses (e.g 5% back). Citi Sears bonuses stack, current bonuses include:
The list of exclusions on the offer is profound to the point of “well what DOES qualify as online?” So — does anyone have data points on what did and did not qualify as “online” based on personal experience?
Well, it turns out the the computer I ordered at the Dell.com site did count as online, although I actually used this card only for the 18 months deferred interest offer.
Also, using the card at 5 Guys to buy burgers for pick-up later has worked. I can’t remember if I used it in the 5Guys app or at their website.
Finally, I bought a Verizon gift card from verizon.com and that seems to have counted, too. Unfortunately, my intended use of the GC — to pay for Fios monthly — can *not* be done (though it says it can), despite several chats, calls, and visits to the b&m Verizon store for help. It *will” buy hardware, so I’m using it up on chargers & such.
Recently bought a piece of furniture from Costco.com, but no idea yet if it counted.
The only way to deduce whether or not something counted is to wait for the “You’ve spent $xxx! Just spend $yyy more to earn your bonus!” email, then see if you can add up various potentially-qualifying purchases to match that exact $ figure… (If anybody knows any other way, please share!)
I started tracking manually via spreadsheet. Clunky but effective. Haven’t been off by so much as a point, even when manually excluding any purchases in the discloses exclusion categories (esp recurring/subscription purchases). I have always put a little bit of padding after hitting spend goal just in case (easy to do by making some arbitrary Amazon or definitely-online purchase). I have also excluded purchases at vendors I suspect are manually running the card despite the purchase being not-in-person.
I’ve noticed this Citi Sears MC has a posting date delay — your purchase may post with a transaction date of 1-3 days after the transaction took place in the real world. Since the posting date is what decides what’s “within the offer period,” *really* important to keep that in mind.
One other thing if doing the math, the min spend is routinely lower than the max bonus-receiving spend level on these. So if you want to max your returns, note that detail.
Last thing — my Sears MC has a crazy interest rate and if redeeming points as a statement credit to the Sears MC only gets $.005 per point. Consequently little to no value in using this card for anything but racking up these bonuses — and I have other “regular” Citi cards under the same TY account. Tip: redeem from the TY site while logged in under a “regular” Citi card and you get a full $0.01/point instead of only half that. Combine this approach with the high-multiple Sears MC point awards and you’re looking at, depending on the deal, as much as a 15% return.
I only just recently came into a 2nd Citi TY card when the DoubleCash converted and have not yet merged TY accounts. Before that, I redeemed TY points from the Sears card as a payment to my mortgage, which is a redemption option if you look far enough down the list. It’s a penny/point, & I wanted to hack away at the balance, so that was perfect. I refinanced last year and, given the current & likely future economic situation, I’m thinking I’ll skip future extra mortgage pmts and focus on paying off all my 0% balances instead. So… How do you combine the 2 TY accounts?
You can combine accounts via the “Combine My Accounts” section (supposedly under Manage My Account) when logged into TY — this is referenced in the “My Citi Accounts FAQ” at the TY site. But if you don’t see that option, a direct link is https://www.thankyou.com/combineMyAccounts.htm . Been a while since I used it to combine all my accounts, but I can still get to that page while logged into TY and it looks to be the same as what I used “way back when.”
Oh, I forgot to mention: that $0.01 redemption rate when logged in to TY under a “regular” Citi account also applies to straight cash back via direct deposit, which will let you apply those rewards to whatever you like.
Be careful with combining TY accounts. You can’t undo it and if you close one of the cards, it’s very hard to use the points that came just from that card.
Just as I had hoped! And many thanks for the link to combine accts.
Any body have any luck finding a company where an online gift card purchase would qualify for this offer? I’m wondering maybe Amazon/ Ebay/ Best Buy? Just curious if anyone has had any success so far. Got this offer, but the exclusions paragraph make me nervous. Thank you.
Those three should be a pretty safe bet. Amazon and Best Buy especially should be fine, I’ve definitely purchased from them on a previous “Online” offer.
Well this is different. Got an offer for 150k SYWP (worth about $150) on $2k spend from 2/15 to 3/14. This is the second time I got an offer for SYWP instead of statement credit. If this continues, it’ll be a bit of a devaluation as they can only be redeemed at Sears/Kmart or for GCs on their portal. I can frequently get discounted GCs elsewhere so I’d rather get statement credit instead of this.
Is there still a way to convert the regular Citi SYW Mastercard to a TYP Citi Sears? I’ve tried calling a couple times but seems like it is not possible
I received an offer of 10X Bonus ThankYou points when I spend at least $1,200 per month. Maximum of 13,000 Bonus ThankYou points per month. This means that I have a narrow window of spending ($1,200 – $1,300 per month) to qualify for and maximize the Bonus ThankYou points.
DP I ordered GC from Simon and it came through as MERCHANT CATEGORY N/A – BHN*GIFTCARDS 866-3278276 CA.
Am I SOL? Any other ideas for GC that codes as online?
It’s difficult to tell exactly what will be considered as “online” as the transaction details won’t tell you. I think on I’ve had some “N/A” transactions still count towards “online” and “travel” spend when I got offers in the past but it depends. The specific category doesn’t usually matter, but I think if it’s a Card Not Present transaction it should count but you can’t easily tell if it’s one of those either.
Turn on alerts for “transactions made without card”. You can send them to your email or text. I also made a gift card purchase from Simon mall. My text alert said this: “Your Shop Your Way Mastercard acct ending in #### was used at BHN*GIFTCARDS for $50.00 without the card present. Reply STOP to opt out.” This should be considered an “online” purchase.
Ok, thanks for this! One exception: My income tax pmt to US Treasury was a “card not present” tx, but of course didn’t count as an online purchase. The CC fee for that tx, a separate charge, was the same way.
But this seems like a good rule of thumb. Gonna start tracking “Not present” notifications & see how close the correspondence is …
Also, if the description for the transaction on the sears website shows a phone number instead of just a store location, then it should be considered an online transaction. So, “O’REILLY AUTO PARTS 75 8007556759 TN” suggests that it is an online purchase. The phone number is 800-755-6759. A description such as “SPEEDWAY 04187 CRYSTAL MN” indicates it is not an online purchase as it has store#, city, and state.
Oh nice, thanks for the tips! Makes a lot of sense now that I think about it. I knew my regular Citi Rewards+ card had a notification option for card not present transactions but not my Sears one. Didn’t think to check the account settings for this.
I looked for but did not find an alert for card not present transactions under my Citi Sears MC. The list of alerts available seems to be more constrained in general compared to a regular Citi card, and frankly, also flakier in real world use. But if one finds such an alert in theirs the advise to turn it up is definitely wise.
Is it possible to transfer TYPs from the Sears card to airlines, similar to Citi Premier or Prestige? I know I can transfer TYPs from other Citi cards by first moving them to a TYP account associated with Premier card but it’s easy because all “normal” Citi cards are managed through the same Citi web account. Citi Sears is separate though so it’s a bit unclear.
No, not possible.
You can link Sears into your Premier TYP account. Have to call in to do it.
That’s great news, thank you! I was bummed when William said no. Hoarded significant TYP balance from Sears over a few years and always planned to transfer to the airlines,
I used to get these offers all the time a few years ago. Now I never get them. I tried no spend and putting a small amount of spend on it, still nothing. Not too upset this time because I’m in the middle of the $12k spend requirement on my Southwest card.
I got 15x back with online purchases of over $700 per month, for three months, up to 12,000 points per month (36,000 max total).
Right now Paypal Key on Zego/Paylease codes as “Miscellaneous-REAL ESTATE AGENTS AND MANAGERS RENTALS”, and that isn’t listed as a non-eligible purchase catagory…so we’ll see how this goes!
This is seriously becoming my go-to rent card with all of those bonus points offers I’m getting.
I haven’t gotten any over 10% and $300 spend in a while.