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Citi has announced an end to its Price Rewind program on September 22, 2019. This is a huge disappointment to those who have historically used price protection programs like this to save money on big purchases. This was especially useful around the holiday shopping season; it’s disappointing to see this end just before this year’s holiday sales begin — though keep in mind that you can still potentially take advantage of holiday sales since you have 180 days to file a claim.
Last year, Citi announced cuts to the Price Rewind program, dropping claim limits. Here were the details:
- Before July 29, 2018, the limits were $500 per claim up to $2500 per year
- After July 29, 2018, the limits were reduced to $200 per claim up to $1000 per year
- As of September 22, 2019, this benefit will be eliminated entirely
I was pretty disappointed when this benefit dropped to $200 per claim, making it among the lowest caps on a price protection benefit. Unfortunately, as competitors have dropped similar price protection benefits, Citi probably had less incentive to keep theirs alive.
As noted above, Price Rewind has been particularly useful for holiday sales in the past. You have 60 days from the date of purchase to start an automated Price Rewind search, meaning that your last possible day start a search (assuming you make your purchase on the last day of the Price Rewind program) will be November 20, 2019 — eight days before Thanksgiving. That sounds like particularly bad news since it is right before Black Friday ads are released. However, it’s not as bad as it sounds: you have 180 days from the date of purchase to file a claim manually, so if you purchase on the last possible day (September 21, 2019), you have until March 19, 2020 to file a price protection claim. You’ll just have to do the legwork yourself as Citi will no longer automate that for you if you don’t start their search by November 20, 2019.
For reference, here is a link to the current terms of the program. You can find the announcement of the end date as a pop-up notification when you go to the main Price Rewind website.
H/T: Doctor of Credit
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[…] 10. Citi kills Price Rewind on 9/22/19 – Frequent Miler […]
I admit that my Price Rewind usage has been extremely minimal, but the Citi FAQ states this in the section about the 180 days to submit the benefit request: “The advertisement of the lower price must have been published or made available within 60 calendar days after your purchase date”.
So I don’t understand how you can still qualify for holiday pricing (and this is why Citi timed the end of this feature exactly when they did). You might have 180 days to submit the claim, but the lower price still has to have been published within 60 days of the original purchase.
[…] today, we reported that Citi is dropping Price Rewind from its cards on September 22, 2019. What we didn’t realize at the time was that this is […]
Nick, not just price rewind, but much more. How can it compete with other travel cards now?