The day Citi cancelled me

On Wednesday, April 22, I popped into a local grocery store to pick up a few items. As usual, I attempted to pay with a Citi Custom Cash card to earn 5X on grocery purchases, up to $500 per billing cycle. DECLINED. I tried a second Custom Cash card. DECLINED. WTF?

I paid with a different card and then opened the Citi app on my phone. After clicking past an offer for a higher credit limit, I found that all my Citi credit cards had been closed. Yikes! Later, I learned that my wife’s only Citi card had also been shut down.

Not a mystery

This is my second time getting shut down by a credit card issuer. The first was in 2021 when Capital One shut down my Venture account. That shutdown was a mystery. I had used the card only for legitimate purchases with nothing remotely fishy going on. I’m now confident that the Capital One shutdown was caused by a misunderstanding that led to the closure of my Capital One 360 banking account in 2015. Capital One seems to have a long memory for this stuff.

This Citi shutdown was different. This time, I knew that the things I did risked a shutdown. There was absolutely nothing illegal about what I did, but I knew that Citi wouldn’t like it. In confidence, an acquaintance had previously told me about a spending technique that worked particularly well with Citi. I dabbled in it a little, but I didn’t hit it hard until it appeared that a key part of that opportunity would end by January 30. I dramatically increased spending on my AAdvantage Business card. I stupidly cycled the card’s credit limit several times to earn AA Platinum Pro status while I could. Since that card had a separate login from my consumer Citi cards, I hoped that any negative consequences would be limited to that card. This was dumb. If I had researched the topic, I’m sure I would have learned that these actions endangered my entire Citi portfolio.

It’s important to understand that I knew better. Had I stepped back to think about whether the rewards were worth the risk, I wouldn’t have done it. I got caught up in the excitement and urgency of the deal, and that undermined my common sense. C’est la vie. The ball bounces and the cookie crumbles.

Fortunate timing

Bizarrely, the timing of this shutdown couldn’t have been better. If it had to happen, it happened at an ideal time. On April 19th, Citi halved the transfer ratio of ThankYou points to I Prefer. In preparation for this, on April 16th, six days before our Citi accounts were shut down, I moved 100K of my wife’s 110K Citi ThankYou points to my ThankYou account and then transferred 261,000 ThankYou points to my I Prefer account. Combined with my existing I Prefer points, this gave me a total of 1,050,000 I Prefer points (see this post for more details on this plan). It was great that I had made such good use of so many Citi points before the shutdown!

The next piece of potentially fortunate timing was with the transition of my Barclays Aviator Silver card to a Citi AAdvantage Globe card. That transition happened April 24th — two days after my Citi cards were shut down. When I returned home from vacation a few days ago, I activated my new Globe card and successfully made a few in-person purchases with it.

I’m still nervous, though. A longtime reader who had been shut down by Citi several years ago emailed to say he hoped the transition from Barclays would help him rejoin Citi’s ecosystem. He reports that he activated his new Citi card and immediately received an email saying that his account had been closed. So far, that hasn’t happened to me. Fingers have been crossed. Wood has been knocked.

Scrambling to redeem points

When I discovered that my accounts had been shut down, my first thought was to redeem my remaining Citi points as quickly as possible. I still had 392,000 ThankYou Rewards points in my account, and my wife had 10,000. I had no idea how long Citi would let me keep the points before forfeiting them.

I tried logging into the ThankYou Rewards portal to redeem my points, but the system kept redirecting me back to my Citi account. Finally, I found a back door. From my Citi account, I clicked through to Citi Travel, clicked “More… Visit ThankYou,” and boom — I was in. Even today, 6 weeks later, I can get to my ThankYou account this way, but I’m locked out of transferring points to partners.

Now that I could access my points, I had to decide how to redeem them. My first thought was to transfer to Leading Hotels of the World (LHW). Citi was running a 25% transfer bonus at that time (details here), which made points worth about 2 cents each towards LHW bookings. That would have been a great choice, but then I realized something… I might never have the opportunity to earn AA miles through credit cards again. Now that Citi is the sole issuer of AA cards and Citi’s ThankYou program is the only transferable points program that transfers 1-to-1 to AA, it looked like I might be forever locked out of AAdvantage miles via credit cards. At the time, I had no idea whether my Barclays Aviator Silver conversion to a Citi AA Globe card would succeed. Given all of that, I decided to transfer all of our points to our AA accounts.

I transferred all 392,000 of my Citi points to my AA account, and all 10,000 of my wife’s Citi points to her AA account. We received acknowledgment emails right away, but the points didn’t appear in our accounts until the next morning. Whew.

My Citi Accounts

For the record, here’s a tally of my accounts that were closed and the ones still open…

Closed Accounts

• ThankYou Rewards Cards
  • Custom Cash x 2
  • Double Cash
  • Prestige
  • Strata
  • Strata Elite (mine)
  • Strata Elite (wife’s)
• American Airlines Cards
  • AAdvantage MileUp
  • AAdvantage Business

Live Accounts

• AAdvantage Globe Mastercard (for now, but maybe not for long)

Goodbye Prestige

The hardest part of this shutdown was losing my longtime friend, the Citi Prestige card, which has not been available to new applicants for years. My dear Prestige card has been with me since 2014. And, since it gained the ability to earn 5X at restaurants in 2019, it’s been my front-of-wallet dining companion. My wife and I eat out a lot, and so I’ve earned many, many points this way.

Besides losing 5x for dining, I’ll also miss the Prestige card’s Priority Pass, which includes restaurants. That said, I have the no-annual-fee U.S. Bank Altitude® Connect card, which offers 4 Priority Pass visits per year (including restaurant visits). Going forward, I’ll use my Ritz card’s Priority Pass for lounge access and my Altitude Connect passes for restaurants.

What’s next for dining and grocery stores?

It feels so weird to eat out now without my Prestige card! What card should I use to pay? Except when using Amex Platinum or Sapphire Reserve dining credits, I haven’t had to think about that in years.

The obvious replacement card is the American Express® Gold Card, which earns 4X at US Supermarkets (up to $25K in purchases, then 1X) and at restaurants worldwide (up to $50K in purchases, then 1X). I don’t currently have the Gold card, but I may consider getting one. Until then, here’s what I’m doing now about restaurant and grocery purchases:

Dining

Among the cards I already have, the best restaurant earners are:

• Chase Sapphire Reserve® Card: 3X dining
• Wells Fargo Autograph℠ Card: 3X dining
• Atmos™ Rewards Summit Visa Infinite® Card: 3X dining
• Bilt Palladium Card: 2X for almost all spend + 4% Bilt Cash (which can be used to increase the overall earning rate to 3X or more)

At first, I put the Sapphire Reserve card in my wallet for dining, but later I realized I was close to earning the Atmos Summit card’s 100K companion award certificate, so I now use that instead. This was particularly handy on a recent international trip, since it also earns 3X on all foreign purchases. While in Europe, I made it my default Apple Wallet card and used it everywhere. Now that I’m back in the U.S., my Bilt Palladium card is my default card, but I still turn to the Atmos Summit for dining.

Grocery

I don’t spend nearly as much at grocery stores as I do at restaurants, so I haven’t spent much time thinking about what to do here. Unless/until I get the Amex Gold card, I’ll use whichever card is my current “everywhere else” card. For now, that’s my Bilt Palladium card.

Parting thoughts

If this had happened a few months ago, I would have been heartbroken. I was really into Citi ThankYou points since they gained the ability to transfer to AA, and to I Prefer at a 1:4 ratio. Now, though, the transfer ratio to I Prefer has dropped to 1:2, and Citi has abolished the ability to move points to other people’s accounts. Citi’s program is still valuable, but less so. My favorite points to collect now are Bilt points and Rove miles. So while I hate to give up my Prestige card, I’m not yet feeling much pain about losing Citi… as long as my AA miles hold out.

Amex Membership Rewards points have also seemingly declined in value lately due to fewer transfer bonuses and a few instances of reduced transfer ratios to airline miles. So, while the Amex Gold card is a natural pick since it earns 4x at U.S. grocery stores and at restaurants worldwide, I don’t find that option particularly exciting.

A more exciting option would be to pick up the Bilt Obsidian Card and to choose 3X for dining rather than 3X for groceries. Since there are ways to use Bilt Cash to increase that earning rate, I’d probably really get 4X or more for dining. Unfortunately, it’s only possible to have one Bilt card at a time right now. And I’m very happy with my Bilt Palladium Card. The solution may be for my wife to apply for the Obsidian Card, add me as an authorized user, and select that the points earned on that card go to my account. The biggest downside is that it would add $145 in fees to my portfolio ($95 for my wife’s card and $50 for the authorized user card). I’ll keep noodling that one.

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