[Reposting 11//6/19 as these official terms recently went into effect. Again, it’s likely nothing has changed in practice.]
Citi Double Cash released an update on the terms of the cards. The new terms exclude gift card loads from earning cashback. It also excludes person-to-person payments, as well as lottery tickets and gambling.
Old Terms:
Eligible purchases do not include balance transfers, cash advances, convenience checks, disputed or unauthorized purchases/fraudulent transactions, Card Account fees and finance charges and fees for services or programs you elect to receive through us.
New Terms (will go into effect on November 1, 2019):
The following transactions are not purchases and will not earn cash rewards: balance transfers, cash advances, checks that access your Card Account, items returned for credit, disputed or unauthorized purchases, fraudulent transactions, traveler’s checks, foreign currency purchases, money orders, wire transfers (and similar cash-like transactions), lottery tickets and gaming chips (and similar betting transactions), loads or reloads of balances on gift cards or prepaid cards or cash equivalents, person-to-person payments, Citi Flex Loans, the creation of Citi Flex Pays, Card Account fees and charges (such as late fees and finance charges), and fees for services or programs you elect to receive through us.
Checking the terms on the Prestige card, for example, I don’t see the gift card exclusion (though it does show some of the other additions like lottery tickets and gaming chips). They’ll likely roll this out to other cards slowly, and it may already be showing on some others or in other updates.
I just want to stress something here, similar to what we wrote recently regarding the Amex terms: I don’t think anything is changing now in practice. This is just an updated terms which means that they have their backs covered in case they decide to enforce such a thing for a given person or decide to start enforcing it in the future.
The terms may imply that even third party gift cards, such as Amazon gift cards, won’t earn points. Again, in practice I expect all these things to earn rewards.
There are also some other updates noted in the upcoming Double Cash changes regarding account reinstatement and in scenarios where minimum payment was not met, read the details here.
Hat tip to reader Chong786
My Citi Doublecash was shut down a few days ago. I was cycling the limit 10x per month and MSing 300k/month on it. Pending rewards that were going to be on the next statement date are lost. Any successful data points on getting them back?
Sorry no experience but very curios. I hit this card heavy, but not nearly as heavy. I MS about 70k a month accross 5 citi cards with no issue. My DC is the only account I cycle. Is your thank you account OK? Did you pay back citi with money orders or gift cards?
I paid back Citi from my a different bank’s checking account, not MO or GC. Citi closed my checking and savings the same day, even though nothing went thru that account.
Have the new terms prevented anyone from earning cashback on gift cards yet? I’m still using the card for Simon $1,000 visa prepaid debit cards…. statement closes December 5th.
My statement closed yesterday 12/3 and all my Simon cash back is there today.
Does this count for discounted giftcards? Also, is there a way on your Citi portal you can see if a purchase doesn’t earn cashback?
Does anyone know if Citi gets L3 data on purchases from Simon and Safeway?
As mentioned above Citi is aware of Simon, so they wouldn’t need L3. If we find them enforcing this Simon is likely not going to earn points. Safeway unlikely to provide L3 but I’ve seen reports that certain stores may.
Safeway (again, at least some stores) definitely offers L3 data, but I don’t know who really gets it. I generally go to a Kroger brand, which doesn’t provide L3 data.
DP: VGCs from Safeway/VONS still earning points –coding as grocery anyways.
I read a lot of complaints about Citi DC, it might be better to use another 2% card like Paypal or fidelity. Now that DC cut all their benefits in September is like any other card. It just my 2cents contribution.
I think you mean: “Just my 2% contribution”
Simon still works as of 10/15 statement closing. No personal DP here until next closing I guess.
Citi knows Simons. That was one of the reasons on account shut down in the past, even though points were earned and redeemed as normal as till the shut down.
If Citi were really serious about this, they’d just outsource their enforcement to the Amex RAT team. Heck, they could just outsource all IT to Amex.
Are there any DPs of this actually going into effect yet? We were told 11/1, but that doesn’t mean that it actually did…
As noted and bolded in the post, I doubt anything actually changed. Most likely, it’s just cover for Citi if they want to confiscate points. I’ve added some verbiage to clarify that.
Oh, sorry, I thought that was just part of the original post back in July. My bad! Thanks Chuck.
I’ve made it more clear now. NP.
Exactly. They have closed accounts based on Simon purchases in the past but they have to settle either thru arb / lawyer work or small claim courts due to there is no specific languages in T&Cs.
Not any more.
Wondering if Simon VGCs would continue to earn 2%.
if not, i’m pretty much done w/ MS. it’ll just be Amex at grocery.