Check Your Citi Pre-Approval Offers For Cards Without 24 Month Language

Awhile ago Citi added new restrictions to who is eligible for the sign up bonus on their cards, we call this the 24 month rule (and you can read more about this here). Basically you won’t be eligible for a sign up bonus on a card if you’ve opened or closed another card within the same “family” in the last 24 months. E.g if you’ve opened a Citi Prestige card within the last 24 months you wouldn’t be eligible for a bonus on the Citi Premier.

Thankfully not all offers contain this 24 month language (there were recently some public links, those have now expired). In our detailed post on this rule we briefly mentioned that one of the ways to get around this rule was by using a pre-approval link that doesn’t contain the 24 month language.

Citi let’s you check for pre-approval offers (more on this here) and sometimes these offers do not contain the restrictive 24 month language. If this is the case, then you should be eligible for and receive the sign up bonus even if normally you wouldn’t be eligible. Just keep in mind the standard Citi application rules. If you’re thinking about applying for a Citi card, then make sure you read these things everybody should know first.

There are also similar work arounds for the Chase 5/24 rule and American Express once per lifetime rule.

Thanks to Gonzohawk for reminding me to remind you about this
    William Charles
  • On February 23, 2017, 10:00

View Comments (15)

  • Fyi - no HP for me on an approved app through this link. I applied right after an approved biz AA app through the new link.

  • Does using someone else's targeted Citi AA mailers without 24 mo language work? There have been recent DPs about Citi not approving it. Do you have any comments on it doc?

    • It worked for me, I cancelled a citi AA card 3 months ago and submitted my son's mailed offer w/ my info, got the 50k. Now I received my own offer which I plan to submit (gonna wait 60 days) and expect to get another 50k

    • I was wondering the same thing. In my case I have a link for the CitiBusiness AA without 24-month language. The link looks just as generic as all the regular Citi application links, so I can't tell if it's "targeted" or public.

  • I currently have 4 Citi cards but got the following message: "we couldn't match your records to a Pre-Qualified credit card offer".

  • What is the 24 month language I should be looking for? Is it typically in the Terms and Conditions? Thanks!

    • Follow the link in the post to the page on the Citi 24-month rule. It's along the lines of, "This offer is not available to you if you have opened or closed any X cards in the past 24 months."

  • So the AA card I am preapproved for has the 24 month language but the 40k Hilton card does not.

    Thanks for the heads up.

    • I wonder how they decide what cards do/don't have the 24 month language, seems to vary from personal to personal. I wonder if you can get matched to the higher 75k offer on the Hilton card?

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