Citi issues a Sears MasterCard, let’s take a quick look at the card:
- Sign up bonus of $15 off at Sears after you make a purchase
- 6 months special financing on purchases made today
- No annual fee
- Special financing offers
- Advanced notice of Sears sales events
- Monthly savings
Now you’re probably wondering why on earth I might say that this card might be worth considering. The answer is pretty simple, this card is known for receiving lucrative spending bonuses. For example this current offer:
Previously these offers were for cash back, but they now earn ThankYou points instead. Here are some of the offers they seem to run:
- 10x up to 10,000 points per month for four months
- 5x up to 10,000 points for a short period
It seems that you need to put a little bit of spend through the card to get these offers. If you do this (just one or two purchases seems to be fine) then from what I’ve seen people have been getting 1-3 of these offers per year. If you can get the 10x offer on up to 10,000 points for four months, then you’re basically getting 40,000 Citi ThankYou points for $4,000 in spend – a generous sign up bonus. People might find that this is even more of an attractive option with Citi’s new rules limiting when you’re eligible for sign up bonuses on their offer cards.
If you have this card, let us know your history of bonuses (and spend) on this card in the comments below.
For at least 3 weeks now I have been unable to login to my Thank You points account. I have the Sears card that earns TYPs (the only other Citi card I have is Costco). The TYP link on my online statement doesn’t work anymore, nothing happens when I click it. They told me there is an issue with Windows 10 and that I had to create a separate TYP login at thankyou.com. That worked once but now that opens to an empty page when I try to login. I have over 25,000 TYPs that were almost all earned in the past few months with the 10x promo on gas, restaurant and grocery spend but I can’t access them.
Don’t miss a payment – I missed 2 payments due to medical issues – they closed my account, charged me 29% interest and late fees. I paid the card in full and they closed it. A slap in the face when I have been a loyal customer for over 25 years to Sears and the financial suite of services. They have horrible business practices
Very strange. I just opened one of these cards in November 2016 but it is offering SYM points…not TY points. If they switched everyone over to TYP, why would they open a new card with SYM points?
I got a Labor Day offer of 5x for any spend at Sears/Kmart, spent $1100 on 2 ‘mattress sets, no 5x bonus so far, also got 2 recent offers, one was 5x on any spend for 4 days, another was 10x on grocery spend up to 5000 points per month through the end of 2016. Still nothing has posted except 1x regular spend points. Wondering if I should call them.
I just saw this offer in my mail (I was out of town for 3 weeks so this may be a couple weeks old):
Earn 100 Bonus TYP on every eligible purchase of $1 or more
Max of 2,500 points
Valid 10/01/16 – 11/30/16
So I will pay off my small 0% promo balance, then do 25 x $1 purchases at gas pumps to earn 2,500 TYP
I wouldn’t put it past them to try to trick people with 0% promo balances to use the card for other purchases so they can sock them with high interest rates (21.49% in my case) on the new purchases.
I have gotten 3 of these offers for ONLY Statement Credits over the past 2 years. I opened my regular (Non Thank You) Citi Sears Card in 2013…and only put $15 on it periodically, minus the months of 5x or 10x where I spent $500 or more.
One of them was gas grocery only, the other was anything… Either way 10% back is solid for a no AF card. Its one of the few cards keeping my AAoA lower… and Its got a 10K limit, which reports to those whom you add as an AU.
Sears ran their own credit card program themselves until 2003. Before that date, if you had a Sears card, it was a store card. But delinquencies started to become a big problem, so it sold the credit card division to Citibank that same year. Sears cardholders in good standing were sent Sears Platinum Mastercard by Citi. This is their primary credit card. In 2004, Kmart acquired Sears and relaunched a Sears store brand card, which was also eventually sold to Citi. The remaining in-house credit accounts not already sold to Citi were sold to JPMorgan in 2005. Citibank treats its Sears Card and Mastercard customers much more poorly than their Citi-branded cardholders. Interest rates on purchases are usually 25% or higher, with an even greater interest rate on cash advances, which are highly limited. Those cardholders considered marginal who just qualified for a certain credit access line level are always given a credit limit ending in $1. So if you are a very marginal customer or you were instantly approved from an in-store app with marginal credit, you credit limit is $501-1001. Other marginal customers or those pre-approved in store with good credit are usually given $1001-2001. If you use the card after that, you usually get a line increase every year or so, and then the $1 increment ends. Standard customers are given credit limits ending in $00, but they can be very strange amounts like $4200 or $5500. Exceptional customers are given credit limits exceeding $7000, but these are now uncommon unless you financed a major home renovation purchase or large round of appliance purchases (or tell them you are about to), or have a very long history with Sears credit products (I just passed 20 years and have a $9000 limit). Citibank will expect cardholders with larger limits to show consistent spending on those cards or they will threaten to reduce the credit line at least once a year. Others need to spend at least once annually to assure Citibank doesn’t close your account if during a periodic review they start to feel nervous about your spending habits. This was worse during the Great Recession years. Dormant cards are usually targeted for balance transfer checks quarterly, active cards usually are not. Citibank moved Platinum Mastercard cardholders like myself to the Thank You Points program earlier this year. I rarely take notice of these things so I have no idea if this is better or worse than what we had before. But after the transition, promotional offers vastly increased as they try to convince customers to spend more on those cards. The reason is obvious. If you don’t pay in full, they get to charge you $25%+ interest on those purchases. Ouch. My personal view is that Citibank is amping up promotions on this card in view of the day when Sears goes belly-up and they’ll need to convert existing cardholders to a traditional Citibank credit card already offering Thank You points.. One other point, besides Chase and… Read more »
Thanks for the detailed comment. My wife and son’s Sears cards are both Plat MCs. Her’s is 6 years old with a $2001 CL and earns TYP. His is 3 years old with $6K and earns SYWR. She has other Citi TYP earning cards, he does not.
Just want to say, I have never had a fraud alert on either of these and it is always binge spending for whatever offer they have out. For example just did $2K each yesterday for the 10K promotion.
My wife’s card was not getting the promotion offers that my son was always getting. I don’t recall exactly, but I think I needed to go in and updated my wife’s profile to receive the promotions. Now she gets the promotions as well. “You will receive Citi account updates, as well as the offers and promotions you selected above. All communications will be sent to your primary email address.”
excellent detail man. thank you. this should be a guest blog post…
does it earn TYP? If so what is the rate?
Only on bonus promotions I think.
But the promo ad says “These Bonus ThankYou Points are in addition to the 1 ThankYou Point for the $1 spent that you already earn with your card.”
I have the card, but mine doesn’t seem to earn any kind of points or cashback, and as far as I remember I have never seen a different version of the card available for application.
Not sure, guess I’ll need to get the card and find out.
Have it, hate it, so no.
Only keep it cause its one of my oldest trades.
I just got a 5,000 TYP bonus posted to my account without even making a purchase since June. I am currently carrying a small balance (< $500) with a 0% promo until next June on some tires I bought at Sears. I got the MasterCard after Sears converted my 1980's store card to a credit card many moons ago. My credit limit is only $2,001 (not a typo — no tellin' what the extra dollar is for). This was the only Citi card I've ever had until the Costco switch. Now I'm looking to go all in with Citi and get the $400 checking account offer too.