A lot of people have been signing up for Citi Gold checking account’s recently, there is currently a 30,000 American Airlines or 40,000 Citi ThankYou points sign up bonus for this account and you can fund the account with a credit card (up to $100,000 or more) – if you’re going to do this then make sure you read our complete walk through first. Another benefit is that by having a Citi Gold Checking Account the annual fee on the Citi Prestige card is reduced by $100 (from $450 to $350), this is done on a prorated basis even if you had the Citi Prestige card first.
A lot of readers have let me know that they’ve actually received an annual fee refund of far more than $100. Blogger friend from Joe (of As The Joe Flies and Observation Deck fame) first let me know about it. I originally speculated that he might be receiving the refund as part of the $700 million in refunds that Citi was ordered to pay to customers by the CFPB.
Turns out I was completely wrong (this happens a lot more than you might think) what actually is happening is that Citi is refunding the full annual fee, minus the prorated discount ($100 or less) and then recharging the annual fee at a later date. I have no idea why they are doing this rather than just refunding the discount, but they are – so don’t get too excited about your massive annual fee refund.
I guess you could cancel your card before the annual fee is recharged and but this will surely sour your relationship with Citi and given the massive improvements they’ve made to their credit card offerings this would be a mistake (and somewhat dishonest and unethical).
quick question, if I use a citi credit card to fund the checking account (yes, I will be sure that it is not a cash advance), do I get the bonus points for the amount I fund? For example, if I use my citi prestige card to fund $10,000 into the checking, do I get the 1% in reward points from the transaction?
Yeah, you should get ordinary rewards. See more here https://www.doctorofcredit.com/its-time-we-reevaluate-citi-and-their-cash-advance-policy/
Yes you do
Also, I forgot to mention that when she had tried to sign up over the phone originally and she even gave the offer code, she was denied. This was due to her not being a US citizen yet. However, when she spoke to a rep, they said she could open it in person at a branch because she had to show proof of identity/soc security card etc….But, as mentioned before, at the branch they said they could set up a citigold acct, but could NOT manually enter the code, so they just said wait to get the offer on a statement, but again, she still has yet to receive the offer.
You wrote that anyone with a Thank you points card is eligible for the Citigold checking acct 40,000 bonus and they should see the offer on their 2nd statement. My wife got a Citi Premiere card and has gotten the first 2 statements. NO Citigold checking offer. Not to mention a month after she had opened the card, we even went physically to a branch an hour away and they said they could NOT give her the offer unless she is “targeted”. ????
Does it matter if I sign up for the Citigold account online or in-branch?
To get the $100 discount on the Prestige discount and the 40K TYP, I mean.
No it doesn’t matter.
I have tried to sign up for the bank account 10 times and everytime I get to the username screen and log in with my citi prestige login I get an error and it freezes no matter which browser I use. Anyone else have this problem?
Should I set up an entirely new login….seems like it would be a pain to link them later…any help would be appreciated.
Just call and sign up over the phone. It’s easy.
If I got the Prestige via branch app for the $350 annual fee, open a Citi Gold then close it or downgrade it, will they bump my fee to $450?
I don’t know for sure but I’ve read of cases where the account was downgraded to basic checking without a fee increase. I believe the account fee was then waived by meeting the “direct deposit” requirement via serve.
This is a side question more relevant to the checking account promotion, but has anyone tried loading $750 to redbird to satisfy the American Airlines promotion? Wouldn’t it still qualify as a purchase since loads at target appear as a sale of goods at target?
I would think it would since it just looks like a sale.
It should work. I bought money orders at a super market, and got confirmation that my requirements have been met.
Dave,
how long after meeting the requirements did you get confirmation? did you ask for confirm, or did it happen automatically? I’m still waiting for points to post, and don’t have any confirm yet, but I did all the requirements.
thanks
I asked for confirmation via secure message after my second bill pay went through. They told me I would receive the points 90 days after my next statement.
Great stuff. You must check reddit.
Did the search but not finding anything too exciting. Could you be more specific or give a hint what you’re talking about?
Probably the /r/curning subreddit, I’ve seen DoC post there occasionally.
gah misspelling, /r/churning
A lot of DOC’s posts come directly from there. I think he ran out of weird credit cards to review.
Like I said, Joe told me about this a few days ago. I found it interesting so I posted. Lots of my content ends up on /r/churning as well.
Sounds like they still going to be charging you the annual fee, just at later date… so whats the news?
Was just letting people know, as a lot of people received the full refund and got excited/confused about what was going on.
Yeah, the same thing happened to me 3-4 months ago. I was pretty stoked to see the $450 annual fee was waived, and then the following month I had a fee of $350.