Introduction
Well, it had been a long time since my last shutdown. I was going strong for a while there. So what happened? I went to make an online purchase this morning and my card got declined. I then logged onto the mobile app and everything looked fine. I had credit available. I then logged onto the site and saw this:
So what happened?
Well, for the past 2 months, I had been cycling my DC card’s 35K limit. I was running 25K a week through a certain promo that I’m sure you’ve read about. Thus, I was doing 3X on the card. I knew the risks of cycling this hard. I had asked a few HH if anyone was cycling Citi, and a few people said that they were. Thus, I went HARD.
Other possible reasons
I can tell you that I wasn’t doing any kind of anonymous payments or payments by phone. Nothing fishy; I was just spending on my ATT (not even cycling that 10K CL.) Now I know I had 2 HP’s recently due to my Tesla 3 loan, so if they soft pulled me, they would have seen that. I didn’t carry any high balances on Citi or any other cards, so it was almost definitely due to the DC cycling and/or those recent HP’s. I hadn’t applied for any cc’s lately either.
Oh, I did close my Prestige card last week and I saw the -$450 when I logged on. MAYBE closing the account put eyes on my account. I doubt it though.
About those TYP
As soon as I saw my cards were shut down, I tried to log into thankyou.com and couldn’t log in. FFFFFFFFF. Luckily, I was still able to get into my TYP on my main Citi login. You see, unlike Chase, Shiti will just nullify your points upon shutdown (or that’s what I last heard – may be different these days, but I wasn’t going to take a chance.) Once I got to my TYP site, I transferred out all 360K TYP I had saved up.
The shutdown did happen a few days before my statement closed, so those bastards did “keep” $2,000 of my DC rewards. Maybe I’ll ping Alex to try to recoup that hard earned money.
Conclusion
So was I sad at the shutdown? Not at all. I was more pissed that my Tesla 3 got delayed again. As you can see, I hardly used my TYP (probably hadn’t transferred any out in 3+ years.) I had amassed 1M AA miles that I hardly use these days. So I’m not sad. I didn’t really care much for their cards. Crossing fingers my wife’s account is saved, but most likely they’ll get her next. I transferred her 80K TYP out just in case though. Do I regret what I did? Ehhh slightly. Shiti is usually a lifetime ban, and I probably would have earned more points in my lifetime than this one-time gain.
Is Citi’s ban really gonna be lifetime? I had a similar shutdown a year back.
1) What is Alex’s info. I got shutdown by Citi and wondering if I can get my 100k + points from them in small claims or thru arbitration
2) They also confiscated around $100 in Costco cashback rewards.
hi vinh, may i have alex’s contact as well?
Check on FM’s site folks. He wrote a couple of posts a year back or so.
thought u didn’t mind to send a pm the contact info if u have it handy; but will search, thx…
check bachuwalawDOTcom
Where’d you transfer the points?
flying blue
That sucks since it seems it’s a lifetime ban with Citi. You were lucky to get your TYPs out!
prob cuz i caught it on same day as shut down
Any chance you can give at least a vague hint as to which promo you were taking advantage of? If you prefer not to, I understand, since I usually like to discuss the lucrative promos privately.
Plastiq MC no fee promo
Ah ok. Any tips for maximizing that promo? I have 3,000 rent I can pay through Pastiq, but unsure how to really take advantage beyond that.
HELOC?
If I had a home, maybe. But for a regular city-dwelling renter with no car and no house, not sure there is any real solid way to take advantage I guess.
I could prepay as much of my rent as a I want, but that would mean floating all of the funds so I couldn’t get too crazy
Hi Phil, How did the Plastiq MC no fee promo work? I read that just for the first $500 is free free? Or a higher amount is fee free?
HH?
heavy hitter