Fun with Citi Price Rewind

A policy that isn't worth the paper it's printed on

Today's lesson is exploiting Citi's Price Rewind policy, which is a gold mine that you never knew you had.  Most credit cards advertise a price protection policy, which promises that if you purchase an item on your card and find it at a lower price later on, they'll reimburse you for the difference.  Sound good?  Yes, too good.  Most cards never pay out on this policy, because you need to jump through a couple of hoops, including mailing in a copy of the advertisement where you found the lower price.  What?  Yes, finding a newspaper with the advertisement, cutting it out, and mailing it in.  What if the lower price is on Amazon?  Tough luck, no Internet price matching.  What if the price is lower but there is no printed advertisement?  Tough luck, you need the printed ad.

As advertised, Citi Price Rewind is virtually useless.  There is a Price Rewind website where you can  enter details of your purchase, and the system is supposed to automagically alert you when their hard-at-work, omniscient machines scour the Internet to find a better price for you.  I tried this, and lo and behold, it didn't work--I made a purchase from Amazon.com, and even when Amazon (and other retailers) lowered their price, no benefit was triggered even though all conditions were met.

Light bulb!  Sticking it to the man

I discovered that you don't need to rely on the Price Rewind website.  Instead, what you can do is fill out a blank form and fax it in to them.  THEY WILL MATCH INTERNET PRICES!  FROM ANY RETAILER!

Allow that to sink in...

Has your mind recovered from the racing through the possibilities?

Yes, you can buy from anywhere and get it price matched.  I am batting 100% so far in my price match requests.  The only restrictions being 1) a maximum of $300 per item and 2) $1200 per year per card.  Found a great price from a retailer you've never heard of?  Perfect -- order from your trusted store.

Even more possibilities

The truly wily among you will realize that there are even more possibilities:

• Category bonuses: What if I have a certain credit card from Citi that earns 5X ThankYou points at an online retailer that sells virtually everything?  Not only will I get the lowest price, I will also earn 5X points if I buy from my favorite retailer and then get it price matched!  Another example is the Citi Dividend card, which is paying 5% back at Best Buy this quarter.
• Double price match (DON'T DO THIS!): This is not something I have done nor is it ethical.  In theory, if you find a retailer like Best Buy or Staples that has a post-purchase price match policy, you can get it matched twice.  If the price difference is 50%, you would get it for free!

50,000 Citi ThankYou point offer expiring today

(expires today)

Citi usually offers a 25,000 point bonus for Citi ThankYou Preferred Card, which carries no annual fee. However, they have a 50,000 point offer that expires today. You get 25,000 points after $5000 in purchases in each of two consecutive 6-month windows for a total of 50,000 points. Their Citi Premier Card also offers a bonus of 50,000 points, but it carries a $125 annual fee (waived for the first year). The Premier card is probably a better offer for most customers--unless you already have one, in which case why not sign up for both? Or if you don't like the idea of signing up and canceling after a year, the Premier card is better with no annual fee.

I would not recommend using the Preferred card regularly after you get your bonus miles except possibly on airfare, where you can get points on miles you fly, even some award tickets. For example, if you book a JFK-LAX, you would earn a bonus of 1650 points (33% of the round trip total of 4950 miles). But you don't earn this bonus unless you have an equal amount of regular spending. So it's something like double points on airfare, but not that great.

I find ThankYou points to be worth just under a penny per point because you can redeem at a penny per point for a wide variety of gift cards such as Amazon.com and Home Depot. However, if you have a ThankYou Premier card, which gives you 25% off airfare booked at ThankYou.com, the points are worth about 1.3 cents. If you fly regularly and rack up bonus flight miles, you can get about 2.7 cents rebated to you for airfare purchases. And with the Premier Card, you get a 20% bonus for spending at grocery stores, gas stations, and drugstores, so that is around 3 cents back in airfare in these categories. But only if you can bank the flight bonus points, which is relatively easy because award travel where taxes are greater than $50 generally counts.