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More Huge Citi Prestige Changes: No More 1.6¢ AA Redemptions, 4th Night Free Changes, Removal of Golf & More

Shawn Coomer
Shawn Coomer

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Yesterday I covered the lower bonus on the Citi Prestige card along with some other changes to the card that had been announced, but that wasn’t all apparently. Today, I have learned via the Travel Hacking 101 Facebook Group (highly recommended) that some additional benefits are being removed from the card as well. It isn’t good.

Among the benefits being removed or changed on July 23, 2017 are:

  • Admiral’s Club Access is being removed. (This we already knew.)
  • 1.6 cent per point redemptions on American Airlines are being removed.
  • All airline redemptions will be at a value of 1.25 cents each.
  • The 4th night free will be calculated based on the average nightly rate instead of the last night rate and taxes will no longer be included.
  • 3 free rounds of golf are being removed.

I have updated my full post from yesterday which details the new bonus offer, what benefits remain and what has been removed if you are interested in learning more.

Disclosure: Miles to Memories has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Miles to Memories and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers.

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Shawn Coomer
Shawn Coomerhttps://milestomemories.com/
Shawn Coomer earns and burns millions of miles/points per year circling the globe with his family. An expert at accumulating travel rewards, he founded Miles to Memories to help others achieve their travel goals for pennies on the dollar. Shawn also runs a million dollar reselling business, knows Vegas better than most and loves to spend his time at the 12 Disney parks across the world.

Responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.

62 COMMENTS

  4. If I sign up today, will I get the 1.6 cent AA redemption rate until July 23rd, or do you have to be an existing cardholder that is grandfathered in?

  6. I signed up in November 2015 for the 3 rounds of free golf. I’ve golfed at some amazing courses where the greens fees were over $200. So it was a great benefit. Does anyone know if I renew in November 2016 that I’ll still get the 3 free rounds on January 1, 2017 but I have to use those free rounds before July 2017? Or are they saying NO more free rounds even after renewing even if it’s before July 2017? Confusing.

  10. […] A couple of weeks ago I reported that the writing was on the wall for two great Citibank signup offers: the Citi Prestige 50K offer and the Citi AT&T Access More free phone offer (See: Two great Citi offers may soon be gone. What to do?).  I was right about the AT&T offer.  The last known link to that offer disappeared last week (congrats to those who got in on it before it disappeared!).  The Prestige card offer, though, did not completely die.  Instead, the public offer was lowered to 40K points after $4K spend.  Plus, we learned of a number of big changes with the card that will become effective late July 2017. […]

  11. I was contemplating on getting this card, but not worth the annual fee now. I’ll stick with my CSP & Freedom combo.

  12. Basically here they created a product trying to be a Premium product like Amex Plat. $450.00 is not a small annual fee. I just dumped AA Exec card as that AF was due. I knew I still had AA access with this. I still have the AMEX club access anyway. They stripped some of the benefits that sold people in the FF community on the product. I am sure they will see many cardholders dump it. What they count on are people just auto renewing and not paying attention to the changes. The 4th night free can be a decent perk but that depends on your travel and stay patterns.

  13. The golf is worth $600 a year to me playing Monarch Beach at $200 a pop, so that hurts big time. No way I’d pay that in cash. Back to Groupon and LivingSocial for golf deals for me! The hotel changes don’t affect me much since I either stay with points or my timeshare for most trips. Will have to see what the final product is to know if the annual fee is worthy of being in the churn rotation.

  15. Oh well, guess this card will never be a hold for me. Here’s hoping they lower the annual fee or there is some future offer that waives it first year, so I can churn the card for its signup bonus and airline credit. Otherwise I will probably never even bother with it now. Great job, Citi! You were eating everybody else’s lunch for a while, but now you just puked it all back up…

  20. Well my renewal is next month. The benefits remain the same until next July, so I will renew since I have AA flights and a couple of 4th reimbursements planned. I will cancel next year. Sad. Citi had a great card and they destroyed it.

  21. Surprised all the discussion about not renewing – that wasn’t part of the plan anyway. Always cancel after 1 year and restart the clock on getting the bonus again in 2 years. Get other cards in the meantime and come back for Prestige in year 3.

  22. When all is said and done I’m not too bothered by this. Obviously it’s a hit, and it sucks, but I’m happy I get a year’s notice to use up my points at $.016. The 4th night free switching to average nightly rate doesn’t bother me, that has as much chance to help me as hurt me. Not getting refunded on taxes blows… That one probably bothers me the most as many of the places I stay have ridiculous hotel tax rates.

    At the end of the day, using the 4th night free benefit once, and the $250 airline credit with it’s flexibility, makes it worth it for me to keep this card. I don’t need to make that decision until next April though.

  26. Well this is what happens when bloggers constantly pump things until the sponsors decide the benefits are too rich, present company excluded.

    • Aside from FM with his 4th nite free benefit post and loophole of not paying with the prestige card and still get it, most of the bloggers are the credit card pumpers who keep posting about this card. You can’t really blame them since that their job

  28. This card has gone from my go to card to soon in the trash card . When the rep asks why I am cancelling, response will be, are you stupid? What did you expect when you gut the benefits but still want your $450

  29. I think Citi is mad about not be exclusive credit card issuer for AA. Recently changed admirals club access & now 1.25 cent redemption from 1.6.

  30. People have been speculating for a while that the Prestige benefits were too generous and that they would cut them back at some point. I think they went a little overboard though and I can’t help but feel the acquisition cost of the Costco deal is a factor in the scale of this devaluation.

    Personally, I will have to think hard if I can justify the $450 AF for this card going forward. What advantages does this card now provide over, say, the Chase Sapphire Preferred? Your redemption rates are now the same. You have better category bonuses and a devalued 4th night free benefit with the Citi but with a much higher AF(ameliorated I know by the $250 airfare credit). I will have to think about how the transfer partners for the 2 cards fit my travel patterns and the value of the new 4th night benefit. The Citi Prestige was a no brainer before….now nowhere near so much.

  31. I have roughly 70000 thankyou points, so they just cost me what, $350? Now i know to redeem them this year. Why would Citi think anyone will continue to pay the annual fee instead of switching to no annual fee Doublecash?

    For a few people, the benefits will still be worth it, but that will be very few.

  32. Shawn,
    If I use my ThankYou Points at 1.6 c each on AA to buy a refundable ticket, what happens if I cancel the ticket for a full refund?

  33. Wow what a huge disappointment. This card went from one my favorites to crap almost overnight. Way to go Citi, you’ll be hearing from me soon cancelling…

  34. Shawn,
    If I use Citi Thankyou points at 1.6 each to buy a refundable ticket on AA how is it handled if I cancel the ticket for a refund?

  39. Wow! That guts the benefits of this card and pretty much makes the card useless for any real value for me after these changes take effect. No way to justify paying the huge AF on this card anymore,,,even if the the airline credit stays intact.

  43. Well citi is pretty much trash now….their thank you cards are worthless at these levels. Did this already start or do we have a little time to get the .016 before they yank it?

    • Well as golf player you probably can pay for your rounds. I will keep flying economy very far as usual, so Thank You cards and transferable points are still an extremely important part of my portfolio. I also couldn’t imagine staying in one hotel 4 nights and have not really paid for hotels anyway in the past few years (outside of company stays and places in the third world in order to support local economies and there have been many hotel nights). There is a good likely hood this card will be back at 50k at some point. Therefore no difference in my strategy, no deval for me. If there is less articles about the hugeness of this card, well be it I did not read them anyway.

      • I’m with Jamaica.

        My mainstay is Singapore Airlines, and I just load up on whatever transferrable points have good offers at the time. This will definitely make me burn my Citi TYPs first, tho, because they are less valuable to me now than UR,SPG, and MR (in that order), but won’t change how I earn them much.

      • Outside of the sign up bonus no real reason to keep it anymore…that is the point. It was a hold card for me but not it is a churn card.

    • The information I have seen isn’t clear on how this applies to new applicants. These benefits are not on the application screen. I would confirm with Citi and I believe these changes will be announced publicly in a few days. We should know then how new cards are treated. These changes are definitely coming on 7/27/17 for existing cardholders.

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At Miles to Memories we share the best tips, tricks and deals plus travel rants, musings, hotel, airline and loyalty program reviews and a lot more! Our goal is to help people save money so they can get out there and travel the world! Through our various blog posts, podcasts & videos we teach others how to maximize loyalty rewards, hotel & airline programs and credit cards to achieve amazing things.

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