Questions and Answers

I acquired a Citibank Premier credit card almost two years ago and have collected over 160K thank you points. I’m thinking of dropping the card when the annual fee is applied — mostly because I now have the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. However I believe I need to keep the card to keep the points active. If that is the case is there some way to downgrade the card to a no-fee card and still keep the points.

Well you need to keep at least the Premier in order to be able to transfer the points to a hotel or airline program. You can downgrade to the Preferred but those points cannot be transferred out.

Is there any upcoming travel you havent booked that you could use the points for?

You could wait for the two year anniversary and then apply for a second Premier or a Prestige and downgrade your current card to a Preferred.

Gaurav: I’m afraid I’m bit confused. My goal is to avoid paying any annual fees and still be able to treat the points a transferrable currency.

Neil

[QUOTE=”Gaurav, post: 31624, member: 79″]You could wait for the two year anniversary and then apply for a second Premier or a Prestige and downgrade your current card to a Preferred.[/QUOTE]

You can’t do so because CitiBank doesn’t have any no annual fee cards that earn transferable thank you points.

The Citi rule is that you won’t receive a bonus for two years after opening or closing a product in the same family. Since you’re almost at two years, you could wait after your 2nd year anniversary and apply for a second Citi Premier (waived AF first year usually) or Citi Prestige (travel credits and bonus should cover AF). Once you have one of those cards, then call and downgrade your current Premier to a Preferred card. This will keep your points intact and you can then merge them with your Premier or Prestige when you want to transfer them. Downgrading within ~37 days after your AF hits will result in a full credit back.