Big rebates for gas and groceries
Written: Feb 14 '06 (Updated Feb 14 '06)
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Pros: Large cash rebates, flexible website, virtual account numbers.
Cons: $300 annual limit on cash rebates, quirky Autopay system, poor website integration.
The Bottom Line: It's one of several credit cards a person should have. Due to low rebate amounts, a different rebate card for purchases other than gas, groceries, and pharmacy is better.
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| wresnick's Full Review: Citibank |
When it comes to getting a Citibank credit card, keep in mind that not all cards are equal. There are a variety of cards with different terms and conditions. My particular card is the Citibank Dividend Platinum Select.
This card has no annual fee, and offers 5% cash back on purchases at gas stations, pharmacies and groceries. It offers 1% cash back on everything else. In order to determine the percentage, Citibank goes by how the merchant is classified. So if your pharmacy is the pharmacy section at Target, and it rings up as a sale from a general merchandise store, then you get only 1%. But if you buy a set of luggage at a convenience store that's part of a gas station, and everything gets rung up at the gas station register, then you get 5% off on your luggage.
My card came with a 0% rate on balance transfers for the first 12 months, and there was no balance transfer fee. This offer was available only if I used it right after getting my card. Since I pay my bill in full, I have no experience with this offering.
The rebate is limited to $300 each year. If your monthly spending for groceries, gas, and pharmacy is near $500 per month, you are better off using this card only for those items and using another card for other things. When I got the card, gasoline was near $3 per gallon, and $50 per week for each car was not unusual, so exceeding $500 per month was a lot easier than I thought it would be.
There is also a Citi Dividend Merchant Network, which is a group of merchants that generally offer larger rebates than the default 1%. Another advantage of using these merchants is that their purchases do not count toward the $300 maximum. For example, FTD.com gets you a 10% rebate, many vacation and cruise line companies give 4%, and Hollywood video gives 5%. But you have to check carefully to see if the reward applies to the store, website, or if it must be accessed through a link at the Dividend Merchant Network website.
Rebates come by check, but you need to request a check. Checks can be requested on-line or on the phone. You must have at least $50 worth of dividend dollars accumulated before you can request a check. Other banks typically give rewards at $25 increments. However, Citibank does not go by increments. If you have $74.92 in rewards available, you can get a check for $74.92, not $50 as with other cards.
Your account can be managed on-line through the Citicards website. It allows you to link your card to popular financial software such as Quicken or Money to download your data. Quicken users can use the one click update feature to have data downloaded automatically.
You can make payments from the website by scheduling them on up to four days of your choice in a month. If you want to pay your full bill, a fixed amount, or minimum amount due on the due date, you can schedule that, or if you want to make smaller weekly payments, that's an option too. This on-line payment system, Click-to-Pay, is set up so that you must specify what payments you want to make each month and when you want them. There is no way of setting up a monthly amount, or having it pay your bill in full each month.
Another card feature that is different from Click-to-Pay is Autopay. This allows you to link your credit card to a checking account and have a payment applied automatically on the due date. This cannot be set up on line. You have an option of paying the full amount due or the minimum amount due. There may be other options too, but you would have to do the paperwork to see them. This feature is for automated regular payments each month.
A difference between the Autopay feature and other banks' automatic payment plans is that Autopay will deduct the scheduled amount even if you have made a separate payment ahead of time. If you don't want this to happen, you must notify the bank five days ahead of the scheduled payment date.
Since the Autopay feature is independent of Click-to-Pay, you can decide at any given time to pay your card from a different account with Click-to-Pay, but if you don't want the Autopay payment to go through, you can notify Citibank from the website contact form.
A quirk in the on-line system is that it masks most of your account number with XXXX XXXX XXXX, and does so even in the encrypted downloaded data that it sends to your financial software. So if you want to look up your own account number in Quicken, you can't see it. Yet the same website allows your browser to store your username and password for you, which is generally not allowed by banks for security reasons.
Another feature that you get with the on-line system is called Virtual Account Numbers. You can either use their website, or install a small piece of software on your computer that will generate a Mastercard number, three digit code and expiration date for you whenever you need one. So if you want to do on-line shopping, but do not want to give the merchant your credit card number, the software will generate one that can be used for that transaction alone. Other options available allow it to be used for that merchant alone for a given period of time, or up to a given dollar amount in a given period. If you use Internet Explorer, it can be integrated with the checkout system of many e-commerce sites, or you can drag the account number to fields on a web form. With other browsers, the link is not so clean. You can generate a number and type it manually, or drag it somewhere else (such as your browser's toolbar), and then cut and paste it.
An alternative to using the Citicards website is to use the citibank.com website if you have other Citibank accounts. You can then link your credit card to your ATM card, so that all accounts show up in one place. Then when you download your checking and savings data, your credit card data goes with it. However, the two systems are set up differently and are not truly compatible. So it's not practical to switch off between the two and download from whichever you feel like. You are better off picking one. The Citibank site does not have the problem of masking the credit card numbers, but the Citibank site requires you to download the data from the website as opposed to one click update from within Quicken.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
wresnick
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Reviews written: 20
Trusted by: 0 members
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