Andy and his wife were just about to use their 87,000 accumulated rewards points to take a vacation when all of a sudden Citibank closed the account and took away all their points. According to customer service, there’s nothing that can be done.

Andy writes:

After 5 years without a late payment and paying my balance off every month, Citibank closed my Credit Card account without warning and took the 87,000 ($870) rewards points we had accumulated. My wife and I were saving the points for a trip to Hawaii in October and we were just about the pull the trigger when we logged into our rewards program and the account was short 87,000 points. That’s $87,000 we spent to get those rewards. They said they closed the account because they had new rules required for the accounts based on rules from Equifax. I checked eqiufax and I have 39 accounts in good standing and one negative from a $1.32 balance from 2008 that was resolved.

I called customer service and they said there was nothing they could do since THEY closed the account. Normally you have 30 days after the account closes to use the rewards, but not in this case. I also just received my last statement from them on August 5th and it says nothing about the account being closed or that it was closed on July 30th. We logged into our Citibank online account as recently as July 28th and it said nothing about the pending closure. I logged into my rewards points account as recently as August 3rd and it said nothing about 87,000 rewards being forfeited.

One good thing is that they will keep my account open so I can pay off my balance that I accumulated in the month of July! However, I guess I won’t be getting any points for the $10,500 I spent in July.

Right now, I’m just really frustrated. I feel like someone has just stolen $870 out of my vacation fund and after I found the perpetrator, they won’t do anything about it. Funny thing is, I have 3 other accounts with them in good standing that I am now going to close myself and I will never do business with them again.

Thanks For Listening.

Andy

Yep. Rewards points are like arcade tokens. They let you play all the games you want but if the arcade closes down, you’re stuck holding goose eggs. You could try escalating your complaint based off of a threat to close your other accounts with them, maybe they’ll relent and let you have the 30 days to cash out the points.

UPDATE: Man Gets 87,000 Rewards Points Back

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