Legoman
Active Member
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2015
- Posts
- 604
Now that AMEX have decided (starting next April) to devalue their points earn on their cards to equal the mid-tier earn rate of Citibank FFL Signature, is it fair call to now say that Citibank Signature becomes the 'go to' card again for major retailer purchases (the kind where AMEX acceptance usually isn't an issue - eg, petrol, Bunnings & Colesworth)?
I've come to this conclusion because at 0.75pt/$ direct earn rate on free 44-day AMEX cards like Qantas Disco or Velocity Escape, you're actually better off earning 0.75pt/$ non-direct earn rate on the 55-day FFL Signature instead. Quite apart from the extra 11 days interest free, you can also stockpile the points at Citibank and wait for the next 15% bonus offer to convert them through to Velocity to realise a 0.86pt/$ rate once converted.
The only difficulty with this is that you need to be sure of which retailers Citibank awards 1.5pts/$ to, when they don't explicitly publish that information and have no intention of doing so. Has anyone got a list of their own experiences/making of the kinds of retailers they know does earn 1.5pt/$ in the Citibank scheme?
I would presume the obvious big ones are:
Anything owned by the big Colesworth duopoly groups
Major brand petrol stations (not independents)
Major big name brand hotel groups (Hilton, Hyatt, Pan Pacific, Sheraton etc.)
anything else?
I've come to this conclusion because at 0.75pt/$ direct earn rate on free 44-day AMEX cards like Qantas Disco or Velocity Escape, you're actually better off earning 0.75pt/$ non-direct earn rate on the 55-day FFL Signature instead. Quite apart from the extra 11 days interest free, you can also stockpile the points at Citibank and wait for the next 15% bonus offer to convert them through to Velocity to realise a 0.86pt/$ rate once converted.
The only difficulty with this is that you need to be sure of which retailers Citibank awards 1.5pts/$ to, when they don't explicitly publish that information and have no intention of doing so. Has anyone got a list of their own experiences/making of the kinds of retailers they know does earn 1.5pt/$ in the Citibank scheme?
I would presume the obvious big ones are:
Anything owned by the big Colesworth duopoly groups
Major brand petrol stations (not independents)
Major big name brand hotel groups (Hilton, Hyatt, Pan Pacific, Sheraton etc.)
anything else?
