Who else still holds the Citibank Free For Life Premier Card?

[Duffa]

Mrs D and I will be using one visit each in Stansted next Monday. No lounges there but a couple of cafes give a spend benefit. There. A good news story!

 

[RAM]

If so inclined - you can use PP for 'The House' at Sydney International air-side.

Starting to show its age since last refresh though. Some of the leather chairs are very well worn.

 

[theblank]

Still the best premium credit card , because where else can you get 2 Lounge passes and Travel Insurance for no annual fee, and most importantly *no effort*.

I barely use mine except for paying the airfares to trigger the insurance.

If we cancel it we aint ever getting it back.

 

[MELso]

Still the best premium credit card , because where else can you get 2 Lounge passes and Travel Insurance for no annual fee, and most importantly *no effort*.

I barely use mine except for paying the airfares to trigger the insurance.

If we cancel it we aint ever getting it back.

And the travel insurance is still fairly decent too.

I'm going to apply for a Revolut metal credit card shortly which will become my primary card should I get it (given it offers conversion into a wide range of frequent flyer programs), but will hang onto this for just those reasons.

 

[RAM]

And the travel insurance is still fairly decent too.

I'm going to apply for a Revolut metal credit card shortly which will become my primary card should I get it (given it offers conversion into a wide range of frequent flyer programs), but will hang onto this for just those reasons.

I thought the travel insurance has been severely cut back some years ago.

 

[Legoman]

I particularly liked how before 1 Oct they told anyone who asked that there would no changes to the conversion rate from Rewards points to FlyBuys points. This would remain at 1:1 conversion and this would not change on 1 Oct they said. Not documented anywhere mind you, so you had to ask that question very specifically to find out and then manually record the transcription of the chat because they have no ability to provide a transcript of anything they say to you in their chat window.

Then guess what happened on 1 Oct? It's not hard to guess because this is NAB where lying is second nature. Yep, the conversion Rewards→FlyBuys immediately went to 3:2 with no announcement, no warning and no notification. Very effectively wiping out 1/3 of the value of whatever Rewards points you had with zero compensation.

 

[Brissy1]

I particularly liked how before 1 Oct they told anyone who asked that there would no changes to the conversion rate from Rewards points to FlyBuys points. This would remain at 1:1 conversion and this would not change on 1 Oct they said. Not documented anywhere mind you, so you had to ask that question very specifically to find out and then manually record the transcription of the chat because they have no ability to provide a transcript of anything they say to you in their chat window.

Then guess what happened on 1 Oct? It's not hard to guess because this is NAB where lying is second nature. Yep, the conversion Rewards→FlyBuys immediately went to 3:2 with no announcement, no warning and no notification. Very effectively wiping out 1/3 of the value of whatever Rewards points you had with zero compensation.

Bother! Would have transferred last month if I'd know.

 

[Legoman]

Bother! Would have transferred last month if I'd know.

That's exactly the issue. They very deliberately made it so you would never know. In none of their correspondence on the surcharge changes did they ever include what would be happening with Rewards points to FlyBuys conversion. Even when asking their chat staff, they would answer like a politician, providing every answer you could ever imagine to all the questions you didn't ask, while ignoring the question you did ask. I just kept asking the same question over and over until I'd been transferred through four different chat reps, until finally one answered the question that there would be no changes to the FlyBuys conversion rate on 1 Oct. Now with that written answer in my pocket I then left it a month and a half and asked them to confirm the answer to the same question I'd asked the first CSR two months earlier. That again was a massive fight to get them to answer in a repeatable way, but eventually after going through another three chat reps, I again got the same answer that there would be no changes to the FlyBuys conversion rate happening on 1 Oct. I got the first answer on 21 July and the second confirmation answer of no changes on 7 Sep. I decided that 7 Sep was close enough to 1 Oct to be meaningful and reliable enough to take to AFCA when they ignored it and reduced the conversion rate anyway. Sure, enough, that's exactly what they did. Totally predictable, which is why I went to such extreme lengths to document and screenshot everything.

Given just how dishonest, unreliable, devious and fraudulent NAB are, I wouldn't be holding my breath to find out what the one-off points increase will be when they apply it on 30 Nov. You can bet your life too that it will be 30 Nov. It definitely won't be before that date. They will string it right out to the limit. Rest assured that the one-off uplift in compensation points will be far less than you were expecting and nothing like an equivalent fair amount to offset the loss from the devaluation. Where NAB is concerned, changes will always penalise the account holder. Nothing is more certain.

 

[Brissy1]

That's exactly the issue. They very deliberately made it so you would never know. In none of their correspondence on the surcharge changes did they ever include what would be happening with Rewards points to FlyBuys conversion. Even when asking their chat staff, they would answer like a politician, providing every answer you could ever imagine to all the questions you didn't ask, while ignoring the question you did ask. I just kept asking the same question over and over until I'd been transferred through four different chat reps, until finally one answered the question that there would be no changes to the FlyBuys conversion rate on 1 Oct. Now with that written answer in my pocket I then left it a month and a half and asked them to confirm the answer to the same question I'd asked the first CSR two months earlier. That again was a massive fight to get them to answer in a repeatable way, but eventually after going through another three chat reps, I again got the same answer that there would be no changes to the FlyBuys conversion rate happening on 1 Oct. I got the first answer on 21 July and the second confirmation answer of no changes on 7 Sep. I decided that 7 Sep was close enough to 1 Oct to be meaningful and reliable enough to take to AFCA when they ignored it and reduced the conversion rate anyway. Sure, enough, that's exactly what they did. Totally predictable, which is why I went to such extreme lengths to document and screenshot everything.

Given just how dishonest, unreliable, devious and fraudulent NAB are, I wouldn't be holding my breath to find out what the one-off points increase will be when they apply it on 30 Nov. You can bet your life too that it will be 30 Nov. It definitely won't be before that date. They will string it right out to the limit. Rest assured that the one-off uplift in compensation points will be far less than you were expecting and nothing like an equivalent fair amount to offset the loss from the devaluation. Where NAB is concerned, changes will always penalise the account holder. Nothing is more certain.

Well done with your perseverance. Bizarre that nab devalue 1 Oct but "revalue" 2 months later...testing the market response maybe.

 

[ecst]

They very deliberately made it so you would never know.

Most likely Hanlon's Razor - "Never attribute to malice that can be assigned to stupidity" (or something along that line).

 

[MELso]

I thought the travel insurance has been severely cut back some years ago.

The 'level 1' cover had some tweaks at the margins a few months ago (e.g. new limits), but the main cutbacks were to the cards offering cover (which didn't affect Premier cards).

 

[theblank]

I thought the travel insurance has been severely cut back some years ago.

all banks made some changes, (likely it means the insurers made changes) but to say severely is a bit of an overkill. i cant even recollect what we lost - maybe a increase in the qualifying travel spend to $500 which isnt significant.

 

[Legoman]

Well done with your perseverance. Bizarre that nab devalue 1 Oct but "revalue" 2 months later...testing the market response maybe.

Just got my one-off points credit to compensate for the lies they told me about the conversion to FlyBuys rate not changing from 1:1 on 1 Oct.

"I am satisfied that incorrect information was provided to you and that this contributed to your concerns regarding the transfer of your MyCard Rewards Points.

To resolve this matter, we have approved a one-off goodwill credit of 255,776 MyCard Rewards Points to your account."

So that's a nice free extra 255,000 points. I fully expect that come 30 Nov, I will get another free ~255,000 odd points when the auto one-off uplift occurs and they've long forgotten they'd already given me the manual adjustment back in October. I won't be telling them they've made that mistake when they do.

Yet more proof that recording and screencapping everything works. Evidence matters. If you don't have it written down, it didn't happen and will be denied.

 

[Legoman]

This is what's called WINNING.



Thankfully I got the complaint in quick enough to be resolved and the points manually added, and then they went ahead and did the auto adjust as well on top. Sometimes it's hard work being this good, it really is. Now I just have to find something to redeem some of them on because holding over 2 million rewards points in one place is probably not the best idea.

What it means of course is that everyone who thought they were doing the smart thing by anticipating the shafting they were going to get from MyCard on 1 Oct and moved all their reward points out to 'protect' them from the inevitable loss, has actually shafted themselves massively by removing the points from the very scheme that was going to reward you for keeping them there. That's an own goal of epic proportions.

I can't help but think this was possibly planned for by MyCard in order to sow the necessary distrust into their card holders by deliberately keeping them in the dark and not telling them what was going to happen to their points on 1 Oct. The not knowing would panic the herd and cause them to redeem or transfer their points before 1 Oct thereby removing the points from the very system upon which the calculation would work out how much compensation was due in terms of pro-rata points to maintain overall value. If this was a plan based around known human psychological behaviour to be averse to loss at all costs, then it was very cleverly executed and I have no doubt worked extremely well, judging by the people in other forums who are now crowing how they 'beat the system' by transferring their points out before the change.

What they've actually done of course is short change themselves massively and let MyCard off the hook of giving them free points by removing their balances to another holding system be it Velocity or Krisflyer or FlyBuys that isn't going to give them any bonus points at all. Face meet palm!

 

[Bofter]

Given just how dishonest, unreliable, devious and fraudulent NAB are, I wouldn't be holding my breath to find out what the one-off points increase will be when they apply it on 30 Nov. You can bet your life too that it will be 30 Nov. It definitely won't be before that date. They will string it right out to the limit. Rest assured that the one-off uplift in compensation points will be far less than you were expecting and nothing like an equivalent fair amount to offset the loss from the devaluation. Where NAB is concerned, changes will always penalise the account holder. Nothing is more certain.

Hang on, was this also you, like just this Sunday ago you?
Celebrate a win, fine. But perhaps be a little more gracious than calling others "the herd", especially if you are going to leave such receipts only a few posts up.

My suspicion would be that the median cardholder just kept their points in MyCard, but through disinterest and inaction rather than anything more deliberate. As one of the likely small herd who didn't, zero regrets, the 15% velocity transfer bonus for what I needed to do anyway made the choice easy.