The team on Doctor Of Credit does a great job at keeping the bank bonuses up to date. I recently took up the offer for 50,000 American Airline miles offer as I am planning a big vacation and can use as many AA miles as possible.
The phone number in that post I am not sure where it directs you. However, you can call:
- 1-888-967-8200
- 1-800-321-2484
Both numbers you want to choose Option 1 which I believe is for English. Hours are 8 AM to 5 PM Central Time. If somehow you get routed to a regular Citibank phone rep, you want to ask for the “new bank account” department, don’t mention anything about funding with a credit card with your new checking account because that rep might put you to the “new credit card department.”
In order to receive the sign up bonus, you must use their bill payment system two times and spend $1000 using the debit card.
Enter Evolve
I had a moment of “genius” and thought about using Evolve to fulfill the $1000 debit card spend requirement for $0 and I could do this all at home. Because Evolve said that “small banks” would be charged a 3% fee and Citi is a globally recognized bank a 0% fee should be present.
We all know Evolve has devolved into a pool of melted ice cream. It’s not worth anything. Even with the Citi card, they’re still not worth anything. I asked them why the 3% fee was assessed and if they planned on fixing it.
When registering your card with Evolve Money, if there is a fee associated, this would mean that your card is considered a small bank debit card within our system.
So I asked them when they will fix the Citi since it’s a huge bank
Citibank cards will be assessed a fee with Evolve Money. This is not something that we would change.
So there you have it, Evolve Money still sucks.
Thanks for sharing the details. I still am looking to sign up for this one. Hopefully getting to it soon. How long did the whole process take, and did they show any hesitance about CC funding?
Boo on evolve. So disappointing.
Took me about a week. Opened last Thursday. Faxed CC info on Friday, billed on Tuesday. Also received debit card in mail Tuesday. Received checks in mail Wednesday. Just need to do the signup requirements now.
Me too – and waiting for the initial funding to go through
It’s taken about 3 weeks altogether. It seemed like a pretty normal process with the agent that I spoke to using a credit card. I’m just waiting for the charges to show/funding to go through at this point.
If you have access to Reloadits, Evolve is still very useful. I still pay all my non credit card bills this way every month. The best thing is not having to go through Reloadits safe program to unload.
Good point! I haven’t been able to find any Reloadits with credit
Is there a reason you are not just adding your debit card to your serve account to reach the needed debit amount for free?
Good question – I wanted pay my bills using Evolve fee free without using any of the cash loaded into the birds/serve
It’s possible that many people have tried this trick and they therefore added the fee. I know this was the case with other bank debit cards that originally had no fee but a fee was added later. One example is UFB. They don’t want people making money off of them
Good point! Sounds like that was very likely
Evolve is still great if you have access to reloadits
Sadly, I don’t have access to reloadits, but if you do, I totally agree!
I just opened the account, and added the citigold debit card to evolve, and it is showing no fee now. Any information as to whether Evolve transactions will count for the $1000 debit card req?
That is awesome! I went through with using Bluebird as a commenter mentioned. The miles for me haven’t posted yet after fulfilling the requirements