ThankYou Points have always confused me. I collected some (about 36K) back in the day via bank account automation and being CitiGold, and had a handful of ThankYou Points from the Credit Card side (about 7000, no idea why).
The program has been baffling to me because they have so many arbitrary rules:
- Bank pts are different from credit card pts
- Regular credit card pts are different from ‘Premium’ credit card pts
- If you combine or merge points, one set of them expires in 90 days…
- etc
Too much hassle for a simple man like myself.
That said, I started to collect ThankYou Points for two reasons:
- I didn’t have enough, and I like the idea of building speculative stashes that suddenly turn into something useful.
- I was dabbling in reselling, and they offered 3x Online via the ATT card.
Interestingly, the ATT card is one of those cards that has an annual fee, but isn’t truly ‘Premium’ so they have some transfer partners, but not any of the great ones. The Citi Premier and Prestige offer the full range. Weird… but didn’t stop me racking up about 150K ATT ThankYou Points, and then signing up for a Citi Premier that earns 3x on travel. One cruise later I had around 60K of Premier ThankYou Points to add to the ATT stash.
Merge vs Transfer
- Merging means different card, same human occurs when I blend my ATT and Premier point balances. I was careful to select the Premier as the receiving account, and now I have 210K in one account. No cap that I’m aware of.
- Transfer means different card, different human. Merging has an annual cap of 100K points.
The plan..
ATT ThankYou Points earn fast (3x online) but burn cheap, at 1cent per point, or to a much restricted list of partners. Premier Card ThankYou Points allow for 1.25 cents per point value using the Citi Travel portal, and allow for transfers.
I figured that I might be able to get a uplift on the ATT points by transferring first, and it worked just fine. My 150K pts were suddenly worth $1875 vs $1500 when put towards travel on the Citi travel portal….I didn’t try, but I imagine by the same logic you could turn the ATT points into transferrable points via a Merge/Transfer transaction.
I also tried to blend in the legacy Bank points, but I couldn’t manage to Merge or Transfer these over, so they are just sitting there waiting to expire again until I figure out a use, let me know if you have one!
I’ve stayed away from TYP. If they have weird expiration date when upgrading/downgrading a card or getting from bank bonuses and cashing them is at less than 1 cent per point, I say they’re more trouble.
Best play, I think, is to carry both Premier and Prestige then redeem TYP for 4th night free stacked with 1.25 cpp uplift. Especially if you can further stack it with a 4th night free rate that’s bookable through the their portal.
Sounds solid. I’m a fan of using Altitude pts at the moment for things like this.
Great points to use for those hotels not participating in an awards program. Plan to use my stash at a nice small independent hotel in Provence, next year.
I am looking for a new spot to MS with my At&t card.