Update on my Citi Card promotion

In an earlier postI was pondering my next moves with my new Citi AmEx card.. whether to keep with it, or do a balance transfer. Golbguru suggested that I call, which I was thinking of doing anyway, to get all of the details cleared out since there was already some confusion when I applied for the card.

I just called and talked with them. There is currently a promotion for the same card offering 5,000 points after your first purchase, which is what she said I would get at first. I said that the promotion I signed up for gave me 10,000 points. She looked it up and I guess there was a problem with the system. They have a note in there, so she said if I only get 5,000 points I should call back and they'll fix it.

Now comes the decision to do a balance transfer or not. Although I could probably get an additional 20,000 points, I was incorrect that I could trade them in for cash. I thought I saw that before, but they do not offer cash for points, just gifts cards and other merchandise. I could get a credit of $100 for 17,000 points, but that is absolutely ridiculous. Even though I said I could use gift cards as the same as cash and just convert over, for this I don't want to. So I've decided that once I pay my bill I am going to do a balance transfer. This will add to the balance transfer that we're getting from my fiance's new AmEx Blue card. But that will take a while to transfer because we have to do it through Capital One which is really slow at cutting a check.