Citi AT&T Univ Card Increasing/phasing out BT fee maximums

I've had the AT&T Univ Card since it was first offered years ago; never used it for BT. Just got this notice in the mail: Effective Nov 17, 2006, max on BT fee is being increased to $250. Effective Feb. 1, 2007, Citi is removing the max on BT fees altogether; as of that date the BT fee, a finance charge, will be 3% of amt transfered.

Anyone get this type of notice on other Citi cards?

Yup, just got the same notice 2 days ago on my Citi Dividend card. Removing the BT max transfer fees seems like the trend with cc companies now. But "special BT offers" often still have a BT maximum fee. We're gonna have to pay extra special attention to the fine print from now on.

charliek said: Yup, just got the same notice 2 days ago on my Citi Dividend card. Removing the BT max transfer fees seems like the trend with cc companies now. But "special BT offers" often still have a BT maximum fee. We're gonna have to pay extra special attention to the fine print from now on.

The trend that's now surfacing is that "special BT offers" are also turning up with a 3% fee. Oh well, so much for a good thing...

posted here already, check the post by Snyder81

If folks like to play the BT game, then more power to you.

I'm an old-fashioned kind of gal. I charge extensively but pay off my cards in full each month.

Just call me a dinosaur.........

its a truly sad day, the end of easy 0% BT money is approaching


Sometimes life just deals folks a bad hand.........

Can still look for CC with good rewards after your first purchase and then pay yourself through Google checkout. It will cost you 2% up front but if you get a card that has for example 1% CashBack as well as a reward on making a purchase in the first few months, that might almost negate the 2% lost and then you have the money sitting in our bank account and you proceed as normal with your AOR.

Yeah, just got the notice a few days ago. You can opt-out though, but per CSR if you do so, your card will expire without renewal.

So do you think with the upcoming fee increase on BTs that it would make sense to utilize the lines higher than in the past? Instead of keeping it to 50% and getting more BTs later, just use up to around 90% since it could be the last "easy" BT for a long time? Any opinions?

EmilM

yes there are still citi ATT Universal offers with NO fee 0% BTS.

time for me to over 90% utilization on my existing AOR. What is there to lose if the game is going away anyway?

I just got this mailing yesterday and I think I might have found a loophole...

1) Call Citibank and tell them that your card's stripe was damaged and to send you a new card. I believe the new card will have a new expiration date.
2) There is a clause in the recent mailing that if you refuse to accept the change to the ToS, you can write in and opt out. Your current ToS will be in place until the expiration of the card at which point your account will be closed.

I have a 1.99% for life offer on my card. So if the expiration date gets extended out to say 3 years, that would be 1.99% with $75 BT fee for 3 years.

I'm planning on trying this and will let you guys know what happens.

SiS/DyS and others...can you find any faults in this?

The loopholes in this plan that I can think of are:
1) You need to write in to opt out by February 2007. That means that if you do a BT between the beginning of the phase-in and when they receive the letter, I'm sure I'll be hit with the up to $250. It will be a pain to get a refund on the difference.
2) My current expiration date is 11/07. If they don't extend it with the new card, then it may not be worth it
3) When they close the account at the end, it may ding my credit report. But I'm wondering if it would be better if at that point, I ask them to merge it into one of my other cards.

BTW: The card I got the mailing for was the Platinum Select card.