CITI Professional card -- how to make use of it AGAIN?!

MosDeft, I'll bet a nickel that those who have been able to convert their Professional cards to personal cards -- there have been cases of this -- had the TYP version of the card. My wife has the Professional Cash card. I was just told by a CSR that it's no problem to convert the TYP card to a Diamond Preferred, but that there are no conversion options (at least personal card conversion options) for the Professional Cash.

Since Citi really wants us to have this card, we'll resign ourselves to taking a BT with its 12-month 0% no-fee BT terms. I'd rather have upped the CL on her CashReturns card, but we'll still make some money from this.

One valuable lesson I've learned from this is that I should consider options for CLR, conversion, or consolidation before applying for a credit card.

MosDeft said: glx, you are correct sir. I 'did' have a Pro TYP, signed up for it because of the 10k+ bonus offer. I wanted to swap it another card, like the Simplicity, but it wasn't listed on the website as far as I could tell.

Maybe you can try with another CSR?
Thanks for the data point. I'm batting 0 for 2 (three if you count a supervisor on my first attempt), the first from the number on the back of the CashReturns card, the second from the number on the back of the Professional card. We'll go another route to increase my wife's CL on her CashReturns card, such as getting the Associated card or HHonors card, closing it and consolidating it to the CashReturns card. And we'll make some money from her Professional card, too. When the BT term is up, I'll consider other options (if any) for her Professional Cash card.

elleve said: I'm going 2 try consolidating my professional into business ty card
I'll report back tomorrow.

Good luck, but you should have no problems moving the CL to a business card.

So, CITI Pro may serve as an intermediate point in moving business credit to personal? Holy cow! Great find! Please do let us know if everything works out the way you were told it would.

cyberkost said: So, CITI Pro may serve as an intermediate point in moving business credit to personal? Holy cow! Great find! Please do let us know if everything works out the way you were told it would.

Well, as I mentioned, I logged in today and it's been processed. My CitiBiz PP card has a $1k CL and my Citi Professional card has a $50k CL, and that's exactly what the credit specialist and I discussed.

elleve said: I'm going 2 try consolidating my professional into business ty card
I'll report back tomorrow.

Ok, called at 8am eastern.
I was denied by an Indian CSR. He insisted that business to business moving of credit line was not possible but offered to transfer part of my cashreturns to my business.

I was like ok, then after 30minutes of holding, he says he's made a note on my account to transfer the credit line and said to check back in 3 business days.

So, there is obviously a huge difference in getting a specialist.

I'll call 2 more times today.

Perhaps I missed it, but I haven't seen any references to being able to use the Professional Cash card as the source for conversion, CLR, or consolidation. If someone has an example of this, could you please chime in? Otherwise, I'll make a note of this in the Quick Summary.

BTW, the reason we chose the Cash version was at the time, it had a BT 0% 12-month offer witn no fee, and we figured that, given a high enough CL, that would make more money for us than the TYP version, which didn't have the 12-month BT offer, IIRC. It appears that the no-fee offer no longer exists.

swishyx said: ahself, not clear here, is your Pro card the Cash card? Or TYP? Or neither?

It's the Citi Pro TYP card.

imsparty said: d/n assume that the 2nd call center person was in the USA...some overseas call cntr employees can speak american better than the average american...

The difference is that the average American has an accent from somewhere in the USA. Although I suppose the 2nd call center person could've been an American living oversees.

BTW, I called this afternoon to consolidate the CitiBiz PP card with the CitiBiz TYP card and was transferred to a credit specialist, again. This time, both the first rep and the credit specialist were Americans (assumedly in the USA). As I mentioned, I guess the key to getting a credit specialist is to mention consolidation.

And, I asked him why some cards can be consolidated and others can't. He told me it's an account number thing and the system dicates whether it can be done or not. I asked him to elaborate and he said said accounts are grouped together by various things. In addition to account numbers, they have something like "serial numbers" and that's what they look for wrt compatibility.

Has anyone had success converting a Citi Professional Cash card to a personal card like the Diamond Preferred?

I explored the CLI reconsolidation.

Dividend Platinum -> Citi Professional: Works (I did this few months back)
Professional -> Dividend Platinum: Not Allowed.
Associated Bank Credit card (Managed by Citi) -> Citi Professional: Works.

I have a 0% BT ($0 Fee) on Associated Bank Card.

As someone suggested, I will try to convert my Professional to a Dividend Platinum or Diamonds rewards (Personal card) and do the CLI.

Can someone put in procedure to convert a Professional card to a Personal card? Do I call the customer support or card approvals department?

I called up the Citi Professional cards' customer service, and required them to convert my Citi Professional to Diamond Rewards. The CSR was knowledgeable and said that he can do it. He placed the request, and converted it in minutes. The CSR cautioned that my interest rates will go up - from Prime+2.99% card to Prime + 8.99% with this conversion. They are willing to make this conversion as they make money on higher interests. We are interested in the conversion as we can merge the CL's. It looks like a win-win situation. We will win as long as we are not really maintaining balance on the new high-interest card.

After that conversation, I logged into the account, and it said, a new account was created. The new Diamonds Rewards card was added to my accounts.

I just tried again to CLR from plain vanilla CITI Business (with TYN) to CITI Pro (with TYN) and got shot down by an american CSR. He said he's pretty sure that this is not a possibility as he had a similar request a couple of weeks ago and consulted with the manager back then.

cyberkost said: Just to continue to document my personal experiences on trying to make CITI Pro card (more) useful -- today I called to ask to convert it (CITI PRO TYN) to a DPR card. I called around 2PM ET and spoke to an indian-sounding CSR. He informed me that conversion to DPR (or any other purely personal [non-professional] card) CANNOT be done. Period. I asked him if this is a new policy, as only a few days ago another CSR seemed to be able to do the conversion (but advised me against it as I'd be losing some of the benefits -- I had to agree as I called playing an "ignorant person seeking advice"). In response he just reiterated that it cannot be done. Bummer. Will try again tomorrow.
Green for persistence!

Just called again and was told (without any hesitation or putting on hold) that "this card product cannot be converted into ANY other card product". I'm gonna try retentions tomorrow or on Sunday.

glxpass said:
I'm afraid you might have a little notation in your file: "When cyberkost calls about..., respond as follows..." Good luck with retentions.

That very well may be, but I don't think I had an option other than "call again" after my conversion request was denied for the first and the second time . Anyway, I just called again (fifth time, I think) and asked the rep to convert my CITI Pro into a DPR ... He said he'd do it and I should be receiving a DPR card in 7-10 days! I may have hit a different team of reps this time, as the system did not let me punch in my cc number, it connected me to the CSR right away and I had to give the cc number to him. It was a "domestic"-sounding rep, which may be a bit strange for a Sunday.

Edit: I already see a new DPR card with the CL of the former Professional card in my account online.

generics said:
Was this a front line rep who converted your Professional card to Diamond Preferred Rewards, or were you transferred to a specialist?

It was whoever answered the phone call (i.e., I did not get transferred anywhere), but it was somewhat unusual in that regard that the system let me talk to the rep without first having me punch in the card number (as has been the case for the first 4 times). I was also expecting to talk to an offshore CSR at this time of the week, but it turned out to be somebody "domestic". Try to mistype the card number?

As I just described in the Dying CashReturns thread, a CSR offered to close and consolidate the CL of my Citi Professional Cash Card to my new CashReturns card (approved with a $500 CL). (It's my second CashReturns card.)

I'd paid off the 0% BT on the Professional a few days ago. This is similar to what happened on my wife's second CashReturns card (which initially was approved with a $500 CL), where Citi offered to close and consolidate her Citi Professional Cash Card in order to increase her CashReturns card's CL. She hadn't used her Professional Cash card at all, however.

Amateur question here: I just got approved for this card with a $9000 limit and a 0% BT and 15000 TY points after first purchase.

How do you take advantage of both of those aspects? From my understanding if I take the 0% BT and then make purchases any payment I send will go to the 0% balance first and purchase APR balance last. That we be no good as I don't want to be paying interest on a purchase all year.

My guesses would be :
A) make a purchase right away, pay it immediately (before statement even comes) ... then do a balance transfer
B) make a small first purchase and just deal with paying a small amount of interest all year.

Are these options viable? Is there a better way?

zrap said: Amateur question here: I just got approved for this card with a $9000 limit and a 0% BT and 15000 TY points after first purchase.

How do you take advantage of both of those aspects? From my understanding if I take the 0% BT and then make purchases any payment I send will go to the 0% balance first and purchase APR balance last. That we be no good as I don't want to be paying interest on a purchase all year.

My guesses would be :
A) make a purchase right away, pay it immediately (before statement even comes) ... then do a balance transfer
B) make a small first purchase and just deal with paying a small amount of interest all year.

Are these options viable? Is there a better way?

I like B. By allowing them to make $12 of interest off you, I think you fit the normal customer profile and run less risk of AA. Sort of like avoiding "perfect play" at the Blackjack table to make sure the casino doesn't ban you.