Today I receive a balance transfer offer from Citi for my Driver's Edge card. This card has a 0 balance and has been basically sitting unused since I opened it over a year and a half ago. I usually see BT offers in my online account as well as mailed offers, but they are always uncapped. The offer today was similar, 0% until July 2010 or 1.99% until Feb 2011, both with uncapped fees. Of course, I was about to toss the offer, but then I caught the bottom part of the letter that said "Or, Customize your balance transfer". It instructed me to go to buildyourbalancetransfer.CitiCards.com and enter the personal invitation code from the letter.
While the configurations of the available offers for me personally was nothing to get excited about, I think it is an interesting approach, and definitely gives the cardholder more options. It let me choose a rate from 0, 0.99, 1.99, 2.99, 3.99 and 4.99%, a duration from either 6, 8, 12 or 15 months, and a fee of 3% uncapped, 3% with $99 max, 3% with $150 max, and 3% with $199 max. Of course if you choose 1 option, say, rate of 0%, it will grey out the options that are not available in combination with that selection.
Is this something that has been around for awhile? This is the first time I have seen this.
I searched and didn't see any discussion on this so I thought I would throw it out there to see if anyone had any interesting similar offers.
Here are the different configurations that were available to me:
BobbyRobert said: Interesting. Perhaps this is a sign that the BT market is about to loosen up a bit...
Disagree. It's the same cat dressed as an eastern bunny, that's all.
BobbyRobert
Ancient Member
posted: Nov. 19, 2009 @ 7:21p
Cheapoking said:
Disagree. It's the same cat dressed as an eastern bunny, that's all.
Did you mean Western bunny?
But seriously, you may be right, but citi has offered me nothing in the way of BTs for a while -- I was excited to see any offer, no matter how mediocre.
Doesnt (Didnt) Capital One offer the ability to customize account features when applying for a new account? Same idea, although this is focused only on balance transfers.
drpepper7 said: I was hoping to see something with no fees...
Assuming your credit is good and you are not carrying large balances, call up Citi during the daytime and tell the Indian that you want to cancel, you should be transfered to their retentions dept and asked why you want to cancel. Tell them you wanted to balance transfer but don't like the large fee, they should then offer you a better transfer offer (maybe not fee free, but at least capped at $50 or $75). I've done this a few time in the past year, and I plan to do it again next week and will post my results.
dcg9381
Senior Member - 1K
posted: Nov. 20, 2009 @ 10:14a
I just got the dreaded "rate increase" notice from citi. 7.2% to 11.9%.
So I called. I asked if my utilization was low or if they needed me to carry a balance. They said my "history" was fine. I offered to balance transfer to the card (I wouldn't pay fees) and of course, I'd pay off that balance. They said no.
I asked why was it increasing? "To continue to maintain the same great level of service"
I asked if citi was still able to borrow from the government at historical low rates... I didn't get an answer to that.
Anyway, she encouraged me not to opt-out, even though opting out keeps my current account open until 2011 at existing rates...
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