ThankYou Rewards Network Review

Citi's ThankYou Network, as large as it is, has problems. I spend relatively little but I very carefully observe the rules when it comes to making purchases that qualify for ThankYou points. The people in charge drop the ball ALL THE TIME. Very frequently, purchases fail to be credited within three billing cycles. The people in charge say that these things are done automatically. So....? What am I left to believe about the way things are automated? From my experiences I can only assume that everyone has the same problems. Don't call and ask questions because you'll only get an "Idunno" from people who don't know, or you'll get the run-around from people who do. It'll be very frustrating. Add more frustration, if the customer service agent you're speaking to does not speak your language natively.

As for the rewards themselves, they're not much to speak of. They're way overpriced! For instance, a typical DVD movie will cost about 2,100 points. You can actually purchase points on your own, at a rate of $25 per 1,000 points. This of course means that buying a DVD will cost you over $50!

Here are some of the rules to keep in mind when making purchases and accumulating points:

• The ThankYou Points that accumulate as a result of qualifying purchases made expire after three years.
• The ThankYou Network member can only accumulate up to 75,000 ThankYou points per year.
• You have to be logged into the ThankYou Network via their website AND use the Merchant links through their website in order for the purchases to qualify.
• Qualifying purchases may take one or two billing cycles on average to be recorded.

Did you know that the ThankYou Network has reward items worth almost 41 MILLION points? Yes, the ThankYou Network offers a luxury boat, the Sea Ray 340 Sundancer comes in at almost 41,000,000 points. Doing the math, if you can only accumulate 75,000 points per year, and the points from qualifying purchases expire after three years, a person seeking to buy such a reward will still have to come up with another 40-and-some million points in order to purchase this reward. At $25 per 1,000 points, This poor fool is going to pay 1.6 million dollars extra in order to buy this item. And that's considering you actually get all of the reward points you have coming to you (see above). Even with ALL options, fully loaded, the dealers will charge you at MOST a little over $450,000 for this boat.

This is just one of the outrageous examples that can be found while gazing through the litany of impossible "rewards" that the ThankYou Network offers.

Save yourself time, money and aggravation and just skip over this useless reward system.