Citi Thank You Indeed

We've been big fans of Citi Thank You points. The combination of (a) being so easy to earn and (b) great redemption opportunities, we've earned and burned hundreds of thousands of Citi TY points over the years.

In particular, we've had special promotions like an additional 2x points on all spend for 6 months or $95 statement credits to offset the annual fee. Then there's the standard bonus categories such as 2x for Restaurants/Entertainment.

With a substantial stash of Citi TY points, we decided to use some for an upcoming long weekend in Florida this coming December.

First, we booked our United flights for 67,488 TY points, which saved us $844 for three round-trip tickets. Second, we booked an Enterprise Rental car for 4 days for just 9,200 TY points, which saved us $115. That's almost $1,000 of savings for a 4 day vacation!

To redeem Citi TY points, you need to book travel directly through their portal. The prices they show are generally the same as what you'd find by going directly to the airline or car rental websites. For example, our United tickets were the same price on Citi's site vs. United.com.

However, the car rental prices were actually cheaper on Citi's Travel site. Here were the prices on Orbitz.com. For the same Enterprise Compact car, they were charging $133 (vs. the $115 price we booked using Citi TY points).

Because we're having so much luck with Citi, we decided to open a new Citi Thank You Prestige card this past week which offers 60,000 TY points and has a reduced $350 annual fee, but with enough perks and benefits where my father will recoup that fee (and then some) easily in the first year.

Chase UR for Rental Cars

I've talked in the past about some tricks we use to get the best rate for rental cars. Our favorite is using Autoslash as it often saves us a lot of money for a very minimal amount of work on our part.

Another key tactic is to search on Travel Reward portals including Citi Thank You and Chase Ultimate Rewards. Oddly enough, their search engines can sometimes find significantly cheaper prices for the same exact rental at the same exact company.

Back in July, my father started locking in plans for our upcoming October trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Since the city doesn't have great public transportation, we definitely needed to rent a car. After doing our standard searches, we found our best deal using the Chase Ultimate Rewards Travel site.

Chase Ultimate Rewards Travel
To access this site, you just log into your Ultimate Rewards portal as if you were going to redeem/transfer points. Just hovering your mouse over "Travel" will show you a link for "Flights, Hotels, & Car Rentals".

As you can see from the photo, it looks just like Expedia or Travelocity's search page. You just type in the dates, locations and any other preferences, and you'll be shown a few different options.

The only difference is that instead of just showing cash prices, it will also show you the price in UR points.

Interestingly enough, the same car rental companies were showing much higher prices on Expedia and their own websites. So booking through Chase was a no-brainer. The only difference was that a Chase UR booking was pre-paid, though refundable as long as you cancelled a few days before the pick-up date.

In our case, the best deal was for an Economy Car from Avis for just 7,787 Chase UR points. Using UR points through this portal fixes the redemption at exactly 1.25 cents/pt, so we could have actually paid $97 in cash for this reservation. But since we were flush with Chase UR points, we decided a "sub-optimal" redemption was fine this time.

Chase UR vs. Autoslash
However, my father is never satisfied if he has the time to get an even better deal. He wanted to use Autoslash (it's a free option, right?) to see if they'd come up with a better price later on. But Autoslash can only check reservations made directly with the rental car companies. So he made a second Avis booking for the exact same dates, times and car type. That price came out to $206 - more than double!

So clearly, we were going to keep the Chase booking unless Autoslash could do their magic to drive down the cash rental. If Autoslash found something better, we'd just cancel the Chase UR portal booking. Otherwise, we'd cancel the cash booking. Unlike airfare, car rental bookings can be 100% refundable as long as you do it during the no-penalty window.

As it turned out, Autoslash wasn't able to come up with anything after months of searching, so we just cancelled the cash booking.

Attaching Our Avis First Loyalty Number
Now that we were committed to the Chase UR booking, we needed to make sure my father's Avis First number was added to the reservation so we'd get the perks (no stopping at the counter, free upgrade, etc).

How did my father get top-tier Avis First status? Well, credit cards of course. At the time, if you had a World Elite Mastercard, you could register online for Avis First. Subsequently, they changed it to just Avis Preferred status, but you can still register online here.

But, because he booked it using a third party reservation system (Chase UR), Avis corporate couldn't make any changes to the booking, including adding his Avis First number.

Of course, my relentless father didn't give up. First, he hung up and called back the following day in case he just met an incompetent Avis phone agent. But the second agent also told him the same thing.

Then he decided to skip the Avis 1-800 corporate number and to call the Avis Albuquerque office directly. Since he was speaking with the actual office agent, they were able to change the booking and add his Avis First number.

Now our reservation was all set and guaranteed to be upgraded to a better car than the entry level economy car (Hyundai Accent) that we paid for.

Small Town Hours

You definitely have your choices when you want to rent a car. And if you're like my father, these companies are all a commodity and you would rent based on the best price (assuming they're not a total joke of a company).

So on his 2 day trip to Columbus, Ohio for work meetings, he went to Expedia.com and looked for the lowest cost option. It came up Enterprise for $45/day.

So back in early May, he booked a reservation online and added his Enterprise loyalty #.

Enterprise Plus Member Number: ******NS
Car and Rate Information: Intermediate SUV Toyota Rav 4, Ford Escape or similar
Pick Up Date: Sunday, June 29, 2014 at 8:30 pm
Drop Off Date: Tuesday, July 1, 2014 at 6:30 pm
Pick Up Location Address and Phone Number: PORT COLUMBUS INTL ARPT 4600 INTERNATIONAL GTWY COLUMBUS, OH 43219-1779 Tel.: (614) 239-3200
Pick Up Location Hours for the week of : June 23, 2014
Monday-Friday 7:00 am 11:00 pm
Saturday 9:00 am 8:00 pm
Sunday 9:00 am 9:00 pm 

Fast forward to last evening, where my father's 6:09PM United 1196 flight was scheduled to arrive in Columbus, Ohio at 8:29PM. But due to late arriving aircraft, the flight was delayed until 7PM...then 7:30PM...then 8PM. Even after boarding in his customary Row 8 seat, the flight didn't actually depart until 8:20PM.

Frustrated with the fact that he spent an extra 2.5 hours at O'Hare Airport, he just fell asleep on the hour long minute flight. But due to Ohio being an Eastern time zone (1 hour ahead of Chicago), the flight arrived at 10:29PM.

Unfortunately, if you scroll up to the Enterprise location hours, the counter closed at 9PM.

My father, being used to 24/7 type of staffing at "international" airports in major cities, completely overlooked the fact that no one would be at the Enterprise desk to rent him his vehicle. So when he landed, he panicked a bit, but was soon calmed down by the fact that he had Enterprise elite status. Perhaps his reserved car would be ready and waiting for him with the keys and paperwork already...

Nope. This was Columbus, Ohio.

At 10:30PM.

On a Sunday night.

The Enterprise desk just had a sign saying "Sorry, we're closed." (Note: this photo was taken when I returned the car a few days later)

Thankfully, the Enterprise desk was in the same area as the Hertz Rental desk. And Hertz had 3 staff members ready and waiting to "pick him up" (note: in order for the reference to be funny, you need to know that Enterprise' slogan is "We'll pick you up.")

If you're not familiar, Hertz and Avis are the premium rental car agencies. They usually have new cars and offer top tier services for their members (i.e., having your car with paperwork waiting for you so you can skip the counter). But of course, for premium service, you pay premium prices.

The other mid-tier car rental companies (Dollar, Thrifty, Enterprise, National) offer some of those services, but not always depending on the location. Additionally, their cars are typically used (a few years older) and have some moderate wear and tear.

Then you have the bottom feeders (Fox, Advantage, Payless) where my father doesn't even know what happens at those companies, because we've never had a reason to be so desperate. But I digress...

So the Columbus Airport Hertz was ready to rent my father a car as a walk-in. Now, he knew Hertz was going to be pricier, but when they quoted him $147 for 2 days for "the lowest priced car available," my father rolled his eyes. That was about $60 more than the was going to pay for Enterprise.

My father told the young Hertz representative that the price was too high. So the agent went back into his computer and found a $135 option. Really? This lower priced option just came out of no where? Now my father smelled blood in the water.

My father: "Enterprise was going to give me an Intermediate SUV for $89..." while showing him the email confirmation from Enterprise.

Hertz: "Like a RAV4?"

My father: "Yeah, sure."

Hertz:  "OK, let me see what I can do...OK, I have a brand new Chevy Malibu for $97 for 2 days."

My father: "OK, I'll take that."

Autoslash for Car Rental

A few weeks ago, we mentioned how you can use Citi Thank You points to get a free car rental. I also referenced a website called Autoslash.com, but didn't go into too much detail. I thought that we would revisit Autoslash this week after the website saved my father about $75 in about 3 hours.

As I mentioned, we added a Free One Way flight to Phoenix for one last family vacation before I no longer qualify for free lap child status. Unlike Manhattan, the Phoenix metro area isn't as public transportation friendly, so you'll probably really need a rental car.

Unfortunately, rental car rates were running $333-500+ for the 5 day period we were looking at. While that comes out to $65-100/day (not incredibly horrible), we were hoping for something lower.

But unlike booking flights, you can make a rental car reservation without any cancellation penalties. That's super important because we're using Autoslash.com to find us better rates.

Step 1 - The Dummy Booking
First, you have to make a rental car booking. Counter-intuitive, but you should NOT use Autoslash for this part. The rental car agencies that allow primary bookings through Autoslash are very limited (I think just 2-3, and not the ones you'd want). The other major agencies do allow secondary bookings, however, but not primary.

Instead, I recommend searching and comparing rates using aggregators (Expedia or Travelocity), but don't book with them either.

When you find a rate you like, head to the actual rental car website (Hertz, Avis, Dollar, National, Budget, etc) and book directly with them. That way, you don't have to deal with the middleman to cancel and rebook.

Note:  While you have no intent to actually keep this reservation, you should still pick the lowest rate at an agency you're comfortable with (in the off chance that you end up using it). You'll notice that Advantage, Fox and Payless will often have the lowest prices, but we NEVER book with them. Too many horror stories of not honoring reservations, not having car availability or having painfully long lines. We generally prefer the high levels of customer service and newer cars at Hertz and Avis, but often prioritize cost and go with Budget, Thrifty or Dollar which are usually good enough.

In our case, we booked with National for $333.47 (including all taxes and fees) for 5 nights (October 25-30) at the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport location.

After you complete your booking, you will get a confirmation / reservation #. Keep this handy.

Step 2 - Autoslash
Next you will head over to Autoslash.com and then input your information into the TRACK A RENTAL section of the page (and not the Search section).

You will notice the section where you need to input your confirmation number. This will allow them to monitor your reservation and continually identify opportunities to lower your rate using a variety of discounts, coupons and special promotions that you probably would never even know about.

The best part is, you're done at this point. Everything is 100% automated (either that or they have massive rooms filled with Southeast Asian children searching every possible combination and permutation of discount codes). Either way, you can just sit back and wait.

Step 3 - Check Your Emails
While not 100% guaranteed, we've used Autoslash about 5-6 times and we've been able to find lower rates every time except once. Anywhere between a few hours or days/weeks later, you may get one of two different emails:

The Rebook Now Email

About 90 minutes after inputting the information into Track A Rental, we received a "Great News" email from Autoslash.

Hi Baby Songer, 

Thanks for tracking your upcoming car rental with AutoSlash. We review each reservation daily to see if we can find additional savings for our customers. We found a better rate on your upcoming rental in Phoenix on 10/25/2013. 

You are currently booked at the rate of $333.47 with National. AutoSlash is able to offer you a lower rate of $272.34 with National for the same vehicle, a savings of $61.13. 

If you'd like to take advantage of this lower rate and lock in the savings, just click here to book through AutoSlash. Better act fast though, as rates can change quickly. We'll even check your rate each day, and if we find a price drop, we'll re-book you automatically to lock in the savings!  

If you decide to take advantage of this lower rate, please remember to cancel your old reservation by clicking here. 

Weren’t able to find the lower price we quoted above? Rental car companies change prices constantly. While this provides an opportunity for you to score a lower rate, it also means you have to act quickly when rates drop.

So in our case, we received this email about 3 hours after we signed up with Autoslash. We clicked through the first email link and it pulled up the Autoslash search engine which showed several rental car options for the same dates/times as our original reservation.

But instead of just showing the 2 companies we didn't want, it also showed National for $272.34. After a few clicks, we booked a new reservation with National and then cancelled our original reservation.

We quickly saved $61.13 in less than 2 hours. More money to buy me ice cream!

The We've Automatically Rebooked You Email

Just 1 hour later, we received another "Great News" email from Autoslash.

Hi Baby Songer,

Thanks for booking with AutoSlash. We review each reservation daily to see if we can find additional savings for our customers. We found a better rate on your upcoming National rental in Phoenix on 10/25/2013 (AutoSlash Trip ID: #######27).

You were originally booked at $272.34, and the price has now dropped to $257.61. We've automatically re-booked your rental at the lower rate. You've saved $14.73 without even lifting a finger! Please note that your rental confirmation number has changed. Your new National confirmation number is ######909.

Please provide this new number to the agent when picking up your rental to ensure you receive the correct rate.

If you do not have the latest confirmation number with you at the time of the rental, request the agent look up your reservation by your name. If you have not received the updated confirmation, please check your SPAM folder before contacting us, as emails are often mistakenly classified as SPAM.

We'll continue to track your rental rate each day, and if we find additional savings, we'll be in touch. If you need to change or cancel your reservation, just click here.

I think that since we made the second booking using Autoslash, they were able to automatically rebook us without us needing to do anything. So far, we've already saved about $75 and still have another 3 weeks before our trip. Crossing my baby fingers!

Conclusion
Since's its a 100% free service for the consumer, we can't imagine NOT using Autoslash to track all our existing car rental reservations.

Of course, there's a chance we may still be able to find better rates on our own if we checked back manually on Expedia or Travelocity, but I've become a pretty busy toddler these days now that I'm in daycare 3 days a week.

Thank you, Autoslash.

UPDATE [October 7, 2013]

We decided to test Autoslash and see if there were any better rates by manually looking up rental car rates on Expedia a week later. While the regular passenger cars were actually higher now than last week, we did find an SUV from Alamo at about $239 for the same 5 days. It would only be a savings of about $18, but we'd get a nicer car with more space. So we made a new booking, but kept the original just in case it would get even lower. Now we had 2 bookings - one for a regular car (National) and another for an SUV (Alamo).

Next, we used Autoshash to Track Rental for the new Alamo SUV rental. About an hour later, we received another "Great News" email from them.

AutoSlash is able to offer you a lower rate of $217.27 with Budget for the same vehicle, a savings of $38.39.

Wonderful. When we clicked through Autoslash, we saw Budget listed with Sixt and Payless. In addition to Budget's Standard SUV (Ford Edge) for $217, they also listed a cheaper Intermediate SUV (Ford Escape) for $191. So we rebooked yet again with Budget and cancelled our Alamo reservation.

Remember when we started this whole car rental process with rates of $333 for 5 days? Now, we were at $191.

Citi Thank You & Free Car Rental

As I mentioned yesterday, we're spending the next 10 or so days in Colorado. However, unlike New York City, the Denver public transportation system is not quite as efficient. So we've rented a car to use for our trip here.

While late summer in Colorado is definitely not peak season, it still ends up being a little over $300 for the 10 days (which comes out to $30/day for the non-Asians). Now while I hope that $300 won't break my family's bank account, I'm sure anyone would like to save $300 to use on other fun things while they're on vacation.


Citi Thank You Points
That's where the Citi Thank You Points come in. Like Chase's Ultimate Rewards and American Express' Membership Rewards, Citi has their own internal point system called Thank You Points.

But unlike Chase & Amex, you cannot use TY points to transfer to airlines or hotels. You can only redeem them for merchandise, retailer gift cards or use them to book travel (flights/hotels) through their captive travel agency. Most of the time, you can only get a maximum of 1.0 cent per point of redemption value (ie, a $100 Best Buy gift card will cost 10,000 TY points).

Flight Redemption
However, if you (or a friend) have a Citi Premier Card ($125 annual fee waived 1st year) then you can redeem Citi TY points for flights at 1.25 cents per point. So if you have a friend with the Premier Card, you're best option is to transfer your TY points to their account and have them book flights for you. From the airline's perspective, it's as if you booked using cash, so you'll earn mileage and elite status credit.

Given we fly within the US as often as we do internationally, we like using our Citi TY points for domestic coach flights. This approach saves us cash, such as when when we booked our flights to Memphis this October for 50,568 TY Points, saving us $672 for 2 economy tickets (at the time of booking, TY point flight redemption rates were 1.33 cents/pt). For long haul international flights in business/first class, however, we're much better off using airline miles (United, American, US Airways, etc) because we'd need A LOT of TY Points to redeem for such an expensive ($2,000+) ticket.

Rental Car Redemption
But sometimes, my parents aren't trying to always "maximize redemption value" and would like to just save some cash for things they'd need anyway. For example, a rental car in Denver.

When renting a car using TY Points, you log into your account and then use their search engine (like you would Expedia or Travelocity) by inputting the dates and location you're looking for. Then the website will show you the options available at various $ and point prices.

Now, these prices may be different from what you'd find on Expedia or actual rental car websites, so be sure to look at all your options to make sure you're not getting a bad deal through Citi Travel.

But if you're confident you're getting a fair price, when you find a car type and price you like, you just click through to make the reservation. You will have the option to pay in 100% cash, 100% points or a combination of both if you don't have enough points.

The reason we like using Citi TY points here is because these points are not as versatile since you cannot transfer them to airline or hotel partners. We could have also used Chase UR and Amex MR points to redeem for a car rental as well at 1 cent/pt, but why use more valuable transferable points when you can use the more restrictive Citi points for the same redemption?

Some Warnings
Unlike booking directly with Avis, Hertz, Dollar, etc, these Citi Travel bookings do have penalties for cancellation. Our booking had a 1 day penalty (paid to rental car company) if we cancelled within 2 days of pickup time and a $15 modification/cancellation fee (paid to Citi) for any changes at any time.

Normally, my father would book directly and then use Autoslash.com to automatically check to see if prices dropped and rebook if necessary. This time, we were stuck, unless rebooking would save him more than the fees to make the change.

But if you're OK with fixing your rental car plans, then Citi Thank You is a great way to save cash using points that aren't as flexible or versatile.

But Why Do We Even Have Citi Thank You Points?
The fact that these points are less flexible and can't do anything that Chase UR or Amex MR can do raises a good question. Why do my parents even collect Citi Thank You points?

Well, in February, my father applied for a special Citi Thank You Preferred credit card that earned him 5x points per $1 spent at grocery stores, gas stations and drugstores (GGD) for the first 12 months of use. At 1-1.33 cents/pt, that's a 5.0-6.7% rebate on all our GGD spend.

Given I eat a lot, my family's grocery spend is pretty significant, even though we try to save money by going to Trader Joe's instead of Whole Paycheck Foods. While we don't drive often in NYC, we do frequent drugstores quite often for diapers and other supplies, including the elusive Vanilla Reload cards and Visa Gift Cards to use for our Bluebird Amex. Through our regular grocery and drugstore spending as well as opportunistic manufactured spending, we've been amassing quite a lot of Thank You points at a 5x clip every month.

When the 12 month promotional period ends, though, we'll probably stop cold turkey and go back to using our boring Starwood Amex (1x on everything) or Chase United Select card (2x at groceries).

Note:  Unfortunately, the 5x promotional offer on this credit card is no longer officially offered online. However, several people report being able to get the offer when physically going into Citibank branches. See The Miles Professor's write up here.