When I talk to people about the miles and points world, sometimes people ask me “Why isn’t everyone doing this?” And there’s no REAL reason why the majority of people couldn’t use credit card miles and points to help them travel. But one thing that IS required is a bit of organization. How much organization depends on how crazy you go. If you have 43 credit cards like I do, then you need to step up your organization a bit!
Other miles and points mistakes I’ve made
While I think I generally think I do a good job of keeping on top of bonuses, payments and such, I’ve made a few mistakes
- I lost out on a $400 signup bonus on the Barclaycard Arrival Plus card by not meeting the signup bonus in time
- I had a delay on an American Express payment which caused 11,436 Membership Rewards to be forfeited (How I got my forfeited American Express Membership Rewards back)
- I nearly missed out on 50,000 American Express points again due to missing the signup bonus date, but ended up getting them mysteriously added to my account a year later.
And there have been a couple of times that my auto-pay hasn’t gotten set up correctly where I’ve been charged late fees or interest, though that almost always gets resolved when I call in and ask.
How I threw away 46,487 ThankYou points
So that brings us to the current situation. Award Wallet sends weekly emails with point changes, and a few weeks ago I received the following notice
Hmmm I didn’t remember spending 44,000 ThankYou points?
I called in to Citibank and they told me that those 46,487 ThankYou points were associated with my AT&T Access More card that I closed back in June (I had also earned ~2000 TYP through spending). Oh yeah, I remember I closed my 2nd AT&T Access More card back when they devalued it in lieu of paying the annual fee
(SEE ALSO: 4 cards I will pay the annual fee on)
Because ThankYou points are associated with the card they’re earned on and expire 60 days after the card is closed,
The annoying thing is that I had a reminder written down to spend my expiring TYP, but in my reminder I said spend expiring PREMIER ThankYou points. So eventually when that reminder came up I said – “Hmm I didn’t close my Premier card (I took a retention offer instead), so I don’t need to do anything”
Oops 🙁
What you can do with 46,487 ThankYou points
So just to rub some salt in my wounds, here’s a few things you can do with 46,487 ThankYou points
- With my Citi Prestige card, I can use them for flights at 1.33 cents / points, or $618.28 in travel
- Transfer to nearly 50,000 Asia Miles – check out these best uses of Asia Miles – that’s enough for half a roundtrip to Europe in business class!
- 3 tickets to Hawaii with Flying Blue
Do I need to go on? 😛
Trying to get them back
Of course I wasn’t going to let over $600 go without a FIGHT! 🙂
I called back into Citibank, but the agent I spoke to said there was nothing that she could do and would not reinstate the points
I’m not giving up… and this story has a happy ending BUT… you’ll have to wait till tomorrow to hear Part 2 🙂
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
Such a tease! … but I’m glad it has a happy ending!
My fiance and I have over 40 cards between us! Which helped us get over 2 million points in just 1 year 😀 😀
But we will be closing quite a few of them soon – we’ll have to make sure we understand all the rules and conditions of what happens to the points we’ve earned before we do! (I keep a super detailed spreadsheet of all of our cards 😉 including exact numbers and details)
Dan, I have the More card, but no other Citi TY earning cards. I did not realize these points ATT More TY points are really worthless for travel unless you can move them to a travel earning TY card. I am trying to figure out what to do with these since I had cancelled the travel earning TY cards.
Correct – the AT&T card gives TYP but not for travel. Can you use them for flights?