So I have some good news from my end. Citibank kept its end of the bargain and finally gave me the 60,000 points I was owed for reaching the spend limit on my Citi Premier Card. I just checked my latest points balance after my last statement and there it was as promised. 
This was as part of the extension on the sign on bonus period I was offered (due to COVID-19) earlier on during the year. You can read about the entire tale here. But here is a summary: FrequentMiler was the first blogger I know of who reported about Citi offering extensions on sign on bonus periods. Every other blogger on the web and even news sites just decided to say it was part of a wider press release by Citibank (which didn’t happen). After many readers and a few bloggers like myself talked about Citi representatives not knowing anything about it, FrequentMiler reached out to Citi for a response and I don’t think he ever actually got a response.
Anyway, on my end it was a long and arduous process, but on a call back in August, I finally got to an agent who confirmed that I had reached the spending threshold for the sign on bonus. The agent specifically said to look out for the bonus at the end of the extended spend period (which ended up being August for me).
Do note that it did take me no less than 10 calls to the same department (1-800-842-6596) to get the desired result so persistence is key.
Takeaway:
A bit unfortunate that this is can be a time consuming process, but it sometimes takes a lot of persistence to get the desired result from Citibank. In my experience, if you keep record of everything and relate it back, someone will be able to help you out eventually. Of course, my situation was a bit specific (as I said before).
My only tip to you guys is to quote the following to them from Citi’s PR release. In my experience this wording seemed to get through to some reps eventually.
“Those who open or have opened new Citi credit card accounts eligible for a welcome bonus between December 1, 2019 and May 31, 2020 will have an additional three months to meet the spending requirements. Again, this only applies to new cardmember welcome bonuses, but it gives you additional time to meet the spend.”
Hello Teja,
Back in May, after reading on multiple blogs and online travel sites that Citi will extend the bonus spend period for its credit cards, I decided to call Citi to verify whether those who open or have opened new Citi credit cards will have an additional three months to meet the spending requirements, before I applied for the the Citi Advantage Platinum Select card (which has a $2,500 spend requirement in 3 Months). I spoke to a customer service representative who then put me on hold while they checked on this with the relevant department, and the representative said that the card I plan to apply would be eligible for the 3 month extension. This conversation took place on May 27th, 2020, and I proceeded to apply for the card on the same day, I was approved and my account was considered open as of May 27, 2020.
Fast forward to November. I met the $2,500 spend limit well ahead of November 27, 2020 (what would have been six months since account opening). So I called Citi on November 10th to reconfirm that I had met the spend limit well ahead of the deadline and that I would be eligible to receive the 50,000 AA miles welcome bonus. The representative (who’s name I noted down in my file) put me on a brief hold to check with the relevant department, and agreed that I was eligible for the welcome Bonus having met my spend limit, and also went on to notify me that I actually had until December 10th, 2020 to meet the spend limit, and so I was all set and the welcome bonus typically shows up in the weeks following the statement closing date.
I called again to follow up on this on December 18, 2020, once again the representative (whose name I also noted down in my file) reconfirmed that I will be receiving my welcome bonus anytime between now and the next couple of weeks.
I followed up on December 29th again (yesterday), this time the representative told me that the spend period was three months and since I didn’t meet the $2,500 within the three months (which would have been in August), that is the reason why my welcome bonus of the 50,000 AA miles has not been credited to my account. I explained to her as I have described above and told her I had multiple phone conversations with Citi over the past few months.
She proceeded to connect me with the Rewards team and I explained the entire situation to their team member (whose name I noted down in my file). He proceeded to check with his department and after a hold came back to me and said that they will file a dispute regarding my welcome bonus AA miles and that Citi will be contacting me in a couple of business days to notify me on the issue. So now I’ll have to wait and see what they come back with. If you have any suggestions or tips from your experience please do share. Thank you!
You just have to wait and see Raj, I don’t have any more tips outside what I shared in my previous post. Just continue calling them to find out regularly. They will yield eventually.
https://grabamile.boardingarea.com/2020/06/citiextension2020/