Citibank is no Eddie Money, but they are offering two free airline tickets for opening an account with at least $25,000. I first heard about this at My Money Blog, but didn’t think much of it since I already have a Citibank Account with a full complement of savings accounts. However, today I went to Citibank to make a deposit and the teller told me that I could still qualify for one free ticket by merely opening or depositing the amount into a money market account. Jonathan has since updated his post to reflect that existing customers do qualify for the promotion.

As I was about to make the deposit, I was told my current account did not qualify. I had originally opened the account via the now defunct Citifi and as a result the account was technically based in IL. Citifi was Citibank’s online banking offering to compete with the online banks that were all the rage in 2000. Citibank quickly realized there was no reason to differentiate it’s regular banking services from online banking. All they had to do was offer online services to it’s standard bank offerings. Because my account was based in IL, I couldn’t simply deposit the check into that account. Apparently the money had to be deposited to a local account.

I thought I was out of luck again, but I was quickly shifted over from a teller to a personal banker. The banker (I’ve never worked with a banker before) told me that I could still just open account and qualify for the free ticket(s). Since I did enough business with Citibank to make me eligible for a CitiGold account, I opened that. I still have to make 2 online bill pays in the next three months and maintain a 25k deposit in the money market account.

CitiGold is Citibank’s private banking and wealth management services. I’m hardly the type of individual you would think would qualify for such an account or services, but across all items such as mortgages, investment accounts, CDs, savings and money market accounts, I do quite a bit of business with Citibank. I was pleasantly surprised to qualify as there are a number of perks including a specific banker to work with. Two years ago I would’ve shrugged off the idea of working with someone as I’ve almost always done things myself and online, but being a little older and wiser I realize calling customer service is really not all that fun. Now, I have someone who know’s my name who I can email and call directly if I have a problem. That’s valuable. I can still choose to close the account in 6 months after I’ve received the Thank You Points good for one (or maybe two) free tickets.  Plus, they even gave me free gift at the bank.  I didn’t get a toaster though, just a branded mug.

The biggest drawback is that I now have yet another checking account, making my total number of bank accounts a rather unwieldy five. My “banker” tells me that after being a CitiGold account that I’ll assuredly close at least my other Citibank account even though I have everything linked to that account currently. I’ll think about in the next a couple months and if I find that I’m committed to the idea of having a CitiGold account at least I’ll be able to make the transition slowly.