Originally Posted by
Biggie Fries
Thanks for the response -- you make a lot of good points, especially with respect to the risk/reward ratio. I guess my thinking is slightly different, in the sense that either (a) any system that has a fixed date for one reward could generate a fixed date for the second; or (b) that's all a bunch of spurious precision and it's more of a "in the ballpark call," like touching second base on a double play before the advent of instant replay. (To be concrete, folks who write rules down are not the same as folks who program computers are not the same as CSRs are not the same as slightly higher-level folks who take appeals from customers.) Was just looking to see if others had experiences that would tip this one way or the other.
If I do reapply at some point I'll update.
You forgot one thing - it is much easier to program it by month, instead of by fixed date - just think about how cumbersome to count dates in a 365 days x 2 period when the date could be fallen in Jul for example, then you have both Jul 31 and Aug 31 - both are 31 days month... versus say, Aug to Jul is one 12 months cycle.
With Chase system does NOT even count the spends posted within a week to statement date in the same cycle as meeting the spend requirement (how many posters have asked, why I met the spend and dont see the bonus? when their spends were a few days before the statement close?), you should know that Chase system employs a BATCH Processing concept (obviously cheaper than the exact date calculation), so the likelihood of using MONTHS instead of exact date to determine eligibility is quite high.
That said, AMEX is the bank which uses exact dates. So it can be done. But AMEX transaction posting also is much more "real time" than Chase. Case in point, when the BB/Serve/RB payment hits an AMEX account, because it is ACH, AMEX would show it in the Payment Received details even though it is not reflected in Account Activity yet. With Chase (and Citi also), there is NO WAY you would know whether the payment has arrived on the promised date until the following date when Chase posted it to the Account Activity (and never shows up in Payment Activities because it is not a payment initiated from Chase side). Biz cards take another extra day to reflect that... In fact Chase is the worst when it comes to post external payments. Both US Bank and FIA show the ACH received as Pending the moment they received it. Barclays does not even go thru Pending but directly posts it.
Just all these "little details:" make me skeptical that Chase would use exact date for the purpose to determine eligibility.