Originally Posted by
muji
If someone has a $3,000 minimum spend (in order to get a miles/points bonus) on a credit card and they spent $2,900 on regular purchases and paid $100 in foreign transaction fees, have they met the spend…or are the foreign transaction fees considered to be something other than purchases (and therefore do not count as part of the minimum spend)?
Only the actual amounts of (net)
purchases count, nothing else!!!
Everyone makes the mistake of calling it "minimum
spend", and that's what gets them into trouble.
I've never seen a promo that actually uses the term "minimum spend". It always spells it out as "make $XXXX in purchases within YYY time" (or similar wording). "Purchases" should not be ambiguous, but "spend' is more ambiguous, so by rephrasing the promo from "minimum purchases" to "minimum spend", and then thinking of it as "spend" rather than as "purchases", that's what IMHO leads to this erroneous thinking of things other than "purchases" counting in the "spend", which would never occur if people called it "minimum purchases".
(You may "spend" your money on paying fees, you may "spend" your money on paying interest, but it should very clear that you don't "purchase" fees and you don't "purchase" interest.)