Originally Posted by
sdsearch
Everyone with such questions all over FlyerTalk, please stop using the word "spend"!
I'm sure the retention offer your got did not use the word "spend'. I'm sure it used the word "purchases", and I bet if you had only realized that, then you would have had the answer to your own question. (Is a statement credit a purchase?)
Every day or two I see a question from someone on FT which is asking 'does this count toward spend", when the answer be obvious if the question was correctly asked as "does this count as purchases"?
For example, a couple of days ago in another thread someone was asking if "cash advances" counted as spend. "Cash advance" is obviously opposite of "purchase" to a credit card company, but that's only obvious if you use term "purchase" instead of "spend".
Sadly, while things may appear this simple to some they are not this simple to Citibank. For instance, I had a credit balance on one of my Citibank credit cards and asked them to transfer the credit balance to another card since I wasn't using the first card. According to Citibank the transaction says "Transfer Credit Balance" transaction type - Purchase. So based on your description above if I was participating in an offer which requires a minimum amount of purchases which the industry refers to as minimum spend requirement then I should have needed to make up for this credit balance but I did not.
In addition, Citibank offered 5% cash back on purchases in select categories on the same card. Guess how this posted, "Category Spend Bonus" and the transaction type is listed as "purchase."
So apparently things are not nearly as black and white with Citibank as your post suggests. However, I do agree with you that it is frustrating to see so many questions about statement credits and balance transfers but the reason card users are confused is because the issuers have not upgraded their systems to reflect the changing credit card landscape. Statement credits should be listed as payments instead of purchases since they rarely count again minimum purchase requirements. There are some issuers though that do deduct points for statement credits and in these instances they most definitely do affect required thresholds for purchases.