Originally Posted by
emcampbe
maybe, maybe not.
can’t speak for Chase, but Amex typically posts with the original charge date, and credit comes a couple of days later, backdated to the same date, with credit allocated to that period. For charges like this, that would typically be purchase time - for items that shop, like Saks/lululemon purchased online, that often defers to ship date, so it’s more important to buy earlier on those kind of charges. YMMV!
It happened to me with the Edit credit that expired 6/30. I booked 6/30. Post date was 7/1 and the credit came out of the new bucket so I lost that first one. When I asked the above question, I wanted to see if Chase is still keeping to the 1 day later post date and it seems they are, so to me there's quite a high risk in waiting until 12/31 to book.
I know with Amex the risk is lower and I myself have opened new cards near the end of the year and was able to quickly cram in getting credits on the last day knowing that Amex usually does back date to day of purchase. However, I've also see plenty of complaints over in the Amex forum where people waited until the last day of a period to book and got the credit from the new period bucket and were upset when that happened (rightly or not).
TLDR: Bottom line is that it's a YMMV situation and honestly it's best not to wait until the last day because of the risk involved. If you can help it, just do yourself a favor and make sure to use your credits earlier.