It depends on when you deposited it. They use the average daily balance to compute the mileage. 9700 miles means you had between 97,000 and 98,000 as your average daily balance.

Dan

Is there a way to tell the dates over which average is computed? It should be close to 200k...

Yeah. October 1 to October 31, 2011

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

A slight correction: BD uses the average daily collected balance in computing miles earned. On newly-opened accounts, BD imposes a long hold time on check deposits.

I checked my last statement. My balance was $173k on 10/3 and 200k on 10/31 so the average should be say $190k leading to 19000 AA miles? Am I missing something?

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

When did you open the account, and when did you deposit the funds to bring the balance to 173K?

As has already been mentioned, the miles are calculated on the average collected balance. If you deposited $173k on 10/3 but they put a 7-day hold on it, then it didn't appear in your collected balance until 10/12. Deposit holds and collected balances do not appear on your statement, so there's no way to reconstruct it from the statement.

Other than this issue, the miles calculation works normally. If you have a $200k collected balance every day of the month, then you'll get exactly 20,000 miles posted to AA for that month.

Yes. A call to BD.

I downloaded my transaction history from website and reconstructed the balance in Excel - see below. Account was opened on Aug 17, 2011 with 3k

Date Balance
10/31/11 $200,014.02
10/11/11 $200,005.74
10/5/11 $193,005.74
10/4/11 $183,005.74
10/3/11 $173,005.74
9/30/11 $163,005.74
9/30/11 $163,001.18
9/29/11 $153,001.18
9/29/11 $143,001.18
9/27/11 $133,001.18
9/26/11 $123,001.18
9/21/11 $113,001.18
9/21/11 $113,001.18
9/21/11 $113,001.18
9/21/11 $113,000.95
9/21/11 $113,000.53
8/31/11 $103,000.53
8/31/11 $103,000.33
8/29/11 $3,000.33
8/29/11 $3,000.33
8/29/11 $3,000.28
8/29/11 $3,000.22
8/29/11 $3,000.14
8/17/11 $3,000.00

I was transferring $10,000/day from Chase as that is the max they allow to transfer per day hence you see the amounts jumping up by 10k/day till when I topped it off to 200k on 10/11/2011.

Hopefully they will count 200k average daily balance for Nov onwards.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

I would definitely give BD a call. Assuming that the transfers in from Chase were accomplished by EFT or wire transfer, BD's policy says that such funds are available immediately (for EFTs), and within one business day after deposit (for wire transfers), even for new accounts. You can find BD's funds availability policy in the "Disclosures" pamphlet that BD sent you after you opened your account.

Unless their policies have changed, it sounds like they owe you some miles.

I just thought of something else. I made an assumption that this is a checking account. If it was a money market account, then this mileage sounds about right. You earn half as many miles with a money market as you do with a checking account. Can you confirm which type of account you have?

Dan

Average daily balance on this is $195,586.65 (assuming no fund holds).

To calculate miles, the average balance is rounded down to the nearest thousand.

195K should earn 19,500 miles in a checking account, or 9750 in a money market.

Edit to add: with a one day hold on each of the 10K deposits, the average drops to $194,296.32.

Good call. The other clue here is the balance increase on 10/31, $8.28, which I assume is interest. BD pays .01% annually on checking accounts (should be about $1.61), and .05% on money markets. .05% of $194K times 1/12 comes out to $8.14. So this account is paying money market interest and money market miles.

It is a mileage money market account. I did not know/realize there was a difference in the AA miles payout in this versus checking account. I only care about the AA miles so I must convert it to a checking account. How easy is to convert the MM account to a Checking account. Their customer support is closed over weekend so I was planning to call them on Mon. I will ask them to convert it to a Checking Account.

Why are the miles/month lower on a Money Market Account? It is not like there is a materially higher interest rate to compensate for a lower AA payout.

Good call to make this out from the data! I am impressed!

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

"I only care about the AA miles so I must convert it to a checking account. How easy is to convert the MM account to a Checking account."

I don't know whether BD even offers the option of converting one type of account to another.

Note that if you close your Mileage Money-Market account within 90 days of opening it, BD will charge you a $15 fee.