Much better, nice thinking!

Go to your local grocery store and buy one slice of a basic sandwich cheese from the deli counter. With the tare, it'll come to 3 or 4 cents.

anyone else wanna post their US airways reward result besides me? just to confirm things, if anyone got say like 2.01 or 2.05 charges

Unfortunately, I just have one charge on it so far - and it was for an even dollar mount

Looks like it rounds up, or down, for me. Darn.

04/07/11 04/08/11 MUSASHI SIMI INC 105.14 105.00
04/07/11 04/08/11 TARGET 00015479 13.80 14.00
04/05/11 04/07/11 ULTA 106 25.48 25.00

The merchant will typically be charged a transaction fee (fifteen or twenty cents per transaction is usual) by his/her credit card processor, in addition to a percentage of the total amount, so good luck in finding one who will permit you to make a long series of tiny transactions!

so 32 is rounded up while 15 is rounded down. i guess the question is what about number in between

OP's rounding suggestion doesn't seem to work with my Citi AA or Amex SPG cards.

Obviously, people push the boundaries at big stores where the employees don't give a rat's arse, not small mom-and-pop shops.

my amex plat, chase PC, marriott, US bank korean air doesn't work also. only the barclay US airways mastercard does.

is this barclay thing? or us airways master card thing?

Rounded down for me:

04/04/11 04/04/11 REDBOX *DVD RENTAL QPS 1.10 1.00

This discussion, and similar ones that have come before it, are moot unless you both have access to a card(s) that will accept dozens of charges per day, and are willing to work for miles accumulating at a rate that equates to a salary less than the minimum wage.

Let's assume that you don't even need to charge a dollar... you find a merchant willing to accept 1 cent charges. Not only this, but you either have a card that is flexible enough to allow, say 50 charges in a day, and/or you have enough cards that you can make this many charges. Let's also assume that you are efficient enough to process each transaction in 30 seconds (swipe your card, authorize, repeat). I'll also assume that you value miles at 2 cents each. With this perfect storm, you could spend 25 minutes per day earning 50 miles worth $1. That's the equivalent of making just over $2 per hour. What's that, you say? You've come up with a way to process 100 charges per day in 20 seconds each, and you value your miles at 3 cents each? That insanely rosy scenario still leaves you with 100 miles worth $3 earned in roughly half an hour, or the equivalent of $6/hour.

The bottom line: I can't see how it's worth considering this, given that 1 mile (a couple of cents to most people) is at stake each transaction, unless you can find a way to get the time required to make each one happen down to a second of extra effort and then you are able to multiply this effort by thousands of transactions over time.

Sounds like a nice little Saturday afternoon to me

I have the card, and they neither round up, nor round down... they round nearest, to the nearest whole dollar/point.

So my 69.99 becomes 70, but my 19.34 becomes 19.

From my account on the cc website... (try as I might, I can't make this table look readable).

Purchases Points Earned
739.06 739.00
69.99 70.00
53.54 54.00
8.91 9.00
23.80 24.00
19.34 19.00

I was thinking the same thing. Thanks for doing the math for me!

As my UA/MP card awards 15 miles for each 1,000yen ($12) spent, I will add a pack of gum or whatever to make sure I hit my minimum if I am within 100-200.

I have been approved for the US Air card and will try it when it arrives. But I have seen things like this before... the AAdvantage mall has rounded up for me many times... usually when it's over the 50 cent mark though.

But one place people could try it is this:

When I need to do my 5 monthly transactions to avoid a checking acct fee at two banks I use, I simply call my cable company (Comcast) and I stay in the automated billing section on my phone. With an ability to enter some things on the phone and press 1 or 2 and the 16 digit card number time and again in the course of a couple of minutes, I can do the five transactions for...

$1.01
$1.02
$1.03
$1.04
$1.05


I am not certain how many times my card might allow before crapping out, but this has been successful month after month for me. I've also used it to generate the 3 transactions needed to get that $50 bonus needed at ING for their online Electric Orange checking accounts. I'm not sure, but one COULD count THAT toward the 'hourly rate' of doing this. AND if one were, say, the stay at home parent or temporarily out of work, etc, then this is bonus income for unpaid time you had anyway. (that is, unless one's action of sitting there doing miles all day was preventing you from changing that diaper or filling out job apps lol)

Now, if some smart cookie were to develop some sort of techy gadget that could generate say a few hundred of these little transactions a day in some automated form, then THAT is something I might even buy AT the likes of the AAdvantage mall! (or at http://www.secretflyertalkmileagetec...thatwillruinit)

MM