Have you ever tried to reconcile your Citi spending with your Citi points transactions? I just went through this process for the last few months of statements and it was a nightmare and ended up with several transactions that I couldn't match.
This worked both ways. There were some expenditure items that didn't appear to have points and some points that didn't seem to have the matching expenditure.
These are a few of the things that I found (note this is for a single card holder on the account it may get even worse if there are more than one, I'm not sure):
On the monthly Expenditure Statement there are 3 points categories:
- Points Earned
- Bonus Points Earned
- Linked Diners Card Points Earned
On (my) Points Statement there are two:
- Earned
- Bonus
Looking at the Expenditure Statement:
- it can happen that the Points Earned does not match the points that would be expected to have been earned when looking at the transactions listed. This can happen for transactions that are listed that are close to the end date of the statement. These transactions may be included in the Points Earned of the following month's statement
- generally the points earned using the Visa card can be matched easily against the Points Statement. The last 4 digits of the card number appear on the Points Statement so the value and date can be used to make a match
- however, sometimes transactions that occur on the same date or close to the same date can be grouped into a single points transaction on the Points Statement.
On the Points Statement:
- Diners Card points all appear as Bonus Points so can't be easily distinguished from other Bonus points
- as mentioned above, one point transaction can include several expenditure transactions grouped together
- there are different rounding methods used.
For Diners only the dollar amount is considered. Eg. for a transaction of $28.95 the points earned would be 2 x 28 = 56 and $28.35 would also earn 56 (2 points per dollar for Diners)
For Visa transactions the dollar amount is first rounded to the nearest dollar so $28.95 earns 29 points while $28.35 earns 28 points.
- if you are lucky enough to get bonus points then the bonuses are only applied to the full dollar amount. So a an expenditure of $28.95 on Visa would earn 29 points and a bonus of 28, for example.
- another odd thing is that Bonus points can appear on the Points Statement before the associated expenditure transaction's points appear. A couple of days later and they can both be seen.
- then there's the whole problem of how many points an expenditure transaction is expected to earn with Citi's complicated 0 / 1 / 1.5 / 2 point categories
I have included zero as my electricity and water payments seemed not to accumulate any points and yet telephone does.
I think that's about all of my findings.
As I mentioned, having determined all of the above I was still left with a few transactions that I just could not reconcile. I really don't want to go through the hassle of trying to work this out with Citi as I am sure that it would be more infuriating and time-consuming than it's worth.
I hope this is of some use to anyone that can be bothered or needs to go through a similar process.
This worked both ways. There were some expenditure items that didn't appear to have points and some points that didn't seem to have the matching expenditure.
These are a few of the things that I found (note this is for a single card holder on the account it may get even worse if there are more than one, I'm not sure):
On the monthly Expenditure Statement there are 3 points categories:
- Points Earned
- Bonus Points Earned
- Linked Diners Card Points Earned
On (my) Points Statement there are two:
- Earned
- Bonus
Looking at the Expenditure Statement:
- it can happen that the Points Earned does not match the points that would be expected to have been earned when looking at the transactions listed. This can happen for transactions that are listed that are close to the end date of the statement. These transactions may be included in the Points Earned of the following month's statement
- generally the points earned using the Visa card can be matched easily against the Points Statement. The last 4 digits of the card number appear on the Points Statement so the value and date can be used to make a match
- however, sometimes transactions that occur on the same date or close to the same date can be grouped into a single points transaction on the Points Statement.
On the Points Statement:
- Diners Card points all appear as Bonus Points so can't be easily distinguished from other Bonus points
- as mentioned above, one point transaction can include several expenditure transactions grouped together
- there are different rounding methods used.
For Diners only the dollar amount is considered. Eg. for a transaction of $28.95 the points earned would be 2 x 28 = 56 and $28.35 would also earn 56 (2 points per dollar for Diners)
For Visa transactions the dollar amount is first rounded to the nearest dollar so $28.95 earns 29 points while $28.35 earns 28 points.
- if you are lucky enough to get bonus points then the bonuses are only applied to the full dollar amount. So a an expenditure of $28.95 on Visa would earn 29 points and a bonus of 28, for example.
- another odd thing is that Bonus points can appear on the Points Statement before the associated expenditure transaction's points appear. A couple of days later and they can both be seen.
- then there's the whole problem of how many points an expenditure transaction is expected to earn with Citi's complicated 0 / 1 / 1.5 / 2 point categories
I have included zero as my electricity and water payments seemed not to accumulate any points and yet telephone does.
I think that's about all of my findings.
As I mentioned, having determined all of the above I was still left with a few transactions that I just could not reconcile. I really don't want to go through the hassle of trying to work this out with Citi as I am sure that it would be more infuriating and time-consuming than it's worth.
I hope this is of some use to anyone that can be bothered or needs to go through a similar process.