I signed up for the SW personal and business cards in early December and was approved. The business card comes with 80k bonus points. I was going to start that in January for a February bonus award.

However the personal card is a little different story. I was approved on 12-4. In the past the statement date would have been 1-4 so I started spending. Unbeknownst to me, the statement date was pushed to just two weeks after I was approved (12-18) so 75k points just hit my account in late December. WTF????I want to call and complain but I doubt it'll do any good.

Dang. Lesson learned. When I was doing SW churns, I never hit the spend until I had a first statement close, so I was positive of the date. I would literally get within $10-$20 of the spend requirement and then stop using it until I had a statement in my account.
Then the day following that first statement, I'd spend the last little bit I needed.

Surprised someone with your travel/churning adeptness would let that happen!

Learned the hard way several years ago that the annual fee didn't count toward the minimum spend requirement.

GiantAntsAttack said:

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Learned the hard way several years ago that the annual fee didn't count toward the minimum spend requirement.

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so you got to exactly what you thought was the spend requirement (less the fee), and then didn't use it anymore?

We really like the companion pass benefit, so we use the SW RR credit card like a debit card, i.e. we pay for everything we can with it, track the expenses on a register, and then pay it off at the end of every month. We've done this for years and have always got the companion pass. We've never paid a dime of interest.

I think my mom has accomplished companion pass consecutively for about a decade now. And she isn't churning getting sign up bonuses..

jbanda said:

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We really like the companion pass benefit, so we use the SW RR credit card like a debit card, i.e. we pay for everything we can with it, track the expenses on a register, and then pay it off at the end of every month. We've done this for years and have always got the companion pass. We've never paid a dime of interest.

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Same. Nice to fly with points virtually everywhere I go.

I'm a bit confused so will throw out my situation to see if "TexAgs knows stuff" about my dates.

Approved in December and first stmt date was Dec 18th with payment due Jan 15th. My offer $3k in first 3 mos gets 75k SWA miles. I obviously spent less than $3k by that Dec 18th date. Now as Jan hit I just paid my car insurance and will be over the $3k once the insurance payment goes through. Next stmt date is Jan 18th so I THINK I'm good (that I'll get the 75k miles in 2023).

Yeah I think once the next month's statement gets finalized you'll get the points. It's been a while but I think that's how it worked.

chet98 said:

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I'm a bit confused so will throw out my situation to see if "TexAgs knows stuff" about my dates.

Approved in December and first stmt date was Dec 18th with payment due Jan 15th. My offer $3k in first 3 mos gets 75k SWA miles. I obviously spent less than $3k by that Dec 18th date. Now as Jan hit I just paid my car insurance and will be over the $3k once the insurance payment goes through. Next stmt date is Jan 18th so I THINK I'm good (that I'll get the 75k miles in 2023).

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Correct. You'll get points on Jan 18 (or soon thereafter). Every time I've gotten a card in December my first statement date was in January. Thus my surprise when I got a Dec 18 statement. Oh well. I've got a workaround for it. Not too worried.

Update:

So I had signed up for the promotional companion pass offer last fall and got a CP for Jan 5 thru early March. Around January 13th, I got an email saying I had CP thru the end of 2023. And then just now qualified for the the CP thru Dec 31, 2024. So even though the weird 2 week first statement posting seemed like it would screw me, it all ended up okay.