TIME SENSITIVE: Earning a companion pass

[DancingDavidE]

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@bpacker wrote:

So if my payment date is May 1, what if I pay my entire balance (over $4,000) tomorrow? Will that speed up the awarding of companion pass and 30,000 rapid rewards points? Or do I still have to wait for May 1?

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It is based on the statement balance and not affected by your payment, other than your account needs to be current.

[05bardic]

Your payment date is irrelevant, it goes off the statement closing date. Once you spend the $4k there's nothing you can do to speed up the award. They'll issue it automatically after the statement closing date. 

[DancingDavidE]

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@jeantags wrote:

This is critical to my decision because if it's 3 months, I won't be able to use it for my May trip, but if it's after I spend $4K, I will.

The credit card promo ends next week so any assistance you can provide would be very helpful.

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So just to follow up as you mentioned it is "critical" to your decision - what is the decision?

• If you are flying Southwest anyway buy the prospective companion's ticket with points so that you can refund the ticket if you do get CP in time, or buy WGA+ fares so you can get the travel credit back in your name.
• If the decision is to get the card or not or even fly Southwest or not - there's no certainty here for a May flight, it seems like there could be enough time to get CP but if that was the only reason, and you only have this one flight, I'm not sure it is worth changing your normal decision making.
• But if you would use CP throughout the year it might be worth $000's to you over the course of a year and would definitely be worth it, especially if you were going to hit that spend requirement anyway. i.e. you aren't buying anything extra that wouldn't have otherwise bought it is a no-brainer.

[jeantags]

Just so everyone knows... it was issued the day my statement closed. Thanks for the help.