I can’t figure this out. Citibank Mastercard has had the following billing periods this year:
February - 29 days
March - 30 days
April - 29 days
May - 32 days
June - 30 days
July - 32 days
What are they doing? Why isn’t it based on how many days were in that month? Do all credit card companies do this? Is there a plan? How long will my next billing period be? I really don’t want to call them.
My (un)educated guess would be that they use the month’s length, but adjust back or forth to start and end the billing period on a business day.
For 2005:
February 1: Tuesday, February 28: Mon
March 1: Tue, March 31 Th
April 1: Fri, April 30 Saturday, April 1 -> April 29 (Fri) = 29 days.
May 1: Sunday, May 31 Tues, April 30 -> May 31 = 32 days.
June 1: Wed, June 30 Thurs
July 1 Friday (but was taken as a holiday for a four day July 4th weekend in a lot of businesses), July 31 Sun
Maybe February gets “stretched” to be slightly longer (to be more consistent), eating the first of March.
On the other hand, now that I think about it, my credit card’s billing cycle isn’t 1st to 29th/30th/31st, it’s usually 14th (ish) to 14th. What’s your billing date?
Ok, so my post is low on factual content, but here’s a bump to maybe get this looked at by people “in the know”.
Well, if they are following the same process we do, they will be processing on working days only (when there are people around if the mainframe gets sick, and to allow for maintenance/system changes) and balancing the cycle cuts of their customers so there is a reasonably even load on the system from day to day. This means that customers are assigned to a billing cycle (such as the 10th working day of the month or the 1st Thursday of every month). It is normally a consistent point each month, rather than a set number of days apart.
Because of weekends and holidays and such, you can’t use a formula to work out when the 10th working day or 1st Thursday is. Instead you sit down at some point (in Nov or Dec the previous year) with a Julian calendar (one where days are numbered 1-365) and work out all the days when each cycle can cut, shifting processing days back and forth to avoid holidays, weekends, planned system outages and so forth. Then you know that cards on cycle E will in 2005 process on the the 18th, 47th, 73rd and so on day of the year and set up the mainframe accordingly.
So your card is billing on some kind of consistent pattern (1st Thursday, 4th day of month excepting weekends, etc.) that will continue. If you can’t guess what their pattern is you will have to call up and ask them what their processing calendar is. They should at least be able to tell you when their next cut is. I would be extremely surprised if it is random 
Hope this helps.
With Wells Fargo’s master card it may be. When I plan making a large purchase I always call to get the cut off date so I can haven an extra month to pay it off. Every time I call I ask the same question. How can I find out the billing cycle without calling you? They never know how to answer that and just say you will have to call us to find out.
Jim
Uh oh, I think you’re right!
My billing dates were
Monday Jan 24
Tuesday Feb 22 (29 days)
Thursday Mar 24 (30)
Friday April 22 (29) - 30 Days would have made it a Saturday
Tuesday May 24 (32 – May 23 was a Canadian Holiday Monday and I am Canadian)
Thurdsay June 23 (30)
Monday July 25 (32) – 31 days would have made it a Sunday
Maybe they try to make it 30 days but have to stretch it to make it not a Saturday, Sunday or Holiday. You’re right!!
I never would have figured that out.
I’m glad I didn’t have to call Citbank and have customer service check the stardate log.