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Earlier in the month I decided to dust off my Chase British Airways card and place a small amount of spend on it.

Now when I say small I really mean it.

I needed to use a parking meter for a half hour so I paid with my Chase BA, charging a whopping .50¢. 

I didn’t intend to only charge .50¢ but after charging my meter I wondered what would happen in regards to earning miles. Did I need to charge $1 to actually earn 1 mile or would Chase round my charge up, earning me the mile (and extending the expiration on my Avios account)?

I figured that I’d wait to get my bill and see how it went.

Fast forward to about a week later. My bill arrived and I was curious to see it.

I opened my bill and was a bit surprised.  Although I had charged the NYC parking meter the large sum of .50¢ my bill showed a new balance of $0.00! For some reason or another, Chase gave me a credit adjustment of .50¢.

Now I know it’s not much but this meant that Chase essentially treated me to free parking! 

After reviewing a bit further, I saw that this was an even better deal that I had assumed. Not only did I get free parking, I also earned 1 mile for my effort.

I then went into my Chase.com account and went to look at last month’s statement. When I saw my charge,  I clicked the little “+” next to the transaction which made the line expand.

This was pretty interesting… I charged .50¢ but Chase.com said that I earned .63 miles! I can’t imagine how .63 miles could post so I guess they just rounded it up to 1 mile earned.

Considering that Chase gave me a credit adjustment for my big purchase, I didn’t think the mile would actually show up in my Avios account. I went over to britishairways.com to see if anything had posted.

Here is what I found:

To my delight, 1 Avios did indeed post to my account thus extending its expiration date!

So let’s recap what happened.

I charged .50¢ at a parking meter in NYC, Brooklyn to be exact. Chase gave me a credit adjustment for the charge, which means that I got free parking! Even thought my charge was credited to me, I still earned 1 mile.

What I don’t understand is why Chase would refund me for a charge that I made, no matter how small it was.

If only there was a way to scale this and earn lot of points while getting free parking!

Earn 2x on all purchases- The Barclay Arrival Plus World MasterCard. Click here to find out how to earn 40,000 bonus miles which can be redeemed for $400 in free travel!