Credit card companies love to promote their premium credit card benefits: Airport lounge access, travel insurance, statement credits for trusted traveler programs, bonus points, free streaming services, elite membership ifrom hotels and airlines, etc. The perks help justify annual fees that can run close to a thousand dollars.

But sometimes those benefits work in ways that leave customers wondering whether they really care about their customers. I carry a Chase Sapphire Reserve card, which includes a statement credit for either TSA PreCheck or Global Entry enrollment fees once every four years. TSA PreCheck currently costs $80, while Global Entry costs $120 and includes TSA PreCheck benefits.

Recently, it was time to renew our memberships. I renewed my Global Entry membership online, and about 30 minutes later my wife renewed her TSA PreCheck membership at a nearby Staples store. Both charges were placed on the same Chase Sapphire Reserve card.

It seemed straightforward enough. The card benefit is designed to reimburse one of these trusted traveler programs every four years. Since my Global Entry renewal cost more than my wife’s TSA renewal, I assumed Chase would apply the benefit to the higher-priced Global Entry charge.

Instead, a quirk of payment processing produced a different result.

Although my Global Entry application was submitted first, Chase received the TSA PreCheck charge before the Global Entry charge. In fact, according to Chase, the TSA transaction hit the account just four minutes earlier than the Global Entry charge.

That timing made all the difference. The system automatically applied the travel benefit to the $80 TSA PreCheck charge. When the $120 Global Entry charge arrived four minutes later, the benefit had already been used. The result: Chase reimbursed $80 and declined to reimburse the Global Entry charge, leaving me $40 short of the maximum benefit.

I contacted Chase, assuming a customer-service representative could easily see what had happened and manually correct the situation. After all, the two transactions occurred within minutes of each other and were clearly related renewals for members of the same household.

Despite explaining that the Global Entry renewal had actually been initiated first and that the timing difference was only four minutes, Chase refused to make any adjustment. The computer system had spoken, and the decision was final. There was nothing they could do. From a technical standpoint, Chase may have followed the rules exactly as written. The first qualifying charge that posted to the account received the credit. But from a customer-service standpoint, the outcome feels less reasonable.

Most customers would reasonably assume that a premium travel card carrying a substantial annual fee would provide enough flexibility to resolve an obvious edge case like this one. But neither the customer service agent nor her supervisor would budge. In fairness, I have otherwise received good service from my Sapphire card, especially their travel department, but this latest situation is a disappointment and something I would not have expected.