This is another post in our series on weird credit cards, this week we will be looking at the little known Chase United card with no annual fee.
Card Basics
- Not possible to apply for this card directly
- No annual fee
- Card earns at the following rates:
- 1x miles for every $2 spent
- 25% bonus on the MileagePlus shopping portal
- Increased award inventory (I originally listed this card as not receiving this benefit but lots of readers report that they do see increased award inventory)
This card does not give you access to the following benefits:
- Free bags
- Gives no benefits on United basic fares
No annual fee card pictured at top, via krazykanuck on Flyertalk
Other United Credit Cards
There are actually other United credit cards that aren’t available for downgrades, United MileagePlus Awards Card (actually listed on the Chase website) that comes with a $60 annual fee and earns 1x miles on every $1 spent and the United Select card, with the following benefits:
- $140 annual fee
- 3 award miles per $1 spent on tickets purchased from United
- 2 miles per $1 spent on gas station, grocery, restaurant and home improvement store purchases
- 2 miles per $1 spent on tickets purchased from other Star AllianceTM member airlines
- 1 mile per $1 spent on all other purchases
- Up to 5,000 Premier® qualifying miles (PQM) each year on purchases made on united.com
- 5,000 bonus award miles each year on your account anniversary
Our Verdict
It doesn’t really make any sense to put any spend on this card with it only earning 1x mile per $2 spent, but it might be worth downgrading this card for three reasons:
- Chase only lets you product change to a card in the same family (e.g United). By downgrading to this card you’ll be able to keep your average age of accounts higher in the long term (if you cancel it’ll take 7 years to fall off your report anyway), this is a scoring factor for FICO.
- Holding a United credit card gives you a 25% bonus on their shopping portal & increased award inventory
- Miles expire after 18 months of no activity, putting a small charge on this card would be enough to keep them active
Thanks to this reddit thread & this Flyertalk thread
