Update: There is a datapoint found here of one person being approved despite being over 5/24 when they applied through the in app entertainment. That’s an encouraging sign.
One of the things that was brought up by analysts during the recent United quarterly earnings call was the fact Delta & American Airlines are growing sales of miles significantly faster than United. United is expecting growth of $300 million and American Airlines expecting growth of $800 million (as Gary points out these numbers aren’t directly comparable).
Previously Chase were not allowing United to offer credit cards to customers on board United flights. That will shortly change and United will be allowed to offer credit card sign ups during flights. The question most people will have is: “will this by pass the 5/24 rule?”
There will obviously be some change to the contract that United & Chase have to allow this new customer acquisition channel, the contracts that Chase have with each co-branded partner govern when they do/don’t apply that rule and it’s entirely possible that this rule will be waived for in flight applications. There are a few reasons why this might be the case:
- United will want higher approval rates for customers already flying United
- Chase’s cost basis for the points will be different for this acquisition channel, especially when it was previously prohibited
That being said, at this stage it’s entirely speculation. It’s also worth noting that United cards do already show up for in branch pre-approvals that do by pass this rule as well.
I received the 70k mailer. Is there any harm in applying for this if it does not bypass the 5/24?
The “harm” is that you will most certainly receive a hard inquiry on your credit report with absolutely nothing to show for it, as you will 100% absolutely be denied if you are over 5/24. If you don’t trust the hundreds of datapoints received so far, feel free to apply anyway…
Every hard inquiry has significant value equal to the opportunity cost that shows up on your credit report.
I came across this blog and it is an interesting read………out of curiosity i browsed all options…and shocked to see results.
We are a family of 4 and i was browsing on United for 4 Business Saver tickets for international travel to india (searched from seat availability from May 2017 all the way till March 2018, just to see options).
Shocking enough, not a single flight to carry us 4 on Business saver award at all.
Is this a drawback of United or restriction of using Miles for redemption or there is a trick i am missing?
Can someone shed some light on my options?
Guess it seems one can NEVER FLY WITH FAMILY OF 3 TO 4 PEOPLE on Business saver seats ever despite having nuff miles to redeem for a fun filled family trip experience.
Finding 3-4 business saver seats is always going to be an issue, but it can be done with lots of planning and luck from what I am told. I don’t have to worry about booking that many tickets and I don’t book business normally either.
Planning in what way? I am looking at seats upto 9 months to 1 year (maximum future dates it can show on website) and still cannot see how to get 4 seats……Please shed some more detailed light on this matter.
Finding 4 award seats is always difficult
Is it difficult And is there a way around it Or it is IMPOSSIBLE?
You can definitely find four award seats on flights, I personally don’t try to find that much space but I guess best option is looking as soon as availability is released and maybe having alerts set up? Again I’m far from an award booking expert.
Pay an award-booking service that will do it for you if 4 seats are available, I never done it but thats your best option if you value your time.
You will also see more Saver seat availability if you have a United MileagePlus Explorer credit card. I no longer have mine, but a co-worker who does definitely sees more dates when searching for the same things as me.
A baffling question, do answer:-
I have Chase Sapphire reserve card, and can get 1.5x UR for travel…….so how can i best utilize it?
Here is my confusion.
I intend to fly business class one way to India In Sep 2017. I am getting one way Business class for 80k miles plus $10 fee if i transfer my UR points to United and book a Business saver ticket on united website.
The ticket with cash costs around $7000.
So what should i do?
1) Book via United for 80k after transferring UR to United?
OR
2) Call UR travel and book through them, meaning instead of 80k points i will be able to book it at lesser points (equivalent of 1.5x)? Or i am wrong and it is for the $7000 cash price that i will get at lesser price (at 1.5x discount)?
Kindly reply ASAP
the ticket will cost 500,000 pts in UR or 80k UR if youre transferring to United. its pretty simple really
So in this case transferring points to United and buying for 80,000 points is much more profitable than using 1.5% value for using UR portal travel, as advertised by Chase saphire reserve and spending 500,000 points right?
So 1.25 or 1.5 x redemption as advertised by Chase cards is a misleading promo fooling customers as one gets more BANG FOR BUCK by transferring points….
No, it’s not misleading if you take the time to do a bit of research and learn how the UR program and the CSR benefits actually work. Generally yes, it’s a much better deal to redeem transferred UR points if you are booking international first class tickets, since the value you get from the transferred points will be massively better than paying cash or using the CSR 1.5x cash discount.
However, there is a massive portion of the population that doesn’t fly first class internationally very often, so rather than waste 25,000 UR points for a round trip flight from NYC to Miami, for example, if the flight only costs $250 (that would be a 1 cpp value, very bad), they could simply redeem about 16,700 UR points at 1.5x each using the benefit you mentioned to essentially purchase the ticket in “cash”. Using 16,700 UR points is obviously a much better deal than 25,000 for the same flight…. it all depends on the situation. Generally, for very long international flights, especially in first class, using points transfers are better, but for shorter domestic economy flights, you will ALMOST always come out ahead using the 1.5x discount.
I have a United flight this weekend. Totally plan to try it out and will report back. Thanks!
Not sure they’ll have them active just yet, might be able to do the in flight entertainment offer though.
Doc, since you have access to his email address, is there any way you could reach out to Wen to find out whether or not this worked for him when he [hopefully] tried it a couple weeks ago? I assume he just forgot to come back to this thread and share his results…
If we don’t get a DP from him, I will provide a DP next week on my United flight, but I would very much prefer not to waste a HP and decrease my credit lines in advance if this approach has already been proven not to work… Thanks!
Don’t really feel comfortable directly e-mailing them. They can sign up to alerts to this post, so hopefully they have seen your comment.
Alright, hopefully he responds before next week, but if not, then I’ll give it a shot on my United flight if I can get the offer to appear via the in-flight entertainment app.
My backup plan, if I’m declined or pended, is to apply for the BA card that same day to avoid wasting a hard pull… this should be safe enough, right? Most of the recent reports of Chase shutting down accounts seem to have involved opening lots accounts at once, and in many cases more than 1 chase account on the same day, right? So assuming the MPE is declined and I am only approved for one card, that hopefully won’t trigger a warning on Chase’s end, based on what you’ve observed recently…?
Currently have 5 Chase cards (1 business and 1 personal Chase card obtained within past 12 months). Score around 780…. about 22/24 overall though… do you think this backup plan is too risky, or do you think it’ll be fine? Thanks for any advice.
Well, the datapoint is in, and unfortunately it’s not good news. It might not be exactly the same circumstances as the guy that claims he was approved, since he said that he applied directly through the in-flight entertainment app… my flight did not have the in-flight entertainment system, but I still logged in to their in-flight wifi directly from the United app (although the entertainment section was marked as unavailable)… but there were still TONS of ads for the MPE card littered all throughout the app.. and I mean tons, literally almost every single page had a link for the MPE application on it. So I clicked a link to find out more information, and it appeared to forward me to theexplorercard.com along with a customized 70k offer for my account, and the URL had something like “mobile wifi” in it but I can’t recall the exact phrase… so I was hoping it was going to work, but unfortunately it went pending as soon as I applied. Called today (one day later) and got a hard denial from the CSR, essentially stating 5/24 with no possibility of parole.
So basically, either the original DP must have somehow applied via a slightly different method than me that somehow bypassed 5/24, or Chase systems have changed to fix this “loophole” in the past few months, or the original DP was simply bogus. Oh well, it was worth a shot for the 70k offer.
Thanks, Tom. Appreciate the DP.
Did it work?
Not your finest grammatical moment.
Troll
problem is that earning UA miles is easy from chase through CSP/CSP or even freedom. bonus category does matter.
AA miles is getting worse but still no transfer partners, means if you want to earn AA miles, best way is apply their credit card….
UA miles are much harder to come by and much more valuable than AA miles, you can get AA miles from 2 versions of AA cards from Citi and 2 versions from barclays, AA milesaver availabilty is a joke, I was able to book a same day UA partner award within 5hrs of flight departure, AA you have to call in half the time for destinations outside the US on top of that.
I second your comments. AA milesaver availability is getting worse year by year, while UA still has decent milersaver availability.
I used to value UA and AA miles about the same. Now UA miles are worth more than twice as much as AA miles for my travel needs.
My guess is that AA needs to inflate travel awards to compensate for the flood of miles that customers have on hand.
Are they passing out the apps before or after the beatings? Inquiring minds want to know!
I’ll take my lumps for an application as long as it’s not subject to 5/24……………………….
I predicted this a month ago… I should be a seer.
https://www.doctorofcredit.com/march-31-last-day-chase-united-mileageplus-explorer-increased-bonus-70000-miles-50/#comment-374581
Haha, not sure your prediction is true just yet.
Sorry for the link, but there are some datapoints in this reddit post that suggest it may currently already bypass 5/24 if you apply during a flight:
/r/churning/comments/5p79dl/united_mp_70k_coming_feb_1st/
I have a flight in late May that I was going to test this theory on, but hopefully we can get some additional datapoints sooner.
Awesome, I knew I read something like this but couldn’t remember where. Added to post.
In any case the $300mm and $800mm are pretty apples and oranges. $800mm is the American expected increase in revenue in calendar 2018 over the 2015 base year.
United’s deal renewed a year earlier, they didn’t provide the exact same disclosures but it appears $300mm is the marginal expected increase from year 2 to year 3 and that’s actually bigger than American’s marginal expected increase of $250mm from year 2 to year 3.
Again, not apples-to-apples but also not clear we can really say from these disclosed numbers that United’s growth is significantly lower — other than that Kirby said in today’s call that they’re lagging American and Delta in card signups, just had a “re-set” of their relationship with Chase and that they’d be looking to grow and one thing that needs to change is the onboard sale of the card which he relates is the most effective channel at both American and (he thinks) Delta.