United created a program where they teamed up with Plastic Jungle where you can cash in gift cards for United miles. They claim it’s a “deal.” On the surface, at best it costs 2.7 cents per mile. It’s still about $10 cheaper than buying miles outright. For 3,000 miles, it will cost $112.88 for 3.8 cents per mile The gift card’s minimum value to trade in is $25.
I entered my $100 Staples gift card and they offered me 3,730 miles
- At minimum you will receive the above graphic, $25 -> 940 miles, $50 -> 1,870 miles, and $100 -> 3,730 miles
There are 113 vendors that Plastic Jungle accepts without needing to mail in the gift card. You can review the list here.
Let’s take my Staples gift card purchase I did using the Chase Sapphire Preferred through the Ultimate Rewards Mall again. If you were to outright by a gift card to convert to miles. At the time of purchase you receive 2x extra UR points for Staples. The total UR points is 306 and there’s the 7% dividend so you’d receive 328 total points. Let’s say you take all of those points and transfer to United through the Ultimate Rewards mall, in total the miles you’d receive to convert a gift card through this portal would be 3730 + 328 = 4058 miles. $102/4058 = 2.51 cents per mile for an extra 7%.
Let’s play with these number some more… I didn’t see anything in the terms and conditions where you can’t do this. Buy the highest % off gift card available online at Plastic Jungle that’s part of the 113 vendors and flip it to convert into miles.
There’s Bass Pro Shops, 13%. There’s a $500 card selling for $435. Pretend you use the Chase Freedom with Exclusives (10% of the charge in UR points + 10 points for the transaction). You should receive 489 points and transfer those points to United. So we flip the card and get United Miles for a grand total of 19,139 miles. The cost, $435/19,139 = 2.3 cents per mile.
Sure, it’s 39% cheaper with this “trick” to buy miles, but this is still a poor deal to convert your gift cards to miles.
