Hello Readers!
Welcome to ChasingThePoints! My goal here is to bring ideas to you about how to maximize your credit card points and frequent mile accounts. Let’s start off today with this offer I received from United:
Offer details:
- To take advantage of this offer, you must use the order links on this page.
- Promotional offer valid until 11:59 p.m. CDT on October 19, 2012
- For a limited time, get a minimum of 30% bonus award miles and a maximum of 60% bonus award miles when you purchase miles via the above links
- Personal Miles or Give Miles cost $35 per 1,000 miles plus a 7.5% excise tax
- 5,000 mile minimum purchase required and then miles are available in increments of 1,000
- Purchase up to 100,000 MileagePlus Personal miles or Give Miles per account per calendar year
- For Give miles transactions, both purchased miles and bonus miles will post to the recipients MileagePlus account
- Credit card will be billed immediately for purchase
- Program fees and mileage rates subject to change
- Initial purchased base award miles post to MileagePlus account (up to 48 hours from when purchase is made) and bonus miles post up to 7 days after promotion ends.
- Personal Miles and Give Miles are non-refundable
- These miles can only be used for awards and do not count toward Premier® status
- If you have questions or concerns about this offer, please email custserv@ualmiles.com for assistance
- All MileagePlus Program Rules and terms and conditions apply
Ok, now that the fine print is out let’s talk averages:
Assuming 4000+ people buy the miles, that’ll give you a 60% more miles. At the max, 100,000 *60 = 160,000 miles. Divide 3762.50 by the miles to get dollar per mile and the final line becomes 2.4 cents per mile.
Now imagine, you have the Chase Freedom card and you haven’t yet used up the 5% back. You plan to travel, but not sure where yet. You could buy 40,000 miles for 1505.
Total miles and points @ 30% would be 1505/61166 = 2.5 cents/mile
Cost: 1505
10% is 151 points
10 points for transaction (assuming 1)
5% cash back 7500
Grand total in points: 9166
At the max, with 60% it would be 1505/73166 = 2.1 cents/mile making it even a better deal for just about $1500.
