If you’ve followed the blog over the past few years, you know I’m a huge fan of Shopping Portals I use them when I buy anything, whether it is to resell or for personal consumption. Using United MileagePlus Shopping is a great way to increase your United MileagePlus balance without even stepping onto a plan.
United MileagePlus Shopping adds a Button
Normally, news like this isn’t, well, news. But, shopping portals in general are all competing for your pass through business, so they want to make this easier for you to go through their portal rather than a competitors. To that end, United MileagePlus Shopping has created a plug-in for Chrome, whereby you get a fancy little button, rather than having to go through MileagePlus Shopping to get the cookie to go to the store you want to buy something from.
Again, they want to make it easy for you. They also want it to be a competition among stores–who ultimately compensate them for the pass through–rather than a competition among shopping portals. Take a look at their marketing below:
A Word of Warning
I personally will not be installing this button for a couple of reasons, the largest of which is that United is not the only portal I go through. I go through a particular process when I go through a shopping portal, I always go to an incognito window, because I’m concerned of cookies. Some cookies can stay with you for minutes, hours, some longer. Some cookies can persist as long as you keep your web browser open.
Why does this matter? Primarily because you already have so much risk of the portal not tracking properly, as Frequent Miler describes in his Myth 6 of Shopping Portals. I like to reduce risk wherever I can, and in this case, I try to reduce my risk by not installing buttons for shopping portals.
Wrapping Up
If you’re a United loyalist, then the MileagePlus Shopping button will be a ready improvement so you can be sure to earn all the miles you can from your online shopping. If you have a family member that doesn’t always remember to go through a portal when they buy stuff online, this could also be very beneficial feature. But if you’re the type of travel hacker that goes through the best shopping portal based on the multiplier / payout, then this is probably not for you.
Will you be installing the MileagePlus Shopping button on your Chrome browser?
