Earn Rebates On United Flights By Joining The United.com Club

Lucky I'm assuming no $5 credit given for booking an award flight?...using the "Club?" ??

Hi Nick.

Yes, award flights count. I just had a $5 credit from an award flight post last month. My understanding is that any ticket on 016 stock counts, theoretically.

Is it $25 per calendar year, or does the year start when you purchase membership?

Geez... I've never even heard of this program (given the name, probably never suspected it was different from United Club).

@ Travis -- thank you!

I've found it works great too if your round-trip is made up of two one-way fares...buy them two one-ways and you get $10 off instead of $5 for the trip. 😉

@Travis, I'm not sure if any 016 ticket stock purchased on united.com works. I've found that whenever I purchased things via a site like Hipmunk (that I couldn't price out strictly on united.com) wouldn't earn me the $5 back.

Nevermind, found it in the T&C's

– united.com Club membership is valid for one year from the date of enrollment and may be renewed.

@Andrew. That's interesting about coming into united.com from Hipmunk. Were you logged into united.com, possibly from a different browser window at the time?

I think I've booked a couple tickets that way, not sure if I got the credit or not. If I didn't, I probably figured it was just another random glitch. 🙂

These 2 sentences make no sense to me:
--In my single days I probably wouldn’t have cared about getting a $5 rebate on a flight
--I know of folks who keep a list of all of their missing credits...Once upon a time, I probably would have done this too. But nowadays, I just don’t think it’s worth it

Either it's worth it, or it isn't. If it's worth paying $25 for $5 off, then it's worth calling them when they don't credit you that $5. If it's not, then you still don't care about getting a $5 rebate.

I've been a member for years! Works great - no glitches. Super-easy to earn and to use.

one of United's best-kept secrets. They don't advertise it at all and almost nobody knows about it.
Once upon a time it was a Continental program I believe (the travel bank) which was more advertised.
I love it! For my $25 I get well over a $100 every year.

Sorry for the confusion Lisa.

I was just saying that I don't worry about the occasional credit that doesn't post. I get a positive ROI on my $25 annual membership fee, and I leave it at that. Sure, I could call in and track down every missing $5, but as long as I come out ahead on the year with ZERO work, I'm happy.

I was a member in 2013. Typically book travel for me and my wife so 2 tix on same confirmation number. Since we are Premier Gold when we do online check in it asks if we want to be put on the upgrade list. We say yes and then one ticket is given a new confirmation number. After travel is completed, I only get $5 credit not $10. I have to go back to united to get the credit and sometimes it takes multiple tries. It was a pain in the rear to do that. Didn't rejoin for 2014.

I've been using it for years and usually wind up with $50 to apply to flights at the end of the year, and that's after "rebating" my initial $25 buy-in. I've never had a problem and my flights always post, so I think its pretty good......except for the name.

Does anyone have experience with whether booking through the United App (on iPhone, in my case) yields the $5 credit, if you are a United.com Club member?

Back in the day, this was a CO program. Never worked well. I almost always had to call or email to get credit and $5 was just not worth it. It was also supposed to be a "club" with specials and extras which never materialized. I dropped out after a couple of years.
Some credit cards require you to pay "in full" using the credit card in order to get the benefits attached (flight insurance, death benefits, etc.....) By using a credit towards the flight and then paying with the credit card, people raised the possibility that credit cards would consider that you "did not pay in full" using the card and therefore loose the benefits. Not sure if that was ever settled but it was a turn off for me.

I just wrote 1kVoice to request credit for 4 award tickets I bought. They told me this is not valid on award tickets. Hmm, what should I do now?

While it has been my experience that it works on award tickets, I am not sure that it is a published benefit. I expect that this is one of those quirks that is common in United-land -- when it works automatically, you can take advantage of it, but when it doesn't, you can't really complain about it because they'll just tell you it was never supposed to work that way.

Did you book all 4 award tickets in one reservation? As I noted above, I have the best luck getting the credits to post automatically when I book only one traveler in each reservation.

Wish I could offer more help!

I booked one traveler per reservation. Two people for two one-ways each. None of them myself. I responded with the T&C's showing award tickets are not excluded, we'll see what they say when they get back to me.

If you book two tix for the same itinerary and you add both to the upgrade list during online checking one will get a new booking number. You won't autmatically get $5 credit for the ticket with the new booking number. This was too much of a PIA for me and I did no renew.