Update: This offer for Citi® Double Cash Card has expired. Learn more about the current offers here.
United MileagePlus has just launched their latest promotion on the purchase of miles. This is a flash sale that’s only available for a limited time, and it represents their best bonus on purchased miles.
Through 11:59PM CT on Thursday, June 13, 2019, United is offering a tiered bonus on purchased miles, of up to 100%, as follow:
- Buy 5,000-14,000 miles, get a 40% bonus
- Buy 15,000-39,000 miles, get a 60% bonus
- Buy 40,000+ miles, get a 100% bonus
If you max out this bonus you can purchase a total of 175,000 miles for $3,292.19, which is a cost of 1.88 cents per MileagePlus mile.
United offers bonuses on purchased miles with some frequency, and when they do, the bonuses typically range between 50% and 100%. So a bonus of up to 100% is as good as deals get when buying United miles.
United lets you buy up to 175,000 MileagePlus miles per year including any bonuses.
With this promotion, it can take up to 48 hours for purchased miles to post to your account. Personally, I value MileagePlus miles at ~1.4 cents each (maybe a little less with the recent changes), though there are ways to get more value out of them than that.
Keep in mind that a while back United introduced dynamic award pricing for travel as of November 15, and this is bad news for members. It means that many awards on United flights will be more expensive. So the value proposition of buying United miles has gotten worse, in my opinion.
With these changes, United has also eliminated award charts for partner airlines, though they have said that they’re not increasing award costs on partners for now. The main reason I’d consider buying United miles to begin with is for partner awards, and those prices haven’t gone up yet.
So with an immediate use in mind, it could make sense to buy United miles for redemptions on partners.
United mileage purchases are processed by points.com, meaning they don’t count as an airfare purchase for the purposes of credit card spend.
Therefore I’d recommend using a card on which you’re trying to reach minimum spend, or otherwise, a credit card that maximizes your return on everyday spend, like the Chase Freedom Unlimited® or Citi® Double Cash Card.
See this post for more on which credit cards are best for buying points.
If you’re looking to earn United miles, MileagePlus is a Chase Ultimate Rewards transfer partner, so you can convert Ultimate Rewards points into United miles at a 1:1 ratio.
Do you plan on buying United miles with this offer?
Hi Lucky…if I buy the miles using my Mileage Plus explorer card does it count towards spend for Premier Platinum status?
@jason no
@bryan…thank you!
When I want to buy points in Europe, there is no discount and the price is significantly higher than what is being show here. I can buy 175K miles for 6,360 euro’s (7,196$).
Does the purchase price and promo now depend on the location?
@Ryan The last promo I saw was also only available for US…
This is a targetted offer for accounts with a US based address. I’ve got 1 USA account which shows the offer and one Australian account which shows no MileagePlus Bonus.
Is this really that beneficial unless you can find a good deal of availability for LH F or UA Polaris?
It all depends on where you are going and what ticket you can find. I recently got a one way first/business from Hawaii to Prague for 75,000. That ticket priced at $8000 but I don’t use those ridiculous prices to base my value on. I use $2000 one way from the mainland to Europe and $2500 from Hawaii, because usually if you are flexible and book a round trip, you can find that price. But even at $2500, buying the points on a promotion would put you at almost half price.