Through March 9, 2018, you can earn 1,000 United MileagePlus bonus miles for $1, by signing up for a two month Wall Street Journal trial subscription. In order to be eligible, the trial subscription has to be initiated by 11:59PM ET on Friday, March 9, 2018, and must remain active for at least 45 days.
If the member doesn’t cancel the trial subscription by the end of the two month period, it will automatically convert into a monthly subscription, and the member’s credit card will be charged on the terms of the agreement. Each MileagePlus member can only take advantage of this promotion once.
Personally I value United miles at ~1.2 cents each, so you’re getting $12 worth of miles for $1, which is a good deal. If you would actually appreciate having a two month Wall Street Journal subscription, then you can get even more value out of this.
As you might expect, the reason they have this promotion is because they hope you’ll like your subscription, and/or will forget to cancel it, since you only have a 15 day period in which you’re allowed to do so (days 46-60). Nowadays it’s easier than it used to be to set specific alerts for things using a computer, so I’d feel pretty comfortable doing this and know that I’d be able to remember to cancel in that roughly two week window.
This isn’t a hugely profitable deal. Getting 1,000 miles for $1 is a no brainer, but only if you won’t forget to cancel. If you’d get value out of the Wall Street Journal subscription, then this is even more worthwhile.
Do you plan on taking advantage of this United & Wall Street Journal offer?
(Tip of the hat to @BlueberryRex)
I purchased the offer on Wednesday and the points have today posted to my UA account. I used a credit card that I'm canceling next week so I won't have an issue with canceling the subscription.
Printed media RIP
Your time is worth much more than the effort required to cancel.
Interesting thing is that you can sign up ONLINE, very easy. But to cancel you must call during business hours, and try to cancel by speaking to a rep. It's not easy. 1000 points is only worth about $13 in United miles. This isn't worth it. Anything that wants to bill your credit card every month until you cancel should be avoided at all costs.
@Jacker. Thank you for the great suggestion/s :-)))
@Jacker - I'd never known about Citi's virtual account number feature/option, just looked into it and THANK YOU for suggesting it. I subscribe to several paper/snail mail publications where the non-optional auto-renew price is ridiculous, so this will be coming in very handy in halting those and allowing me not to have to track them mentally or via spreadsheet.
Don't do it. It was very hard to cancel and they put you on hold for an hour on the phone after asking you a bunch of questions... Never again.
You'll be hounded until the end of time with marketing and junk mail, all for a paltry 1,000 miles. Only the cheapest of cheap bastards would even consider this.
man it sounds like it's a pain in the !@# to cancel. was going to jump until the comments enlightened me!
If you have a Citi card, or other card that allows virtual numbers, take 1 extra minute, establish a number with a $2 limit. Do this WSJ transaction, and then forget about it. They won't be able to charge you again. Works great for, um, adult content sites also ;).
I did with American for 1500 miles and was able to cancel with no issues. Getting the miles posted was another issue. WSJ even ignored the emails from American Airlines customer service. Took about three months t finally post.
If you don't cancel before the renewal date, your subscription will renew at the full rack rate. They will not allow you to cancel either if you miss this deadline (well you can cancel, they just wont give you your money back). And it will be a pain to cancel even if you remember in time.
Not worth the trouble.
Thank you for this Blueberry Rex. I was considering a new WSJ subscription anyway and I'd been tempted by their "President's day sale" ending today, supposedly. Now this sale which has offered me either $18.50/month for 12 months or $19.50/month for 12 months (same as the previous sale offered). But the T&C says that the renewal cost is at the rate displayed on the screen and they're not kidding as I've seen two different rates....
Thank you for this Blueberry Rex. I was considering a new WSJ subscription anyway and I'd been tempted by their "President's day sale" ending today, supposedly. Now this sale which has offered me either $18.50/month for 12 months or $19.50/month for 12 months (same as the previous sale offered). But the T&C says that the renewal cost is at the rate displayed on the screen and they're not kidding as I've seen two different rates.
Once you are a subscriber, there's a setting in the account to turn auto-renew OFF.
But what I find ironic is that they are offering miles at all for subscriptions. About two years ago they used to allow mileage or eRewards redemptions toward subscriptions, but would not allow you to be a WSJ+ member. Then all of the mileage options disappeared.
Needed something this year to keep my United miles current so this seemed obvious but now I'm regretting it if it's gonna take more than 5 min to cancel
Similar offer was available a few months back, and it was a nightmare to cancel it and listen to endless sales pitches. It was like a timeshare presentation....not worth the extra miles in my mind.
I signed up for this deal last fall. The miles posted before 45 days. To cancel, I had to wait on hold for 25 minutes and talk to a retention specialist for about 5 more. I'm not planning on going through that again.
The WSJ is a decent newspaper. The offer is good for those who are considering getting a newspaper again. For those wanting 1,000 miles, it's on the threshold of "too much trouble". For those that already subscribe, no use for a second copy.
Tacky for even posting this article and tacky for anyone considering it.
not worth it, not even close. it took me almost 3 months to rectify the situation with WSJ continuing to bill me even after i cancelled it. even had a customer service guy accuse me of "just using WSJ for miles".