United MileagePlus (Consolidated) - A New Way to Spend Your Miles - United Digital Media Store

United Digital Media Store

http://digitalmediastore.mileageplus.com/

The prices are a bit on the high side, but a good way to spend any leftover miles.

What a bizarre idea. The overall effect would be much better achieved, of course, by letting me cash in miles for iTunes credit, which would save them the trouble of building this whole expensive infrastructure (using software engineers who would be much better off redeployed on fixing all their other infrastructure...)

I can only assume that this is part of a longer-term plan. Perhaps they're obtaining the rights to sell digital content now so they can sell you digital content on the aircraft later. Why fly another airline and get entertainment for free when you can fly United and pay for it?

1. This is a great redemption option for infrequent fliers - why keep making MP Shopping purchases just to keep your miles active.

2. I doubt UA actually built anything here. There is probably some web startup that is doing this for multiple parties. That being said, they obviously had to dedicate some engineering resources to do the integration.

I'm sure it's just an easy revenue stream, might contribute a whopping ~0.00000001% of revenue next year? Just another distraction from fixing their core business.

Choose Digital, Inc.

It's hardly distracting them that much, is it? Unless you believe the same guy who is responsible for setting up 3rd party partnerships moonlights as a developer? ;)

Prices seem high

What a bizarre idea. The overall effect would be much better achieved, of course, by letting me cash in miles for iTunes credit, which would save them the trouble of building this whole expensive infrastructure (using software engineers who would be much better off redeployed on fixing all their other infrastructure...)

I can only assume that this is part of a longer-term plan. Perhaps they're obtaining the rights to sell digital content now so they can sell you digital content on the aircraft later. Why fly another airline and get entertainment for free when you can fly United and pay for it?

Supposedly they have claimed to have ruled out direct purchases from an iPhone (and perhaps even the iPads).

Prices seem high

Well, realistically it's about 150 points for a song that'd be 99 cents on iTunes, so you're getting about 0.65 cents per mile, which is... uhh, not the worst possible redemption.

For infrequent flyers, who might have to fly for years and years in order to save up 25,000 miles for a return ticket to somewhere, this might seem like a good deal. For us, of course, it's rubbish.

Just got this email:




Introducing MileagePlus Digital Media Awards.

MileagePlus® is excited to bring you a new and innovative way to use your award miles. Digital Media Awards allows you to use miles to download your favorite music and movies at low mileage prices:

• Over one million songs are available

• Movie titles include box office hits like Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and The King’s Speech

• New songs and movies are added each week



Check out the MileagePlus Digital Media Store and shop for your favorite digital entertainment today.

Looks like movie rentals run about 450 miles and purchase around 2500 miles.

Links in email send you to MP Digital Music Store (http://digitalmediastore.mileageplus.com/)

I wanted to get some feedback and opinions on the recent launch of the MileagePlus Digital Media store from United Airlines... Has anyone tried it and do you feel as if you are getting fair value (selection of content seems sparse yet adequate) for your miles?

Tried it to use up some ready-to-expire stray miles. Can't make it work, keep getting error message saying "you don't live in the US." We do, and the account profile even includes "United States" as part of our street address. Will post if we figure out a fix.

Update: No progress to report. United MP help is of no help so far, is not understanding problem. So far, still getting the "ineligible b/c you don't live in US."

I doubt the problem is the address on your file. You're probably being geoblocked because of an issue with your IP address. (That's why you can't use your US Netflix account in Canada, for instance.) If there's an option for online support for the MP Media Store, see if they can check whether your IP address range is being blocked.

Redemption value is horrible. Any estimate on when UA will put a temporary pause on coming up with new ways to nickle and dime customers and focus on fixing all the crap that is wrong with their flight operations?

One reason why you might get the "ineligible to purchase media - you do not live in the US" is this: program apparently requires 1000+ MileagePlus points. Too bad for my kids, who've been trying to (finally) use those stray few United miles. :td:

Well, realistically it's about 150 points for a song that'd be 99 cents on iTunes, so you're getting about 0.65 cents per mile, which is... uhh, not the worst possible redemption.

For infrequent flyers, who might have to fly for years and years in order to save up 25,000 miles for a return ticket to somewhere, this might seem like a good deal. For us, of course, it's rubbish.
And even the FF community might have trouble using miles sometimes, especially with *net blocking.

If nothing else, seems like a good way to keep an inactive account alive. 120 miles to keep the account active for another 18 months.

I wanted to get some feedback and opinions on the recent launch of the MileagePlus Digital Media store from United Airlines... Has anyone tried it and do you feel as if you are getting fair value (selection of content seems sparse yet adequate) for your miles?

Sparseness of content has nothing to with value for miles. It's the effective $ per mile that matters, and as others have noted it's lousy.

It looks like this is available to Premier members and credit card holders only:

http://digitalmediastore.mileageplus.com/help

Click on "Who is eligible to use miles for Digital Media Awards?"

Was this always the case? At the very least, this restriction needs to be much better advertised...I tried multiple times to download, it said I wasn't eligible without actually giving a reason, and finally I found the link above.