MilesBuzz! - Earning miles with new car purchase?

First time poster here... Just found these boards a few days ago and been reading and learning. Very enjoyable!

We're planning to buy a new car in a couple of weeks. Are there ways to get miles? Is it worth getting the miles, or does the purchase price get jacked up?

We have most of our miles in BA and AA, but would like UA as well.

Any advice and opinions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!!

Welcome to FlyerTalk!

For UA, take a look here:
http://www.ual.com/site/primary/0,10017,1243,00.html

Do you have an airline affiliated credit card which gives miles for every $ spent? You should, especially if you charge a lot. Most car dealers will only let you charge a portion of the car. I bought a Toyota a couple of years and the most I could put on the card was $3000.

I don't know if they are still part of it, but not quite 2 years ago I bought a car through Carsdirect.com, and got by far the best price out there. After deciding to get the car there, I then went through a link from vehiclemiles.com and I think got 10,000 miles for the purchase - plus carsdirect allowed me to put up to $5,000 on a credit card for a total of 15K miles.

My sister recently bought her car from a dealer who allows the first $5,000 to be put on a credit card for no fee and a 1.5% fee for amounts over $5,000.

Thank you all for your input. We've already put in a request from the UAL link.

We do have an airline credit card but charging on it is probably not applicable for us, as Toyota (our top choice right now) is running a zero down and 2.9% (3 years financing), 3.9% (4 years financing), etc.

Any other programs out there?

I am a car dealer.

We allow $3,000 on CC's before we insist on adding the 1.75% charge assesed by VISA or the 2.75 from AMEX.

Tell your dealer you want to put the entire amount on the card and calculate the $$/mileage factor to see if it is worth it.

BTW....complaining to the CC company doesn't work if this was in your plan......as an example we process about $400,000 per month on CC's....they could care less about your purchase versus the volume.

[This message has been edited by Carioca Canuck (edited 02-16-2002).]

Hey Carioca! I wonder if there are other LPers here...kinda a different scene....

Hi BA !!!

RANGER22 comes here occasionally...I personally don't know of any others however.

The car dealer has to pay 2-4% commission on a CC transaction. He is not in business for charity... http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif
However, a car dealer took from me recently $8,550 on UA affiliated CC for a car repair job. that is about $85 worth in FF miles. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif (Assuming 1 cent per $1/mile)

i was able to work a deal with massey cadillac in orlando on obt for the entire purchase on my visa or amex with no extra charges.

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Aren't surcharges against the agreements with Visa/Mastercard/AMEC?

AA and some other airlines have a program where they will recommend a dealer and you get 1 mile for every $4 purchase. As I wasn't needing to finance and the rate WASN'T good for a Toyota Prius I shopped around and found a dealer that WAS willing to let me use my credit card for the TOTAL purchase (on AMEX for me). Tried other dealer in the Chicago area and the others were willing for only about $2K. If I had wanted to finance, I would have gone with the first dealer where I would have gotten miles. I got more miles this way. Once you definitely know what you want you could try walking in and asking right away if they accept a credit card for full purchase - then you are not wasting your time.

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DtG