ksucats

I am in need of a quick 900 United miles & noticed that I could redeem 5000 choice points for 1000 United miles. I know it isn't a very good ratio, but there is an award ticket that I want to book asap. I will fly United again in 2 weeks, so I won't do the redemtion if it takes that long. I know the terms say 6-8 weeks or something like that. Does anybody have any experience with this?

sdsearch

I don't have specific expience with United transfers. I can tell you that my Wednesday night one-night stays that would show up at Choice's website in 2to 3 days if I earned points take 12 days after checkout to show up at AA's website, so apparently in those cases take 10 days to go from Choice to AA.

I haven't monitored posting time until very recently (I'm only doing so because I set up a spreadsheet this year to track my Choice stays, since the website is no help in counting my progress toward requalifying for status!). Since then I've only had one-night Wednesday night stays, so I have no data for other days of the week.

Quite likely they only do the transfer once a week on a particular day, and thus I'd expect the posting time to the airline to vary depending on the day of the week I check out. And keep in mind that many such hotel-to-airline transfers are not electronic, but by some sort of physical media sent my mail or courier! That can explain why it can happen once a week yet take almost two weeks.

The 6-8 weeks is because if these physical media have a data read problem when they arrive, the airline has to re-request that data from the hotel, and that can slow things way down. So it doesn't mean it normally takes that long, it just means that in the worst case it can take that long.

ksucats

Well, I decided to go ahead & take the gamble. It was only 5000 points, so I am not out much if my flight isn't available when the 1000 miles arrive. I will come back & post when the miles show up in my account.

ksucats

Well, the miles just posted. Unfortunately the flight that I wanted to book is no longer available for 25,000 miles. The good news is the price dropped from $500 to $300, so I can just buy the ticket.