United Explorer Card--United Club Passes?

I am small fry as far as FT is concerned--have maintained 2P status for the last couple of years and made it to 1P once a few years ago. But I hope anyone who has recently signed up for the Explorer card can help.

One of the main attractions of the Explorer card for me was the prospect of receiving two club passes annually, since it's not a benefit I can get without paying for it as a 2P member. But today I called the customer service line and they explained that the first time you receive club passes is after the one year anniversary of your account opening, so the first time I will receive my club passes is next November 2012 (!!) I accepted this as good faith information even though it kind of irked me as I really had gotten the impression that I'd get some that I could use when travelling in the upcoming year.

But now I am looking at the explorer card website here:

https://www.theexplorercard.com/MPYoureIn40kAFW.aspx

and if you scroll down to the bottom and click on the very small font "*OFFER DETAILS" a window opens up and gives the following information:

"You will receive two (2) Club passes after account opening and every account anniversary thereafter. Please allow 8 � 10 weeks after account opening for delivery of Club passes. Please allow 2 � 4 weeks from your credit card account anniversary date each year thereafter for delivery."

This clearly states that I should get 2 club passes when I first open the account, in addition to the later annual ones.

My question is has anyone who opened an Explorer Card account in the last few months actually received their Club passes for this year? Has anyone else been given the same information I received on the phone? If I call back to try to press the issue how should I go about it (ask for a supervisor, etc.)?

Thanks.

I received two with my card when I opened the account.

Hmm, darn, wish I had. I just double checked the envelope that my card came in (which I kept with all the info about the account, credit card agreement etc. in it) and there were no passes in it.

I only received them at the anniversary date.

How would you have already received them at your anniversary date for your Mileage Plus Explorer card?

I was wondering that too, since I thought the program was less than a year old.

I just checked with United, the passes were mailed out less than a week ago. My account has been open 9 weeks at this point.

My understanding was that passes would be sent upon payment of the Explorer Card annual fee, and not if the fee was waived for the first year. Those of you who are getting the passes, have you paid the fee? Would that happen if you moved from another flavor of MP Visa? I've been wondering if I'd be offered the card if I declined to renew my MP Select card.

Did you pay the annual fee? The annual fee was waived for me so that may explain why no passes this year.

Anyone notice, by the way, that the cost of the annual fee ($95) is about the cost of two day passes if purchased at the desk

Oh well, I guess I will continue to decide on a case by case basis whether I want to pay for a pass.

I have had the card for about four months and have NOT received any Club passes.

Anniversary date for the predecessor (The One Pass Plus card)

I saw several people waving their credit cards to try to get into the lounge today, but with no luck. The lounge dragon at LAX was very effective at blocking people without a Club card or passes.

Did you want the "dragon" to waive the rules?

I feel sorry for club front desk employees at the moment as I'm sure a lot of people recently signed up for the card and think they can just walk in with it, so they are probably having to deal with this a lot right now.

So I guess my question is answered. Because my fee was waived for the first year I didn't get the passes. But that definitely wasn't explained to me at any time in the (online) application process and I don't recall getting the option to, er, waive the fee waiver. Oh well, as I said above, I'll just continue to choose whether I want to pay for club passes on given individual itineraries this year (and if I order two passes online from united.com they will only cost $78).

Did you call the number on the back of the card? I did and the (Chase?) rep clearly had little idea. First she told me the passes are only available after first year. After I read back the offer details that say it's available after account opening, she said she would contact some department and I should have a reply in 10 days. According to my experience, either I got no reply or some BS dumb letter... I am wonder if I can contact United directly.