mahasamatman

Where do you see that? It's not in the T&C.

MojaveFlyer

Didn't work for me using IE, but then I logged out of my open session (checked itins a few minutes ago) and it worked OK.

jhayes_1780

Isn't that the point of business?

UnitedSkies

Huh, didn't the OP say you'd still get the double or triple miles in the event of a flight cancellation?

UnitedSkies

OP, where did you find this? I can't find it during a sweep of the website.

It almost seems like it's not ready for prime-time yet. The FAQs say "Placeholder T&Cs" and it's not under "Travel enhancements."

GoingAway

My mistake - I put in a "not" in there -- oops

Diplomatico

Using the LAX-SYD example, the $449 is for [I]triple[I] miles. So you'd get 7483 x 2 ~ 15,000 extra miles for $449.

20,000 miles would then cost closer to $600, not $1,200 (thus dovetailing with the OP estimate of 3cpm).

Edit: That said, $750 for 25,000 miles (a Y saver ticket) is not what I consider to be a "good deal".

mahasamatman

Another reason not to worry about devaluation: this is only slightly cheaper than just purchasing the miles outright (at http://www.ualmiles.com/PersonalMiles.jsp). The cost for those 15K miles is $518.75 - not that different from the $449 with this new plan. For many trips, the difference will be even more negligible (like you may only need 14K miles for $486.50 or 13K for $454.25). If you're not worried about the mileage purchase option, why worry about this? In fact, in many cases the purchase option is even better for topping off since it has much finer granularity.

UnitedSkies

Another great point.

This is actually quite a smart product, because the PersonalMiles product isn't presented ideally to encourage impulse buying, which Award Accelerator is. I suspect this product would garner some pretty significant success, especially if customers are asked if they would like to double or triple their miles. That's a pretty convincing statement, and not everyone would have the time to do the math right then and there.

Diplomatico

Definitely a promotion for the math-challenged customer.

lucky9876coins

LMAO, too true!^ Of course "math-challenged" describes a good percentage of the population, so might not be a bad promo...

UnitedSkies

Why I think this is brilliant is because this is simply a repackaging of sorts of the PersonalMiles program, and it's tailored towards each customer by the itinerary they are flying, so that it's more personalized and also is presented at the right time, right place.

What would be even smarter is if UA pulled the customer's RDM account balance, showed them how many miles they need to redeem their next award (along with award options), and illustrate how good a deal this would be and get them further along to their next award trip.

Diplomatico

I wouldn't be surprised if they do this. My wife received a MP Visa offer of 25,000 miles and that's exactly how the offer was packaged..."you now have XXXXX miles + 25,000 mile sign-up bonus = XXXXXX miles."

JSlo

I have no problem with United doing this, I think it's smart business on their part. They need to find ways to bring cash in. As far as being overtly negative on this promotion...I don't really agree with all the UA negativity that exists on FT sometimes. All the complaining about the DEQM posting for example...what? griping that your miles didn't post yet when the T&C clearly states the timeframe for posting...just be glad you got DEQM offer! if you don't want DEQM posting 6-8 weeks after then don't sign up for the DEQM offer! Sorry...maybe venting on that ridiculous thread because I don't want to post to it and bump it...lol.

I don't see myself taking them up on this deal. But for some it may be a real winner if you don't fly much- and are trying to earn a free ticket or something?

Diplomatico

Except that it's cheaper just to buy the ticket.