MP Visa Choices Primer

[WineCountryUA]

Did not find a consolidated summary of the MP Visa Choices Point program – so collected a few thoughts here.

In 2006, United MP and Chase introduced the Choices program (and it was made retroactive to January 1, 2006). The program has expanded the choices one has for redeeming awards – but some have found the program confusing. Below is an attempt to discuss the highlights of the program. Additionally the Mileage Plus Choices Program Terms and Conditions & Choices FAQs are good resources and more definitive statements of the rules.

1) What is the Choices program?
Choices Points are a class of RDMs that have additional redemption options. These RDMs can be used like miles have always been used to redeem award tickets, upgrades, merchandise, … PLUS you have additional cash credit redemption options. With Choice Point RDMs you can receive a credit on your MP Visa for selected air travel, hotels, rental cars, the annual MP Visa fee, or to purchase E+ Access or EQMs.

2) How do you earn Choice Points?
Choice Points RDMs are earned by making any purchase with a Chase United MP Visa. The exact number earned per dollar purchase depends on the card (can varied from 0.5 to 2). Each month, at the statement close, your MP account will be credited RDMs (as pre-Choice program) and your Choice Points total will be increased by the same amount.

3) How do you use Choice Points?
After your have received the MP Visa statement with the purchase posted, go to the Redemption page – you will need your MP Visa statement for reference. Credit should appear in seven (7) days.
• Air travel – United or Star Alliance travel booked on united.com-- $1 for 100 Choice Points – with a minimum of 5,000 Choice Points ($50). This is credit toward the purchase and can be for any ticket and does not change the terms of the ticket (such as upgradeability or RDM/EQM earning.)
• Hotels or Rental Cars booked on united.com , annual MP Visa fee -- $1 for 125 Choice Points – with a minimum of 5,000 Choice Points ($40)
• Economy Plus Access – 40,000 Choice Points (only for yourself?? Unclear)
• Exchanging for EQM/EQS – 1,000 EQM/1EQS per 10,000 Choice Points, up to 50,000 Choice Points per year. EQM/EQS should post in three (3) days (deadline for 2007 is by 11:59pm CST on December 30, 2007)

Remember purchases must have been made with MP Visa and credit request must be made within 90 days posting date of purchase
Dollar credit is limited to total of eligible purchase, but partial credits are permitted.

Additional key points:
To find your Choice Points Balance.

For each Choice Point used, your RDM total will be reduced - since Choice Points are effective a special class of RDMs with extra redemption options.

Your Choice Points total is capped at (can not exceed) your RDMs total. For example, if your Choice Points total is 100,000 and your RDM total is 115,000 and then you redeem a 25,000 domestic Saver Award – reducing your RDM to 90,000, your Choice Point total will be capped to 90,000.
It has been reported that Choice Points above the cap are not lost but are banked. If additional RDMs are earned, the banked Choice Points will be returned. In the above example, if 10,000 or more additional RDMs are earned, then the Choice Points total will return to 100,000.

Since Choice Points are credited against purchases, what happens if original purchase is cancelled and refunded? United & Chase reserves the right to reverse the Choice Points redemption and may charge your account with a redemption fee of 2,500 miles.

Do miles from air travel or other programs / bonuses that generate RDMs create Choice Points? No, just purchases with the MP Visa cards generate Choice Points.

What happens if you cancel your MP Visa? You lose the ability to receive cash credits redemption's – you lose your Choice Points option BUT you do not lose any of your RDMs.

Do you need to complete travel before redeeming Choice points for a particular ticket? No, start or completion of travel is not required.

With the Platinum MP Visa, will you earn EQMs on air travel purchases if redeeming Choice Points for the same purchases? Yes and RDMs for the original purchase plus for actual miles traveled.

How you view the Choices program will depend on if you can use it to your advantage or not. If not, the Choices program takes away nothing from the pre-Choices use of RDMs. If Choices works for you, it is a plus.
YMMV

Last edited by WineCountryUA : Dec 18, 07 at 9:41 pm. Reason: Banking of capped Choice Points

[WineCountryUA]

How does the use of Choice Points compare to Saver, Standard Awards?

If you are considering getting a ticket, you can
1) Use RDMs to get a saver ticket – take less miles but has less availability
2) Use RDMs to get a standard award – takes more miles and is very available
or
3) Use RDMs / Choices miles to reimburse yourself for the cost of purchasing a ticket -- miles amount depends on the ticket cost, very available, earns RDMs/EQMs, is upgradeable, ...

There is no simple, hard and fast rule on which one is better than the other.

First, taking the Saver Award out of the discussion and just comparing a Standard Award to a Choice purchase.

Let's look at SFO-BOS (I pick this because that was a recent purchase)
Price in W class was $378 dollars, Standard Award would have been 50K

So a Choice purchase would costs 37,800 RDMs, will earn 10,800 RDMs, 5,400 EQM (for an 1P) and is upgradable. Net RDMs 27,000.
Very good deal compared to 50K Standard and even a good deal compared to 25K Saver, if available (considering EQMs, upgradeable and seat availability).

If instead $800 H fare was all that was available then the net RDMs would have been closer to 70K (69.2K) and one would have to decide if the EQMs and upgrade opportunity was worth the extra 20K RDMs/Choice points over a Standard Award. A Saver (less likely available if H fare is the best available) would be a great deal.

This all get further complicated when looking at awards between continents or if using miles to do upgrades.

With some generalizing, for less expensive tickets are probably better with the Choice Point approach and the advantage decreases as the ticket purchase price increases.

[WineCountryUA]

Choice/RDMs earning rates for various MP Visa cards

Regular MP Visa
- 1 mile per $1 spent, up to 60,000 miles per calendar year

For the Gold card
- 2 miles per $1 spent on United purchases
- 1 mile per $1 spent on all other purchases, up to 100,000 miles total per calendar year
- 1 mile per $2 in balance transfers or convenience checks, up to 10,000 miles total per calendar year

For the Platinum card
- 2 miles per $1 spent on United and Star Alliance purchases
- 2 miles per $1 spent on groceries, dining, gas at the pump and home improvement purchases
- 1 mile per $1 spent on all other purchases

- EQM bonus for sign-up, purchases or exceeding $35K annual purchases do not generate Choice Points (or RDMs)

For the Check Card
- 1 mile per $2 spent, up to 60,000 miles per calendar year


Choice Points post a few days (2,3,.. days) after the monthly Visa CC closing

Annual mileage limits are waived for 3P and higher MP members

From T&Cs, "Miles accrued for credit card purchases, enrollment, Chase promotional offers, anniversary renewals, and other eligible card activity are available for redemption."
So, Sign-up Bonus & renewal RDMs are included and yield Choices Points

Special bonus programs, such as 5x miles for Department Stores appear also to count into Choices Points (at this time).

Not eligible: debit/check card purchases or home equity advances, third party bonuses (FTD?)

Last edited by WineCountryUA : Dec 16, 07 at 1:28 pm. Reason: Added RDM sign-up bonus info
Last edited by WineCountryUA : Dec 19, 07 at 9:58 pm. Reason: Add comment about EQM bonus

[WineCountryUA]

reserved

[cepheid]

Nice primer, WineCountryUA! I'll take care to add this to the UA Wiki at some point... unless you do it first.

You may want to change the "Check my balance" link to http://www.united.com/mychoices - it's more "generic" and should work in the future even if the back-end link you posted changes.

[WineCountryUA]

Thanks for the better link

[Firewind]

I would first add, since it's useful for some to know, that this is actually a Chase program, per se. Hence the need to log in again, even if you navigate from the link in the UA website. This is transparent in most instances, but will matter if you have to work through the bureaucracies. The question often comes up on this board, a propos of such instances.

Second, to me, this is only valuable for flights, because I can always do better for cars and hotels -- FT is rife with connivances.

As to free flights, it works if the net cost in miles is less than 25,000. For example, I do best on transcons at the cheapest time of the year. (Thanks to WineCountryUA for working through the numbers, so I don't have to.) .....OK, I shall: Spend ~$220 out of MHT/PVD to OAK, SJC or LAX, then redeem ~22,000 choice points, while earning ~11,000 RDM. Net: It costs me ~11,000 miles. This means I can get two transcon roundtrips, costing (net) ~22,000 miles total, which is less than the (mileage) cost of one RT. And I can upgrade because I paid $$ in the first place. Sweet. If I'm lazy, and don't want to do all the math (ha!) then my rule of thumb is, if the cost of a flight is more than ~$250 to anywhere - and I want to fly free - it's not worth it to do the Choice points thing. Book a saver award. I've found that if a saver award isn't available, the cheapest fare is also >$500 (meaning >50,000 points).

Last, I would only do the points -> EQM redemption if I were desperate. I think it's brutal.

There are probably few places where the phrase "YMMV" is more apt.

[chitownflyer]

Good primer. Perhaps we can also add this info to the UA FAQ sticky at the top of the forum.

[aku]

I did use Choice points for EQMs last year: I had 124k EQMs, and cashing in 10k Choice points earned me 5k EQMs for this year and a couple of other benefits that made it worth the cost.

[CPMaverick]

Great thread WineCountryUA!

The only thing I would change is that you can get Choices with the CC sign-up bonus as well as with purchases.

Originally Posted by aku

I don't think I'd ever use my miles at that rate. I target my miles for situations where they're at least close to $.02 per mile used. Example:

There are TONS of threads about whether or not to use Choices, if it's worth it, why people do, etc. Lets not make this very useful thread into a thread 20 pages long, full of opinions. It's a personal tradeoff to use your miles any particular way.

Originally Posted by aku

P.S. I did use Choice points for EQMs last year: I had 124k EQMs, and cashing in 10k Choice points earned me 5k EQMs for this year and a couple of other benefits that made it worth the cost.

10k Choices will get you 1k EQM, not 5k.

[mahasamatman]

Originally Posted by aku

I did use Choice points for EQMs last year: I had 124k EQMs, and cashing in 10k Choice points earned me 5k EQMs for this year and a couple of other benefits that made it worth the cost.

You just contradicted your own valuation. Since you only needed 1,000 miles, a cheap SFO-LAX would have been around $100. By cashing in 10,000 miles, you only got a value of $.01 per mile.

Conclusion: nothing is written in stone.

Originally Posted by CPMaverick

10k Choices will get you 1k EQM, not 5k.

I believe he's talking about the Elite Choice benefit of the 5K EQM carryover at the 125K level.

[CPMaverick]

Originally Posted by mahasamatman

I believe he's talking about he Elite Choice benefit of the 5K EQM carryover at the 125K level.

I get it; my mistake.

[CollegeFlyer]

Originally Posted by WineCountryUA

For the Gold card
- 2 miles per $1 spent on United purchases
- 1 mile per $1 spent on all other purchases, up to 100,000 miles total per calendar year
- 1 mile per $2 in balance transfers or convenience checks, up to 10,000 miles total per calendar year

For the Platinum card
- 2 miles per $1 spent on United and Star Alliance purchases
- 2 miles per $1 spent on groceries, dining, gas at the pump and home improvement purchases
- 1 mile per $1 spent on all other purchases

So the Gold card gives miles for balance transfers, but the Platinum card doesn't?

[WineCountryUA]

Originally Posted by CPMaverick

Great thread WineCountryUA!

The only thing I would change is that you can get Choices with the CC sign-up bonus as well as with purchases.

My CC signup bonus predates Choices. So to verify what you are saying, the 20 to 25,000 sign-up MP Visa bonus -- earn Choices Points??

If so, that's a pretty good bennie.

[WineCountryUA]

accidental double posting