travelkid

http://www.usairways.com/en-US/divid...c=USBuyLanding

Only "buy miles" purchases made online are eligible for the bonus. Miles purchased or earned do not count towards Dividend Miles Preferred status. Earn a 75% bonus on "buy miles" purchases made between February 16 and March 31, 2011, 11:59 PM PT. All purchases are non-refundable. 75% bonus miles will be awarded upon completion of the transaction. Only the first 50,000 miles purchased per Dividend Miles member are eligible for the 75% bonus and 25% additional bonus. All miles purchased beyond this limit will not be eligible for either the 75% bonus or 25% additional bonus. Offer is subject to change. Dividend Miles accounts less than 12 days old are not permitted to Buy, Share or Gift miles. Award seats are capacity controlled and may not be available for the requested dates or mileage amounts. All other Dividend Miles Terms and Conditions apply.

�25% additional bonus offer: Dividend Miles members based in the 50 United States and Puerto Rico can earn an additional 25% bonus on their "buy miles" purchase by downloading, installing and completing at least three valid searches using the Dividend Miles Toolbar during the above dates. To qualify, a member's Dividend Miles account must have been registered with a United States or Puerto Rico address on 2/1/2011. Members who did not have a United States or Puerto Rico address on file as of 2/1/2011 are not eligible to receive the 25% additional bonus regardless of address updates. 25% additional bonus miles will post 5-10 days after eligible members have completed a qualifying "buy miles" transaction and valid Dividend Miles Toolbar search.

jbcarioca

At 1.375cents/mile that is one of the cheapest offers I have seen, assuming my arithmetic is correct.

travelkid

It is, but only if you have an US adress and use the toolbar.

rxralph

are you eligible for the 25% if you have already downloaded the toolbar?

ralpg

travelkid

Cant see why not. But you could of course uninstall and reinstall.

FlyIgglesFly

Just in time for the tax refund...

tommyleo

Were you following US's promos over the last two years? Way better offers were to be had, sometimes less than 1 cent/mile. But 1.375cents/miles isn't a bad deal.

tommyleo

OK, why the geographical limit on this bonus? Is it because the toolbar only works in the U.S. and Puerto Rico? Or is US trying to discourage rampant miles purchases by people outside the U.S. because these people are far less likely to redeem US miles on US medal (which is US's preferred use of miles, for sure).

When US had its mileage specials last year, lots people all over the world were buying the miles and then spending the miles on non-US, *A awards.

DCAorBust

Probably all of the above, but I'm thinking that the reason has more to do with the costs of the non-US redemption aspect, as well the additional costs associated with international credit card transactions: there's the added layer of the costs associated with fraud detection and prevention. Based on some of the threads started in the last year, it was clear that US spent a lot of effort (e.g., money) investigating potential fraud or abuse with these promos. We heard about some here, but surely there was much more going on that we didn't hear about. Since so much fraud is committed by way of overseas transactions, US can eliminate much of its "policing" cost by simply limiting the geographical scope of the promo.

ma91pmh

$1,478.12 after taxes and fees, so 1.47812 CPM

Still a good deal if you can get the awards

richinaz

So for $1,478.12 you get 100,000 miles which can usually be used for 1 business class ticket from the US to Europe. Then there are some other fees/taxes when you redeem the miles. My last experience that was only $140 but since taxes to many locales have gone up it probably is more.

Roughly $1600 for a R/T business ticket to Europe. Since I've never purchase one is that still a good bargain? I'm guessing business tickets would run in the $2500-3500 range?

I know you can use various specials to get cheaper business tickets but in general am I looking at this correctly?

DCAorBust

More or less, yes, that's about right. The taxes can vary widely, for example, the luxury tax on business seats into the UK might double your tax estimate.

I tend to view these specials as a good deal when you have a specific use in mind and intend to book something in the near term. I wouldn't otherwise hand any airline $1400 for safekeeping until I'm ready to make up my mind about a trip--they can devalue the miles without any warning.

dcpatti

Roughly $1600 for a business class ticket to Europe is a good bargain in my book. There were definitely some nice sale fares last year (CO was running about $1700 a.i. to several cities, and DL right now has $1400 to Europe; US had $1300 to MUC for a few months and I saw a stray $1800 to CDG on US over the winter here and there) but the sales are few, far between and hard to plan on, plus they're usually only good for very short periods of time. Second week of January, or between Thanksgiving and Christmas, etc. The partner mileage awards can be had for the same price anytime of the year, as long as you can find availability. I've spent a lot of time looking at fares to LON lately and the best I could find on any *A partner was about $2800 a.i. and I've seen them as high as $5k on some.

Even the cheap day-of-booking upgrades sometimes offered by UA were running $2700 (coach ticket plus rt upgrade fees) when I was looking.

So yes this is a good bargain to Europe, with the only downside being no miles are earned for the flight. Even better bargain to Asia and the South Pacific.

tommyleo

It's only a good bargain if you'd typically pay for J out of pocket. If you typically fly in Y, convincing oneself to pay perhaps double for an award ticket in J doesn't make sense to me.

It also depends on what part of the U.S. you're flying from. From the East Coast, I'd rather suck it up and pay for Y (and earn miles) than drop 100K miles to fly in J to Europe, which is relatively close to the East Coast.

Instead, for 110K miles, I can do what I just did over the holidays: a trip in J to New Zealand and Thailand (with a day trip to Shanghai). Now THAT'S a bargain.

That said, I did indeed fly on a *A award to Europe last summer. Why the seeming hypocrisy? Because I had recently bought 90,500 miles for just $834 (.92 cents/mile!) through the Share Miles promo. It cost $106 for taxes at the time of booking. At that time, buying a Y ticket to BUD would have cost me over $1200 anyway, so buying the J ticket (an open jaw, to boot) made sense -- even though I'd rather spend miles to fly across the Pacific instead of to Europe.

Of course, we can't wait around for the Share Miles promos, so maybe our expectations need to be more realistic.

tommyleo

Anyone else notice that Preferred members do not get a bonus with this promo? If they tacked on an extra 25% for Preferreds, I'm be very tempted.