I've had good luck with this card. Got it before I became a 1K, but was able to call them after I became 1K and got a partial rebate of the annual fee.

Generally use the secure message center; this seems to work.

Got the full monty the first year; 5k bonus, 5k for UA flights booked on .bomb, and 5k for the $30k ($35k?) spend. Been getting the latter two each year since then. (One really has to track the EQM's as the ones from Chase just sort of quietly "appear" in one's account, with no reference).