Originally Posted by
oblisk
My take on it is they variability is so broad, that it can be insulting to those at the top. If united simply had 4 different promos at different spend thresholds. E.g. $500 /1500 / 2500 (bottom threshold) and $15k / 20k / 25k (Top threshold) with 50k max to 150k max miles, but a constant upward sloping curvature. People would have been oh its a nice bonus.
But seeing the variability of one person 12k spend gets 210k miles vs. a 50k+ spend only getting 200k miles. Its a little disheartening, that the reward slopes can be inverted.
If there were no inversion, you'd see upper elites getting crazy amounts of miles. And for some of them, hitting at least one target is already going to happen. So why would UA give hundreds of thousands of miles away with no benefit?
You can see that UA wanted to hand out a free ticket or two (but not 5 or 6) to everyone that was targeted. For a lowly GM or Silver, RDMs are "expensive", and loyalty is not worth much. Even a $2,000 threshold is high for some. But if they qualify for this, it's a nice incentive. Same goes for that $12Ker. $12,000 might be a bigger mountain for that member than $30,000 is for another.