Originally Posted by
ftweb
It's weird that they discount the club membership, but not the credit card for elites. Even the paltry $60 annual credit seems to have disappeared. United clearly wants me to get the card given how much junk mail they send me, but I'm very disincentivized to pay $450 for a bunch of benefits that I mostly already have.
The club is pretty terrible for the $400 fee unless you fly a lot of segments. I fly TCON once a month, so I get about 24 visits to the club a year, making it about $16.50/visit. That makes it worth it given that I'd pay $15 for food elsewhere in the airport, though the club is quieter.
Note that my travel will only net me Silver status. The club card seems ready made for one of two types of people:
-those who travel frequently, but not enough to get status (so they make up the fee in saved check bag fees)
-those who rack up a pile of miles, but not PQD. $395 is a lot cheaper than $9000 if you are going for platinum.
If you fly only hub to hub, but never enough to make it to top tier elite, meaning your CPUs never clear because of the 50-some odd elites on the list, you can basically buy all the perks of Gold status with the United Club Card and an E+ subscription. (save the Gold benefit of the waived SDC fee) The club membership would just be an extra perk.