Originally Posted by
pmarcos
My renewal is coming up in a couple weeks and I'm really torn on whether to renew or not. I have been surprised by how much I used CLEAR (they are at almost all the airports I fly out of) but that benefit is gone. United's Gift Registry seems permanently unavailable. United no longer offers Gogo on its planes (at least none of the flights I've taken this past year). I already have a United Club Card (can you tell that I'm shackled to United?), although I'm curious about maybe ditching that and using the new lounge credit to pay for that instead. I've used the Priority Pass benefit a few times as well as the $100 Visa discount.
The Gift Registry is really what made this card pay for itself. Are there any other ways to, um, leverage that incidentals credit with United (other than, you know, incidentals which I never have)?
They might reimburse super cheap tickets (i.e. $40-50). So in theory you could try buying a very cheap ticket and then canceling it within 24 hours, but ask for a voucher instead of a refund to the original form of payment. Would be a pretty significant PITA though, especially if you had to get an agent involved (I forget if you can get a voucher for online cancellation). Sounds more like it’s probably not the card for you.
Edit: I should also note that to fully use the credit you’d have to do this many times (especially if you have AUs too). Eventually there is some risk on the UA side that they come after your miles/status because you are “purchasing with the intent to cancel.”