Rather than sniping at one another about whether Travel Bank reimbursements were a loophole, what we need now is for UA flyers to try other types of expenses and report if they are reimbursed automatically, or after asking. Travel Bank reimbursements have been so effortless for so long that we do not have fresh data on other techniques . . . .
mia Thank you for the wise reminder that the purpose of this particular thread should be on collecting data regarding reimbursements of various UA charges.
That said, I think one of the challenges of collecting such data is going to be that many people who selected United as their airline for Plat credit purposes are not necessarily regular United fliers, or even regular fliers at all. The beauty of the (well-publicized) reimbursement of UA TravelBank purchases is (was?) that you could make this selection without knowing what your flying plans will be in the coming calendar year, knowing that the TB credit will be available to you anytime in the next five years. I think that there are many cardholders for whom the availability of this particular credit on this particular airline was a significant factor in their individual calculations of whether the value obtained from the card is greater than the annual fee. And in that sense, a potential change in the reimbursement policy for this particular charge -- whether or not it should have been anticipated -- seems both quantitatively and qualitatively different than the periodic changes we see to reimbursement of other incidental fees on other airlines.
If we want to keep the current thread focused on data collection, it might make sense to start a separate thread for discussion of the broader significance (or not) of this potential policy change. I'm not sure exactly what that should be -- e.g., discussion of potential TB change only? broader discussion of the airline incidentals credit, apart from the airline-specific threads that already exist? -- but maybe someone else has an idea.