jags86

For economy tickets—which are nearly all I purchase—the UR cards are better than United’s offerings. I can simply buy the cheapest ticket available at 1.5cpp with UR rather than try to find a 25000 point domestic saver or 60000 Europe saver. Sure those redemptions might technically give me more than 1.5cpp vs United’s cash price but that only counts if United is the cheapest offering to a location. Many times it isn’t.

sdsearch

Be careful for what you wish for, it might come true!

What if UA switches to Amex the bank? Amex has a "once in a lifetime" rule per card type! How would that be better for "applying willy-nilly" than 5/24?

Or what if it switches to a smaller bank with no transferrable points, and yet still tough on churners?

RNE

Point taken. But I'll take my chances.

RNE, sick of Chase.

mia

While I think Chase is ripe to lose one airline and one hotel partner, I did not interpret the original story to mean that UA was shopping their co-brand card business around, but rather that they wanted to renegotiate the terms of the existing agreement.

RNE

Your interpretation is fair, but it would be at a minimum. Outside that—but not as far as shopping around—UA could be angling to drop out as a UR transfer partner. That would end UR-branded cards' directly competing with UA-branded cards' MP-earning ability. And even that half-step would be momentous. More so would be UA switching banks.

While we don't know how far the renegotiation may go (and perhaps UA and Chase don't either) this matter is potentially explosive for The Hobby.

snic

HA. UA has made it very, very clear to me (and many others) over the last few years that is does not care at all about how engaged I am with them.

RNE

That's all the more reason for UA to seek new, unsuspecting cardholders. It's gotta be sticking in Kir Baby's craw that Chase is capriciously denying applicants. Accordingly, there's a possibility UA will negotiate its cards out from under Chase's draconian 5/24 umbrella. We'll see.

RNE, predicting something significant affecting credit card holders will come out of this renegotiation. Not sure what, but not nothing.

dmodemd

I got a survey about my MP card asking about what would make me use it more. It presented a number of different options related to promotions and card benefits. I made it clear that the Chase Sapphire Reserve is my go to card and really doesn't leave any reason the use the MP card.

At one time I had the United MP Select Card which gave me EQMs which I found helpful in achieving status but with PQDs now the main driver of status, the card became useless to me. Now I don't even fly United.

Basically, the the CSR card around, any brand card is going to have to really step it up.

1120

Thanks all for the thoughtful responses.

Personally, I don't think 5/24 is huge issue other than to those of us that are playing the game.

The thing that is an issue is that for those that have both UR (especially CSR) and UA cards is that there's simply no incentive to use UA since the marginal value per dollar spent is higher for CSR.

This leaves UA with two choices - try to get Chase to lower the value of CSR or raise the value of the UA card.

Translated, that means that UA has to pay to make their card more valuable or lose market share to the UR cards.

I'd love to know if Marriott is seeing the same problem. I don't use my Marriott for much incidental spend, but I do use it for actual Marriott expenses.

As I noted previously, I don't use the UA card even to buy UA tickets.

mia

I think not. Chase will have to pay more, or risk losing the United co-brand card contract.

RNE

Agreed. So long as URs can be converted to MR points and MP miles 1-for-1, I don't see any reason to use either my Explorer Card or Marriott Card after getting the sign-up bonusses.

Spot on!

bbriscoe34

I agree, all that would be bad. I really like the ability to combine UR points with UA miles to get J class TATL redemptions. Last summer, wife and I flew the LH 747 upper deck for 70K miles and points each. Those tickets would have cost $3K or more each using cash.

1120

Perhaps, but just how much leverage does UA have? Remember the whole issue is that UR cards are gaining share at UA's expense.

The real question is whether UR cards are more profitable than UA cards to Chase. Frankly, I have doubts about CSR, though I love the card. It seems too good to last.

If CSR gets cutbacks then UA would look better on a relative basis.

Could UA get a better deal from Chase? I guess, but that does nothing to address lost market share.

I doubt that this just a UA thing; I suspect UR cards are taking market share from all of the airline cards.

Anyway, lots of good posts here and we'll see soon enough.

StartinSanDiego

Chase would suffer in other ways if they lost UA. I think an intrinsic value of UR points is the ability to transfer to United. Secondarily, Southwest. If they lose United, they lose a key UR partner, if not THE key UR airline partner. If that happened, the value of the UR earning family would erode. One backlash of that might be less people holding a high cost card like the CSR. The average person just wants to go online and book a ticket, without a big research project on award charts and sweet spots. They want to take their spouse or family somewhere and just go online and get a ticket. United is easy to book. You can generally get an award seat on the date you want, and it's straightforward. So keeping United and UR transferability to United may be as important to Chase as keeping the co-branded card.

jeepie

Alaska Air Visa for me (3 cards). Companion pass and more valuable miles. But most spend goes elsewhere (AmEx Plat, CSR, Prestige) for transferable points and multipliers. Ymmv. Cheers.