JBSF

Offer was for:
4000 miles: $116 for RDM + $320 for the PQM = $436/4000 mi = $0.109/mi
8000 miles: $232 for RDM + $640 for the PQM = $872/8000 mi = $0.019/mi

or did i misunderstand the offer or the way you have all been looking at it?

chinatraderjmr

My flights on ANA were offering .03 & my upcoming UA flight to HNL is at .028. I guess they no longer offer me .023. I bought RDM's twice in my life @ .023 but certainly would not buy more for miles that are now worth less

exerda

The 10.9cpm rate you see is the "all in" rate and includes both the RDM (at 2.9cpm) and the PQM (at 8cpm). Yes, you have to buy the RDM to get the PQM, but the PQM are being offered at 8cpm in your offers.

8cpm for PQM is pretty good; I've had as low as 7-point-something earlier this year, but most of mine are 10cpm at the moment. Do note, though, that unless you have a waiver for the PQD (via credit card spend, for example), buying PQM is not all that valuable for a non-status pax this year.

JBSF

Maybe I am mistaken again. But I thought I needed 25k miles and $2500 spend on PQD and at least 4 paid flight segments to get back to lowly silver from Kettle.
http://www.united.com/web/en-US/cont...r/qualify.aspx
I will be spending $1300 just on this one flight. I know it wont all count towards the PQD but it should get me a long way there, right? So if I have a few more of these (and I always do, since I always have to finalize tix at the last minute) then I will be short on miles to get to Silver, so buying miles might actually make sense? And they are cheap a) early in the year & b)for general members with near zero paid miles for the year, right?

Am i missing something, again? Thanks for your patience. I am evaluating spend and non-premier experience simultaneously for the first time since the late 90's. I just changed seats at <24 hrs and was delighted to find a 34c, because everything else SHOWING was middles. Wondering if the flight really is this full or if seat display available to general member (non-premier) is restricted... OTOH, giving UA $400 for 4k or $800 for 8k miles, without flying, is a nearly inconceivable expenditure right now.

5khours

ANA has dropped from 0.03 to 0.025.

GregMM

Next flight, 2.9 CPM plus 10 CPM for 13K miles.

chinatraderjmr

Doesn't help when my flights were last week

5khours

Looks like they've dropped the rate again to 2.3 cpm. I still predict it will go below 2.0. With the bump in award redemption rates, current cpm rates make no sense. It's cheaper to buy a paid ticket.

RNE

On the contrary, I think 2.3¢/RDM makes a lot of sense. In fact, I saw the same rate drop you did and I snapped up several thousand for an award trip that would have cost $466 more if purchased with cash.

RNE, not scrying accelerator RDMs going below 2.0¢.

5khours

Got to look at it in aggregate. Assuming that they had the price right before at 2.1 cpm for most of last year and that they have significantly raised redemption rates, then a) either they had the prices wrong before, b) they're going to cut prices this year, or c) they're dumber than I thought.

Mats

I was just looking at a mileage run, and buying Premier Accelerator looks to be actually cheaper.

SEA-IAH-BOS and vice-versa in Z earns just over $10,000 PQM for about $1,200 (add a bit more for parking, someone to watch my dog, and possibly a hotel if I want to stay overnight at the Hilton Logan Airport.)

On a one way later this month SEA-EWR-MIA, it's $1400-ish for 15,000 miles. No bargain, but arguably a better deal. I'm going to hold out and see if the kiosk offers a better rate.

WineCountryUA

for a minority of actual redemptions (debatable how small but an argument can be made for single percentage of the total redemption). If this is true, it is doubtful the rate was being driven by the those small number of redemption.

drowelf

On 2/24 - 6000 PQM for $954 -- $0.159cpm

5khours

We don't really know the numbers but...

1. The important thing is not total redemptions, but redemptions of purchased miles.

2. For domestic and international economy, me experience has always been that one could generally find paid fares for less than the cost of award tickets bought with purchased miles.

3. I use miles to buy domestic F, but I don't think the universe of people like me who are willing to pay twice the price of Y for F on domestic awards is very big.

4. Which suggests, that a lot of purchased miles are being used for premium international redemptions, and these redemptions were the ones for which the redemption rates rose the most.

5. That said, it is certainly possible that people were buying miles for small top ups to hit redemptions levels.

No data obviously. Just my analysis and I may be totally wrong. We'll see what happens on the award accelerator rates.

WineCountryUA

yep, so all we can do is speculate

One thing I learned a long time ago is what I do and why I do it probably is not very representative of what many others do, so I avoid making projections of the average customer based on my behaviors.

that's a bit too much of a leap for me
while a change may be for many reasons, the future will play itself out