Tricks to achieve card spend limit to get PQD waiver
 

We normally use the Chase Sapphire card and use the United Explorer card solely to hit the $25K spend to get the PQD waiver. This year I'm in a bit of a bind. I'll qualify for Platinum only if I get the PQD waiver. There's a chance that we will not be able to hit the $25K spend on the Explorer card in the remaining time available this calendar year. I'd hate to go to ZERO status next year because of this. So one idea I had was to make some large purchases that we don't need over the holidays, register those expenses on our December statement and then return the items (unopened) to the store sometime in the second half of January (making use of extended return periods offered by many retailers). I know I'd be cheating the system here, but it hurts to think that I'll lose all my status just because we might be short of the spending threshold by $5K or so. The question is: would the return be flagged by United and my Platinum status for 2020 revoked for not achieve PQD waiver?

(PS: the alternative to avoid the PQD mess is for me to get a foreign address, which I can plausibly since my parents live in another country and I travel there frequently.)

Guess: You would be fine and your YTD spend in 2020 would start out deeply negative (if you care about PQP from spend), but I'm not 100% sure about that. It's normally a really bad idea to try to game CC benefits by charging back after obtaining a benefit.

How about you buy a fully refundable/no-fee-changeable ticket and then later on use the ticket value for other travel you were planning to do anyway?

Look at the manufactured spending forums for ideas to cheaply buy spend.

The more significant risk is that Chase shuts all your accounts and forfeits your UR points.

Pay property taxes with the credit card if you really have nothing else to buy. Don't spend money that you wouldn't otherwise spend though.

Agreed. Or even pay personal income taxes (e.g. make a 4th quarter estimated payment)

It would cost the credit card surcharge, but that certainly is worth avoiding committing fraud.

Regards

2 I’ve done before:
- Buy Costco gift cards.
- Book a week at a resort, there are a few in the Marriott system that typically take a credit card deposit of 3 nights. You can cancel in 2020.

Would it be fair to conclude your actual PQD for the year (or through the end of the year) would not reach $3,000?

I am not sure if this is a good idea. Address change would require you to submit verification as proof. Given the timing, it might trigger additional review.

Also, non-US PQD waiver is going away as of January 1, 2020.

United only knows what Chase tells them. My concern would be that Chase updates your spend and that will cause you to lose status. I've had status post in early-January when I've cut it close on the waiver and Chase normally subtracts out returns. I would not take the risk because you can't build a time machine. Just prepay bills or MS if you have to.

UA can pretty easily tell where you live if you book all your tickets thru them. (Hint: it's where all your trips originate). I haven't heard of anyone being caught but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Here's some things that might help.

Prepay your cell phone bill. I've put $1,000+ towards my account before and this is about 5-6 months worth of credit (I have 6 people on my plan).

Prepay utilities if possible. My utility company charges a flat fee for credit card payments. I usually do enough so the fee is less than 1% of the payment. Usually only a few months of prepayment is necessary.

Yep, my cell phone account has a balance of -$208 due to an AmEx promotion where I got bonus MR points for paying $100 or more, 3 times. And I'll pay my utility bills $750-1000 at a time for the same reason you do, flat fee for payments.

Another idea: use Plastiq https://www.plastiq.com/ and pay the mortgage with your credit card (disclaimer: I have never used this service).

Kiva.org is where I've put plenty of MS before (and still do). DO read up on it before putting any money in as you can lose money on there. BUT, done right it's pretty profitable. I've lost $23 out of $15k. Or the way I look at it, I paid $23 for ~45k Chase points. Pretty good deal to me.

If you're interested in more, PM me and I'll share my strategies. Rule #1 -- AVOID US borrowers. There's more than enough sources of credit in the USA. If they're fishing around on Kiva, they're not going to pay you back.

I'm going to derail the thread slightly, but how do you have 75000 PQM/90 PQS to achieve Plat, but you don't have at least enough spend for silver/gold? Just confused by your statement of having zero status.

If you can float the amount you're short of the $25k go hit a Simon mall. You can buy $10x$1000 GC at a time (maybe it's 20) and either find a way to liquidate those or just use them for your spend over the next months.Read in the MS forum on how to get rid of them if you don't want to put organic spend on them.

I can think of one easy way you could do it: partner flights on non-016 tickets.

If he was only flying on Star Alliance partners with non-016 tickets then the United Plat status won't really be doing much for him... not relevant to the initial ask, but makes me curious how you get into this situation .

If I get to the end of the year, and haven't reached the $30000 on my British Airways Chase card, I just put my property taxes on the card. Have to pay the service fee, but it is worth it.

He never said his goal was Plat, he said he had the miles for Plat. But assuming his goal was *G, he won't even be getting that without a PQD waiver.

I'll end the year with ~76K PQM's and $3,300 in PQD. Swap out Christmas travel for something in the low season and I could probably be under $3K. A $650 ticket to BKK , a ~$550 ticket to Sydney, and a very cheap P/R fare combo to Europe didn't hurt. My PQD is normally in the $8-$10K range but this was just an off year with not a lot of business travel and some cheap personal tickets. Crossed 1MM back in October which comes at the perfect time.

I can see how OP has less than $3k PQD with good old fashioned mileage runs, cheap fares and the waiver(which is what United is targeting with next year's elite requirements).

I don't normally do mileage runs but I had to go to Asia anyway and the opportunity to do the island hopper cheap presented itself. I booked EWR-NRT-SGN, PEK-NRT-GUM-(island hopper)HNL-EWR-YOW for $467.That itinerary earned me about 20k PQM but $310 or so in PQD.

Another example was where I used miles to get to Asia for another trip and came back to the US with PVG-SFO-LAX for $162 ($127 PQD but 6700 PQM).

The cheap $250-$300 fares to Europe from the US adds PQMs but little PQD too.