United Mileage Plus Miles - best use of them (Merged)
 

What is the best way to use these? I only have about 24K points, but I'd like to use them up....

I could buy something from their store, or is there a way to transfer them to another points program, or get gift cards?

The best way is to get another 1K miles and book a free trip.

Using miles for merchandise is not much better than throwing the miles away.

Moderator action
 

Moved to the UA section because this question pertains to mileage redemption.

25,000 miles?

Probably a roundtrip to Alaska is best use on the domestic front.

Thanks for moving this to the correct place...

I didn't realize I was so close to a free flight....

Or maybe a one way upgrade on a run to Europe?

In general, UAMP is a dead end program (not implying UAMP is a bad program). There are tons of ways to transfer in, but very little (if any) way to transfer out (with the merging with CO-OP, I don't know if that would allow you to transfer to AX/*wood/etc.).

Anyway, you can get merchandise, hotels, car rentals, magazines, all sorts of stuff (I don't know if 24K is enought for all of those). But more info can be found here:

http://www.united.com/page/article/1...Title=usemiles

You actually have enough for a short haul flight (up to 700 miles) - those are 20,000 points.

You also have the option of buying 2 one-way awards at 12,500 each.
Or one one-way first class domestic award for 25,000

Agree, it's not very good value to use these to purchase merchandise. If you have a CO account with any miles, you can tranfer your UA miles into that. I'd probably try to earn another 1000 miles just by shopping through Mileage Plus Mall, but failing that, I'd purchase the miles so I could use the 25,000 miles for an award ticket.

And if United flight availability isn't what you want, you can transfer your miles to Continental and see what they have to offer. But I'd get another 1,000 miles first.

Get Netflix - easy 1000...

Are there any 22.5k awards in the chart? The presence of one-way awards makes 24k worth much more than on, say, Delta.

The easy answer is to go eat a meal or do something else to nudge it up to 25k. Of course then you could argue that you should go a little further and get some sort of longer-haul one-way.

I actually do quite a few 12.5k/25k awards for Canada. From my hometown we never have decent fares so it's a pretty good place for miles. Alaska's a nice call too, although won't award availability be tight in the summer?

A good way to use united skymiles?
 

I've got over 130,000 miles between my account and my wife's account. Unfortunately the rewards there are horrible, there's no straight up gift cards or anything from what I can find. Aside from flights, what's the best way to spend these points?

I'm very disappointed because I look at Southwest and other credit cards with rewards programs that will just give you gift cards.

Why don’t you just buy flights? You can get pretty good value with these awards. With 130k you’ve got yourself two round-trips to Europe.

We earned these points by flying to/from Europe and don't have the vacation time to go back before they expire next summer. That's why I was hoping for a decent alternative....