Chase announced today that their popular United co-branded card – the United MileagePlus Explorer Card – will no longer have foreign transaction fees as of June 1st. This is huge as the current foreign transaction fee is 3%. If you travel internationally with this card, you can now save 3% in fees (as of June 1st).
Foreign transaction fees are a big deal because not only do you get hit with a massive fee (that literally wipes away any value you would get from points earned on those purchases) when you are traveling outside of the US but you can also get hit with it when you book travel with a foreign agency/airline or purchase online from a foreign company.
This Chase card has a public offer of 30,000 United MileagePlus miles but you can find information in this thread on Flyertalk about how to get even more miles from this card. My wife and I both applied for this card when we were able to get 55,000 miles with the application. This is a great card to have for the bonus as well as the features:
- Free checked bag
- 2 United Club passes annually
- Priority boarding privileges.
- Primary rental coverage
The best thing about this new waiver for me is the primary rental coverage on rental cars. This allows you to waive the rental insurance from the rental car company and let the card take the brunt of the insurance. So now, if you use this card to rent outside of the US, you do not have to worry about the 3% foreign transaction fee. Thank you, Chase!
[…] May 23, 2013 […]