Up to 40% Bonus on Purchase of United MileagePlus Miles

This United mile purchase bonus ends tonight (3/14) at 11:59PM Central time. How it works is that if you purchase 50,000 United miles or more, you will get a 40% bonus. If you purchase less than 50,000 United miles, you will receive a 25% bonus. The total amount you will see has all the taxes and fees included in the purchase price. According to Ben from One Mile At A Time, this purchase originates directly from United (instead of points.com like many such purchases). This means that if you use a credit card that offers bonus points for airfare, you will receive bonus points for this purchase. For example, if you were to use the American Express Premier Rewards Gold card and purchased 50,000 miles for $1,128.75, you will receive 3386 Membership Reward points for the purchase. If you were to use the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, you will receive 2413 Ultimate Reward points.

If you purchase over 50,000 United miles, you will be paying $.022 per mile. That is a lot to pay for miles, but it is cheaper than the $.025 per point from Ultimate Reward points (Chase only allows you to purchase 5,000 Ultimate Reward points in a month anyway). So, should you purchase these miles? That would depend on whether you are short United miles and/or you have a planned trip coming up. To put this clearly, 60,000 United miles would get you an award ticket to Europe from the US. To purchase enough miles to fly there on that award ticket would set you back $1354. It is pretty easy to find paid tickets to Europe quite a bit cheaper than that. However, if you were looking to purchase miles to top off your account for a business class/first class redemption, it would be a little bit better. If you had thought about buying United miles, this would be the cheapest you will find them. If you want them, act quickly as it expires tonight!

Hat tip: One Mile At a Time