Today Only: Purchase United Miles and Get up to 19,000 Bonus Miles
Update: Some offers mentioned below are no longer available. View the current offers here.
For Wednesday only, United is offering the ability to buy MileagePlus miles with up to a 95% discount. But, in order to get the highest discount, you'll have to act fast.
Throughout the day and until 11:59pm CT on Wednesday, Nov. 28, you can buy packages in the following order. Only when Package 1 is sold out will Package 2 become available, and so on. Here are the different levels:
- Package 1 — 80% + 15% bonus; buy 20,000 miles, get 19,000 bonus miles
- Package 2 — 80% bonus; buy 20,000 miles, get 16,000 bonus miles
- Package 3 — 60% bonus; buy 20,000 miles; get 12,000 bonus miles
The carrier is selling 1,000 of each of the packages. If you want to get the best deal, you'll want to book sooner than later in order to get Package 1.
Keep in mind that buying miles doesn't always makes sense. It’s obviously much better to earn United MileagePlus miles for free through credit card sign-up bonuses. If you’re looking for good options, the United Explorer Card is offering a limited time bonus of up to 65,000 bonus miles; 40,000 miles after you spend $2,000 in purchases in the first three months. Plus, an additional 25,000 bonus miles after you spend $10,000 total on purchases in the first six months your account is open.
As of time of publication, only Package 1 is available — the other two options are not available to select and see the pricing. With the bonus of Package 1, you'll get a total of 39,000 United miles — purchasing at a rate of 1.9 cents per mile. Based on TPG's most recent valuations, which peg United miles at 1.4 cents apiece, you'd still be paying more than what the miles are worth. Of course, if you're close to a redemption, the purchase could make sense.
According to the terms and conditions, the promotion is available only in the US and Canada. In addition, you can only make one transaction — no purchasing one of each of the packages. Bonus miles will be credited to your account when the transaction is complete, and the bonus miles will count toward the 150,000-mile annual limit per account.
How to Buy United Miles as Part of This Promotion
If you're planning on taking advantage of this one-day promotion, here's how to do so:
- Visit United's Buy Miles page.
- Click on Buy Miles.
- Enter your United MileagePlus account number and last name.
- Select which package you're going to buy.
Which Credit Card Should You Use?
We put this exact question to the test recently. Since the purchase is processed by Points.com, you won’t earn a travel category bonus for it on most cards. However, some United co-branded credit cards — such as the United Explorer Card and the United Club Card — earned 2x United miles on the purchase.
Surprisingly, the Ink Business Preferred Credit Card earned 3x Ultimate Rewards points — netting the best 6.3% return on your purchase based on TPG valuations. The runners up were The Blue Business®️ Plus Credit Card from American Express with 2x Membership Rewards points on the first $50,000 per year; then 1x (3.8%) and the Chase Freedom Unlimited‘s (1.5% cash back).
