In 2006 Chase and United came together to offer a revolutionary new product called Choices. For the first time it gave customers the ability to trade in their hard-earned MileagePlus miles for a statement credit on United purchases made with their co-branded credit cards. The redemption rate was, and still is, 1 cent per mile. Choices was quickly written off by many, because after all, who would want to sell back their miles for half or a third of what it typically (at the time) cost to earn them. Compared to trading in miles for first and business class travel overseas (which seems to be the aspirational goal for so many in our hobby), it didn’t appear to be that great of a deal. Understandably, there just hasn’t been much buzz about the program since it was first introduced.
Still, MileagePlus Choices remained a viable alternative for those looking to redeem miles, especially for domestic coach award travel. Instead of paying 25,000 miles for a Saver Award or 50,000 miles for a Standard Award, if you could find a ticket less than $250 or $500 respectively, it actually made sense to use Choices. I myself traded in some of my Choices miles for a couple of cheap tickets to Durango, CO back in 2008. As an additional bonus, my husband and I still got our miles (and precious EQMs) for the flight, because as far as United was concerned, those were revenue tickets.
After that, I too quickly forgot about the program. In fact, up until very recently, 2008 was the first-and-last time I took advantage of that particular offering from United and Chase. Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, after a spontaneous late night mileage run booking binge, and all of a sudden I had a several thousand dollar credit card bill to deal with. It was now time to reevaluate my Choices…
The Basics
Complete program terms and conditions can be found here, but here are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind:
- Award miles accrued with your MileagePlus credit card and transferred to your MileagePlus account based on eligible card activity, including, but not limited to, credit card purchases, Chase promotional offers, and anniversary renewals, are available for redemption in the MileagePlus Choices program.
- Your Choices program balance is a subset of your MileagePlus award miles balance and not a separate balance.
- You cannot have a greater Choices program balance than your MileagePlus award miles balance.
So basically, the amount of Choices you have available is based on how much you spend with your co-branded credit card (not just on United purchases, but in general), and you must have enough MileagePlus miles in your account to cover the redemption.
Partial credits are allowed, but the minimum redemption is 5,000 miles (up to $50). Statement credit cannot exceed the price of your ticket and requests to redeem Choices must be made within 90 days of purchase.
Chase Choices vs. United Award Travel
If you’re contemplating award travel, let’s evaluate some options-
- Domestic Coach Standard Award = 50,000 miles. It’s for last-minute travel and you can’t find a Saver Award (25k), but you do find a revenue ticket for less than $500- let’s say $350. Redeem 35,000 miles via the Choices program for a $350 statement credit and save 15,000 miles! You’re still eligible for upgrades, plus you’ll get both miles and EQMs for your flight.
- Business Class Saver Award to Asia = 120,000 round trip. If you can find a ticket for less than $1200 (again, Business Class) then by all means use your Choices, but good luck! In this case you would most likely never find a ticket for that price so its makes sense to book a mileage award directly with United. Of course, don’t forget about the taxes and fees; if your decision point is close, that may tip the scale.
The math is pretty simple- Add two zeroes the price of the ticket, and that’s what it would cost in miles using Choices for a statement credit. The above are two extreme examples, but the more you search for airfare and play with the numbers, the more evident it becomes why this strategy works best domestically and in coach.
Redeeming Choices for a Statement Credit
united.com/chase
As I mentioned before, I recently booked a bunch of cheap mileage runs on United using my Chase MileagePlus Select Visa, but wasn’t as happy when I finally got the bill. Since I hadn’t touched my Choices balance since 2008, I had plenty of miles available to cover most of the expense. I went to united.com/chase to begin the process. I clicked the “Redeem Now” button next to the picture of the airplane, and after I logged in, was taken to a page titled “Redeem for airfare statement credit”. I entered the transaction reference number off of my credit card statement, the dollar amount of the ticket, and my email address.
Redeeming My Miles for a Statement Credit
Next came a message that my request had been received and a statement credit was posted to my Chase account just a few days after that. I repeated the process for a bunch of the other tickets I bought until I was almost out of Choices. My mileage balance took a significant hit, but the good news is that I will earn a majority of those miles back once I start flying again in the fall. I’m still working out the exact math, but at this point I figure my 1K Status for 2014 is now only going to cost me a few hundred dollars out of pocket. In light of today’s big announcement from United, I doubt I’ll ever make 1K again, but for now, this new strategy will undoubtedly come in handy for at least another year as I wrap up my quest towards Million Miler. As the statement credits continued to roll in, I began calculating the price of those last few precious EQMs and began to wonder what I’d have to do to earn back the rest of my miles…that’s when things got interesting…