5000 United Miles for Spending $1000 on MileagePlus Visa

by Gary Leff

If you had a United Visa on August 1, then all you need do to earn 5000 United miles is spend $1000 on that card between August 1 and October 31 and register here.

The unusual thing is that spending prior to registration counts. So you didn’t need to know about the promotion, and I’m not entirely sure how I didn’t know about the promotion (fortunately someone on Milepoint did). You just have to have spent the $1000 during the promotion period and register by October 31.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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  1. From the T&Cs, it looks as though people holding a MasterCard (ex-CO cards) are probably eligible as well. It’s probably worth the registration if you hold one of these.

  2. Curious that it’s been around for a while, yet only recently been noticed. Seems like a good bonus for using the card.

  3. Sorry if this is a dumb question but,
    Does the $1,000 include interest charges on my United card?
    And does it include Foreign Transaction Fees?

  6. It only says MileagePlus credit card and doesn’t specific say Visa only so I believe both Master Card and Visa will work.

  7. Is there any chance that those of us who signed up for the most recent Mileage Explorer bonus can double dip with this?

  8. Just added up all my expenses on my United card……$997.900. lol

    I guess I better go buy some milk sometime this month =]

  11. Closed one Chase account, consolidated the credit onto the MP Visa. Wish that counted 😀 Thanks for this, Gary

  13. When I put it my mileage plus number and submit it brings me to a new page but it doesn’t say anything confirming my registration. Is this normal?

  14. Note that the offer is supposed to be at Home > MileagePlus > MileagePlus News & Offers on UAL’ website. But I navigated there both while being logged in and not being logged in and could not see the offer. Everyone who signs up sees a page confirming registration, but I suspect it is targeted and the miles will not be given unless you were targeted. I suggest you first see if you can navigate to the offer while being logged into your UAL account. I suggest signing up for the offer regardless of whether or not you can navigate to the offer, but that you do not make an extra effort to spend the money on the card unless you can navigate to it.

  15. So, registration is apparently tied only to the MP number and not the credit card number. I have both a personal and business card tied to same MP number. Any idea if both would earn the 5,000 miles?

  16. 1) I think the reason United did not specify the name of the credit card, because this appears to be open to many countries where United cards are issued by various Banks (including Chase in the US), hence the disclaimer in the T&C :
    “MileagePlus participation may not be permitted in some countries. United and MileagePlus are registered service marks.”
    also:
    “Earn up to 5,000 bonus award miles when you register and spend at least “$1,000 USD or equivalent in local currency” on your MileagePlus® Credit Card between August 1 and October 31, 2012.”
    2) The above reconfirms that this promotion is open to United credit cards from many other countries apart from the US as well. For instance, I believe in Hong Kong it’s HSBC that issues the United card. Hence I believe if the promotion is permitted in your country, any flavour of the United Airlines credit card would qualify.
    3) From the confirmation page once registed, I got this:
    “Valid Fri., Oct. 5, 2012 – Wed., Oct. 31, 2012 (Time Remaining: 27 days)
    Posted Sun., Jul. 1, 2012″
    This implies that spends made prior to your registration date (for me it is today) may not qualify. Hence I suggest everyone wanting to get the 5K bonus miles to count their spend from today.

  17. @Chad – same behavior for me; no confirmation page. does it mean I’m not registered / targetted?

    Anyway to check which promos I’m registered for?

  18. Thanks for posting this one gary

    I signed up from my iphone (to do this, when clicking on gary’s text where it says, “register here,” your iphone will go to ua mobile. but if you click thru to access the full site and lig in, then you can go back to and click on the “register here” hyperlink and it brings you to the 5k registration page.

    anyway, like some others it did not give me any notice saying i was rego so i think it could be targeted but ill make the spend anyway and try and report back if it worked.

  20. I just have my reservations. When I registered, it said I was already registered with a signup date of Jan. 1, 0001, which was well before United was issuing credit cards, unless I missed something in my study of Caesar Augustus.

    I am guessing that this is targeted and we’re going to see a lot of anger, gnashing of teeth and regrets in the blogosphere when this is all over. My thought would be, sure, register if you’re likely to spend $1,000 on a Mileage Plus earning card anyway, but don’t go out of your way to do so, and don’t be overly disappointed if it doesn’t pan out. Think about it, there may be a million such cards worldwide. Why would United be making such a generous offer (5x on all ongoing spend up to 1k – who offers that?) to all people who already hold any of them regardless of location or bank? Surely they would use a targeted marketing strategy for such a promotion.

    And why, among all the credit card obsessed in this community, did nobody notice the offer until now? Just seems strange to me.

  21. the pros missed this one so bad! its like someone with a bomb slipping thru the airport security and made his way in the plane.

  22. @DaveS When I signed up yesterday, my email confirmation said I had registered July 1, 2012 which I have no memory or record of doing. That is better than your 1/01/01 date, but still gives me pause. I have not had the best luck with UA posting promotion points.

  23. The landing page now says “Eligible credit cards for this promotion are only BAM – Guatemala, Bancolombia – Colombia, Banco General- Panama, Banco Popular – Dominican Republic, HSBC – Panama, HSBC – Costa Rica, ITAU – Uruguay, PacifiCard – Ecuador, Santander- Puerto Rico, Standard Bank – Argentina. Other credit cards are not eligible for this offer.”

    My card is the Chase US card, and my attempted registration was rejected.

  25. Yes, we got the Jan. 1, 0001 confirmation as well. We no longer use the card that much and I won’t go out of my way to charge the additional $250 needed to make the thousand for the promotion.

  26. I registered yesterday and then today they changed the conditions to limit it to cards in South America. Good thing I did not switch the spending to my UA card yet.

  27. I signed up last night and got confirmation. Today, I tried to sign up my dad and got the error message. If I got the confirmation, am I good do you think?

  28. Thanks for posting both the 1k and 3k offers. I did the 1k first and was not sure if it went thru because I did it on my iphone.

    I then did the 3k and also was not sure.

    Later, on a pc, I did the 3k and got a message saying I was registered (as of oct 8). I went to do the 1k and got this note in red:

    ! We could not process your request. Please see the message below and make revisions.

    This offer cannot be registered as it is not valid offer for selected country

    So for me it’s $3k spend only. I mean I will do more anyway but I bet that’s all that counts.

  29. This was very underhanded of United whom I usually have the greatest respect for. I switched my spending from meeting my Sapphire spend to my UP Mileage Visa only to find it was a waste of time. Boo on United’s lack of transparency.

  30. Does anyone have a screen shot of the original promotion? United has asked for that when i disputed this….

  31. Does the right to change the terms and conditions of the promotion apply retroactively? I should think that if I registered and met the spend criteria prior to the change being publicized, I’ve earned the bonus, no?

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