Outstanding 75,000 Mile + No First Year Annual Fee Offer For United Business Card

by Gary Leff

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The UnitedSM Business Card has an outstanding offer to earn 75,000 bonus miles after you spend $5,000 on purchases in the first 3 months your account is open. That’s a lot of miles for a reasonable minimum spend requirement, and it’s exceptional value for a card with a $0 annual fee for the first year (then $99).

With a $0 first year annual fee you can even make money off of it: you’ll receive a $100 United travel credit after 7 United flight purchases of $100 or more each anniversary year.

If you’re a United flyer it has all the usual benefits and such, first checked bag free; priority boarding (which means being able to bring a full sized carry on bag on board even when traveling on a basic economy fare), and two United Club passes both at account opening and again on each cardmember anniversary. So you’re getting a couple of club passes even without that first year annual fee or waiting a year.

They even encourage you to have both a business and personal United card because you’ll receive a 5,000-mile “better together” bonus each anniversary when you have both the UnitedSM Business Card and a personal United credit card.

In year one you can earn the $100 statement credit and receive two club passes, in addition to earning the 75,000 mile initial bonus, with a $0 annual fee. In future years the 5000 mile bonus for having a personal card is nearly worth the annual fee, card benefits aside. So it’s worth getting and can easily be worth keeping.

  • The annual club passes are interesting. First, United cards have generally offered these only after the first year. This card gives you two right away.

  • The card’s initial bonus offer is huge. The travel benefits are useful if you fly United. And if you use the card to buy United tickets 7 times a year, the cost of the card ‘covers itself’. Then you don’t even have to decide if the travel benefits are worth it.

  • Rebating back $100 in United travel, which is just over the card’s annual fee, is an interesting way to encourage using the card for United purchases and putting it towards the top of your wallet for travel spend. And rather than saying you should only have one card, or one United card, they’re actually encouraging you to get a personal and business card with United by giving you more miles each year if you do.

The card makes a compelling case for new customers. They’ve got a good value proposition for keeping it too. I wouldn’t generally spend much on the card, preferring to earn Chase Ultimate Rewards points for spending which transfer to United if you wish, to other loyalty programs, or can be used to directly pay for travel or with Chase’s “Pay Yourself Back” feature.

Naturally Chase’s 5/24 applies so to be eligible you’ll want to have gotten fewer than 5 new card in the last 24 months. Although it’s generally believed that getting a Chase small business card will not add to your 5/24 total.

UnitedSM Business Card

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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Editorial note: any opinions, analyses, reviews or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any card issuer. Comments made in response to this post are not provided or commissioned nor have they been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any bank. It is not the responsibility of advertisers Citibank, Chase, American Express, Barclays, Capital One or any other advertiser to ensure that questions are answered, either. Terms and limitations apply to all offers.

Comments

  2. Value in a card like this is no longer the mileage offer. UA and others have devalued miles to the point that they are fools gold. There is value in a free bag and priority boarding if you don’t fly the airline often enough to get it through status. Oh and the lounges, you’d be better off spending a few dollars on food and drink at a restaurant in the concourse if Dr. Fauci is allowing them to be open.

  3. United miles are pretty much worthless. Thankfully I cashed in for many transoceanic F awards back in the day.

  4. When does this offer expire? I have a personal UA card coming up for annual fee renewal and will get the business UA card as a replacement.

  6. They’ve always given the lounge passes the first year, and you can usually get the second year passes and still cancel and get the AF refunded. Even better, they now deliver them via email.

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