Via Milepoint, US Airways is back with their 100% bonus on purchased miles through March 31.
Except it’s not a straightforward double miles offer. Instead, you get a 75% bonus immediately when you purchase miles. Then in order to get the remaining 25% bonus you need to use the Dividend Miles toolbar by March 31.
Now, when you download and install the toolbar and make three searches with it or an online purchase, you get 500 bonus miles (1000 bonus miles for US Airways elite members and co-branded credit card holders, only US-based members of the Dividend Miles program are eligible for the first use bonus).
Making three searches with the toolbar is required to earn the 25% bonus on purchased miles, and the 25% will post 5-10 days after having made the miles purchase and after completing the three searches with the Dividend Miles toolbar.
Accounts that don’t have an address in the 50 U.S. states or Puerto Rico aren’t eligible for this 25% bonus, and changing your address won’t help because your address as of February 1 had to be eligible.
Only the first 50,000 miles you purchase are eligible for the 75% and 25% bonuses.
And as usual, Dividend Miles accounts less than 12 days old are not permitted to buy miles, you need to open an account and wait — they don’t want people signing up just to cash in miles immediately for high value awards.
Last month US Airways made a targeted offer to folks who had purchased miles before to do so again and get a bonus.
Clearly Dividend Miles is playing around will all kinds of things to see who will take them up on their offers and what they can make members do in order to get the offer. In this case there’s the modest pain of downloading their search toolbar, though I don’t see any reason you can’t just uninstall it after receiving your 25% mileage purchase bonus.
So am I correct that, in the end, this allows you to buy US miles at 1.37 cents each?
Seems useful to the int’l biz class set (folks willing to pay about $1500 roundtrip to Europe to sit up front) and those topping off their accounts for specific awards.
Any other good uses for miles at this price?
@iahphx bingo. 90k miles for business class North America to North Asia (which includes Hong Kong).
@Gary
So do you think that someone with an EU address should go for the 75% bonus? I don’t want to travel in the next months, but I would like to start stacking miles for future awards.. With 87,500 miles you can’t do much, but it shouldn’t be so hard to find another 2.5k to reach 90k. Besides with the next promo I will be able to have enough miles for an F to South pacific which is tempting. So buy or not buy?
I love how they market a toolbar for IE when no one still uses IE.
How does this compare to 2010 offer for buying miles? Can one buy more than 87,500 miles and still receive the 75 percent bonus?
..and something else. I now have an acount with EU address, only 1k miles in it. Is it possible to open a new one with the same name and US address? Wait 12 days, buy miles, get 100%?
@chitownflyer
Nope. You buy max. 50,000 miles. And you then get the bonus over those 50k. So with 75% you end up with 87,500 miles. Any more miles you buy are going to be without a bonus. So you can buy more, but they will cost you the normal price.
Gary —
That North Asia award is definitely the “loophole” in the Dividend Miles program. I think I’ll use my miles for that one. Thanks.
Gary – How’s the typical availability on North Asia awards (Tokyo/Hong Kong) when booking a few months out?
@Ken lots of ways to get there…so in general pretty good. There’s Asiana and ANA and United all through several gateways. (Not to mention Continental, and Air China, but those flights can be harder to get.)
You can’t change your address now: that horse has bolted.
Your address had to be US-domiciled as of February 1.
Other good uses I can think of:
* C Europe – Africa (75k)
* C Europe – North Asia (80k)
* C S Pacific – N/S/C Asia (90k)
* C Caribbean/Mex/C Am – N/S/C Asia (90k)
* F Europe – N Asia (100k) -> unbelievably good deal
* F Europe – Africa (100k)
@Joe Jones – have you had any success in booking any of those routes?
I took advantage of the last promo they had with 100% bonus. Paid about $1400 with all fees I believe for 100k miles and booking fees to do N. A. to Hong Kong. Took 90k miles and I am going Business class ( First time ever) was only 400 more then flying coach so I jumped on it
How do you uninstall the toolbar? I have a mac. Any help would be appreciated. THanks.
Bought on a promo back in september, got 100k miles for 1478usd. Used it for an F award on SWISS from europe to Tanzania (africa). The total including all taxes and fees for the ticket was about 1600usd. Would have had to pay around 1450-1500 for a coach ticket anyways, so 100-150 dollar for an upgrade to First Class was an easy deal ;)!