younginvestor2013
Recycles dryer sheets
- Joined
- Feb 6, 2013
- Messages
- 226
United is currently offering a flash sale (ends on 4/8) on mileage purchases, offering up to a 100% bonus on the miles purchased. If you buy 40,000 to 87,500 miles, you get a 100% bonus.
Is anyone pursuing this? Or am I overlooking something?
As fate would have it, my family and I booked a Spain/France/Italy cruise in late-Sept this year. We booked before the COVID pandemic, obviously.
It is probably likely that it will get canceled, but who knows at this point.
Looking at flights on United, if we were to buy miles under the promotion described above, we could fly Polaris business class round trip to Europe for roughly $750 PP (when converted from miles), which is actually slightly less than what we'd pay if we just bought economy fare tickets outright.
Is it not advisable to buy miles under this scenario and immediately book this low cost business class fare?
Here are the risks I am thinking of:
-Flight is canceled but cruise is still scheduled, left trying to work around United's alternate flight schedule which might not align with our cruise schedule
-Flight + cruise is canceled, and we are left with a ton of United miles. Not really a bad thing, we travel a ton and would use the miles eventually. United miles don't expire
-We decide not to go, and cancel the flights and have a ton of miles. United changes mileage program where miles can expire and they end up expiring before we can use them, thus resulting in me losing money.
-United goes bankrupt or merges with another airline, and my miles disappear, thus resulting in me losing money.
This is obviously a ploy for United to get some cash due to the current circumstances...understandable. Does it make sense to take advantage of the offer, even if I think there's a good chance that the cruise doesn't happen (we would probably try to schedule for 2021)? As I said above, we travel a ton and the miles will get used, but there is risk in that they could change the parameters of the mileage program, or United could go under
Is anyone pursuing this? Or am I overlooking something?
As fate would have it, my family and I booked a Spain/France/Italy cruise in late-Sept this year. We booked before the COVID pandemic, obviously.
It is probably likely that it will get canceled, but who knows at this point.
Looking at flights on United, if we were to buy miles under the promotion described above, we could fly Polaris business class round trip to Europe for roughly $750 PP (when converted from miles), which is actually slightly less than what we'd pay if we just bought economy fare tickets outright.
Is it not advisable to buy miles under this scenario and immediately book this low cost business class fare?
Here are the risks I am thinking of:
-Flight is canceled but cruise is still scheduled, left trying to work around United's alternate flight schedule which might not align with our cruise schedule
-Flight + cruise is canceled, and we are left with a ton of United miles. Not really a bad thing, we travel a ton and would use the miles eventually. United miles don't expire
-We decide not to go, and cancel the flights and have a ton of miles. United changes mileage program where miles can expire and they end up expiring before we can use them, thus resulting in me losing money.
-United goes bankrupt or merges with another airline, and my miles disappear, thus resulting in me losing money.
This is obviously a ploy for United to get some cash due to the current circumstances...understandable. Does it make sense to take advantage of the offer, even if I think there's a good chance that the cruise doesn't happen (we would probably try to schedule for 2021)? As I said above, we travel a ton and the miles will get used, but there is risk in that they could change the parameters of the mileage program, or United could go under