United Months of Miles Lessons Learned

Here we are two weeks into the United Months of Miles promotion and we have yet to earn a single bonus mile. What are we doing wrong? Lets backtrack a moment first.

My wife was targeted to join the Months of Miles promotion via United back on 8/15/11. I really did not pay all that much attention to the email honestly until MommyPoints got me excited about it with her detailed analysis and once I realized we received the best of the offers out there. My wife received the offer for 1,000 bonus miles for every two transactions (the best offer). I did not receive any such offer in my account, but it gives us the chance to earn bonus miles with less for me to keep track of with all of our family accounts.

So on August 20, I registered my wife’s account with the United Shopping portal. I knew my wife wanted to order announcements for our new house, as well as various other pictures from Walgreens. Excellent! A chance to earn some free miles. So late at night, right before heading to bed, I decided to place my wife’s orders for pictures. The terms of the United Months for Miles promotion states a minimum of $10 via the shopping portal, and we just so happen to be ordering enough prints where I could break the order up into two separate transactions to earn the bonus 1,000 miles. Yes I was going to have to pay an extra couple of bucks for separate shipping, but considering it was our first transaction in the promotion, I wanted to test the system and make sure everything worked.

As I was placing the order, there was a 20% discount code available, and mentioned on the United or Walgreens page, to receive a small discount on photo purchases. That is great news. So I placed order #1, entered the code, and placed the order. Then I placed order #2. Done. Good night.

Fast forward to September 2, and the transactions finally showed in my wife’s United queue as pending. However, in my excitement of using coupons to save a couple of bucks, I failed to realize the coupon code brought the total of one of my orders to under $10 when you take out the tax and shipping. DUH! When I placed the order I saw the total was greater than $10, but the pre-tax and shipping total is what got reported to the shopping portal. Ok regroup. Now we only have one transaction for our bonus. Lesson #1: Make sure your purchase totals $10 before tax and shipping!

After the promotion was announced, there was lots of chatter around the forums whether the United dining program had the $10 minimum spend requirement. After several days, some people contacted United and heard back that there was no minimum spend. Perfect! This is where the program had great potential!

So I signed my wife up for the United dining program, which came with a 1,000 mile bonus for new members. Sweet! I registered my wife’s United credit card with the program since we have not used it in a while. Then I strategized how to start taking advantage of this great promotion.

Downside #1 from moving to a home in the suburbs as opposed to the City…there are very limited restaurants in the dining program. The only place of potential was a Mexican joint across the street from my work. Ok I can deal with a burrito a couple times a week. So I decided to go over there one day last week to again test out how I was going to do this. I placed a to-go order for a burrito and enchilada, total $5.50 + tip. The food arrived, I placed my wife’s United card on the paycheck, and the waitress took them. She returns saying the card was declined. WHAT!?!?! Now what do I do? I have miles waiting in balance on this transaction, and things are not going according to plan. Panic, panic! I threw my food across the room in disgust and walked out…

…umm…

…of course not. I just took the card back and handed her another card. Darn. I missed out again. There was nothing I could do until my wife got home from work, and I had to explain my burrito obstacle.

So my wife called to check why the card keeps getting denied. Stupid, stupid me. I was reminded that the card we were trying to use was no longer active since we downgraded the card just prior to the annual fee renewal. Lesson #2: Make sure the credit card works before using it. I never pitched the old cards from our safe and replaced them with the new cards.

So here I am yearning for miles to post from the United Months of Miles promotion, and I keep messing up the transaction. I thought there was a chance I could add my credit card into my wife’s United dining program to still earn the rewards, but it would not let me since the card is in my name.

Once I finally get my act together, it is going to be a long couple months of tacos.