Where Did My United Mileage Plus Credit Card Go?

I love to learn new things, although some of the things I learn may not be all that interesting to some. Over this past weekend I randomly logged into my Chase account for some reason. I can not even recall why I was at their site, but I was surprised to see only one account when I logged in. I was used to seeing at least two Chase accounts on my personal line. My business account is through a different login, and the accounts are not attached at least when viewing them online. So I started to scratch my head and think.

When we opened up our Continental OnePass accounts last year, I knew at some point we were going to have to shut them down to maximize our chances of being able to open new United Explorer cards in the future. So the fact that my United Mileage Plus account was missing when I logged in through me off. So I figured when I get to the bottom of where my Mileage Plus account was, I would also work on closing our Continental OnePass accounts.

Long story short, after going through several rounds of representatives, no one at Chase could locate my Mileage Plus accounts, like I was completely erased from the system. Only after getting to upper level management did they finally locate my account, but could not exactly tell me why the account was closed, possibly due to inactivity. I knew inactivity definitely would not have been the case as it had only been 10 months since I used the card.

After not being able to tell me why my United account was closed, I proceeded to close my Continental account. Besides my business line, I am completely free of Chase cards at the moment. One one hand I am nervous not having any of the Chase credit lines on my files, but I will be monitoring my scores to see if there is any impact. On the other hand I am hoping the lack of Chase credit will help me when applying for future products, like the United Explorer cards.

Later that day, I called in to cancel my wife’s Continental account, assuming her United Mileage Plus account was closed also, only to find out hers was still active. I was baffled. So instead we moved my wife’s OnePass credit limit over to her Mileage Plus account, and closed the Continental card since there was no point in having dual United cards once it would convert to the United Explorer card. 🙂 Not a problem, done, and my wife now has a hefty credit line with United Mileage Plus that we can leverage in the future to get new cards.

While I had to representative on the phone, I proceeded to try and dig further on my accounts. Long story short, they still could not locate my Mileage Plus account, but offered to reopen my Continental account if I desired. I opted out, but then I start to wonder if maybe I was asked to close the United Mileage Plus account when we applied for the Continental accounts. As the agent was reviewing stuff in my account, I happen to go back to my original post when we opened up the Continental accounts to see if I had any notes about closing my Mileage Plus account. Sure enough, I had made a note stating “Long story short, Chase made me close down my United Mileage Plus card to be approved for the personal credit line.”

The blog had come to my rescue and help explain something to me that Chase somehow could not. They apparently have no notes on file about me closing one account in order to open another. Here I thought they would maintain a database to help them analyze future credit requests, but apparently not. So I learned that my memory is not the best (my wife could have told you all that), but that it really pays for everyone to have a blog documenting their credit history. 🙂 Without my notes and article, I would still be racking my brain trying to figure out what I did wrong to lose my Mileage Plus account.

What I ultimately think that I learned that can help out others though is that the terms of the United Explorer cards state “United MileagePlus Explorer cardmembers will only receive one 25,000 bonus miles award if they apply for both the United Explorer Card and the Continental OnePass Plus Card after 7/19/2011.” Therefore, according to the terms, since we applied for the Continental cards after 7/19/11, we should be ineligable for the United Explorer card in the future. However, Chase could not even locate my original United Mileage Plus account with an annual fee from two years ago, and had an extremely hard time even finding the United Mileage Plus card with no annual fee that I downgraded to last year. Based on this experience, I have a good feeling that we should have no problems obtaining the United Explorer cards in the future.

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