BIG Bonuses From United MileagePlus Dining
The United Airlines MileagePlus Dining filled up my inbox with a big offer for miles through their dining program.
My offer allows me to earn 10,000 miles if I dine 10 times in the next roughly 40 days. That’s a lot of miles, but also a lot of dining out.
I don’t dine out a ton when at home with the family. I also don’t have a ton of work travel scheduled over this time period. Couple that with the fact that the restaurant choices for the dining programs have thinned out a bit for my tastes, and this is a tough promo to achieve.
The offer appears to be targeted, as Mommy Points noted she got a slightly weaker offer than mine from the American Airlines version of the dining portal. All of the dining programs are essentially run by the same program and you can sign up for all of them, though you can’t have a credit card registered with more than one airline’s dining program. Sorry, no double dipping!
Mommy Points brings up the idea of purchasing gift cards to achieve this bonus. I don’t suspect I’ll go that route, but if you do qualify for the 10,000 mile offer, it’s almost half of a domestic coach ticket if you achieve all ten transactions. It’s certainly something to think about…..
For the offer I received, not only do you have to dine 10 times (I could do that), you have to spend at least $40 per visit. They left that little tidbit buried way down in the tiny print at the bottom of the email.
Yeah, that’s another reason why the dining programs have become diluted. Most of their promos have a minimum spend. As Mommy Points notes, you could buy gift cards for future use, but you’d need to do it ten times.
Same for me, and mine is for 7,500 miles after 10 @ $40 each, not 10,000.
Since you can’t visit the same restaurant more than once a day, even the gift card idea is harder. If you want to buy gift cards to the same restaurant, you must go repeatedly on different days. And you can’t buy a gift card on the same day you actually dine there either. Giant pain. Not worth it.