When flight attendants tell you they have an “amazing” credit card offer, be sure to double check how amazing it actually is…
Last Saturday I flew from San Francisco to Burbank on United Express after connecting from Frankfurt on Lufthansa. This was a CRJ-200 operated by Skywest. After the beverage service, the FA made the following announcement.
Ladies and gentlemen, I want to offer you a very special deal available only onboard this flight today. Shortly I’ll be walking through the aisle with credit card applications for the United MileagePlus Explorer Visa card from Chase. You can use this card to earn valuable award miles and save on onboard purchases. Now’s here the great thing. If you sign up onboard today you’ll get 40,000 bonus miles, an offer available only on this flight. I’ll be coming through the aisle in a moment with applications.
Sounds nice, right? The usual onboard credit card push. Small problem, though. The best offer for the Explorer card is currently 50K miles! Typically, you will find an application for a 50K offer in your seatback on mainline flights for the same credit card. The 40K bonus is the standard public offering, but the 50K bonus has been round for awhile onboard United flight or online here.
I didn’t take a an application, but wonder if the FA just had some old applications? The flight oddly had no Hemispheres magazines in the seatback pocket (at least in my row) so I could not verify if the offer in the magazine was the same.
CONCLUSION
If you are considering a United branded credit card, perhaps the Explorer Business Visa is a better choice for you. Chase is offering a 75K mile sign-up bonus through March 18, 2019 and also waiving the annual fee for the first year.
Bottom line: do your homework before you apply for any credit card to ensure you are taking advantage of the best offer possible.
I must be jaded, because I find the irony of a travel blogger telling people to do research rather than taking the easy approach on credit card bonuses to be uproariously funny. Supposedly reputable bloggers offer links to inferior offers so often that it’s almost a tradition. The irony is kind of like someone saying that they’re from the IRS and they’re contacting you because they’re just here to help. Killing off my near-hysterical mirth for a moment, I do realize that you are a blogger that doesn’t push credit cards, so that doesn’t necessarily include you, but I do think that you’re more than bright enough to at least find some wry humor here.
I do. And if I ever start pushing credit cards, as I used to do, I promise you will I not pump inferior offers.
I appreciate this. I saw too many people pumping the New BA 4x points for you first $30,000 in purchases. Which is worse than the old over of 100,000 points after $20,000 in spend, because you get the same amount of points for <10,000 less spend.
Meanwhile your overmonetized LP has an AMEX advertisement where main content should be. Kettle meet black ass.
Matthew please don’t push credit cards. Your blog is superior to the others thanks to you not doing that.
OMAAT and TPG I’m looking at you!
Good blog post and good point on this. Present company excluded… there are bloggers that intentionally pimp inferior offers. There are also bloggers and FA’s that just don’t know there are better offers out there. The real value is when bloggers find really special offers that are the best. My favorite FA wording is something like “and this is enough miles for a one way ticket anywhere in the USA” or whatever. Fun times.
I think TPG’s record is like 15 or so links in one “article”. Though Brian Kelly did sell the blog, so I guess that only makes sense. But man, if that’s not pathetic… I’m ecstatic that I get a respite from all that here at LALF. Even OMAAT is starting to inch its way up to “obnoxious” from simply “annoying”. Any Priority Pass lounge review/article is going to be littered with links.
Lucky over at OMAAT has a record of 25 links per article
This guy (Matthew) is a genius..openly stating he doesn’t promote credit cards in the comments on an article that surreptitiously promotes one credit card offer over another….and people are eating it up!
But no backlinks. It’s not like I am making any money off credit card sign-ups…