To me nothing is worse than miles that expire after a certain amount of inactivity. You work hard, putting time, energy, and effort into earning your miles. And then a program comes along and says that after 18 months of inactivity your miles, *poof* disappear.
For the overwhelming majority of us this won’t be an issue. However, I know many among us have friends and family who don’t earn miles with credit cards. There are people who aren’t ever going to apply for an airline card, and jump through all the hoops we jump through. For them they might fly once a year, or even less. These people really earn their miles, and count on them to be there when they need them. However programs such as United, and even AA have expiration rules stuck in decades past.
Miles Expiring In a Few Days, What to Do?
I received a call from an older friend of mine, Louis. Louis doesn’t fly much, in fact he hasn’t flown in almost 18 months. He doesn’t hold a Credit card, and doesn’t really use a computer. Louis might remind you a lot of a parent, or a relative. These are the little guys, the people holding 6,000-30,000 miles that they spent 5 years earning.
Louis was a little upset because a few years ago 20,000 miles he earned by flying expired. Now he was looking at losing his other 10,000.
Does an airline as big as United need to shake down elderly folks for 10,000 MP miles? I guess they do. Fortunately today we’ll look at a quick, easy, and free way to extend the Expiration date of United Miles.
Using 24 hour Cancellation Policies to Save Miles from Expiring.
I’d love to see United drop their 18 month deadline and embrace a more pro-consumer angle. As you’ll see, anyone with 10,000 or more miles can stop the expiration of their miles for free, in about an hour. Today we’ll be using the free 24 hour cancellation policy to extend Louis’ miles.
Update (3/14): Reader Rich commented that you only need 6,000 United miles to book an intra-Hawaiian Island flight. It seems like that would make the threshold for using this trick 6,000 miles, not 10,000. Thanks Rich!
United allows flights booked more than 7 days from departure to be cancelled within 24 hours of booking for no cost. This also applies to award flights. This book/cancel action resets your 18 month inactivity period for your miles with United.
Since Louis only has 10,500 miles, I looked for a flight which can be booked for just 10,000 United miles. Anything under 700 miles would do. The booking I went with was from Denver, CO (DEN) to Sioux Falls, SD (FSD).
Flight ticketing shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes for an easy booking like this. Once ticketed Louis’ mileage balance was deducted the 10,000 miles, but most importantly this activity extended his Mileage expiration date ahead 18 months:
Use Only When Necessary
Obviously this is not the intended purpose of the 24 hour cancellation policy–but it is a nice way to help someone who’s just days away from losing their miles. This is probably against the terms of the program, and I’m sure United doesn’t enjoy the thought of people booking and cancelling to extend their activity date. However, all of this begs the question, Should airlines still have miles that expire?
United, if you read Milenomics, consider getting rid of the antiquated 18 month policy. As you can see above your 24 hour cancellation pretty much renders it useless anyway.