Unable to earn non flight miles

[DanziM]

Such a pity that United dont offer Australian customers alternative means of accruing miles. I regularly fly to LAX however like my Velocity account id like to be able to link my MP account to a credit card to access extra miles.

American customers as of todaz can get a bonus 50k miles signing up to their mileageplus explorer program.

The only way i can earn extra miles by spending is by transferring my amex points to SPG at 2 to 1 then over to MP at 2 to 1. Pretty tragic as 10000 reward points turns into 2500 mp.

I have contacted United about this however nothing is planned to change this. It wont stop me flying United as they are a fantastic airline just disappointing to not offer us more.

 

[pangwen]

Probably not as lucrative as credit cards, but I've managed to keep my United account alive for the past 4-5 years without flying by using their shopping toolbar (now gone IIRC), plus their online shopping mall and the facebook offers.

 

[ChrisFlyer]

I know that United MP is a partner with Hilton and WorldHotels - if you stay in those properties, you can often earn miles for each stay... while not direct credit card spend, it's better than nothing and would keep your account active!

 

[Supersonic Swinger]

You probably can't for the same reason you can't directly earn credit card miles on British Airways, Air Canada, Air India, Icelandair or most other overseas airlines. There just aren't enough people who would be seeking miles in the UA program in Australia to justify the cost to a credit card provider or the airline instituting a credit card earning mechanism.

I recently asked someone at Amex if they had any plans in allowing Membership Rewards conversion at least to Delta given that Amex is Delta's exclusive card provider in the US, and they said there were no plans - their transfer partners reflected where most people in Australia wanted their rewards to go - i.e. Qantas, Virgin, Singapore, Cathay, Malaysian, Etihad, Air New Zealand, Thai and Virgin Atlantic. The only other one would probably be Emirates, which has a co-branded credit card with Citibank.