Earn Up to 1,500 United Bonus Miles for Shopping

After 20 years working in the travel industry, and 15 years writing about it, Tim Winship knows a thing or two about travel. Follow him on Twitter @twinship.

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Until recently, the airlines ran promotions for their online shopping portals just a few times a year, typically around holidays. Today, it seems that on any random day, there’s more likely to be a shopping bonus in place than not.

Here’s the latest from United.

Offer Details

Through October 13, MileagePlus members can earn up to 1,500 bonus miles when shopping at the MileagePlus Shopping portal, as follows:

Earn 500 bonus miles after spending $150
Earn 1,500 bonus miles after spending $350

The bonus may be earned only once per member.

Deal or No Deal

Any miles are better than no miles, right?

If you’re not earning miles by shopping at the airlines’ mileage malls, you should be. There’s no reason not to; the prices are the same. And by making your purchases through the airline’s portal, you’ll be earning miles—typically between one and 10 miles per $1 spent—that you don’t get when dealing direct through the merchant.

Making a good deal even better are the periodic bonus promotions, like this one, that amp up the mileage-earning. Such offers generally proliferate around Christmas and other heavy buying periods, although recently the airlines have used back-to-school shopping and other recurring events as the hook to hang their promotions on.

So, if you’re going to be shopping online anyway, it always makes sense to do so through an airline’s mileage portal, to earn miles for the purchases. And when there are extra bonuses in place, it makes even more sense.

As always, when shopping via an airline’s mileage mall, you must first stop at the mall’s landing page to log in with your loyalty-program credentials. Thereafter, purchases at any of the mall’s hundreds of participating merchants can be tracked and credited to your account.

Shop on!

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After 20 years working in the travel industry, and 15 years writing about it, Tim Winship knows a thing or two about travel. Follow him on Twitter @twinship.

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