Miles at a price UPDATE: Borderline fraud, reduced to 1 star
Written: Jul 25 '06 (Updated Aug 21 '06)
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Pros: Fair amount of miles if you charge a lot.
Cons: Unexpected fees, high rates, high annual fee, no special perqs.
The Bottom Line: Get the card if are going to spend a lot and pay it off every month. Otherwise, go for a no fee card.
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| dgdahl's Full Review: United Airlines Mileage Plus Visa(First USA) |
UPDATE: I received my statement today. Last month I paid off the statement in full. This month I had a $1 fee for finance charges. When I inquired about this, I was told that cash advances charge interest until they are paid off. That means if your bill is $1000 and part of it is a cash advance, then paying ALL of the $1000 will not prevent interest from accruing for the next period. Moreover, the source of the cash advance charge was a Western Union charge; I don't know why Chase should consider this as a cash advance on the Chase card, as they pay WU as they would any other merchant. This is just another way to screw cardholders out of some more money. The $1 fee was removed when I called to squawk, and yes I know it's petty of me to complain about this, but I feel Chase is being quite sleazy by operating this way. I am lowering my rating from two stars to one for this behavior.
I have had Mileage Plus Visas for about 7 years now. There have been a few different banks backing them, and Chase are the hooligans now running the show.
If you use the card quite a bit, you may be able to justify the high annual fee in terms of the miles you accrue. However, if you don't rack up more than about $10k per year, this card is not likely to be worth it. Moreover, there are no real perqs to this card that are not offered by cards with a much lower (or no) annual fee.
While traveling in Thailand, I had the card refused once. This necessitated calling them and straightening things out. This ain't fun. Ordinarily, I would not complain about them having some sort of fraud detection/monitoring. In this case, though, we were able to buy over $500 in jewelry on the card (in Thailand) with no problem. The refusal came when we tried to settle a $120 bill at a resort. It seems to me that the jewelry should have been the trigger, especially after the resort was able to place a hold on my card a few days earlier.
On a final down note, Chase are really putting the screws to their customers. They have jacked up interest rates and have a fairly weaselly finance charge policy that means you will likely pay a (hefty) interest charge for one extra month, even if you pay off the card in full the month before. Also, things like Western Union are considered a cash advance, and you start paying a very high rate of interest on it as soon as you make the charge. After that, Chase/United charges you a $10 fee for using WU or making a cash advance. I think it's pretty sleazy, since they do not have to do a damn thing in terms of processing the transaction that is out of the ordinary.
On the up side, you get miles. If you charge a lot, you can get a lot of miles. There are frequent double mile promotions. For example, I am paying for my MBA program with this card now, and Chase is giving two miles for every mile spent on education. That's kind of nice, since I am spending $24k this year on it. Oh, they also gave me double miles for charging traffic school. ;)
Overall, if you are going to charge $10k / year and pay things off every month then you *may* get your annual fee back from this card. Otherwise, stick with a no fee card.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
dgdahl
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Reviews written: 25
Trusted by: 1 member
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