Doctor of Credit has published a couple of posts recently that highlight a negative change with regards to how eligible Chase United cardholders will receive statement credits.
A couple of weeks ago, DoC shared a report from a Quest cardholder that stated their $125 statement credit benefit would be changing. As a reminder, the Quest card offers up to $125 in statement credits for United purchases each cardmember year. Previously, this was easy to redeem because all you had to do was use the card to make a purchase (or purchases) with United and you’d automatically receive statement credits each anniversary year.
No longer though. There will still be $125 of value to be had – potentially – but it’ll now come in the form of United TravelBank credit:
Starting 3/24/2025, your $125 annual United Quest Chase issued statement credits will change to United TravelBank cash, which you can apply to the flight of your choosing. View TravelBank cash in your MileagePlus account.
DoC followed that up with another post yesterday as it looks like this change will be impacting other Chase cards that previously came with statement credits in one form or another. For example, United Business cardholders received $100 in statement credits after spending at least $100 on United flights seven times a year. Going forward, that’ll be TravelBank credit:
Starting March 24, 2025, after meeting qualifying flights, your $100 annual United travel credit will be deposited in the form of $100 in United TravelBank cash
These changes are disappointing for a few reasons. One is that TravelBank cash is restrictive in terms of what you can use it for. You can redeem it for paid flights, but you can’t use it to pay for taxes and fees on award flights, nor can you use it to pay for seat upgrades, in-flight purchases and other fees of that kind.
Another downside to this new approach is that TravelBank cash expires. Ordinarily it expires five years after it’s loaded to your account, but these new credits will apparently expire after only 12 months. On the one hand that makes sense because you previously only had 12 months in which to redeem the benefits towards statement credits, but it will make things more confusing if you have TravelBank credits that expire on other dates.
That leads us to a third downside with TravelBank. I’ll be writing a separate post about this later today, but it looks like TravelBank cash is redeemed based on the date it was loaded to your account, rather than its expiry date. Seeing as TravelBank cash normally expires five years after the date it was added to your account, if a Chase United cardholder credit gets added to your account after that, it’ll only be redeemed after you’ve redeemed all of the other TravelBank cash in your account. If that’s a sizeable sum (perhaps due to using it as a method of earning airline fee credits on other cards), those United cardholder credits will go to waste each year. Update: This final paragraph was incorrect.
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This will make the people in congress see red! Another example of how the credit card companies cheat people! They will use this to say that’s why their new law they are trying to pass will protect consumers lol
Will travel bank credits be given at time of anniversary or upon purchase (as the statement credits were)?
We’re not sure about that at the moment because the notification from Chase/United didn’t address exactly how these will be credited.
You stated:
“it’ll only be redeemed after you’ve redeemed all of the other TravelBank cash in your account.”
If this is like the IHG Biz United TravelBank credit, then this gets used up usually first as it expires in 6 months after issuance. In other words, TravelBank credits that expire the soonest get used up first before using the other credits that expire later.
I don’t think that’s the case – I published this separate post afterwards as my IHG Premier credit for United TravelBank wasn’t redeemed when booking a couple of flights using TravelBank despite it expiring sooner than the rest of the credits.
Thanks for the heads-up. Would be news to me. Will find out when I use my TB next in the spring. I hope you’re wrong but we’ll see.
With their leaning more in for travel credits I would not be surprised to see them have travel bank become a true cash card for United spend. Meaning you get to use it for all United purchases.
Note – it’s annoying but if you want to extend and or consolidate credits of different age, buy a refundable fare far into the future then cancel after 24hrs. Gets deposited as travel credit with a new expiry date based on that ticket.
I belive that you can also use the refunded travel credit on non-UA metal (code share) or more flexible choices and uses (taxes, seats and cabins).
That said I still value the Quest card.
For us UA tends to be our domestic carrier of choice (but that could change when we finish spend for the SW CP in Jan/Feb 2025.
For the past 5 yrs the TB has been our primariy choice for Aspire/ and other card travel credits. We had almost $5K banked. We did use some on SW, AS and DL.
We also have the IHG card so i will likely buy a refundable fare every December/early January.
It’s a bit of game and the CC is always changing.