Until now, Amex was the king of coupon book credit card perks. These are rebates and discounts available to cardholders for specific types of spend. They’re designed to make it look like credit cards have become more affordable even as their annual fees increase. In recent years, Amex has systematically gone through their card lineup to “enhance” their cards with higher fees and more coupons. Now, someone on the Chase United card team with excellent copy & paste skills has absolutely inundated the United card lineup with coupons that are even harder to use than Amex’s. There’s a new coupon king in town. Amex has lost its crown.
Overview of Card Changes
Before diving into United’s new coupons, here’s a summary of each card’s non-coupon changes:
| Card | Old Annual Fee | New Annual Fee | Key Changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Gateway℠ Card | $0 | $0 |
|
| United℠ Explorer Card | $95* | $150* |
* $0 introductory annual fee for the first year
|
| United℠ Business Card | $99 | $150 |
|
| United Quest℠ Card | $250 | $350 |
|
| United Club℠ Infinite Card | $525 | $695 |
|
| United Club℠ Business Card | $450 | $695 |
|
As you can see above, before considering the new coupons, most cards have higher annual fees and worse benefits than before. The Quest card is a notable exception in which improved benefits arguably offset the $100 price increase. Also, those who want to spend their way to United elite status will like the fact that the PQP earning limits have gone up on all cards.
And what’s with these huge spend requirements to earn “2 Global Economy Plus seat upgrades”? It’s almost insulting. Economy Plus is just economy with slightly more legroom. It’s not even close to Premium Economy or regional first class.
Coupons, coupons everywhere
Below I’ve outlined most of the new coupons found in the United card line up. It’s staggering to me both how little creativity went into this (i.e. almost all are copied from other cards) and how they’ve managed to make most of them harder to use than with similar Amex (or, in one case, Citibank) coupons.
Prepaid Hotel Rebates
Both of the $150 United cards (Explorer and Business) come with $100 in United Hotels credit. On the surface this sounds identical to the Delta Gold card’s $100 Delta Stays credit. But United makes this one harder to fully use by breaking up the $100 across two stays. With United, you get at most $50 back per stay.
Renowned Hotels & Resorts
This is a hotel booking website that offers perks when booking luxury hotels:
- Daily breakfast for 2
- $100 property credit (includes dining, spa or other activities at the property)
- Room upgrade at check-in, if available
- Early check-in/late check-out, if available
- Complimentary wifi
Quest cardholders get $150 back per anniversary year while Club Infinite and Club Business cardholders get $200 back per anniversary year.
This is obviously a copy of the Amex Platinum Card’s $200 Fine Hotels & Resorts / The Hotel Collection rebate. I prefer Amex’s approach, though, because it is offered per calendar year and so it’s much easier to remember when it resets.
Rideshare Credits
Delta Platinum and Reserve cards offer $10 per month in rideshare rebates after a one time required registration. United now offers similar monthly credits as follows:
-
- Explorer: $5 per month
- Business: $8 per month; $12 in December
- Quest: $8 per month; $12 in December
- Club Infinite: $12 per month; $18 in December
- Club Business: $12 per month; $18 in December
Of course United had to make it a little bit more difficult than Delta’s coupons. With United you need to opt in every year.
Avis/Budget Rental Car Credits
Here United decided to copy Citi’s AA Executive card rather than Delta. Citi’s AA Executive card offers up to $120 back on Avis or Budget prepaid car rentals every calendar year. With the Citi card, you can use up the entire credit with one rental. Of course, United wanted to make it harder on us so they’ve broken up the rental credits across two rentals, each of which must be at least 2 days long, and made the credit reset each anniversary year. Worse, instead of a statement credit, you get United TravelBank credit.
-
- Explorer: $50 United TravelBank ($25 per rental) for Avis/Budget rentals booked through cars.united.com per anniversary year
- Quest: $80 United TravelBank ($40 per rental) for Avis/Budget rentals booked through cars.united.com per anniversary year
- Club Infinite: $100 United TravelBank ($50 per rental) for Avis/Budget rentals booked through cars.united.com per anniversary year
- Club Business: $100 United TravelBank ($50 per rental) for Avis/Budget rentals booked through cars.united.com per anniversary year
Instacart Credits
This version of copy and paste stayed in-house at Chase. Here they copied the old Instacart benefits that used to be available for Sapphire Preferred and Sapphire Reserve cardholders. Annoyingly, with cards that offer more than $10 per month in credits, they decided to break up the credits across multiple Instacart purchases.
- Explorer:
- 3 month Instacart+ membership, then 25% off through 12/31/27
- $10 rebate per month through 12/31/27
- Business:
- 3 month Instacart+ membership, then 25% off through 12/31/27
- $10 rebate per month through 12/31/27
- Quest:
- 3 month Instacart+ membership, then half price through 12/31/27
- One $10 and one $5 rebate per month through 12/31/27
- Club Infinite:
- Free Instacart+ membership through 12/31/27
- Two $10 rebates per month through 12/31/27
- Club Business:
- Free Instacart+ membership through 12/31/27
- Two $10 rebates per month through 12/31/27
FareLock Credits
Finally an original coupon! If you’re looking at buying a flight, but you’re not 100% sure, United lets you purchase FareLock to lock in the current price for 3, 7, or 14 days.
- United Business: $25 per anniversary year
- United Club Business: $50 per anniversary year
JSX Semi-private Jet Service Credits
Here’s another original-ish one. Delta and Amex have offered various discounts and rebates for private jet service at different times, but I don’t remember this JSX service in particular. Here’s the rebate that each United card offers:
- Explorer: $100 per anniversary year
- Business: $100 per anniversary year
- Quest: $150 per anniversary year
- Club Infinite: $200 per anniversary year
- Club Business: $200 per anniversary year
Annual fees are near carbon copies from Delta’s lineup
United didn’t limit their copy & paste skills to couponing. They also copied and pasted annual fees. United’s new card lineup copies Delta’s annual fees almost exactly. The one deviation is at the high end where United charges $45 more for their club-access cards than Delta (which may be justified since United allows cardholders to guest in their family to United Clubs whereas Delta provides only 4 guest passes per year to Sky Clubs).
| Annual Fee | Delta Card | United Card |
|---|---|---|
| $0 | Blue | Gateway |
| $150 | Gold & Gold Business | Explorer & Business |
| $350 | Platinum & Platinum Business | Quest |
| $650 | Reserve & Reserve Business | |
| $695 | Club Infinite & Club Business |
Conclusion
I’m really disappointed with the direction Chase and United went with their card refresh. In most cases they raised prices and made the base-level benefits of their cards slightly worse (or much worse if you counted on Star Alliance club access before). Then they threw in a junkpile of hard-to-use coupons to make up for the higher annual fees. No thanks!
Of course the changes aren’t bad for everyone. The Explorer and Business card annual fees only rose slightly over $50 each and if you make even a half-hearted attempt to use their coupons, you could easily recoup more than that. Those who like to spend their way to elite status will like the higher PQP limits and the annual bonus PQPs available with the more expensive cards. For everyone else, I think the one bright spot is the Quest card. Yes the annual fee increased from $250 to $350 but they also increased its TravelBank credit by $75, changed the two 5K award rebates into a better 10K award discount, added the ability to get a second 10K discount with $20K spend, increased the cap on Premier Qualifying Point earnings, and added a 1,000 Premier Qualifying Point (PQP) bonus each year, starting in 2026. And all of that is before counting any savings you might get from the card’s slew of coupons.
What do you think of the United card changes? Comment below.
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This sucks. I don’t want to spend $10,000 on the Gateway to get reduced mileage awards.
It’s crazy to me that the Quest card gets $200 travelbank credit each year, while the Club card gets $0.
Mostly useless benefits, maybe the hotel discount could be useful but I’ve never used United Hotels, I assume that they’re more expensive than other avenues and of course you don’t get any loyalty benefits. Also why is instacart here, the others I can kind of see being relevant for a traveler, but instacart shouldn’t be on an airline card.
What worries me more is whether this will be a trend with Chase, will they start raising the fees for all of their cards and adding extra coupons that make them more annoying to use? Well, I suppose now this is the best chance we have to cancel and send a message before it gets out of hand. I’m definitely going to be cancelling my Club card, the lack of *A access completely kills any benefit I had since I mostly fly overseas. Unless people start to cancel or downgrade their cards now and send a message, expect all of our Chase cards to add this nonsense.
Only worth it for the SUBs. Loyalty not going to be worth it now w the CLUB card taking away Star Alliance Lounges.
You can get Peacock through Instacart+
Yes
Just say no to coupon cards.
can one combine a instacart credit from 2 cards on one order?
I don’t think so
The loss of saver view via backdoor Explorer -> Gateway PC is going to be missed.
This really doesn’t change anything for me with the Exploder Card – $150 for bags plus two club passes (and maybe $50 for a cheap hotel room) still works. United nerfed their points program years ago so [shrug emoji].
Fixed. Thanks!
Does anyone know what happens to the $75 IHG credit on the united club card?
Don’t premier gold elites get acces to star alliance lounges regardless? How’s is it then considred a chase united club card benefit?
Good question. It’s very confusing because United created two levels of lounge access membership and the Club card is sort of like a third level:
If you have the Club card and Gold status (or spend $50K) you get upgraded to All Access membership. For Gold status members the only advantage (I think) is guesting in another adult.
How do you opt in to the ride share credits? The terms say you must do so but there is no link and I can’t find anything on chase com/app.
LOL. You’re right. When I look at the benefit from the Chase app it says to register in the Chase app (or by calling) but it doesn’t seem to provide a way to do that
It worked for me in the Android app. Maybe they have not updated Apple yet?
Worked for me as well in Android.
You’ll see it on the Benefits tab on the bottom of the main screen in the Chase app
Ah, that’s the key! When I went to the card first and click to view benefits it didn’t show me that option. Thanks!
Well said – generally negative except Quest. For the Quest, one paid and one award booking annually for it to pencil out. But 90k SUB seems low, I’ll wait for an increase.
As someone else commented to a different article, given the huge demand in travel, airline and hotel loyalty programs will continue to chip away at tier benefits, up the ante on things like lounge access, and move to dynamic pricing. And, it seems that Chase has borrowed part of Amex’ playbook on statement credit breakage. It will only get tougher and tougher for the average loyalist.