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One of the new benefits that launched today on the IHG Premier card is the ability to get up to $50 per year in United TravelBank cash. Unfortunately, it’s kind of disappointing. The TravelBank cash will expire in short order, so unless you frequently buy United tickets this benefit will likely be of limited use.
Link to sign in and enroll your IHG card with your United MileagePlus account
At the link above, IHG explains that these credit will come out as a $25 TravelBank credit twice a year around January 1st and July 1st. Credits issued between January 1st and June 30th will all expire on July 15th and those issued from July 1st through December 31st will expire on January 15th regardless of issue date. It may take about two weeks after registration to get your initial $25 credit.
I’m disappointed to see that this will be rolled out as two $25 credits as that limits its usefulness to me and the fact that the TravelBank cash expires so quickly means that you’ll only be able to make full use of it if you fly United pretty regularly on paid tickets. Unfortunately, you can’t use TravelBank money to pay the taxes and fees on award tickets.
I’m sure that this discount will work out well for some, but for others it will get occasional use at best. I wish IHG and United would have made this a single $50 annual credit, but I’m sure it isn’t accidental that they built a smaller-value short-term-expiration credit here. I’m sure they’ll see more breakage that way and as such the benefit will live a longer life for those able to take advantage of it.
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I got them to fix it.
Has anyone figured out a workaround? I’ve tried 5 browsers on multiple devices and can’t get it to go through
Link won’t work for me on any device
Just registered. Credits posted immediately. See four $25 credits, for a total of $100 expiring in September 2023. I have only two IHG cards: one premier and one older $49 AF card.
people are already seeing the credit? I just registered an hour ago or so, I see nothing.
Some strange things just happened: when I finished filling in the personal information and clicked register button, it did not respond, so I tried to click again. Eventually it showed that the registration is successful. While when I logged in my united account, the expiration date of the newly deposted travel bank cash is 09/24/2023 (18 months from now), but it showed with 3 X $25 cash was deposited today, while I only have one card. And I waited for another 10 min, it still exist. Very interesting. Hopefully the additional amount would not be clawed back…
I’ve been trying all morning and I can’t get the button to click and submit anything. Tried multiple browsers, and desktop/mobile
Yes, I remembered that I had encountered the similar scenario: the submit button did not seem to be clickable, as the mouse is still in cursor instead of the finger shape, but I just clicked on it any way. Nothing seemed to work, so I just tried to click it one or two time, still nothing, which seemed to be stuck with a frozen web page. Then around 10-15 seconds later, the page magically changed to the congratulation page saying that my registration is successful. And that was the time when these 3 X $25 amount showed up in my United Travel Bank account. (Still here now). So YMMV I guess…
yeah it’s still not doing anything for me, IDK
if you have both cards, do you $25 times 2?
Interesting. Both $25 credit went into my Travel Bank at the same time.
I’m seeing “$50 Expiring 0/24/2023”
The $25 appeared instantly in my Travel Bank, and it expires 9/24/2023.
Im curious what happens if you use this toward a flight and then cancel the flight. I assume it goes back into the travel bank with the same expiration date, as opposed to becoming a travel credit with one-year expiration like a cash ticket would.
It will work for me. I’m Gold for life on United and still fly them frequently. The only problem is I hit the register button and nothing happens.
Two different browsers. ipad and laptop. Button still doesn’t work. Anyone else having this problem?
I am but haven’t found any solutions
same problem for me.
same here. Did not work for my wife. When I click the register button with my wife’s IHG login details, it logs her in but the same login page comes up. For me it worked immediately. Called and wrote to IHG, they have no idea.
Nick, Have you written a United Travel Bank 101 themed article? I’m not as familiar with United’s offerings since the Continental merger, so I really need to get caught up! Thanks.
With the Clear credit and all the Amex Airline incidental credits many have been stuffing into their travel bank, a post on this subject would be of great interest. I just used travel bank for the fist time. I had $100 in the travel bank from the CLear credit expiring in June and am Going to Austria next week. Unfortunately, travel bank funds can only be used on United metal and United does not fly to Vienna, only codeshares with Austrian Air. So I booked a basic economy positioning flight to Madrid on United for $205 splitting between travel bank and Quest card to get free checked bags.
Yeah, and the Diamond breakfast benefit will be $10 per day…
Does this mean that the family rule is also in effect (i.e. can’t get the Premier if you have the Select)?
Also seeing $25.00 expire 09/24/2023