United’s overwhelming coupon-book onslaught

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:

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
  • 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).

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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