Link a Visa card with United Mobile Offers and you’ll get 500 free United miles. You’ll need to receive a few text messages (max of 3 per week ongoing) and the 500 miles posts in 4-6 weeks. I have no idea if these special offers will be any good, I hope at least in the beginning they have some good ones. You can cancel the service at any time, but I’d wait until after the miles post.
Any ole’ Visa card works, but I’m sure they would love for you to link up their new Chase United MileagePlus Explorer Visa card targeted at regular United fliers that offers you 30k bonus points, free checked bags, priority boarding, primary rental car insurance, and more.
REGISTER FOR MILEAGEPLUS MOBILE OFFERS AND GET 500 BONUS AWARD MILES. Receive mile-earning opportunities faster by text message on your mobile device when you use your registered Visa® card. Getting started is easy. All you need is your MileagePlus membership number, your eligible Visa card and your mobile phone number.Register up to three eligible Visa cards for special mile-earning opportunities. You’ll receive up to three MileagePlus offers by text each week when you use any of your registered Visa cards.
Note that this shares your complete credit card transaction history with united to have them provide you these offers. 500 points is a rather minimal reward for that luxury (~$5 in credit card points).
Also, google voice numbers don’t work for receiving text messages from this and the other visa offers programs, making this worthless for people who don’t have SMS plans. It’s ridiculous and insulting that they don’t provide a way to use e-mail instead of SMS at this point – I’m guessing the phone companies have a finger in this too.
FYI, I just got a 50k united points offer in the mail, so people may want to pass on 30k offers. (50k points after first use, another 10k points after spending $25k in calendar year)