If someone is losing money here, it's chase, not united. How on earth is united losing money here? chase pays them for the miles, lounge passes, and all other benefits.
Besides, i spent over 30k on my UA card in my first cardmember year.
Doesn't look like you know much about how CC's work, get off the high horse you're claiming not being on.
I find it interesting. Apparently you're fine with the guy who "knows the type", who "sit in their entitled chairs while complaining about their jobs while overweight and unhappy in life - complaining that they deserve to sit down and speed up their heart disease progression because they 'paid' for that right with someone else's money." but I'm the one who needs to "get off the high horse"! So stereotyping jerk, just fine with you? Logical argument about the business case around lounge access="high horse". Nice to know.
Absent the bogus ad hominem attack, you make an arguable point. Perhaps United does make money off your $60K in spending, although it's hard to say. Speaking for myself, I routinely use miles to displace flight costs that I would in fact otherwise incur (generally short notice flights) and end up averaging $.03-.04/mile in value for each mile based on money I would otherwise have given directly to United to purchase tickets. So if Chase is paying United $.03 or more per mile, then United is making money of my co-branded card spend, but since they're really paying sub-$.01/mile they're in fact losing money, more money the more money I spend on the card. I would provide you the respect you didn't provide me and assume you're also a savvy mileage spender and get far more value for your miles than Chase pays United for those miles, I know the folks who really try get up to $.08/mile in value. If you instead use the miles to replace super cheap economy fares with 25K mile round trips, then sure, United is making money off your spend, but I wouldn't insult you to presume you (or anyone here) would ever commit such a travesty! I don't know how much Chase pays for the lounge passes but I guarantee it's not $50, probably a small fraction of that if it's even broken out separately at all, and they're probably able to offer them at all because United was able to make them a "space available" product so it costs them very little. If anyone has harder data on that I'd love to hear it.
I'm happy to talk shop about business, as I mentioned I enjoy running one and did in a past life work a co-branding project so have been exposed to some of the inner workings of that. I'd love to hear your thoughts based on your experience running businesses. Just be civil, hopefully not too much to ask is it?
