The Fidelity promos for AA, DL, and UA have been around for some time and offer an easy way to earn up to 50,000 bonus miles for depositing $100,000 in a new or existing account each year. Back in 2010/2011, the promos were extremely lucrative as you could double-dip by signing up for more than one partner promo per year and you were even able to cycle your money into and out of your account to reach the “100,000” requirement. However, in recent years Fidelity has placed more scrutiny on both the rolling 12 month limitation and the cycling of funds to reach the 100k threshold (some still report this working but others have been warned). One positive change is that all three offers are now open to existing account holders and no longer limited to new customers (though there were ways around this requirement as well). I followed the rules on this promo and signed up for the AA promotion in December 2011 and received 50,000 miles after maintaining 100k in the account for six months. I then pulled the funds and redeposited them in December 2012 to take advantage of the UA promotion. While the miles took almost eight weeks to post in 2012, I woke up this morning to find the miles in my United account after only 5 1/2 weeks. Though it’s rare for Fidelity to try to pull the miles back, I’ll maintain the funds in the account until the six month mark as I want to be able to take advantage of the promo again next year. Remember, the limitation is based on your social security number, so you can withdraw the funds, sign your spouse or significant other up for the promo, and then redeposit those same funds to qualify them for the bonus. An Apple gift card offer is also available.
AA Offer
DL Offer
UA Offer
Apple Gift Card
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9 comments
I was pleasantly surprised to see my 50k miles deposited less than a week after the 100k deposit.
Can I borrow 100k someone?
@JackDaniels – Haha, yes that’s one of the problems with this promo.
Is it possible to earn the bonus miles if I have 403b retirement account with them and deposit that into other accounts with fidelity? Would you be able to clarify how to take advantage of this promotion?
@jim – unfortunately transferring between Fidelity accounts (even from a retirement to a nonretirement brokerage account) does not count as “new funding”. The funding has to come from an external account, however you can use the same funds to open your nonretirement account, wait 6 months, withdraw them back to an external account, and then redeposit them into another new account that perhaps another family member opens.
thank you
Not a bad deal… but not as good as before.
Suppose you value miles at 1.5 cents / mile… then over the course of 2 years, you’re netting $2250 worth in miles + $500 in apple gc, or $2750 in total cash/cash equivalent for locking $100,000.
Using simple average, $2750 / $100,000 / 2 years = 1.375% APY. Of course, you could actually be investing using the account, and not just for a rather slow churnage in miles…
I used this promo after opening a new fidelity account in dec2011. I used rinse and repeat 4 times ,$25k each. I was able to get $100 apple GC and 50,000 UA miles. I didn’t keep $25k in fidelity account for more than a week after I got all my miles. I got all my miles with in a week of finishing the $100k goal. Now, that fidelity account is used by my employer for my retirement account.
It has been about 12 months since I got miles from last promo. Any report of rinse and repeat for this promo in 2013?
@Flyer – Nice! I haven’t heard of any positive rinse and repeat experiences for 2013…