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How Long Do Chase Ultimate Rewards Points Take to Transfer? For most airline and hotel partners, the transfer time is close to instant. That said, points don't always transfer instantly–they can take hours or even days in some cases, even for a partner that you've previously transferred points instantly to. Before we get to a recent example of a delay, here are the typical Chase Ultimate Rewards transfer times:
- Aer Lingus: Instant
- Air France/KLM Flying Blue: Instant
- British Airways Avios: Instant
- Emirates Skywards: Instant
- Hyatt: Instant
- Iberia Avios: Instant
- IHG: Instant
- JetBlue TrueBlue: Instant
- Marriott Rewards: ~3 days
- Singapore KrisFlyer: Usually 24-48 Hours
- Southwest: Instant
- United: Usually Instant (but see below)
- Virgin Atlantic Flying Club: Instant
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Delays with Ultimate Rewards Transfers to United MileagePlus
Previously, we've transferred Ultimate Rewards to United MileagePlus that were instant. But a few days ago, I was surprised to find that a 20,000 points transfer from my husband's Ultimate Rewards account to United MileagePlus didn't go through instantly. We'd previously transferred from his Ultimate Rewards account to his United MileagePlus account, earlier this year in fact, and it was instantaneous.
This time, even after repeatedly logging out and logging back in, the miles weren't there. One hour went by–no miles. Two hours, then three hours–no miles. Not until roughly 15 hours later did the miles appear.
Nor is this an isolated occurrence–I found a number of Flyertalk posts also complaining about delays. In one example from early in 2019 an Ultimate Rewards transfer to United took 20 hours, while in a post from last year a points transfer to United took over 4.5 days for the miles to post.
It's unclear why some transfers still proceed instantly and others are delayed, but if transferring Ultimate Rewards points to United MileagePlus is important, I recommend leaving plenty of time in advance of when the miles are needed to book an award, in case you do encounter a delay.
Have you ever experienced delays when transferring Ultimate Rewards points to United MileagePlus, or to another Ultimate Rewards partner where transfer time is normally instantaneous?
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I tried to transfer 85,000 Ultimate Reward Points from my wife’s account to MY United MileagePlus account yesterday (~25 hours ago) and they have not yet posted.
Note that when transferring Chase Ultimate Rewards points to a frequent flyer account, the frequent flyer account must be in the same name as the Ultimate Rewards account or must be an authorized user of that card account. Are you an authorized user on your wife’s account? When you’re not an authorized user, what you need to do is to first move points into your own Ultimate Rewards account (since you can move/combine points with one household member without it being an AU), then transfer from your account to your frequent flyer account.
I tried to transfer 85k points from my Chase account to my United account this morning (around 10:30 am). I haven’t seen it in my United account yet. It is about 6:30 pm in the afternoon. I received an email saying your Point Transfer is in progress! I called Chase Customer service. They said there is nothing they can do; it is all automatic. It could take 2 to 7 days to deliver the points. It is contrary to what it is believed to be instantaneous. I had done this a couple of times before the pandemic and they had… Read more »
Ben, sorry to hear this happened to you; if it’s any consolation, this happens to others as well, there was a FlyerTalk poster who noted it took 2 days for a transfer to go through, see https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/33600551-post151.html If the name on your Chase Ultimate Rewards and United MileagePlus accounts are exactly the same and you can afford to wait another two days you might want to give it that amount of time before paying cash for tickets. You could also see if there’s an option to hold the current cash fare for a few days for a reasonable cost (United… Read more »
any update on that?
I transferred 200k from chase to southwest yesterday, about 25 h ago, and still hasn’t posted yet. I transfered another 1000 point to see if anything is wrong, and it posted instantly.
I called the customer service and chase said that it took 1-7 days, and some cases it took 10 days. When they advertise their reward program that’s not what they said.