Never forget to earn rebates on your travel purchases again!
At least that’s the potential, and where Award Wallet is going with this.
I use Award Wallet to track all of my frequent flyer accounts (well, all except American AAdvantage anyway). One click and I update my account balances, seeing what points have posted. One click logs me into an account.
Since Award Wallet also tracks cash back shopping portals, they came up with something ingenious. They will log you into a cash back shopping portal first and then into your frequent flyer account, if you wish, so that you’ll automatically receive any cash back rebates you’re eligible for on purchases you make.
So far this is set up only with TopCashBack and for British Airways and Alaska Airlines.
We’ve rolled out another feature. It is sort of a beta so the plan is to expand on it going forward. Basically if you have British Airways or Alaska accounts you now have an option to perform auto-login to those accounts via your TopCashBack account. The plan is to support more cash back sites and to support it for more loyalty programs. Just to be clear this feature is designed to use your cash back account so you would be earning cash back on your purchases (not AwardWallet).
The President of Award Wallet let me know this was coming at the launch party for the upcoming Star MegaDO earlier in the month. My first reaction was this is incredibly cool. Real value added to the consumer. My second reaction was that too much value added to the consumer will cost the programs they’re tracking more money, those programs may not like that.
I don’t want to see any more functionality yanked from Award Wallet the way American shut down their access to accounts. Award Wallet is too valuable to me! So hopefully they’ll find a way to co-exist, or to the extent they make themselves increasingly valuable to a large base of members, programs will grudgingly leave them alone. Or they’ll have too much else to worry about…
One thing I noticed AwardWallet implement in the last month was that all my Delta eCerts/volunteer vouchers are now listed in AW with the expiration date. Since I have a few of them, it makes it so much easier to keep track of those. Glad to pay the nominal fee per year for this service.
sweet.
Iff this becomes very functional and iff they provide us with reasonable cash back, I well finally set up an AW account and run everything through that site.
not so fast. only packages on ba:
Cashback is not paid on short-haul or long-haul flight-only bookings
Aloha Gary,
Thank you for everything you do. I’m not sure how many people you have helped, but you have helped me and my family immeasurably. On Sunday, we will begin our annual two week vacation which, via your blog, you have been helping us plan for the better party of a year.
I purchased 4 one way tickets for $212 each and thanks to husband/wife credit card signup bonus, used points for the JFK-HNL return. Our 1 year gets to be free.
After much research, I’ve decided to stay at The Westin Times Square. I’m grandfathered in at 48K points for 5 nights; it’s now 20K points per night, redeem 4 get 5th night free, so 80K points. I have enough Hyatt points to stay at Andaz 5th, but I’ll save them for Vendome or Tokyo. Which reminds me, thank you for 4 nights at Vendome for $150bucks, ahhh, that was a coup.
Anyway, all points are tracked in Award Wallet, sans the 150K husband/wife American miles.
We leave this Sunday and return 7/9. We are not paying for any hotel rooms– 100% points. The only hotel cost I may have to pay is Hyatt Bellevue (Philly) parking which is like $27 per night I think.
Thank you for the Manhattan dining tips the other day, excellent and the macarons looked delectable, will def try.
I now need to get everyone to SLC for Christmas and to URC for next year’s family vacation to see my in-laws.
I know you like to travel and you like food. If you haven’t been to Urumqi and Kashgar, you should go. You will like it. Uyghur food is some of the best in the world. The melons in the summer there will blow you away.
Thanks again! Stay healthy and on top of things.
john
::LIKE::
How did you get the four nights at venom for 150?
is this for premium AW accounts? I just went in and trying to give this a test but do not see this occurring when I auto log into Club Carlson as a test.
nevermid Just found my answer. Right now it is only BA and Alaskan accounts.
I had trouble with this feature as it seemed to want me to set up a new topcashback account and not link to my current account. No doubt user error on my part or something.
@ Victor: Chase Hyatt credit card comes 2 two free nights at any Hyatt in the World; annual fee is $75; one for me and one for the Mrs. equals 4 nights for $150. The French Onion soup from room service is seriously yummy.
DaninSTL, is your current TopCashBack account added to AwardWallet? If not this is how you “link it” at the moment. If this doesn’t work, please write to us in support (http://awardwallet.com/contact.php) and we will get it addressed.
The auto log-in feature is a winner in my book (as long as I’m the one who makes it “automatic”). Sometimes being “too busy” can cause you to forget a thing or two.
TopCashBack is one of the worst services I have ever encountered. They reduced the amount of rewards I had in my account without notice or explanation. When I tried to investigate, I found that my login/password didn’t work and I could not access my account. I tried their online form to get a password reset, but never received the email link that it promised. So I contacted customer service to alert them of these problems and was told that their membership team would follow up with me shortly. A month later and four additional follow up emails and I’m still awaiting resolution. Since then, I have read innumerable online complaints of similar behavior from other TopCashBack customers. AwardWallet and others should disassociate themselves with such a shoddily run organization.