AwardWallet Giveaway: Win a Personalized Loyalty Program Membership Card

by Gary Leff

As regular readers know, I used Award Wallet to track my miles and points. They have a free service with most of their functionality, you input your frequent flyer accounts and passwords and can update them all with a single click or can log into an account with a single click as well, no more spreadsheets or writing down account numbers and passwords on scraps of paper.

I’ve used various services like Award Wallet for years, and there are several. The first one, which I loved, was Miletracker (the downloadable application, not the online service). The problem was that it wasn’t kept up to date. Whenever a loyalty program would change up its website, the service needs to be updated, and Miletracker just didn’t get updated all that often. Which meant that lots of programs wouldn’t update.

What I like about Award Wallet is that they’re really quick on the draw, if something isn’t working it isn’t working for a very short period of time.

The site also has community and TripIt-like features to track your reservations, though I don’t especially use those since I have my own customized ways I prefer to manage my trips.

There’s also a “Plus” membership, which requires you to pay some amount, it can be as low as $5 for 6 months. The biggest difference is that basic free membership will only show expiration dates for points in three accounts, whereas Plus members get expiration dates shown for all accounts that the website supports it.

To encourage you do pay more for premium service, some sites would consider crippling their free product. Fortunately Award Wallet hasn’t done that, and instead is now offering more premium benefits for higher payment amounts.

The new benefit they’ve come up with is the OneCard: a single card which will show your frequent flyer numbers for up to 30 programs on it, the phone numbers for those programs, and includes a magnetic stripe so that you can use the card to check in at airport kiosks in lieu of a credit card. It’s available one card for folks paying $10 and 3 cards for folks paying $25.

Award Wallet’s PR folks reached out to me last week to offer me a coupon code to get a card for free. I didn’t use that card. The guys I know at Award Wallet had discussed the card with me in the past and they knew my initial reaction was that I wasn’t a fan — I know my loyalty program numbers, I carry my elite cards when I travel, I have them all on my laptop. So why do I need another card? But I also realize that not every frequent traveler has 30 account numbers memorized and it occurred to me that for some folks this is rather brilliant.

Back in 2008, Starwood and Priority Club started offering personalized membership cards. Priority Club let you put other program account numbers on the card, in their quest to be the card you actually kept in your wallet. Starwood offered to let you select the photo of one of their properties for your membership card, in order to build affinity between you and that card and get it to be a card you actually kept in your wallet. Both programs were on to something, and it seems like Award Wallet may have the best implementation so far.

I didn’t accept a free card, I paid for one instead, as regular readers know while I’ll happily accept a referral when someone signs up for a credit card rather than telling the banks just to keep it, when someone comes and offers something to me I prefer to offer it to my blog readers instead. You’ll know my feelings about a product are as a paying customer, and it lets me share it with y’all. I’m more than happy to cover my own costs, thank you very much 🙂

So instead of my getting a couple of free cards, we’re giving away two free cards on the blog. If you aren’t an Award Wallet user, you will need to be of course, since the programs you’ve entered in your account are the ones you’ll select to go on your card.

What we’re going to do is this, as per my usual practice:

  • Leave a comment on this blog post to enter, one comment per person only please! (When I draw the winner, I will check..)
  • In that comment, please tell us how you track your miles and points.
  • The contest will run until Friday 12 p.m. Eastern.
  • I will draw the winner at random using random.org. This is a giveaway, done with generous spirit, not a lot of terms and conditions here but let’s just say that in all matters related to the giveaway I am the final arbiter of any interpretations, disputes, disagreements and will use my sole discretion in handling such matters.

So leave your comment here to enter to win an Award Wallet OneCard. And if you have any questions, drop them to me by email. Thanks!

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  2. I currently use awardwallet (free version) and points.com (for the exchange/trading) to manage my points.

  5. I used to have a spreadsheet that I would carry around on my laptop and phone that I would manually update every few months. Ever since I learned about AwardWallet, it’s the mint.com for my points!

  8. AwardWallet is my miles/points tracker backed up by a spreadsheet in google docs.

    At this point I would never be able to remember more than 5 or 6 of these numbers on my own.

  9. I use Tripit pro to monitor my award miles, however, generally know when they expire from my frequent visits to the actual program websites

  10. I haven’t ever used Award Wallet before, because I have a folder in my email that has all of my account numbers listed in it. Not all that convenient when going with a lesser-used entity and I need the # fast, though.

  11. I love awardwallet! Now if only they’d start tracking daily deal site coupons (i know…not their schtick)

  13. I am a premium AwardWallet user, but when I want to assign miles to a different carrier, I usually have to unpack my laptop and pull up my FF.xls spreadsheet, which is a pain. So the wallet card seems like a really smart idea.

  15. I use award wallet to track my husband’s and my points/balances. I find it really useful.

  17. As of yet I am still keeping track on the desktop so I am looking forward to getting up to date soon!

  18. I use the notes tab on my iPhone. Rarely carry my cards because I have too many so a single card would be extremely helpful.

  26. I still use a spreadsheet to keep track of my FF accounts. Maybe it’s time to try AwardWallet…

  27. I use Award Wallet premium and love it! Have been thinking about upgrading to get the One Card.

  28. Another Award Wallet user here. I especially like being able to store my login’s on Award Wallet, as it allows me to pull up my accounts on each airline/hotel/rental car site with one click.

  32. I use AwardWallet, plus a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is especially useful for tracking promotions.

  34. I have been using award wallet for a few years now as well as monitoring activity on the individual websites of the programs that I am a member of.

  35. I track everything manually using the programs websites and my own spreadsheets to track account numbers.

  36. i use awardwallet and i like it a lot. i just wish it would automatically refresh the point balances.

  39. Pageonce, mileagemanager and tripit pro are used quick frequency as I travel over 200,000 “butt in seat” miles per year.

  43. I’m currently using an old fashion spread sheet but I’m in the process of becoming an AWARD WALLET person. I believe I will benefit from AW’s service.

  47. I use Award Wallet. It’s my go to. Really like the iPhone app. Any chance of an iPad app coming down the pipeline?

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