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

  3. I just signed up for awardwallet.com and it seems like a great way to keep track of both my points and my husband’s. Does anyone know if the one card can include both of our accounts? (as in 2 Delta #s, 2 Hertz #s)

  4. Thanks Gary–I’ve been using award wallet thanks to you–this is an added benefit. Much appreciated.

  7. I have several active FF accounts. I am looking into award wallet as that would save me some time.

  8. I only use AwardWallet…and I hate that AA is threatening to no longer allow these types of sites to access my data.

  9. Awardwallet is an awesome service! I track my points/miles, my wife’s, my son’s, and my parents’.

  12. I use Award Wallet as many others have mentioned. This card could be really useful – there is no way I could memorize all my frequent flyer accounts!

  16. Im using Awardwallet to track my miles and points and have more than 20 programs registered with them. Its extremely convenient that they also offer an Iphone app for people on the go.

  18. My premium membership for award wallet just ended and would love to get the upgrade again. The card would be useful, even though i fly all the time and use my credit card to check in, I keep on thinking they’ll charge me for something i’m unaware of!

  22. I actually keep it in writing and I check up on my accounts online. I could really use this. Thanks!

  29. An interesting idea – I think I’d like to have one to see if it’s useful or not. I have mine memorized as well, but every once in a while I’ll draw a blank on a lesser used program.

    I use award wallet, btw.

  30. I use award wallet for me my husband and my son. I’ve also gotten my mom and all 3 of my siblings to sign up because I think it’s such a great site.

  32. I use AwardWallet, just got the email from them introducing the OneCard, and thought it was a brilliant idea!

  38. I use AwardWallet. I also use the “Full View” option in my Fidelity Brokerage account, it is a great way to track all of your programs.

  39. I’ve used Award Wallet for about a year? Paid version 🙂 (and recently the android mobile version). But do not have the card!

  46. I have used premium award wallet for a few years now and frequently reoommend it to my friends.

  47. I use Award Wallet and the Google Homepage plugin. I like the daily reminder of being able to see my updated balances so I don’t forget to keep the earning (or spending) going! Thanks Award Wallet

  49. I use AwardWallet to track my airline/car/hotel accounts with ease. Fun fact, i can track my groupon purchases too!!

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