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

  1. I use AwardWallet for myself and the rest of my family! Its a great source, especially since it now track daily deal and coupon websites along with the traditional airline and hotel points.

  4. I track miles and points using AwardWallet, and it is fantastic! Makes it so much easier — I particularly like the feature where they track your expiration dates as well as your points.

  6. I’m currently being rather inefficient about keeping track of my less well used programs and have just lost some points because of it. So your post about AwardWallet is timely and the card sounds like a great idea to get rid of all the many, many cards in my travelling briefcase.

  7. I’ve been looking at AwardWallet and just haven’t done it yet. This would be the reason to try! Presently, I use the point tracker function in TripIt Pro but find it a little passive. Plus, I’m becoming more of a points hound so really need a better tool.

  8. I was using a Google doc with all the account numbers and all of the individual websites (lots of bookmarks) but once I saw your Award Wallet post I signed up and plan on using it all the time.

  9. I’m an AwardWallet user–great service. BTW, Gary, thanks for taking the high road and buying your own card. IMHO it makes you a more credible blogger.

  12. I only track my Aeroplan regularly. I do track the expiry of my miles in other accounts on Google calendar though.

  13. I use both Award Wallet and TripIt. I pay for TripIt Pro because I love the immediate notifications for gate changes, baggage carousel, etc. But I think Award Wallet does a much better job allowing me to track the rest of my family’s mileage account numbers.

  15. What? Only 30 account numbers memorized, Gary? You’re really slacking 😉 Maybe a tip on your memorization techniques is a subject for a future blogpost?

  17. I have been using AwardWallet for the past 3 weeks.. since I started churning CC’s! What a great new hobby I’ve found 🙂

  18. I have been using AwardWallet for several years. I always pay the $5 and manage accounts for about 6 people. Thanks, in advance.

  23. I track everything manually today, logging in and out of all my various accounts. I mostly just use accounts when I’m looking to redeem awards, so it hasn’t been a major issue, but Award Wallet is something I’ve been meaning to try out for a while now!

  26. I just go to individual sites of the companies to check my mileage balance. But to keep track of all my numbers, I have a spreadsheet that I maintain.

  27. I use award wallet and an Excel spreadsheet. I can’t keep track of that many numbers in my head.

  29. I use AwardWallet and find it to be pretty handy. I have its App as well so I can look stuff up on the go.

  30. I use awardwallet to track all my miles. However recently gomiles has also drawn my attention although they participate in not as many programs. (They do promise to add a lot more soon) Other than that I see gomiles as a serious challange to awardwallet but for the time being awardwallet rocks

  31. I use AwardWallet and find myself checking it at least once per day, especially with the Grand Slam going on!

  32. I use AwardWallet and periodically check the sites for correct miles/points. As far as membership numbers, I typically have relevant ones printed out on my itinerary before the trip.

  35. I currently track them on each separate site… this is… less than ideal I now see. I think this is me getting award wallet now… thanks!

  36. I definitely use AwardWallet and LOVE it! It’s the king of tracking websites in my opinion.

  38. Awardwallet is a lifesaver for us travel addicts. I love the premium service and its one place – one click automated updates for all my programs. Infact I have my entire family on it and manage over 85 programs (ridiculous I know, but super helpful). Quite simply, I think Awardwallet Rocks and this new one card is a super idea. I’d love one.

  39. I have the premium version and loved it. I think the one card idea is awesome because I can never remember all the account numbers.

  45. I use Award Wallet to track my wife’s and my mileage and award points. I also use their Iphone app which works seamlessly with the PC version. This way you don’t have to pull out your laptop when looking for account information.

  46. I rely on AwardWallet. It makes tracking my loyalty miles quick and easy. I was a beta member and am happy to renew every six months.

  49. I’ve been getting TripTracker alerts for several months now. I like not having to check balances constantly.

  50. This would be really useful, given how massively over-stuffed my wallet is already with all those loyalty cards. Award Wallet offer a great service, and this just makes it better!

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