I’ve written about the best one-stop tool for all of your award booking needs, Point.me.
- It lets you search award space across pretty much every airline
- It shows you the best way to book a flight, with the lowest prices, and which points to use
- And it even walks you through the process – click by click – of transferring points and creating your booking (this is the past I like the best)
Point.me Makes Everything Simple
Since they also offer full service concierge booking, it’s a competitor to my own BookYourAward.com but I also think it’s a tool you should know about. It’s the former Juicy Miles, merged with One Mile at a Time‘s booking service PointsPros.
They’ve raised several million dollars from several top name investors (including founders of ITA Software, which is now Google Flights; the founder of Dropbox; Jeffrey Katzenberg; and Bethenny Frankel of Skinnygirl and Shark Tank). And they’ve leap frogged what they offered before, with great award search and great video tutorials that hand hold you all the way through.
Here you can see an animation that shows you how to wake up in the morning and notice it’s a new day how to log into the Air France KLM Flying Blue website. They have an animation showing how to search for an award. It’s not just booking, it’s tutorials that make everything simple.
Best Deal Yet, Exclusive to This Blog’s Readers
When the site first launched publicly they were offering a free day pass (versus $5). Here they’re offering a full month for just $1. That’s pretty good, or if you’re ready to subscribe they’ll give you 20% off.
Code VIEWFROMTHEWING will give first-time subscribers their first Month of the Standard Plan for just $1. Or, select Annual billing and save a total of 20%! If someone is interested in the Premium Plan, this code will also give $11 off that option. Either way, this coupon code should be entered on the checkout page for the plan itself, after subscription details have been filled out. This code will not work when clicking “I have a code” on the Services page.
Good For Searching Awards, Good For Holding Airlines Accountable
In some sense making self-service tools this easy is going to be a bummer for the hardcore among us that do the hard work, because it means more members competing for limited seats. But I’m a fan of democratizing a process that airlines have made too opaque, and that credit card issuers haven’t done a good enough job demystifying for their customers.
I also like services that place airline results side-by-side. Airlines that don’t make much saver award space available, and charge exorbitant prices for the best awards, aren’t going to come out looking good. As well they shouldn’t. The ability to compare programs is great for consumers, and for holding the devaluating impulses of programs in check!
Update: for folks having issues using the special code, here’s some clarification. You want to enter the code on the checkout page of the Standard (or Premium) plans. The code gives an entire month for $1 – it does not work when clicking “I have a code” on the Services page, which is just for 24 hours.
@ Gary — I tried this out, and I am very unimpressed. I would not recommend this product to others.
VIEWFROMTHEWING code did not work.
The code VIEWFROMTHEWING still does not work.
Their billing page isn’t offering a monthly billing option and now because I’m registered there are no longer any trial options.
For a service that promises a lot up front but wants a financial commitment, a functional sign up would be a good start on fulfillment.
@ Paul — The sign up process is amateurish at best. That is the Number 1 reason I do not recommend. Number 2 is that searches are SLOW. Number 3 is that it doesn’t recommend anything useful that I can’t find using AA, UA, or AF websites. It even pulls up useless phantom space. I view this as an up-front money grab for a poorly-implemented and possibly doomed project.
@gene you know what is slow? Searching 30+ loyalty programs individually, logging in and out. This is the first place in the history of the world where all program results are in one place, the way we look at results using cash. It’s slow, but 2 mins is still faster than signing in and out of two programs, let alone the 28 others which might solve a need. Plus, it’s showing how much further up the tree branches transfers can go. People forget about booking EK through QF, etc.
I just don’t understand the doom and gloom?
I’m happy searching on the major airline sites like AA and UA for award space. I don’t see the value of a website that pulls data from other sites to which I already have access.
@ Paul — There is a toggle to switch the standard plan between monthly and yearly billing, but it might have been hard to see. If you send a note to our customer success team (available in the upper right, since it sounds like you’re already signed in) they can get you squared away.
@ ROBERT B ROSE @ Mark C — Gary’s code will give a hefty discount off the Standard Plan, so make sure you select that first, choose your monthly or annual billing preference, and then enter code VIEWFROMTHEWING on the checkout page.
@ Gene — I’m sure it was super frustrating to not have been able to login easily after making a typo on your email address, and I agree that the various authentication processes on our mix of systems made it far too difficult to resolve that for you, for which we can only apologize.
We’ve since added an email verification box; an extra step in the sign-up flow, but hopefully one that helps people avoid that particular problem.
We’re also constantly working to increase the speed of search results — keep in mind we’re pulling and collating 30+ data sources, versus most websites (airline or otherwise) are just pulling one. We’re getting faster though, and will continue to do so — Google was slow at first too.
And finally, you certainly owe us nothing, but if you do see phantom space, we always appreciate knowing about it! We have a bunch of algorithms to catch and filter those out, and we refine those daily in response to program adjustments and other data factors.
More than anything, I appreciate you giving it a try. I’m confident that we will eventually get point.me to a place where it’s exciting for the hardcore miles and points people who have been in the space for decades like yourself, but understand that given your knowledge and skill it might not fill any gaps for you right now. Thank you 🙂
I signed up for the month trial and will give it a try. But I REALLY don’t like the way it returns ‘sample’ results if you search and are not logged in. Showing sample results is fine in general, but IF you are going to ask people for SPECIFIC routes and dates then return sample results that don’t match that route and date (even if there is a notice), that is just scammy (or at least scammy adjacent). Why let people put in an itinerary unless you are trying to trick them into thinking the results that come up are the results for that itinerary.
@ Tiffany — Fair enough. Thank you for listening to my feedback.
I have to agree with some of the comments. I’ve been using the service for the past 2 months and will probably cancel before it renews again (the monthly option is deceptively hidden somewhere – I don’t remember how I found it). I was trying to find tickets to Europe for this summer – which I was successful – but the tickets I actually booked were first found on AA (I attempted to find something better with Point.Me). It is convenient to be able to search across multiple programs at once, but it is slow and you cannot search across a 3-day or 7-day window, which makes it laborious to do searches across multiple dates compared to most airline web sites. Also, there are only 33 programs and I question how it is actually producing the results. Example: I was trying to use miles to go between Spain and the Greece. I found LX flights on the Miles-and-More web site that Point.Me did not display.
Furthermore, after making multiple searches, eventually the results do not refresh when you change the date or from/to, necessitating a manual browser refresh This is really frustrating when you click the route details and see that it isn’t what you were searching. For example, say you are searching ORD-BCN, ORD-MAD, ORD-AGP on many different dates. When you are finally searching your first date for AGP after doing the previous two, you may find that the results displayed….are the same as your last search. Say a curse word and hit manual refresh.
Point.me would be way more valuable if there was a function to configure alerts. I want to fly between these two cities on X date, in Y class, for Z miles or less. Bonus points if I can alert for multiple dates, specify stops, or receive a text/app notification instead of an email.
I get it, they are probably in the v1.0 stage of development and I can’t even comprehend how complicated it might be to put such a site together. I think it is worth trying for a buck, but I think if Point.Me are trying to have a sustainable business model they need to improve accuracy, support more programs, and offer features like alerting that are a value-add over the airline sites.
Great and useful like Joke Biden…
There is no monthly option so you have to pay upfront $110 and you don’t even know what you’re getting. Useless
I use it for sending family or friend requests – I tell them “Find space you like and I will book it”
They do not know how to search different sites and partners of each site
The problem is also that the JuicyMiles/Point.me program only links to awardwallet all or none – I do not want to give my info to everyone else if possible.
It does not have an option in your profile that asks – what programs do you have miles in ?
If one could select among the individual programs it searches – then it would help
Then while searching if you can select search specific individual programs that one has miles in that helps
Alerts are already there on ExpertFlyer but that is having a few issues now
It says the code is over subscribed and tells me to click to add to a waitlist. Gary I think they put a very limited number on your code
I wish premium Econ , Econ and biz and first were separated. Also I am finding a lot of phantom space from sq ac aa ua and ba .
Point.me is really a remarkable product. I’ve paid for about four our five $5 day passes so far and anticipate using it five to ten times in the average year. I’m in Italy now on a 70k J redemption it found for me at the last minute in a very difficult booking environment.
For what it does it’s quite performant (you can have multiple searches running at once) and I fear that any additional performance is likely to come through result caching which would make the results less accurate. I feel the daily pricing is fair although I’m not sure who, other than a professional award booker, would pay the annual fee — and I don’t think that’s a large enough market to support the product.
Some of the folks complaining — boy I hope you never check luggage because I’m not sure you’d be able to figure out how to get it off the carousel.
I found an excellent business class flight from AMS to SFO on KLM. I liked the heads up on the Chase UR transfer bonus and the detailed instructions on how to book the flight. It all worked perfectly. I have continued searching using point.me but have not found any other flights as good as the one I booked.
@Gary- not a great project. Did a test search on their front page, which indicated award avail on a tough to find route at 70k one way, was intrigued to see if that was accurate, used the code to sign up, and minimum 145k for the same itinerary, not a great service at all and deceptive landing page.
@ Tiffany
I seem to remember this service being promoted through a different travel blog a few months ago (apparently on top of an Amex beta launch), no?
A batch of folk reported issues using their promo codes at that time, apparently, there had been a limited number issued. A big fail for anyone interested in marketing their product. Folk who made it into the system also reported the system being too slow. You’ll lose your members if you don’t fix that.
Please share whether your team has fixed up these issues. I do hope that it’s all positive because the tool has merit, and I can only imagine how complicated it would be to compile such a product.
Also, IIRC, you could only search one specific date at a time – is this still the case?
And, I cannot use my email to register for this VFTW promo since my email address has apparently been retained by the database although I never completed the registration process in your previous offer (due to restricted numbers of coupons).
So your have my email address, but I have never actually completed registration. I do not think it appropriate for you to harvest email addresses in such manner whether intentionally or unintentionally.
Effectively you have accrued a batch of email addresses / personal information without ever delivering anything. Either way, IMHO, that’s one big red flag.
If you have to resort to using miles to fly, my suggestion is buy a cheap cargo ticket in coach with the rest of the kettles.
Something smells like rotten herring…
Click bait to a $1. monthly promo, but it only generates that price if you toggle a hidden switch, otherwise collects a yearly subscription. The website collects lot of personal information, emails and then according to those using it, functions poorly…
I think a lot of people are being scammed into an annual subscription, paying for something of questionable value…
Thanks for the code Gary! I have been wanting to sign up for awhile but the price was little high for me. Your code helped! I did a couple of searches to try it out and the results are impressive. This should save me a lot of time.
It says the code is over subscribed and tells me to click to add to a waitlist.
The code is not giving 20% off the standard plan with annual payment. It, too, is only giving an $11 discount.
Billed me the whole $12 for the first month FYI. Followed your instructions with the standard plan & code at checkout.
Trialed this with Amex a couple of months back. Ill take a wait & see approach for improvement. No choice since Im stuck with this for a month 🙂
I really really want this to work, but God, it’s awful. I paid for a year assuming it was pretty decent. In 30 minutes with a single search over two dates, I found:
* Integration with AwardWallet is broken.
* Tens of “Oops! There’s been a glitch!” errors. Sometimes when sorting, always when checking booking options, sometimes when filtering or clicking other random buttons.
* It showed OneWorld options for one of the two dates but not the other even though both dates had similar availability, validated through doing identical searches on Alaska and Qatar websites.
* It showed odd choices for value – on some of the OneWorld itineraries on Qatar it showed the cheapest option as Alaska even though the flight was on Qatar and cheaper using Qatar Avios.
It really feels like proof of concept. I love the idea, and think it is a great addition to the arsenal of tools, but it’s not ready for use as a paid service. Any one of these issues would be a minor annoyance, but taken together, I’ll stick with individual searches for now.
I’ve asked for a refund. If I can’t get one, I’ll chalk it up to my own gullibility, but I’m really surprised at how truly bad this is given the hype.
@revman I don’t think this is the first time in history you could have this kind of results. Doesn’t Awardnexus do this for a while already?
The tool cannot calendar search. Only one day at a time. So for the most part its more of comparing cost of awards that you find already via the websites.