The one travel tool I can’t do without

Harry

6 years ago

(EDIT: This article has been updated with details of a free 6-month upgrade for Tricks of the Trade readers who register for AwardWallet membership).

There has been much discussion on Tricks of the Trade in recent weeks about numerous different airline and hotel points currencies and that has prompted me to share with you one of my must-have travel tools.

One of the most time-consuming tasks when collecting loyalty points across multiple programs is keeping track of all your balances not to mention remembering all of the various logins and passwords. Luckily there is a free service that makes this practically hassle free.

AwardWallet is a US-based company that has been in business since 2004 and is currently tracking over 100 billion miles and points across 677 programs for more than 472,000 customers.

It also allows you manage and store your travel itineraries and will alert you to any changes to your flights and even send you online check-in reminders once it is available.

Here are some of the key types of points that AwardWallet can monitor that will be of interest to those based in the UK:

British Airways – Avios
Virgin Atlantic – Flying Club miles
Boots – Advantage
Tesco Clubcard vouchers – this is particularly useful for preventing fraudulent use of vouchers.
Costa
House of Fraser – Recognition
Marks and Spencer – Sparks
Nectar

I use Award Wallet daily and it takes no more than a couple of minutes to refresh the balances in the 28 active accounts I currently keep tabs on. It would be a far too lengthy process to check each of these accounts individually each day. If you are not like me and don’t feel the burning need to check your points balances every day, AwardWallet will log into all of your accounts once a week and send you an email with notifications of any changes.

Additionally, having to remember all of the various expiry dates of my points would be very difficult to stay on top of. Each program has a different set of rules regarding points expiry and I could never stay on top of all of them otherwise. AwardWallet does this all for me and will even email me to warn me of expiring points.

There are two versions of AwardWallet membership available: AwardWallet Free and AwardWallet Plus. The free version is, well, free and the Plus version costs $30 for a year’s subscription.

These are the key differences between the two types of membership:

How to register and get AwardWallet Plus free for 6 months!

Tricks of the Trade readers can now receive 6 months of free Award Wallet Plus membership. In order to so, you need to follow these easy steps:

1.) Register for AwardWallet using this link

2.) You will see a page that looks like the below image. Fill out the various fields and click ‘Continue’

3.) You’ll see the following page as below. Copy and paste xexectricksofthetrade into the coupon code field.

4.) Click submit and you’re done.

Your account should reflect a free 6 months of Award Wallet Plus membership.

Note: This coupon code cannot usually be applied once your account is active so please input the code during the registration process.

There will be those who are concerned by the security implications of allowing AwardWallet to handle all of your logins and passwords.
Personally, I am comfortable with that risk and with the high levels of encryption they use, however, if you are still perturbed by this you can choose to store your passwords locally on your device. This does mean that you can only access AwardWallet services on that device though.

VERDICT

Using AwardWallet is a no-brainer for both experienced points collectors and even casual users.

Award Wallet is the only practical way for me to keep on top of the changes to the many programs I use as well as remembering all the log in details so that I don’t have to. By being able to easily update all of my balances every day I am also likely to be alerted to any fraudulent uses of my points far earlier than if I was checking them manually. All in all, this is a service I am more than happy to pay for, but I would recommend trying the Plus service first via our free coupon code and then you can decide after 6 months whether to pay the fee or to just make use of their free service.