Asiana Airlines' business lounge in Seoul.
Are you tired of logging in to dozens of accounts for your airline, hotel and rental car loyalty programs? It was high time a website came along that displayed all those balances on one page, so you can see quickly when your miles expire or how many more hotel points you’ve earned since your last log-in.
Last year, I received an e-mail message from one of the founders of AwardWallet.com, suggesting I write a column about the new site. I wanted to wait until I’d tried it, and that took a while, but now that it’s been a few months since I signed up, I’m glad it came along.
The site supports hundreds of programs, including schemes for credit cards, dining and shopping, such as OpenTable, iDine and CVS’ ExtraCare, and it’s constantly adding new ones. All you need to do is provide the user name and password for each of your accounts, and the next time you log in, all your balances will be displayed on the same page.
Another page shows your upcoming trips — but you don’t need to do anything extra to create those trips. Because your AwardWallet account is already linked to all your airline and hotel programs, as soon as you book a plane ticket or make a hotel reservation, it’s automatically added to AwardWallet. The site also e-mails reminders to check in for your upcoming flight online.
There are some little quirks that can be a bit annoying, but they seem to be beyond AwardWallet’s control. For example, when a schedule change occurs for a booked itinerary and the ticket is reissued, the site creates a completely new trip but doesn’t delete the old one.
Still, the service the site provides for free is unique, useful and will make your life quite a bit easier.
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