Advertiser Disclosure: Eye of the Flyer, a division of Chatterbox Entertainment, Inc., is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as CreditCards.com. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers. Compensation may impact how and where card products appear on the site. This site does not include all card companies or all available card offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities. Some of the links on this page are affiliate or referral links. We may receive a commission or referral bonus for purchases or successful applications made during shopping sessions or signups initiated from clicking those links.
It is hard to believe I have been a full-time / part-time blogger now for over 13 years as of this past November 17th. Back when I started as “Delta Points” readership exploded out of the gates and it was fun to be a Delta Air Lines focused blogger. Even so I was open to other airlines and deals if they were of great value vs. sticking 100% exclusively with Skyteam partners.
One of the programs that I was an early adopter of, and just about every blog on BoardingArea, was Award Wallet (AW) to track the many many many different travel programs I joined and was a part of. For just $10 per year it was well worth the fee to track everything and every flight change or seat change and so on. They promised everyone would be locked in at the fixed rate you got as an early adopter.
That promise is now over. Notice the e-mail they have recently sent out:
Well isn’t that disappointing – but maybe really not so much when I think about it. Why? Let’s take a look.
- Airlines are blocking AW. Even as a free agent I find myself still flying Delta now and then as well as AA almost as much out of South Bend. Neither airline likes AW so all the useful parts of AW are nerfed. A tracking service that can’t track my stuff has little value to me.
- Two factor authentication. More and more programs are – wisely might I add – moving toward two factor authentication to access your account. One of the big perks of AW was that you could enter all your passwords and the service would either automatically (if you set it up that way) go and check all your loaded account or you could with one click have AW do it for you. Having half my accounts not update again makes the service less advantageous.
- Some programs not supported. For a long time I was diligent to have in my timeline every trip, hotel and more all tracked so if I needed anything I could quickly pull it up and reference whatever I needed. Plus, when there were changes, I would be alerted. But some of the programs I am now using are not supported so the one-and-done is no longer really working for me with AW.
What I intend to do is put a reminder in my phone to go in and delete all my tracked accounts before my subscription expires. You can cancel right now if you go into “Edit my profile” and you will still have the service until your renew date hits if you want to.
Bottom line, like so many cheap streaming services, I would have likely been OK going on paying $10 per year even with the limitations because for the price there was value. But for $50 per year I am simply not willing to put up with the shortcomings of AW and will move on to, for now, doing my program tracking manually until I find something better (and cheaper) that AW. – René
Advertiser Disclosure: Eye of the Flyer, a division of Chatterbox Entertainment, Inc., is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as CreditCards.com. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers. Compensation may impact how and where card products appear on the site. This site does not include all card companies or all available card offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities. Some of the links on this page are affiliate or referral links. We may receive a commission or referral bonus for purchases or successful applications made during shopping sessions or signups initiated from clicking those links.
Responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
I agree, just when AW is the least useful they raise there rates.
spreadsheet time?
Huy – Yup!
Yeah I’m on the fence. I like the reminders for expirations, but barely use it otherwise. $50 feels high. Seems like it should have been raised to $19.99 or $24.99 maybe even $29.99 but to go 5x is wild when ending such a benefit. Usually businesses will grant a smaller increase.
I haven’t compared features fully per-se, but I believe the free version offers a couple of expiration dates and still updates accounts, so might be useful in conjunction with one’s own spreadsheet. (For accounts/vouchers etc. added manually, I put in the expiration in the comments field, so that might be a way to at least visually check expiration dates.)
To add to that, I also track the expiration for AA, UA etc. by updating the expiration date manually, though not sure if the free version will have that field available at all.
@Jeremy – 100% agree. I think when they see 50% cancel rate they may rethink.
I canceled within 10 minutes of getting that email – going from $10 to $50 was utterly ridiculous. Bye bye!
The new rate does not go into effect until next year
@Micheal – Right. 2025 is so far away. Oh wait…
Thanks for covering this Rene. I have been in two minds about this rate change. The old rate of $10 per year made it an easy decision to renew. But $50 per year may be a bridge too far.
Even with manual entry app is very useful especially for tracking multiple family members and accounts. But $50 per year is a rip for a glorified spreadsheet.
Content providers seem to have no understanding of their value in the marketplace.
I pay microsoft $69/yr for a massive suite of programs that my family can use. I pay major media $49/yr to subscribe. Awardwallet provides a fraction of that value.
$10/yr is a reasonable convenience fee. $50 is absurd.
Cancelled too