78 AwardWallet 6-month upgrade vouchers (worth $25) to give away at noon today

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• Nick R says:

  7 Feb7 February 11:29

  I tend to agree with the consensus. The theory is great, but such a pain with 2FA and either does not refresh/update (most of the time) even after codes are entered, or locks your account out (as currently the case with my BA account!)

• will says:

  7 Feb7 February 11:59

  Personally find huge value in it tracking many family members balances on many schemes. I periodically go in and click through the 2FA’s. Ability to see a snapshot in one place is very valuable especially for expiry dates.

  If you only have BAEC and one hotel scheme that you follow perhaps less so.

  • supergraeme says:

    7 Feb7 February 12:21

    You can do that without paying $50 though.

    • will says:

      8 Feb8 February 00:40

      1. I get far more value out of it than $50 per year
      2. What’s the alternative for less than $50?

      • supergraeme says:

        8 Feb8 February 07:27

        The same thing for free. They barely update for $50 so why not do it manually for $0?

• Alex says:

  7 Feb7 February 11:59

  Ì agree that with 2FA becoming the norm, AwardWallet missed the boat of trying to work with airlines / hotel chains to get API access (in an Open Data type of arrangement). Maybe they don’t want that.

  So now it’s hardly worth a tenner, and certainly not the 50 USD they’re asking for. But for free, I’ll take it thanks.

  • Track says:

    7 Feb7 February 16:11

    Financial companies were forced by regulators to accept Open Data.

    Loyalty schemes valuations are inherently tied to that magical data they hold about you. That supposed to help the brands to sell more.

• CC says:

  7 Feb7 February 12:52

  Even before 2FA issues they didnt alert me to Melia points expiring so I lost them initially. Luckily got them back by making a fuss that Melia themselves failed to alert me to the expiration.

  • The Original Nick. says:

    7 Feb7 February 15:15

    That happened to me too. I wish I’d of contacted Melia now.

    • CC says:

      7 Feb7 February 16:56

      I had to be full on male Karen to get them. Also it was around summer time and they gave me until end of the year to use them as “Gesture of goodwill”

• Alexi says:

  8 Feb8 February 00:29

  Hey everyone, this is Alexi from AwardWallet. I wanted to jump in and address some of the points brought up in this thread:
  1) About 2FA (Two-Factor Authentication).
  You’re right — many loyalty programs require 2FA, and that’s a good thing for security. That said, AwardWallet has several workarounds to make updates as seamless as possible:
  * Email-based 2FA: If the authentication code is sent to your email, AwardWallet can retrieve it for you (with your permission) by connecting to your mailbox. You’ll need to link your email to AwardWallet here: https://awardwallet.com/mailboxes/.
  * “Remember Me” Trick: When you first authenticate an account, we prompt you for the second factor and check the “remember me” option (if available). This means that, in many cases, 2FA is only required the first time or when the “remember me” cookie expires — reducing how often it pops up.
  * Browser Extension Updates: If you’re using our browser extension, updates happen from your own computer, not our servers. This makes it no harder than logging into the loyalty site yourself.

  2) Account Lockouts (Especially BA Accounts).
  Yes, it is possible to get locked out of an account using AwardWallet, but this usually happens when incorrect credentials are entered into AwardWallet, and an account update is triggered multiple times — just like if you tried logging in manually and kept using the wrong password. Most loyalty sites have a limit (e.g., 5 – 10 failed attempts) before locking an account. That said, some programs (specifically Qatar Airways) are stricter than others, but these cases are rare.

  Regarding British Airways: They’ve been increasing their security, so we’ve adapted. Our new browser extension (version 3), released last month, now updates BA accounts directly from your own computer (or phone, if you’re using our mobile app). This means AwardWallet updates no longer come from our servers. I trust that some folks in this thread have had BA lockout issues, but: (a) This isn’t a widespread problem (we’d see it flood our support if it were). (b) I personally use AwardWallet for my BA account, and it has never been locked out.

  I suspect a lot of the frustration here is tied to our recent price increase to $50/year. I totally understand that changes like this can be frustrating, but I just wanted to clarify how things work on our end.

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