AwardWallet has sent an email to members today advising them that American Airlines has forced AwardWallet to Stop Tracking AAdvantage accounts. Unfortunately, there isn’t even a work-around: AwardWallet is being forced to remove AAdvantage accounts entirely from the platform.
The email from AwardWallet indicates that American Airlines demanded this change. “AwardWallet believes that you own your loyalty and travel data and that you have the right to control and share that data as you see fit.” Unfortunately, whatever demand is being made by American clearly required AwardWallet to remove AAdvantage data altogether.
Regular uses know that other airlines that block direct AwardWallet functionality (like Delta, United, and Southwest) can still be tracked by forwarding monthly mileage statements. While an unideal solution, that’s still better than nothing for tracking mileage balances to be sure that your account hasn’t been hacked and in situations where points may expire. I have also found Award Wallet incredibly useful for tracking reservations. I have been saved more than once by a reminder about my upcoming trip from Award Wallet in situations where I had intended to cancel said trip.
Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen here. AAdvantage accounts have been completely removed from AwardWallet in this case. That is a huge disappointment. At a base level, it is helpful to me to have loyalty account numbers handy when making travel reservations. It’s a shame that American is blocking that here. There is a change.com petition urging American to reconsider this decision.
It is interesting to note that it seems to only be US-based airlines that actively block AwardWallet functionality.
Perhaps more interesting here, at least in terms of appearance, is the timing. I’m sure that I am not the only person who chuckled at the timing of blocking AwardWallet in the days following the incredible SimpyMiles bonanza. I couldn’t help but think to myself, “I guess American doesn’t want anyone to know exactly how many miles they awarded in that promo!”. Realistically, I doubt there is any connection at all. It takes time for lawyers to draw up demands and I have to think that whatever this is was in progress before the SimplyMiles promo. Probably.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
Other than a place to store pws i find very little benefit with award wallet any longer
Did AA sue Awardwallet? I guess that’s the case since they can’t even support offline updates like for United.
Here’s something interesting, it looks like you can still get AA flight bookings in awardwallet if you use partner miles. I have one using Etihad guest miles and the AA flight appeared in my Awardwallet a minute ago.
Petition signed.
Me too. Not that I really think AA cares. I plan to use my miles on partners and then never fly AA again.
AA is free to devalue their mileage program and by extension, their airline in this way. And we are free to fly them less, buy fewer tickets, and advise everyone we know to do the same.
I use AwardWallet several times a week. It’s been incredibly helpful in my quest to amass a fortune in points and miles, while also giving me that little jolt of excitement at the end when my new total pops up after updating. I actually just upgraded so I can get my fix even sooner, but this truly is a bummer. AA is my biggest miles stash of any single airline. All my current reservations were made through AA. However, I have wondered when AwardWallet might be hacked. After all, it would be sort of a one stop shopping trip for cyber criminals looking to steal virtual travel currency.
AW does not store your passwords, so even if they were hacked there would be no access to your accounts. There is no security justification for this move, they just don’t want you to be able to access your data anywhere but their website. I look forward to the day when user data is protected as personal property and the companies can’t make ridiculous decisions like this that limit your access to it.
Well, I’m certainly no technologically wizard, but what I do know is that I can sign on to any of my award accounts with one click from AwardWallet. Therefore, if someone hacked my account, they could certainly do the same and drain those accounts at will. So, regardless of where my passwords are stored, AwardWallet has access to them or it would be able to update.
My mistake – it is an option to have your passwords stored locally and not in their database, but that is not the default. In any case, security was not AA’s concern here. AW had already passed all of their security checks to gain access to their API.
I’m surprised AwardWallet had to comply with removing AA from the platform entirely – that’s as if AA made you remove all of the AA articles from this site.
Ps- charge.com = change.org 🙂
Give & provide your account info & personal info to third parties is such a good and smart idea!!! Are you really that fat & lazy and not smart enough to keep track of your own money/miles/points?
AwardWallet is an incredibly helpful tool for tracking rewards. It has saved my butt many times when alerting me to upcoming expiration dates for points, free night certificates, etc. And they’ve been in business for many years. If they had a history of endangering their customer’s info, that would be well known by now.
Anyway, I understand if you don’t want to risk your info with a 3rd party, but that’s no reason to insult others who do.
I’m fine with folks expressing opinions about the hazards of third party monitoring. Not ok with expressing that opinion in a vulgar insulting way. The previous comment should be asked to be revised or be removed until revisions are made. If he refuses then remove the comment. While free speech is respected when you post on here you are asked to be respectful and comments are subject to moderation.
When I went to the AA website to send a contact us on AAdvantage, all of their options just redirect to the FAQ, except if you select Other Mileage. It was the only one that allowed me to send a comment. I guess they don’t want to hear from their customers.
You guys are FAST! I got your email three minutes ahead of the email from Award Wallet. I just logged on to my Award Wallet account and added our American Airlines accounts in as manually tracked programs. No automation, but at least I can see the balances at a glance along with the rest of my accounts. I have so little American Airlines activity that keeping them up to date shouldn’t be an issue.
Thanks for mentioning the manual tracking option. I had forgotten about that. Just added our AA accounts back in.
I hate that they took AA off the list altogether instead of just disabling it. Now I have to go figure out everyone in my family’s AA numbers…
They did send an email with numbers in it. Not sure if it included all accounts though.
Oops. LOL, that’s true.
I did not receive any emails at all. checked my spam folders as well