Updated 8pm PT on 3/15/19: Thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway. I wish I could give everyone codes, but I only have so many codes available. Here are the winners: Mike Saint, Bill Pisor, LAURAPDX, Brandon, Priscilla Ennis, Seth, Will, Stephanie Woods, iwantmoremiles, and Jim F. I will email the winners the codes. Thank you.
Good afternoon everyone. A year ago, I wrote AwardWallet Feature I Wish Existed: Keep Checking for Account Balance Changes. In that post, I wished there was a way for AwardWallet to constantly check a specific airline / hotel account to see when miles or points posted. This is super important if you transfer points from a transferable points currency (Chase Ultimate Rewards, American Express Membership Rewards, Citi Thank You Points, Capital One Points, or Marriott Bonvoy) in the hopes of booking an award flight before the award space disappears. Some transfers are instant, while others may take several hours or several days.
I am happy to report that AwardWallet took my idea and added the feature to AwardWallet. Here is a blog post describing Balance Watch and how the feature works:
“Balance Watch will monitor a loyalty account to let you know as soon as your points arrive. Once activated, AwardWallet will check your balance up to twenty-four times per day and send you a desktop, mobile, and email notification as soon as a change is detected.”
Image source: https://awardwallet.com/blog/balance-watch/
Yesterday, Alexi, the CEO and owner of AwardWallet, emailed to let me know the new feature was live and gave me 30 Balance Watch codes to give out to readers. You can apply 1 Balance Watch code to each program you want to watch. You must have an AwardWallet Plus account to use this new feature. If you are interested in winning 3 Balance Watch codes, please leave a comment on this post (by 6pm PT on 3/14/19) explaining how you would use your Balance Watch codes. I will pick the 10 winners tomorrow evening and email each winner 3 Balance Watch codes. Good luck to everyone who enters the giveaway!
If you have any questions about the Balance Watch feature, please leave a comment below. Have a great day everyone!
Hey Grant!
This is a great idea and a great feature. I’d definitely use this for accounts that I have several cards. Like maybe AMEX MR as I have many AMEX cards that give points and kind of a hassle waiting to update all the accounts.
Just out of curiosity, how often to you update your Award Wallet (either on website or App)? Again, great meeting you at FTU Seattle.
Mike
I have 90% of my credit card statements close on the first day of the month, so I like to refresh my AwardWallet account a few days after the first of the month to see my new balances. AwardWallet usually updates all my accounts once a week on the weekends. That is usually plenty for me :)
That’s a great idea to change the closing dates to the 1st of the month. I think I’m going to do that now for all of them. :)
I think the wording I use with the credit card companies is “Please change my billing due date to the first of the month” which then means the statement closes around the 1st-7th of every month.
I’d definitely use this to keep up to date tracking of my Hyatt, Delta, and AA balances.
Those are good programs to track!
Great choices, Marvin!
looks like there’s a typo in the browser notification text – “has been tetected” should be “detected”
Good catch, let me pass that info along to Alexi at AwardWallet to double check if the misspelling is just a typo in the mockup or in the actual alert.
Hey thanks for the heads up! Can you tell me where you saw the typo?
The typo appears in the photo inside the Google Chrome alert. The bottom line says “tetected…” at the very end.
Great idea! Glad they used your idea. That would be very useful when we are trying to move points around. Thanks
Thanks Bill, I have great ideas every now and then :)
Awesome
Thank you Jim :)
Perfect timing, as I transferred points to an airline yesterday from two different sources and they took different amounts of time to post. I can use this feature too.
Great idea.
Awesome, Balance Watch was built to help you with that process :)
Definitely I’d use them to keep track of my JAL and ANA in one place, as well as probably a hotel chain as i plan for some more travels in the future :)
Great to hear, Balance Watch will come in handy for that :)
What a great idea!
Thank you Stephanie!
I would use it when transferring my Bonvoy points to an airline. This is an extremely useful tool especially when the points take a few days to move over. Planning a month long trip to Panama for March 2020.
That sounds like an amazing trip. The Balance Watch feature will definitely help you book that month long trip :)
I would use it to look out for a miracle…..Marriott Bonvoy points actually posting.
Haha, that would be a miracle!
I would probably use it on some of my accounts that have had fraud before. Having awardwallet helped me to quickly identify when someone hacked my ihg account and my membership rewards accounts. This would be even better real time info to fight fraud!
I’ve been hit with IHG fraud too, but I only found out when they cancelled one of my reservations. Hopefully your accounts are safe now.
I just found out one of my accounts had been hacked. Had I the new awardwallet I could have found out much sooner to prepare myself.
Good point, this could alert you to fraud right away.
I would use it to watch my AA, Hilton, and IHG accounts.
3 great choices!
I have a trip coming up to Africa in April 2020 and I would use them for that or my trip to Spain and Portugal October 2020!
Which hotel or airline programs would you use for your upcoming trips?
I’d use these to monitor my personal and business UR accounts to know when to combine everything into the CSR (before they take away that ability, I’m sure without warning!)
Hopefully Chase never takes away that ability, that would be very disappointing.
I wish they have a column on left for programs below persons
similar to what they have for persons accounts
So if i need DL points, I can just click on the program and I can see all DL accounts
and so on
It should add the programs monitored as and when we add new programs
I know I can filter, but when I need to look at the next airline, I have to filter again
I would use it to track my balance after transferring AmEx points.
what an excellent idea . I definitely could use it.
Thank you Mahomed!
I have Award Wallet Plus and would use this feature to track my AA miles, UR points and — if supported — Fuel Rewards points.
If AwardWallet can track the program, then Balance Watch should be able to track the balance.
I would use this future to track my URs
What a terrific idea. Thanks!
Thank you Jana!
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