Early this year AwardWallet launched a new feature: balance watch. I’d not had a reason to test it out, as nearly all point transfers I’ve ever made are with programs that transfer instantly. However, when I started booking Turkish Miles & Smiles award tickets, I decided to take the AwardWallet Plus Balance Watch feature for a test drive.
AwardWallet Plus Balance Watch
There is little more nerve wracking than deciding to transfer points into a program where they are lost in the ether for anywhere from hours to days before they post to your account. Award availability can disappear rapidly, and stranding points is something I don’t like to do. This means that the few times I’ve initiated non-instant transfers, I’ve checked incessantly for the miles to appear. Enter AwardWallet balance watch.
While balance watch can’t solve the problem of award inventory disappearing from under your nose, they can give you a little peace of mind while you wait for a transfer to go through. Essentially, AwardWallet checks incessantly for you. You just need to set it up.
I tested AwardWallet balance watch on a Turkish Airlines transfer. Now, I’d already secured this award and placed it on hold. I just needed the miles. This gave me a level of comfort already, and now AwardWallet would do the rest of the work for me. I’d just need to pick up the phone and call Turkish once I received the notification.
To enable AwardWallet balance watch, you need to navigate to the “Edit” pane for the particular program you’re transferring into. Select the “Enable Balance Watch” checkbox, and fill in the details. You’ll need to provide the program from which the points are transferring and the amount.
Once enabled, the account will be marked as “monitored” until the transfer completes. Balance Watch will remain enabled for up to 7 days.
True to my typical experience with Turkish Miles & Smiles transfers, it took a little over 24 hours for me to receive an email regarding the successful transfer.
This was so painless. I love the AwardWallet Balance Watch feature. It saved me checking the account multiple times until they posted. I’ve gotten used to Turkish transfers, though, and don’t tend to log in until it is at least the next day.
Is AwardWallet Plus Worth It?
AwardWallet offers two subscription levels: free and Plus. The free subscription is a fine choice for many people who just want to track their points balances and have everything housed in one place. The basic version of AwardWallet does this admirably. The primary features with the free version are:
- Automatically track reward balances
- Track rewards for your family members
- Automatically track travel plans
- Allow sharing travel plans or reward balances
- Notify when balances expire via email and (optionally) push notifications on your phone (frequency: 90, 60, 30, and 7 days before expiration)
- Access all of your data on a mobile device
- Set up two-factor authentication on your account
- Credit card spend analytics of day-to-day transactions to optimize points earned with each merchant
However, the AwardWallet Plus subscription offers some additional features that I have found especially useful, including:
- Display historical account balance changes chart
- Display historical transactions for some of your loyalty accounts
- Allow exporting award balances into Excel or PDF formats
- Display extra reward account properties
- Update accounts in parallel (up to 5X faster)
- Unlimited updates of a single account within 24 hours
- Display expiration date of your miles or points
AwardWallet Balance Watch isn’t explicitly named, but it would definitely fall under unlimited account updates within 24 hours. The Plus subscription used to be available for $10 when the service first launched, but it now costs $30 per year.
If you’re interested in giving AwardWallet a try, here is my referral link. You can also enjoy a free upgrade to AwardWallet Plus to test out those features using a coupon code. Just leave a comment and I’ll send it to you by email.
Conclusion
The AwardWallet Plus balance watch feature is a lifesaver when you need to transfer points from a program that doesn’t post instantly. In the case of Turkish Airlines, it’s not necessarily mission critical, as transfers generally take ~24 hours, and the ticket holds are ~48 hours. You can get by without it.
But for other transfers (most specifically, Membership Rewards to ANA Mileage Club), I wouldn’t want to begin one of these without it. It will save you incessantly checking your account to see if the miles are there. Simply set an alert and walk away. Award Wallet will notify you when the miles post.
Just hope that your award space doesn’t vanish. If only they could solve this problem.
