pinniped

iDine topics seem to be fair game in MilesBuzz, but if this one strays too far I won't be offended if the mods throw it in OMNI... I just need to rant.

I have iDine accounts with AA, US, UA, NW, and DL. I recently opened an iDine Prime ("Rewards Network") account.

The problem? I have SIX user ID's at SIX different piece-of-junk websites!! (I can't really remember all of the IDs - I'm always guessing at them.) Why doesn't iDine (or Rewards Network...or whatever) have ONE portal website at which their customers can configure and maintain all of their various accounts? It would be far easier if I could log in at Rewards Network and modify a table of credit cards, FF numbers, etc. at one place.

It wouldn't be quite so bad if the six different sites were TOTALLY independent, only dipping into the master DB to validate that 1 CC is only attached to 1 reward program. Then I could log in with the 1 user ID at 6 places and modify my cards. I would still be frustrated because that is still bad process, but at least I'd remember the user ID. But noooo...the sites are just linked enough on the back end to require UNIQUE logins for EACH airline!

And the final straw: there is no way to get the Rewards Network site to email you your user ID! If you forget your password, no big deal: type in user ID, and it emails your password. But if you forget your USER ID, you are hosed - presumably you would have to call them on the phone at that point.

IMHO, iDine should fire its current IT staff and hire ME to redesign their entire online user experience. I'd subcontract a bunch of high school kids at minimum wage and we're create a better product in a matter of weeks.

RicoWrite

As to the various user IDs- I use them same basic name for each and simply append the airline.

SmithNW
SmithUA
SmithAA
SmithUS

and so on.

Mike

pinniped

He he...I've now been having some fun at the Skymiles Dining site. I know I have a Skymiles Dining account, and I know the credit card attached to Skymiles because once in a while - out of the blue - I accidentally earn a few Skymiles by using that card at a restaurant I didn't realize was part of iDine.

Two enhancements that the iDine IT team has made:

(1) The various iDine sites are now Googlable. THANK YOU, iDine, for making the pages searchable. Six months ago, you had to go digging deep within Delta.com, NWA.com, UAL.com, etc. to find the iDine sites. (When you went Googling for iDine sites, you sometimes got sent to a Flyertalk thread! )

Now a Google of "Skymiles Dining" correctly returns the Skymiles Dining home page.

(2) When you guess a User ID and are wrong - but hit one you have used on another iDine site - Skymiles Dining tells you this! Basically it says, "We notice you have a Worldperks Dining account", but it STILL MAKES YOU KEEP GUESSING AT THE SKYMILES ACCOUNT!!! I guess this is an "enhancement", because I *did* successfully uncover the Worldperks account for which I had forgotten the User ID. (I went to Worldperks and tried guessing Skymiles IDs to no avail.)

What a big sloppy cluster****. I think what happened back in the day was that I gradually joined iDine over time. I was flying AA, so I joined AA Dining. Then I flew US for a while and joined Dividend Dining. And so on. Had I known what a mess this was, and had I joined them all at once, I would have done what Rico did - appending AA, US, DL, etc. on the end of my "normal" ID. I failed to recognize early on what a train wreck this would become!

CMW

I had to make a chart for all of my userids. I think it would be best to use your FF # for that idine acount. I think UA defaults to that and I never have to try and remember what my userid is for MP idine. I started doing that for all the idine accounts I managed for myself and family members.

Marathon Man

this is the topic of my angst for some time now, idine or no.

You cannot have the same or even similar PW for many accounts in life!

A pure and simple example was this one I once ran into:

on Continental.com you had to have 4 numbers.

on Cont vacations web site link, however, you had to have 6... numbers and letters. there, right there they are different.

Some banks make you change PW every once and a while and you cannot do one you already had.

I have 6 pages of scribble and excel attempts at putting EVERY pw an dUN and online or tel or other access ID and pin card code and special URL or this and that CS number and it is so totally out of its mind, you would think i was nuts just having it! A serious pile of near-post-it note scribbles and papers with tattered edges that is driving me nuts every single time I have tofind that SPG account to transfer miles to AA so I can get idine and transfer all to HH.

frustrating to say the least!!!!

so I happened to bring it up when signing up to get my miletracker download, and Mike from Miletracker said to try this site:

www.roboform.com

it seems to store all your everything with one secure pin you can know. Those idines being some of them/ (I have the same problem and use online and switch accounts a lot for my self and wife too.)

BUT is THAT roboform site at all secure initself?

I guess so. I am not a big business people can knowingly find and hack.

MM!

AAAAAAGHGHGH!

pinniped

Yes, for some reason iDine makes you use your UA MP number as your user ID. They don't do that for any other airline - just UA.

Wierd, isn't it?

cactuspete

Sure would be nice to have these types of threads centralized .

pinniped

No smilies are needed - I 100% agree that FT should have a dedicated iDine board. It would have at least as much traffic as the credit card and phone company boards. Maybe we should revolt and hijack the AT&T board or something.

randix

fyi, the roboform program you reference stores the information on your computer, not on their site. Excellent program. Well worth the few dollars.

skylane

Switch to Mozilla or Opera web browsers. They both have the ability to store website usernames/passwords locally.

Jailer

It would be nice to have a pop up map for cities that have more than one area. "West of Market" might make sense if you live in that city, but when traveling it would be nice to see the areas (although the find by zip code is useful).

Also, purely ego, but would love to see a lifetime miles counter.

DaDOKin DC

I find it difficult to keep track of all the PINs and PWs. I use the same method as Rico: 2-letter airline abbreviation + an easy to remember suffix (address of granmother's house when I was a kid - not easy to hack that).

I keep an Excel spreadsheet on my C-drive with all the account numbers and PWs. Not only easy to keep track of, but easy to cut and paste and know the numbers are correct.
(Of course, the file is password-protected -- now where do I keep THAT password?? )

------------------
Da DOK

free101girl

Just want to put in another good word for RoboForm. I've been using it for two years and I use it all day, every day. It's a great program and very secure. Unlike some competitors (i.e. Gator) it is not scumware or spyware, either.

RoboForm stores all of your passwords and user IDs and allows you to access them by using ONE master password. So you make up ONE really hard-to-crack password and that's all you have to remember.

It also fills in online forms for you, which is a big time saver if you buy a lot of stuff online.

Can't say enough good things about it!

wonderer

RoboForm also lets you print out all your user name and passwords. Nothing like a hard copy sometimes.

Used Gator for 2 years and had a heck of a hard time getting rid of all of its tendrels deep in my computer.

pinniped

Gator is an evil beast that needs to be banished from the Realm.