alfaman

another one bites the dust

mikew99

It's a really tenuous position that you are in when, with a stroke of a pen, any airline can decimate your business model.

IANAL, but I do know technology. If you were to script access to an airline's Web site and scrape the results, there's no way for the airline to tehnologically distinguish your access from that of the traveller -- they look the same as far as the airline is concerned. Even if you couldn't legally write such a script yourself, if you provided access via a plug-in model, somebody else could.

I admit that I'm not certain about the particulars regarding the legal basis that AA used to shut you down, but at some point, I believe you might have to fight for your rights here and test the law out in court -- or go out of business.

veresch

Sure, this is what we did with the browser extension. There is no way to technically tell that the content is accessed via AwardWallet's extension (as it happens from the user's computer). But it is not the IT people who are looking at it - it is the lawyers / business people. And they don't analyze logs, they simply go to our website and analyze what we do. So an extension or application or any other method won't work. The problem is not technical.

azepine00

AW, would it be possible for you to have some sort of miscellaneous/notes or "untrackable - user specified" program line?

It does not have to autologin or be linked to anything but i would really like to have some notes on at least expiration of 5 different family member accounts together with all other accounts.

CPRich

Can't you use the "if you want to add a custom program that we don't support, please click here." feature, available when adding a program? I added an "Americrap" program (yes, the lawyers forced them to do a string compare on the name and the URL) and manually track my expiration date and balance.

azepine00

Thanks! I missed that (or perhaps it wasnt there i few months ago when i checked last) - that's exactly what i am looking for...

travelkid

You mean the download into excel function? You can include PWs in downloads? And use it as back up without typing all back?

Mary2e

I haven't been able to update my Hyatt balances using the iphone app for about 2 weeks now. The options are no longer there - only the account number is still there.

If I update using the web, the new balances show.

tim2977

I wonder if aw was willing to pay airlines for access if that would rectify the real situation here. AA and others seem to care an awful lot about how secure everything is, or is it that they see a business model where someone is making money off their information. I would pay a little more to keep the service intact.

beagleflyer1977

And now United has pulled access... AwardWallet continues its death by 1,000 cuts...

CPRich

I think it will take <10. It's now basically useless to me for airlines, and just one or two key hotels and it will be a pointless app for me.

Quite a shame, it was awesome.

mikew99

I wonder why AwardWallet doesn't stand up for themselves? Either they need to start fighting back, or just close up shop already.

ckpeter

I am a little surprised at how many people seem to think that AwardWallet has to support balance-checking for every single program, in order to be useful.

It is certainly disappointing that AA, UA, and a few other sites have asked AW to stop with the balance-checking.

However, even if tomorrow, AW were to drop support for the balancing checking features, I would still think that it is useful. I manage a few dozens accounts in my family, and having a centralized place to organize all the mileage information is invaluable to me, even if I have to enter the information manually. I would, of course, prefer to have fully accurate automatic balances for all of them, but I can live with entering approximate balances and expiration dates manually.

Besides, while the major airlines may ask AW to stop, it's unlikely that most smaller programs would do the same. So long as AW support a good number of programs, I am quite happy paying for the membership.

mikew99

The problem is that AW no longer supports transactions of the largest US-based carriers, so that cuts out the bulk of their potential users. It just isn't as worthwhile to pay money to track the smattering of miles I have across several smaller programs. And if I have to track most of my miles manually, I might as well just use a spreadsheet, for free.

While I do pay for TripIt Pro, that's primarily for the trip status monitoring capability; tracking of miles and points is a secondary function that I rarely use. AFAIK, tracking of miles and points is AwardWallet's bread and butter. If they can't do that for the majority of fliers, I'm not sure they will survive for very long.

Easy Victor

Because litigation is prohibitively expensive. And the airlines have lawyers on retainer.