Delta Blocks Award Wallet Users from Tracking Miles

Sept. 10, 2012

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3 min read

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It’s a sad day for Award Wallet users who use the handy site to track their Delta SkyMiles because as of today Delta will no longer allow Award Wallet to access the SkyMiles accounts of the 70,000 users who use the site to do so.

Delta joins American Airlines and Southwest as the third major airline to deny Award Wallet access to its frequent flyers’ accounts, and though I hope this is not going to be the start of a major trend, I wouldn’t be surprised if further airlines pull out in the future.

The one good thing is, at least Delta Miles don’t expire, as opposed to other airlines where Award Wallet is especially helpful in letting you know when your miles will expire – a handy tool when you’ve got numerous accounts to keep track of. So at least you won’t be losing your miles all of a sudden without notice.

However, in my opinions, airlines should allow consumers to access their miles however they like, and central aggregators like Award Wallet make the process much easier and more consumer-friendly. I don’t think security is an issue because you don’t have to store your password on the site, you can store it locally on your own device.

What I suspect is that this is a revenue push by the airlines to direct consumers back to their own sites where they have more up-sale opportunities both on travel and on the other products that they offer.

This move also comes on the heels of other recent customer-unfriendly actions, so I emailed my contacts at Delta to express my opinion and to ask for further information and they said they would send my letter on for a response.

In the meantime, if you are an Award Wallet user who linked your Delta account to your portfolio on the site, I encourage you to write Delta to let them know that you don’t agree with their decision, and Tweet them as well. If you want, you can even retweet what I wrote them and be sure to include the hashtag #PlayNiceDelta:

Sad day for @AwardWallet users- @delta no longer allows users to track miles. Not a customer friendly move #playnicedelta.
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