Two loyalty program tracking sites, Traxo and AwardWallet, are urging travelers to contact Southwest Airlines to reverse its no-tracking policy.
On their respective websites, both Traxo and AwardWallet imply that Southwest's no-tracking policy is hypocritical, given the airline's self-portrait: "We like to think of ourselves as a Customer Service Company that happens to fly airlines."
Traxo and AwardWallet provide contact information for Southwest and both ask consumers to gently ask Southwest to enable the restoration of RapidRewards points' tracking on their sites.
The development occurs as The Wall Street Journal's Scott McCartney reports that Southwest and American Airlines over the last year have sent cease and desist letters to various mileage and points' tracking sites, demanding that they halt retrieving such data from the airline websites.
These two airlines traditionally have been the most aggressive in the US in taking steps to protect what they view as their intellectual property.
Consumers generally provide loyalty program tracking sites with their account numbers and passwords and then the sites automatically update changes to program tallies on their respective websites so travelers can easily access all their accounts in one place.
But, according to The Wall Street Journal story, Southwest argues that the tracking sites pose a security risk to passenger information and American Airlines' objects to AA.com getting scraped for data.
And, to compound matters, many airlines argue that mileage and points account information actually belongs to airlines and not to travelers, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Meanwhile, in a quick survey, Traxo, TripIt, AwardWallet, MileWise and GoMiles all were still automatically tracking American Airlines AAdvantage miles, but none were doing so for Southwest RapidRewards.
Some of these sites, though, enable members to manually post their Southwest RapidRewards points.
A spokesman for American Airlines, citing "pending legal matters," declined to detail which companies received cease and desist letters or complied or didn't comply.
Without providing specifics, Michael Komarnitsky, CEO of GoMiles.com, says the company is "comfortable with our current relationship with Southwest and American airlines."
Komarnitsky argues that GoMiles "delivers a strong value proposition to operators -- driving up user engagement for their loyalty programs, driving user transactions in the form of promotion signups, points-based redemption and cash-based redemption, and encourage excitement about loyalty programs overall."
Meanwhile, Andres Fabris, co-founder and CEO of Traxo, confirms the company received a cease and desist letter from Southwest "and took action."
A number of these companies are known to have negotiated or are negotiating data rights agreements with American Airlines.