Southwest Rapid Rewards - SWA Credit Confusion - Ripoff?

In June, I purchased four tickets for travel in December. I applied unused travel funds to the reservation, then paid the remaining $300 using my SWA credit card. I made a change to the reservation in August, resulting in a $140credit of unused funds.

I was rechecking the unused funds balance today and discovered they expire 1/1/2010! When I made the original reservation in June, the unused travel funds were applied first. I assumed, apparently wrongly, the travel funds would be applied first and considered used and the $140 credit would be had from the credit card funds in June, thus having a new expiration date of June
2010. This doesn't seem very fair and has left me feeling very deceived.

My next planned trip with SWA will be in March and I was planning to use that credit to help with those tickets. I contacted SWA to inquire and was informed ANY SOURCE of funding used to buy a ticket adopts the earliest expiration date. This is not very customer friendly and isn't very clearly explained. Has this happened to anyone else and is there anything else I can do to salvage my credit?

As mentioned in this forum often and in the FAQ section, any "refund" funds later used with cash will always carry forward the Original Expiration date going back to first ticketing. That is why it is often not good to use old funds for future trips, especially if small amounts, unless you are sure you will take the trip and not make changes.

It has been this way for a long time. Not a change.

Rip-off??? Try $150 per passenger change fees. That would have cost you $600 on most legacy airlines.

http://www.southwest.com/about_swa/customer_service_commitment/csc.pdf

When you buy a ticket you agree to the Contract of Carriage.
It clearly says "If you apply an unused ticket, Ticketless Travel funds, and/or other
Southwest Airlines travel credit toward the purchase of a new reservation, your new
reservation record will reflect the expiration date of the oldest ticket, Ticketless Travel
funds, or Southwest Airlines travel credit used to pay for the new reservation"

Welcome to FlyerTalk, lw67!

A couple additional points to note: because your itinerary is for more than one passenger, it may be that only a portion of your funds expire in January. See this post for details.

As also explained in the Wiki FAQ (http://flyerguide.com/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Southwest_Rapid_Rewards), you can have your unused funds converted to a LUV voucher after an administrative fee is deducted from the balance.

See the Wiki FAQs sticky posted above too. You may be able to "revive" expired Ticketless Funds credit by paying a $50 fee, which might be worth it in your case:

What if my ticketless funds have expired?
If your ticketless funds have expired, you can write to Customer Relations and request a travel credit. They typically will charge you $50 to send you (by US mail) a "LUV Voucher" with a new expiration date.
Editorial comment: Given this policy, one might think Southwest might as well simply retain the latest, rather than the earliest, expiration date of funds being combined. Such a policy, however, would make it difficult for Southwest to recognize revenue from expired funds in their financial statements. See page 25 of the 2006 Form 10-K (page 44 of the "annual report"(pdf)) for explanation. Although the effect on revenue would appear small, the effect on the bottom line could be quite substantial.
As of July 2007, Southwest charges $50 to extend your expired ticketless funds. The fee reportedly applies per ticket so it may be wise to consolidate all expiring funds into a single new reservation before calling to extend the expiry date. You need to call them within a week of the expiration date.

In June, I purchased four tickets for travel in December. I applied unused travel funds to the reservation, then paid the remaining $300 using my SWA credit card.

Next time split your purchase. Buy the minimum number of tickets to use the travel funds, then buy the rest of the tickets with the credit card only.

Most of us here purchase tickets as one-way reservations for convenience of changing or re-faring one direction. Also, with multiple passengers you may be able to re-fare the tickets one or two at a time as seats appear in the low fare bucket.

Hard to consider you ripped off when every single travel confirmation you recieved said "All travel involving funds from this Confirmation Number must be completed by the expiration date" and that Expiration date was clearly noted.

It's not a fair system but it has been documented on here several times.

DON'T intermingle old & new funds if there is any chance of the trip not being made quickly.

I booked a $400 flight for relatives and being thrifty I gave them a $2.50 credit that I had expiring in two weeks. Guess what, they didn't travel on the flight due to a medical issue, and now their $397.50 paid via credit card expired at the same time as the 'old' $2.50 I gave them.

The proper way would be to let $2.50 expire 2 weeks after booking and $397.50 a year after the original booking date.

It's not a fair system but it has been documented on here several times.

Compared to the way the rest of the airlines work? It's far more than "fair".

It's not a fair system but it has been documented on here several times.

DON'T intermingle old & new funds if there is any chance of the trip not being made quickly.

I booked a $400 flight for relatives and being thrifty I gave them a $2.50 credit that I had expiring in two weeks. Guess what, they didn't travel on the flight due to a medical issue, and now their $397.50 paid via credit card expired at the same time as the 'old' $2.50 I gave them.

The proper way would be to let $2.50 expire 2 weeks after booking and $397.50 a year after the original booking date.

So, pay the $50 to have their funds re-instated and be done with it. You tried to help. It didn't work. C'est la vie. Not everything works out well. Thankfully, WN doesn't impose a $150 fee PER ticket.

still better than other airlines , just need to be careful of the rules