Southwest Rapid Rewards - Lost seat while paying

Does anyone know what procedure is used to hold a seat while entering c-card information? I tried to change a return to a later day but after I entered the credit card information, the site displayed an error that no seats were available. When the last available seat is selected for purchase, why doesn't the system lock out others from also buying it?

The site continued to give me booking errors, so I finally called to get the change made. So the quick change took over 30 minutes. Quite annoying.

Also irked that a $10 EarlyBird pass is not credited toward an upgrade to BS fare. I can see not permitting someone to cancel an EarlyBird w/ 26 hours of a flight, but I don't understand not crediting it toward the purchase of a more expensive ticket. After all, I have freed up space for someone else to purchase an EB on both flights (the one I left and the one I joined).

phone agents seem to automatically see/hold the last for-sale or RR 1.0 award seat while they start to make a change for you, (it disappears for sale onine as soon as you tell them the flight #/date before you tell them the traveller name)

Unlike buying a concert ticket from ticketmaster etc, there is no way to hold a Southwest seat on the website, whether it's the last for-sale, RR 1.0 award, etc, until you get a confirmation # at the final stages of booking.

I've lost out on seats and had fares go up during the final screens. As you said, website errors, please retry make things worse. FTNoob has some shortcuts and browser tricks to help eliminate the error pages from Southwest. Sometimes I can't book at all in IE but I can in Firefox, and sometimes neither works but mobile.southwest.com (which fortunately works from a desktop pc) lets me book.

IIRC, the initial display of inventory available is not from a real time database. It's from a snapshot which might be a few minutes old.

I've seen seats show available and be gone at the purchase screen, and I believe this is the explanation. You missed it, but more likely by minutes rather than seconds.

Unlike buying a concert ticket from ticketmaster etc, there is no way to hold a Southwest seat on the website, whether it's the last for-sale, RR 1.0 award, etc, until you get a confirmation # at the final stages of booking.

While I agree with your reasoning, we have been told otherwise:
There are other reasons for sessions besides your MySouthwest login - one would be so that a Customer cannot sit on seats for hours without actually making a purchase

I have long decried the fact that the 2009 overhaul of the reservation pages included a change from the relatively benign use of cookies to store such things as search parameters, to the user-hostile technique of keeping most data within a server-side "session." From a customer perspective, I have yet to encounter one of the alleged advantages.

IIRC, the initial display of inventory available is not from a real time database. It's from a snapshot which might be a few minutes old.I've not been around as long as you have, but I have never encountered such an explanation. (OTOH, I have seen claims that the reason "our fares are only available on southwest.com" is that no other site can provide accurate fare availability.) What you state is quite plausible, I just haven't run across that specific claim myself, as far as I recall.

I've not been around as long as you have, but I have never encountered such an explanation. (OTOH, I have seen claims that the reason "our fares are only available on southwest.com" is that no other site can provide accurate fare availability.) What you state is quite plausible, I just haven't run across that specific claim myself, as far as I recall.

I was probably recalling the discussion about inaccurate "low fare calendar" display and extrapolating it to the purchase process.