Southwest Rapid Rewards - Redeeming voucher for being bumped

Last year my wife and I agreed to be bumped from a Southwest flight from OAK to SLC. We were offered a voucher of $400 for (for both of us together) plus a refund of the price of our ticket to SLC. In addition, they promised us to put us on the first flight the next morning.

When the plane (and our checked bags) had flown off, we received our voucher from the gate agent. The fine print on the voucher states that it's only redeemable at a Southwest ticket counter.

Who goes to the airport to buy a ticket? Fortunately, we don't live too far from an airport, but it's still really inconvenient.

I wrote a letter of complaint saying this was unreasonably restrictive, and the customer service guy responded and said that we could book a ticket on the web with a credit card and send him the voucher. He would have our credit card refunded after we made the flight.

Since we want to purchase the tickets well in advance to take advantage of lower fares, by the time we fly, we'll have already paid our credit card bill for the flights. We'll have to send our voucher to customer service, hoping he'll refund the money. What guarantee do we have that we'll ever see the voucher or the credit?

Is there a better way to do this? Why can't Southwest make the vouchers easier to redeem?

Docmonkey

The EASIEST way to do this is to redeem the voucher at the airport. It may not be the most convenient way. Unless you have the name of the CSR with whom you spoke, you may eventually get into a situation where you use a phrase like "I spoke to someone who told me that....no, I don't remember their name....I know this doesn't sound like your policy, but that is what they told me...." I work in a place where these types of conversations are common, and I assure you, invariably, the customer is not always right. It is most often a case of simple misunderstanding, but that doesn't make it right.

I would book at the airport.

Stevekoe

Yup, ticket at the airport.

That is the downside of the bump vouchers. Upside is ticketing at the counter isn't as bad as trying to do the same thing with another airline. It will be done quickly and the biggest hassle will be going to the airport.

What I have done in the past when I had vouchers was to book the travel over the phone when I was travelling home. When I landed I went to the ticket counter with the reservation number and walked away with my tickets in a few minutes.

It is a little bit of a hassle, and it would be nice if they would give you the dollar amount of your voucher as ticketless travel funds so you could book on the internet, but they don't.

I'm guessing if you have a letter from Southwest saying they will refund the money, I think they will do as they promised. My experience is they have always done what they promise.

If it were me, I'd just run out to the airport and ticket at the counter, just to avoid the hassle of having to mail in receipts from travel for a refund.

Well, I guess I'm showing my age, but I remember "back in the day" when you could only buy/pick up your ticket at the airport......

I'm still a sucker for free flights, so I take a bump whenever I can and I really don't mind the trip to the airport to buy the ticket. We live about 30 mins. from the CLE airport and we just make a point of going to a restaurant or mall on the Westside when we have to pick up tickets.

As a matter of fact, I just redeemed $750 in vouchers for 3 tix to Las Vegas over Thanksgiving. The only hitch was having to have 3 sets of paper tickets issued--that takes some significant time at the desk.

I know I've heard that SW is working on being able to redeem vouchers via the internet but I'm not holding my breath. I figure that all airlines "bank" on people losing or forgetting about vouchers. Making it too easy to redeem them might be costly.

If I have any gripe, it is that with paper tickets I can't check in online- that I can't understand. I have a confirmation #, etc. and I'd like to be able to get my boarding pass printed at 12:01 a.m. rather than have to get to the airport 2+hrs. ealry.....

Enjoy whatever trip you take with your vouchers---and whatever trip you take to pick up the tickets.

Yes. Just ticket at the airport.

Marvel at all of the rubber stamps that come out. Count how many pieces of paper get stapled into neat little piles. Bask in the inefficiency of the process.

The whole thing is pretty stupid, nothwithstanding any WN 'benefit' from voucher travel that's not redeemed due to (1) lost vouchers (2) people who find the process too inconvenient to follow through and/or (3) difficulty in booking cheaper fares. Besides, people can lose or misplace their papers showing they have electronic bump funds, too.

My goal is to use these vouchers to ticket for friends and/or family members who are asking me to help them plan travel. If they're old or unseasoned enough, they won't notice the difference because the expect to have a paper ticket anyway, and would get the C group because they're not going to checkin online either. As a fallback, I'll use them in cases where I would otherwise be flying at full fare - that way, I can just keep the reservation on book and ticket at my leisure. If I use them for advance purchase fares, I just make the reservation w/in 24 hours of when I know I'll be at the airport (usually for another flight or to pick up people). You can ticket and then re-ticket without losing value (other than PFCs which you used to get free the first ticketing go-around) up to the expiration date just like any other fares, so no harm in cashing them in if you have some expectation that you may be flying on that date. Plus re-issuing the tickets starts the whole insane process anew.

Since we want to purchase the tickets well in advance to take advantage of lower fares, by the time we fly, we'll have already paid our credit card bill for the flights. We'll have to send our voucher to customer service, hoping he'll refund the money. What guarantee do we have that we'll ever see the voucher or the credit?

Others here on FT have reported that the method you describe is in fact possible. So you don't have to worry about the customer service guy being wrong and/or lying to you. You should not run into any trouble if you do that, the only roadblock I could think of you running into would be if your voucher got lost in the mail, but the odds of that are pretty slim.....

Thanks to all for the responses. We decided to purchase the tickets online and send in the voucher for a credit card refund.

I still think that requiring customers to go to the airport to redeem the voucher is unfair. This system is obviously is in place to make it harder to use the vouchers. If this would have been explained to us before we gave up our boarding passes, we may have thought twice before agreeing to be bumped.

This would be especially difficult for people who live far from an airport and fly infrequently. Fortunately that's not us.