Southwest Rapid Rewards - RR credit question

Hello,

I have flown 4 roundtrips in the last 2 months between MDW-DTW, always leaving on Friday and returning Sunday.

I have always booked online and my flight credits are always posted by Friday, 5 business days after my return leg.

I last flew last weekend and only had the outbound leg credited and still waiting for the return leg to be credited. This will present me with 16 credits and a flight coupon that I will need to use in 3 weeks. I know that I am cutting is close but is it any cause for worry yet? Website says allow for 14 days but after 3 round trips and always having credit posted after 5 business days, this is worrying me

Also after I get my 16th credit, how long does it take for me to get my coupons? This is the beauty of Southwest, I can simply walk up if there's a seat and still get a free flight.

Thank you WN!

By now you have already confirmed your 16th credit as it seldom takes more than 10 days but on rare occasions it will take a full 14.
You can expect on average about one week from the 16th credit posting to receive your free ticket and mabey drink coupons.
You may make your reservation before you receive the travel cert which helps.
Happy flying

Personally, I think you're cutting it too close. Three weeks should be adequate, but if I were in your situation, I'd look at buying a discount ticket as a backup in case the reward certificate doesn't make it in time.

By the way, I noticed that sanFF said "maybe drink coupons." I think the standard practice is that you would get drink coupons with your free ticket, unless you specifically requested in your profile that you don't want them.

I do think I am cutting it too close and today is already the 9th day and still has not posted yet.

I will try giving them a call later today

My experience is usually they post very quickly, but occasionally it takes up to a couple of weeks - last time there was a delay was when hit 100 for the companion pass. The good thing is Southwest is very quick to mail out the tickets. I've never really paid attention to when there is a delay, I am wondering if there are certain times of the month where their people are doing something else with the computer system other than sending the data toward RR credits. This could account for the couple of days lag that I see every so often.

If you fly the route a lot you could go ahead and buy a ticket just to be sure, and then use the award ticket at another time, or if the award ticket arrives in time use it and use the paid funds later, as they don't charge you an administrative fee if you don't use the ticket.

I have a feeling you will get the ticket within the 3-week window, you could call and ask about it, telling them you are waiting for the flight to post for the free ticket. I have found the people at Southwest to be very helpful, knowledgeable and friendly when you call, and they probably can tell you if flights in the time period you flew have already posted or not, and if there is a problem they might be able to fix it for you on the phone.

They are the only airline that actually makes it easy for you to use an award ticket.

I'll bet your credit is there now. The RR web page was very recalcitrant the past few days, requiring repeated entry of the account information. Now it's back to normal, and a 10/14 flight appeared that was not there this morning.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by nsx:
I'll bet your credit is there now. The RR web page was very recalcitrant the past few days, requiring repeated entry of the account information. Now it's back to normal, and a 10/14 flight appeared that was not there this morning.</font>

Not neccesarily. From my last trip, the 10/11 flight posted very quickly, but the 10/15 one still isn't showing up. Strangely, there is an online statment promotion that posted, that is dated 10/17, after my flight.

Hopefully, all of these delays everyone is having will be cleared up soon.