hokiegl

I am very new to SW and wanted to pick your collective brains. Please tell me if this will work. Let's say I had tons of 3rd party currency like thank you points or other traver currency. This currency allows me to purchase SW flights at 25% off (I am 99% sure that SW gets paid the full fare) Can I do the following:

1. Book 20+ SW flights.
2. Wait a few days
3. Go to SW and cancel all the flights
4. Get 100% of the flight value as credits?
5. Take my time over the next year to book the actual flights I want.
6. Does it get complicated if you have lots of credits of different amounts?

The reason I want to do this is that the discount is for a limited time and I would love to stash all the value with sw.

danielonn

While it seems good in theory I think WN would catch on and flag you for doing this. While in theory it may work my thinking is they will sooner or later catch on and not let you book 20 flights and cancel them. If they detect a pattern then they could say you are not following their terms and conditions.

Perhaps others can "chime in" but me thinks not.

lougord99

You won't get 100% of the flight value as credit; you will get 75% of the flight value as credit.

You will only get a credit for the amount you paid.

hokiegl

So I went ahead and tried this out. I was able to make a booking at 25% off. Then I went to SW and tried to modify/change the reservation, but it would not let me. It said it cant be done online since it was bought through a 3rd party. I waited a bit and tried again after the final confirmation came though. I was able to cancel it! And I did get the FULL fare value credit. Next I tried and was able to book a different flight using the credit. So on a small scale this does work. Also, I was able to see who exactly purchased the ticket and it was "montrose travel". I did some research and this company represents 100s of credit card and reward programs.

So my outstanding questions are:

1. Will Montrose Travel be notified that I canceled the reservation?
2. If so, I wonder if they would care?
3. Will SouthWest care if I did this 20 more times?

Once thing that I found interesting, is that Montrose Travel does not seem to have access to some of the cheapest fare on sw.com. But it does not seem to matter since I can just buy a mugh higher fare, cancel it and reapply the funds to a cheaper fare.

Doc Savage

I suspect if you try this often, they will catch on and either cancel your flights or something else you will find quite unpleasant.
Not worth it IMHO.

hokiegl

Are there any data points on adverse action for repeated booking and canceling and rebooking?

minamhere

The biggest issue I can see is that when you book a Southwest WGA fare, the ticket itself is only good for 1 year. You can cancel it and reuse the funds, but the new ticket still retains the original expiration date. Meaning, the "new" flight has to occur within 1 year of the old flight. You can't just keep rebooking into the future. So, even if this worked they way you wanted, you would not want to "stash" more money than you intend to spend at Southwest in the next 1 year.

(This wouldn't apply if you paid for fully refundable tickets, but TYP can't do that.)

Doc Savage

Well for one thing, when you try to cheat by abusing the free cancellation aspect of WN, you bring closer the day when they take it away, thus hosing every honest WN customer.

Please don't do this.

Exiled in Express

So what is this Golden Goose opportunity operated by Montrose?

hokiegl

Rest assured I will not be doing this on mass scale. Simply because I don't fly enough. But if there was a business person that paid their own way and flew on SouthWest regularly, this would be a great opportunity to save 25% of all their flights.

jeffandnicole

This seems to completely contradict what you wrote multiple times. Why would you book a whole bunch of flights with an airline that you're "new" with when you don't fly very often? Heck, you've yet to even use the correct capitalization of Southwest (It's not SouthWest).

Looking up this website you're referring to, I don't see anything regarding Southwest, or 25% off. But then again, I'm not going to spend all day figuring it out.

nsx

Southwest is unlikely to care. The travel agent is the wild card.

I wouldn't try it 20 times. Maybe 2 times with 10x the dollar amount. My guess is that it will work several times and then the travel company will ban you.

joshua362

Are these fares 25%+ higher the WN's costing you more "currency"? Then who would care?

FindAWay

Someone correct me if I'm wrong....But, I don't see this a 25% off WN flights opportunity. The points currency used simply applies a ratio to book paid flights. So, the "25% off all WN flights" mentioned is the exact same as using it toward flights on UA, DL, or AA (or worse if we're talking about TY points on AA). If something is applied uniformly to other airlines, then, it is not unique to WN and not really a discount.

IMHO, this thread is really about a nice liquidation strategy for those points if one is closing-out a card.

hokiegl

Exactly. I have a bunch of CC reward points and I want to see the best way to use them. I can't transfer them to RR points, but with this technique I can at least stash the cash for next year.