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WN's new reservation system aggressively cancels duplicate bookings

WN's new reservation system aggressively cancels duplicate bookings

Old Feb 20, 2017, 6:37 pm
  #1  
nsx
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WN's new reservation system aggressively cancels duplicate bookings

I confess. I recently wanted to replace some June points bookings with cash bookings. I made the cash bookings but I slacked off on canceling the points reservations, figuring that I could do it several days later.

The new system slapped my hand by canceling the new bookings at the end of the second day following my creation of the new reservations. (If it had canceled the older bookings I would have been happy, since that was my original intent. But no, it must have been programmed to reverse the most recent activity.)

One of the cancellations was for a different flight on the same date. The others were for exactly the same flight.

No complaints here, since I should have been more prompt to cancel the duplicates. The cash fare was almost exactly the same as when I had booked the points flights, so the cancellation was annoying but not costly to me.

FT'ers should beware that the new system is watching you more closely than the old one did. Play nice.
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Old Feb 20, 2017, 7:09 pm
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Yikes. That's a pretty significant change, and unfortunately likely one of many we'll see as WN leverages the capabilities of the new system to their benefit.

Did you receive any notification of the cancellations?
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Old Feb 20, 2017, 7:13 pm
  #3  
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Originally Posted by ursine1
Yikes. That's a pretty significant change, and unfortunately likely one of many we'll see as WN leverages the capabilities of the new system to their benefit.

Did you receive any notification of the cancellations?
Yes, I got a separate email for each one, albeit with no reason given.
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Old Feb 20, 2017, 7:20 pm
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Curious what's going to happen when the system goes FUBAR due to wx or some other reason and pax books a same-day backup flt. Will be interesting to see when and how often they sweep.
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Old Feb 20, 2017, 7:21 pm
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And the fares refunded as Travel Funds, presumably? (WGA fares?)
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Old Feb 20, 2017, 7:24 pm
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Originally Posted by smmrfld
Curious what's going to happen when the system goes FUBAR due to wx or some other reason and pax books a same-day backup flt. Will be interesting to see when and how often they sweep.
And also what the criteria is. Could this be subverted by not using your RR number? Not adding a KTN?
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Old Feb 21, 2017, 1:42 pm
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Did WN not have revenue integrity capabilities before Altea or did they just not exercise them very well?

This change concerns me although I don't fault them at all. We need a lot more data points, for instance are co-terminals affected?? What about same O&D on consecutive days?
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Old Feb 22, 2017, 12:40 am
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Originally Posted by ursine1
Could this be subverted by not using your RR number? Not adding a KTN?
I believe the WN system matches your name and automatically adds your RR info when booking, even if it's left off. I did this once in the app and it showed up in my account even though I just typed my name in manually and left everything else blank.
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Old Feb 22, 2017, 6:36 am
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Originally Posted by tusphotog
I believe the WN system matches your name and automatically adds your RR info when booking, even if it's left off. I did this once in the app and it showed up in my account even though I just typed my name in manually and left everything else blank.
Really? I just had to manually give the agent EVERY personal detail because even though she had my RR number she couldn't figure out how to use that number to identify me in any way.

I am not sure where they got this new system, but I think I will be booking with another airline for a few months while they try to figure out what they are doing. It's now taken an hour to book one EASY ticket!
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Old Feb 22, 2017, 6:42 am
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Were you logged in inside the app? Or the web site for that matter? Or autofill of sorts added it in? I can't imagine it's smart enough to locate a particular John Smith out of 10,000 John Smiths

This definitely requires some more testing to determine any workarounds given the disappearance of most WGA fares once inside 7 days.

Any blowback from the hand slap, i.e. "better not do it again"? I could try some pure points booking tests in the near future.
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Old Feb 22, 2017, 8:38 am
  #11  
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Originally Posted by audio-nut
Did WN not have revenue integrity capabilities before Altea or did they just not exercise them very well?

This change concerns me although I don't fault them at all. We need a lot more data points, for instance are co-terminals affected?? What about same O&D on consecutive days?
It must have been less convenient for the old system to find and/or cancel duplicate bookings.

Old habits are hard to break. Again yesterday I replaced a points booking with a cash booking and went to sleep without canceling the points booking. This time I got away with it, canceling the points ticket this morning. For now I'd guess you have 24 hours to eliminate the duplicate yourself. I will also guess that a booking for the preceding or following day will not be canceled.

Given that my reservations contain my phone number, I would have appreciated a phone call before the cancellations. But I guess if Southwest wanted to add a manual step to the process they would have enforced their rule manually under the old system.
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Old Feb 22, 2017, 8:43 am
  #12  
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Originally Posted by joshua362
Any blowback from the hand slap, i.e. "better not do it again"? I could try some pure points booking tests in the near future.
No penalty other than time needed to fix it. Customer Relations was nice enough to put it back the way I had intended. Even if they had not the low fare came back yesterday so I could have done it myself. For now, Southwest is accommodating with all kinds of problems and surprises under the new system.

I expect that the biggest gripes I will have with the new system will be non-refundability on changed tickets and the new limit of 3 sources of funds. The latter will require a lot more making and canceling a lot of dummy reservations to aggregate small funds.
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Old Feb 22, 2017, 11:05 am
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Similar story but different in a key way:

On 12/6/2016 (schedule extension day):
1) A one-way points booking was made for XXX-YYY on a certain day in May 2017
2) A one-way points booking was made for XXX-ZZZ on that same certain day in May 2017

This month:
A) Booker cancelled booking (1) above and re-booked for the same flight on the same day (cancelled & rebooked to avoid converting the $5.60 to TTFs if a simple re-fare was done) [Booking (2) wasn't touched)
B) 2 days after (A) was completed, the booker received a cancellation email from Southwest for (2) above (and points were refunded).

In summary, Southwest automatically cancelled an older booking (and refunded those points) for travel to a different city on the same day for which a flight was later booked to another city.

Last edited by FindAWay; Feb 23, 2017 at 3:40 pm
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Old Feb 22, 2017, 12:05 pm
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In NSX's case, the newer bookings were cancelled. In FinaAWay's, it was the older booking (aside from being a different destination). Odd.
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Old Feb 22, 2017, 12:52 pm
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It appears that you have about 2 days to correct any duplicate bookings before Southwest cancels them. On the few times I've done this I have generally cancelled one reservation within a few hours of booking a second one. It appears you could still do that as long as you are within the window of opportunity.
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