I never remember seeing anyone from southwest claim to be a "champion of the consumer", they're a business. and by no means is this consumer fraud, there's no bait and switch or anything illegal. they're offering a discount off some base price. hotels do this be saying a certain discount is off the rack rate instead of the lowest price so the value may not be as great as it seems, but the consumer likes it and in the end they get what's advertised. heck, even stores valued for their social responsibility like costco do this - when the coupons the mail out are active, the price on some of those goods can be higher than what it was the week before. for the consumer, they think its a bargin when in fact it may not be.

Southwest's strategy is geared towards taking advantage of people's behavior. Building the idea of scarcity is a big one. The no assigned seats gets people boarded faster becasue people 1) line up early and 2) rush down the jetway to get their chosen seat. The Ding specials also are "limited time" items. In this case, running these 1 day sales are a way to get people to book travel sooner to, at least from the recent Dings I've seen, locations that haven't had the desired amount of traffic.