Originally Posted by
laqimi
Hey guys, a bit surprised by the vitriol here. I'm a frequent Southwest flyer, and a long-time FT lurker. Several of the bullets here I found out about recently, like Southwest's policy this year to waive the $100 fee along with the hack to convert WGA to WGA+ then cancelling within 24 hours, so decided to share here. How many of you knew about all these tips already outside of the automated check-in?
As for the bot, I'm not the creator and I was skeptical at first too, but then I tried it over Memorial Day weekend and it worked like a charm. I didn't need to worry about remembering & stepping aside just to check-in in the middle of a family gathering. I totally get that some folks are hesitant about handing a third-party your PNR, so if that's the case then don't use the bot. I'm just sharing it here in case folks will find something like this useful. Apart from that, hopefully the other tips I have here are still helpful to you, as they are neither spam nor scam.
By the way, I think the error message there ("call us") is what's returned from the Southwest API, as I got that too when I typoed my PNR. There's also other error messages (like "passenger not on this reservation") when I mixed up SO's flight with mine. Anyway, guess I'll stop posting helpful things here going forward ha!
We do know all the tricks here. I'd bet 10 to 1 that the bot is not a scam, but I would not bet 100 to 1. If not for the new rule allowing transfer of funds, the risk would be limited to having your reservation canceled. As with any check-in tool, it might fail to execute and leave you without a boarding number until you finally check in.
In any case, I am sure Southwest will shut it down quickly, so I wouldn't recommend that members invest time learning to use it. But since you made that investment I'd like you to continue to report your results with the tool here.