FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - FAQ: What's a Systemwide Upgrade / SWU / VIP and how to use? (Master thread)
Old Jul 8, 2022, 1:54 pm
  #1555  
anabolism
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Programs: AA (EP), Hilton (Diamond), Marriott Bonvoy (Titanium)
Posts: 8,937
Originally Posted by Rebob
I remember a post from someone a few years back that "reused" their SWUs and were charged the fare difference on the second usage.
I've never heard of that, and would think that would be easily disputable. What I have heard fairly frequently is that people's accounts go negative without their knowledge (the SWU counter never displays a value lower than zero). When they do earn more SWUs, the counter shows fewer than earned. That's how they know they were negative. In some cases, people went negative because they double-used SWUs that weren't deducted immediately, while in other cases they went negative because of an error on AA's part. For example, in some cases someone had called the EXP desk for something unrelated to SWUs, after the caller hung up the agent got a new call but their system still had the first caller's account loaded, the second caller applied an SWU, the system deducted it from the first caller's account. It took an audit to find and clear it up.
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