New benefit for A-List Preferred: Free Drinks?
 

The Tier Status View Details page

http://www.southwest.com/account/rap...ds/tier-status

has a surprise:

Free Drinks Onboard are shown as a benefit for A-List Preferred. I haven't seen this mentioned before, so it may be an error. If not, I hope it includes Monster energy drinks!

"This portion of the Southwest Airlines website is undergoing maintenance and is currently unavailable.

Please try again later. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
If this issue persists, please contact a Southwest Airlines Customer Representative for assistance at 1-800-I-FLY-SWA (1-800-435-9792)."

I also saw that this morning.

Will you get a drink ticket with your BP ala BS, or just flash your card, or what?

Oh the irony. Even the free drink offer page won't load. So now I can't even learn about a free drink that might help make up for the web site issues....because of a website issue....:(:(

This portion of the Southwest Airlines website is undergoing maintenance and is currently unavailable.
Please try again later. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
If this issue persists, please contact a Southwest Airlines Customer Representative for assistance at 1-800-I-FLY-SWA (1-800-435-9792).

That's not a working link. It needs a long session-specific code that I chopped off.

You can also reach this page by clicking View My Tier Progress near the lower left of the My Account Snapshot page.

On the page that shows the Free Drinks, when you click View Details under A-List Preferred, the details do NOT include free drinks.

After the web site trouble today, plenty of customers need a drink.

my guess is one set of drink coupons mailed annually with your a list preferred card

maybe it's free soft drinks, juice, cofee or tea for a list preferred

non potable water for everyone else

The free drink message is visible in the screen capture expert7700 included in his lengthy post at 5:04am CST.

I predict it will not include Monster, based on past precedent.

I thought you were kidding but I was able to get logged in for a bit and it's true. Thanks WN!

Well this is good^

A-List Preferred Benefits
 

I have not noticed this to date which may be due to not spending the time to understand RR2.0. However, I wanted to note that for A-List Preferred members, free drinks will be offered on the flight. Hopefully this (1) includes Monster for the non-drinkers and, since it says free drinks onboard on some pages but not others, (2) isn't a benefit that was supposed to be removed prior to launch. ^

The way it is worded on the site makes it sound like it's unlimited drinks:) It doesn't say one free drink per flight.

If you don't get upgraded on Delta and are medal, a lot of times you get a have one on use coupon with your boarding pass that you can use onboard for a free drink or set of headphones which is a nice little extra.

Free drinks? buy stock in Jack Daniels, because I can personally guarantee that they will be selling lots to Southwest this year!

And you'll be seeing plenty of free drink coupons for WN going on Ebay if this true as well

We can always give them away to the serendipitous, late check in, travel naive, canceled A-list position space getters, standing in line in front of us. Tell them it is one of the other perks of A+ that they did not earn but can have anyway.

Well I have only flown WN on PAID trips twice in the past 12 months on cheap DTW/MDW trips (but earned CP status and earned 9 or 10 RR awards thanks to partners in the last year) so this benefit doesn't apply to me. But I still have plenty of coupons I'll never use (thanks to Southwest not keeping their word on the tan coupons never expiring) so I may put some on Ebay myself. I was drinking at the bar at Ruby Tuesdays at DTW a couple weeks ago for a RR award trip and the lady sitting next to me flies WN DTW/DEN once a month and said as soon as she gets a book she burns them on one flight so I gave her a couple of mine and she was very happy:)

I will test the water here tomorrow, as I fly from BWI to MSY for Mardi Gras!!! I have not received anything in the mail from WN as far as coupons go, however did see my status at A-List Preferred on their website. I followed the link in this post and found the free drinks at the bottom of the page. Maybe as easy as showing your boarding pass that says A-List Preferred? Will report back. Although I am sure that someone will have the answer here that it flying today. It would be nice not to have to carry the silly coupons though. If it is the case, then I'll have a ton to sell on ebay as well...

On the other hand, as good as it sounds, the real value is greatly diluted as I can imagine that a great deal of the highest volume traveler's, like myself, usually have to jump in a rental car and really can't partake in more than one cocktail on the flight. Makes it more gimmick than value...

It's dead, Jim. :mad:

Wow, that was mean! They dangled those free drinks in front of you guys like a carrot. Now *POOF*....they are gone. Even my husband thought that was pretty cool, though he is only regular A-List.

I need a drink... and I don't drink!

the post Kenny linked was not the exact same screen shot that I took yesterday, so I still had hope. I logged in again, and he's right Poof, free drinks are gone. Apparently the IT people drank all of our free liquor.

\http://www.sbs2003.net/alist-no drinks1.jpg

I tested this on both my account which is already past the 25 year to date for a list requalification, and also on a 2nd account which is slightly below that mark, just in case the screen was different. unfortunately, nope.

I'll bet the free drinks were a proposed item that got cut. I remember seeing a RR benefit survey asking if I'd rate the order of preferences: priority standby, free, wifi, free drinks, etc.

Removed without any acknowledgement. Poor PR (yet again).

. td:
I checked and its gone on my account too and it dosnt print preferred on the boarding pass (yet)

It's gone from my account as well. I'd settle for one free drink, kind of like Alaska's "first one on us" when you're in Y and a gold.

As for preferred: it prints on the BPs you get at the airport. "A List Preferred" was on mine this morning in AUS. I almost pulled a DYKWIA in line. :D Yesterday morning (3/1) my BPs from TUS didn't have it, though (not surprising given yesterday's mess).

When I get upgraded on Delta, I have seen a lot of people drink a lot more than one drink:)

Still only "A-List" printed on boarding passes 3/1 LAS-CLE and 3/2 CLE-BWI, BWI-PVD. I was wondering if the BP's would indicate this distinction.

Wasnt on mine from ELP this afternoon

Nor on the one I printed this evening.

No, the CS&S employees used the liquor to douse the effigies of the IT people they set ablaze.

Is it possible your BPs were issued before the glitches were fixed?

Someone from WN customer service needs to step up here... Not that the free drinks are that important, but the fact that they posted it and took it away is REALLY BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE! I am sure that the original screens were read and proof-read several times. If it was not to be a benefit for their busiest travelers, then someone should have taken care of it before the "go-live" date. I think that they owe us an explanation and a bunch of free drink coupons at a minimum. I am writing to WN (email) to complain and who knows, they might actually respond back... Like several others on this forum, maybe I'll look to move business elsewhere. Maybe with the new status of A-List Preferred, I can get a status match to someone else... The bottom line is that this really does not set well with me...

Does this honestly surprise anyone? I have a big stack of tan drink coupons that I was told could be used on monster and that would never expire. They stop accepting them for Monster (even though they are still suppose to accept a lot of the ones I have for monster the majority of FA's still don't know the rule) and then they deicde to put an expiration date of August, 2011 on coupons that have no expiration date. When WN has the audacity to make those changes on coupons they SOLD, no one should be surprised at this. And not to mention they didn't even give 60 days notice to HUGE changes they made in rapid rewards, luckilly I didn't have any travel paid for after the changes, but I would have been upset if I would have book travel on WN over Delta on a DTW/MDW ONLY because 2 RR credits was worth more than 1000 MQM's to find out I was going to be WN points worth less than the Delta miles.

WN should admit they made a mistake and give those passengers a free drink coupon on every flight for the next 30 to 60 days. But you know when an airline charges for drink coupons that don't expire and decides to put an expiration date on them and stop accepting them for one of their products, they sure aren't going to do that.

I'm guessing the team hadn't figured out the mechanics for how to work the deal or realized it required a "gimme free booze" a-list preferred ID card (which hasn't been issued yet) and hopefully will bring it back in another 6 weeks once the paper program catches up and we get our "I'm a special customer" A-List Preferred card.

Keeping the fingers crossed, I'm curious if they'll reinstate it as "1 free drink per flight" policy or a "let's get wasted in first class" type policy.

I called the Dallas folks and, yes, they are aware of the little picture that surely insinuated free drinks for A-List+ folks. That has been removed and there is no free drink(s) program simply due to A-List+ status nor is there one planned.

To get free drinks as an A-List+ member, you will still need to purchase a BS fare or have drink coupons.

Wow. I gotta call shenanigans (stole that one from the DL forum :)). That wasn't just a mistake, it was deliberately coded into the site, seen by several people- enough to be able to say it was once there publically- (and was also seen by- and try not to laugh- the QA team for the website revision), and allowed to go live.

I dunno what happened, but something just doesn't pass the smell test here.

I'm as irritated as anyone, but perhaps you are oversubscribing to a conspiracy theory. Even with the most sophisticated content management and revision repository systems in place, all in takes is one web developer to check in a change and push it live. And with all the madness going on before and after the botched conversion, I doubt the QA 'team' was focused on small details. After all, their whole flucking website blew up after having months to prepare to convert frozen databases and the associated backend queries, etc, over a two-day period into the new RR 2.0 environment.

It could have been a misunderstanding by a single employee of instructions given to them by their manager or perhaps an overzealous noob in the marketing department gave wrong information to the web development director.

Not to excuse incompetence, but I doubt seriously that Southwest management purposely put that free drink graphic on the website in order to pull it less than 24 hours later. What purpose would that serve?

How will drink coupons be distributed? At what threshold - 16 flights still?

After 10 paid trips.

trips = roundtrips, or segments?

If you have credits still in your account and convert the points is WN still going to give you the four drink coupons when you get your standard award? Those drink vouchers help make flying WN on a long flight a lot more bearable. And the FA"s on WN are great about doing refills compared to Delta in Y.

One-way trips, whether or not they include a connection. I'm not sure about the next question (award combining credits and converted points).