deltheking

Hi, I have previous credits in my name from past SWA tickets. I have a total of 5 or 6 previous credits and they roughly total upto $500. So, I wanted to book a new reservation on SWA and use these credits. Here's where my troubles begin.

I use the 'apply travel funds while booking' option , enter my previous confirmation #[that has unused funds] and then my first and last names and all needed info and then I get the message - Funds available $120, Funds applied $0 . And I get the same message with any of my previous unused fund that I try to use . So, What am I missing? What am I doing wrong ?

Thanks.

nsx

I have seen that error when I attempted to apply more than 2 unused tickets or more than 4 other sources of funds.

If you make separate one-way reservations for each passenger this is unlikely to bite you.

deltheking

Thanks for the reply. I am making a single reservation on my name using previous funds that were all on my name. Infact, I had contacted SWA a month back about this and gave them the list of conf # that I had that were unused and they checked and said that I was good to go. And I thought that was it then. But when I tried to make a booking yesterday, I keep getting the same message.

So what do I do ? Is it a glitch in their website ? Do I call them again and let them know? b'cos I have used SWA so many times before and never had this problem.

nsx

The max of 2 unused and 4 partially used is not directly avoidable. You may need to make some dummy reservations to break unused tickets into partially used funds. Did you get the message without exceeding these limits?

deltheking

Thanks. So,does that mean you mean I can use either 2 unused or 4 partially unused ? I always thought - 4 was the max limit irrespective of whether each fund is either unused or partial. And I am not sure which of my funds is which. Is this max 2 unused and 4 partially used a technical glitch or has it been the SWA rule? I never knew about this this.

Sorry for the questions, but never have encountered such a situation.

pshuang

Wiki FAQ:
http://flyerguide.com/wiki/index.php...tions_apply.3F

If many or all of your 5-6 PNRs are Unused Tickets (UTs), that could explain the problem that you're having.

If that's the case, the FAQ section points you to the FT thread that discusses how to combine several UTs into a single new ticket, which you then cancel, and then recursively repeat until the value of all of your PNRs are aggregated together. Very briefly, for example, if you have five PNRs all Unused Tickets and each worth exactly $120:

1. Use UT PNR1 $120 and UT PNR2 $120 to buy an approx. $200 ticket (new UT PNR-A), leaving approx. $40 on PNR2 as Leftover Electronic Ticket Fund (LETF).
2. Use UT PNR3 $120 and UT PNR4 $120 to buy an approx. $200 ticket (new UT PNR-B), leaving approx. $40 on PNR4 as LETF.
3. Cancel UT PNR-A and UT PNR-B.
4. Use UT PNR-A $200, UT PNR5 $120, LETF PNR2 $40, and LETF PNR4 $40 to buy an approx. $400 ticket (new UT PNR-C). If the ticket you find is cheaper than $400, you may have a little bit of residual LETF. Let's suppose you buy UT PNR-C $390 and that leaves $10 on LETF PNR4.
5. You can now use UT PNR-C $390 and UT PNR-B $200 to buy the $500 ticket you actually want. That leaves you $90 on one of these two PNRs (usually the one you entered second) as LETF, which will be relatively easy to use in the future, and $10 on LETF PNR4.

The idea here is that during every dummy ticket purchase, you use two Unused Tickets (and one or more LETFs), and that only produces one new Unused Ticket. Therefore the number of Unused Tickets you have drops by one. Along the way, if you pick the right intermediate tickets with the right price (and remember, you have no intentions of traveling on these tickets, so they can be on any route Southwest flies, and you can just find something at roughly the right price), you can absorb most of the LETFs into your new Unused Ticket. Just watch out during this process that you don't co-mingle tickets with vastly different expiration dates and therefore inadvertently make hundreds of dollars of stored value expire much sooner than they had to.

gejone

Why don't you just call the 800# and have them take care of the issue?

deltheking

That was a very comprehensive and detailed information . Appreciate all your effort in posting that.. Yup, much much clearer now.

deltheking

Yup, also calling them up today on this issue!