B747SP

In the past, whenever I saw a fare drop, I used the "Change Flight" tool on southwest.com to select the same flights, and was able to refare the ticket to the lower price. The difference was either refunded to me or saved as credits, depending on the original fare type.

So on 6/30 I booked two one-way tickets and my colleague booked a round trip, all in Business Select. The next day on 7/1 I saw that the price for Business Select dropped $50 each way, so I went ahead and used "Change Flight" to refare. The process went through normally for all three tickets. However I did not receive the "UPDATED flight reservation" email. I totally missed the clue, but this turned out to be an important clue later one.

A few days later I still did not see any refund to my credit card, so I went on southwest.com to check the reservations. All three reservations from "My Trip" gave me "page not found" error. Manually entering the reservation number and traveler name resulted "reservation does not exist" error. I called Southwest reservation and reported the problem. Immediately after I gave the agent the two one-way reservation numbers, and before I could explain the price adjust issue, she delightfully reported "problem fixed, although I don't know what may have caused the reservations to disappear". Immediately I saw the reservations online, and received two "UPDATED flight reservation" emails showing new ticket numbers but the old price. I then explained to her about the price adjustment I had done, and asked her about the refund status. She said that the tickets were still at the original price, and she did not see any price adjustment made. By this time the price online had returned to the previous price level, $50 higher than on 7/1. She asked me to call Customer Relations at the new 1-855 -234-4654 number, and said Customer Relations might have an insight to the price history.

I called Customer Relations. Long wait. Eventually got someone. She could not understand why the reservation disappeared either. I then gave her my colleague's round trip reservation number, which was still invalid at that time. She looked into the reservation, and told me that the reservation was invalid because Southwest somehow did not collect the credit card charge (the credit card charges have posted to my account already). She could not verify the price drop either, and offered to restore the reservation for me.

So in the end, I missed $200 of price adjustment. Still puzzled on why this happened. A lessen learned the hard way - next time if I see a BS fare drop, I will just purchase new tickets and then request refund of the old one, instead of trying to refare online.

smmrfld

Not a good strategy if you booked the original trip during a promo. IME, trips booked during the "book by" bonus period and later changed will still receive bonus points as long as the new flight(s) fall within the original "fly by" bonus period. If you cancel and rebook, no soup for you.

lougord99

Interesting. I was under the impression that BS fares did not change like that. Evidently Southwest is now pricing BS like they price other fare categories.

ursine1

Yes, that's very odd -- I can't say that I've ever seen a BS fare drop after booking.

alggag

Third.

This sounds like it was a bug or glitch which would also explain why it didn't go through. BS and AT fares are pretty much set in stone and the few times there's a change there's typically some sort of announcement about cutting fares $10!!! (nevermind that is $10 off of the *full fare* tickets )

InkUnderNails

4th?

I agree. Must be a glitch. I have checked BS fares literally hundreds of times through the years. When I make travel estimates for my work, it is the "I'll never have to pay more than this price." I am not omniscient, but I can not even remember a BS sale.

qisu

I have a different refaring issue. It's somewhat of an edge case:

1. book ticket, let's say fare is $100
2. fare drops to $80. reprice the reservation so now the ticket is for $80 and i have $20 in travel funds
3. fare goes to $90. I forgot that I had already repriced at step 2 and did not think to use the check travel funds tool. I go to reprice the reservation - southwest.com will tell you that I will get $10 back (difference between current fare and the original fare in step 1) - which is very misleading. When I do this reprice, I actually lost out on $10 of travel fund.

unifix

I've definitely seen BS fares go up intra-CA (SAN-SFO), never too much though, mostly around holidays when WGA are close to selling out.

B747SP

The reservation agent also thought it was strange to see a BS or Anytime fare drop. The drop happened on the day when DOJ announced their investigation to Southwest alleging coordination among airlines to control capacity and keep fare high. Coincidence? Some knee-jerking reaction at the HQ?