ursine1

WN's once great customer service is sadly not at all what it used to be.

smmrfld

+1. The poster to which you refer regularly displays a total lack of knowledge about WN, yet insists on contributing inaccurate or misleading information. Best to ignore, IMO.

formeraa

I have always received decent service from Customer Relations. However, I don't find it "outstanding" in any sense. I find it comparable to Customer Relations service at other carriers. If you want to see excellent customer relations, try Alaska Airlines.

emrdoc

Or Delta customer relations if you are an elite.

pinniped

I've always found WN's IROPS support to be very lacking. There are other things they do well, but this isn't one. If OP was willing to accept BDL in this situation, the agent should have made it happen immediately, period. How is it advantageous to anyone to force the customer to go to the airport to get proper IROPS support? That doesn't help Southwest, the affected passenger, or other passengers.

This is a big weak spot for WN. I hope the OP gets his additional points back: it's bogus that he had to outlay them to begin with and then fight to get them back.

Marko123

Good news to report here. I got a call today from them and the woman said she completely understood where I was coming from and would refund my points. She also said she agreed they need to look at relaxing that policy too. I didn't get many details about her or who gave the go ahead to refund my points but I'm pleasantly surprised it happened this quickly.

I'll keep in mind that it's better to speak to someone at the airport but in this case we didn't have time once we got there since I spent so much time on the phone!

NextTrip

Thanks for reporting back with the outcome. Glad it worked out!

esquesk

Glad to hear that they did the right thing, although it would have been better if they did it the first time around.

mylegs

Just wanted to add that escalating to a supervisor on the 1-800 line got us rebooked during a cancellation situation. But we did have to argue with her as well and got a "1 time exception". Ha!

Our situation was that we were a family of four booked from MHT-AUS on a 4:00 pm ish flight. Got a slew of messages at 8:30 am that day that our flight had been cancelled. As we were out of cell range in Vermont, we didn't see the email/text until about 9:30. Called and were told all flights out of MHT were booked, flights out of BOS were booked, Providence, etc. No way to get back to Austin that day or the next.

We said we'd be willing to fly to Dallas, Houston, or preferably San Antonio, from some NE Southwest airport, but were told that since these other Texas airports were "not code-sharing" we couldn't do it without paying the fare difference. (Yes, that's the term the agent used over and over again.) NO one could or would explain where this "code-sharing" or market-based approach was listed for customers to view or challenge. "That's just our policy, ma'am."

Long story, but after an hour on the phone and quite a bit of searching/arguing, we did get a flight to Houston that night and we paid for a hotel and rental car to get home. Ugh. Not WN's best day. If we didn't practically fly for free on miles everywhere we vacation we'd have been more pissed.

diver858

I find it hard to believe that WN remains the only major US carrier without ANY interline agreements. This may have been justified when WN was a low fare carrier, but now that its prices are generally equal to or greater than the competition, it simply does not make sense, must cost them some highly coveted business customers. While interlining may not be very useful during weather issues due to the industry-wide reduction in capacity and high load factors, it would allow WN to do a better job accommodating elites at other times. Perhaps Kelly is concerned that customers will find the competitive experience superior, lose their business?

This is one of the primary reasons AA continues to earn my business. When connecting through LAX on a flight home (SAN) from the East Coast earlier this year, a delay would have caused me to miss the last LAX-SAN flight, leaving no good options - either stay over until the next morning or rent a car and drive 2+ hours. Fortunately, UA had a late LAX-SAN flight with availability, a gate agent was waiting for me with a new ticket, which I was able to exchange for a boarding pass, allowing me to arrive home that evening.