"Current fare" when trying to rebook due to price decrease
 

I found a number of trips previously scheduled that had prices go down quite a bit when searching early this morning. Strange given the sale from the beginning of the week "extended" but I'll take what I can get.

However now you can no longer go into your flight and just "change flight" and get the lower price for that same flight time. The ability to do that is blocked by a box saying "current fare" in your flight. You now have to go through the labor intensive process of canceling your flight and re-booking it.

This airline is moving toward quite the anti-customer model, and this is an unnecessary hassle and waste of time. This was clearly an intentional change in the website design.

Probably WGA fares that the system isn't handling properly, and somewhat treating as BASIC. I'd bet not intentional, and eventually goes away when all WGA fares are done.

Or, are they fares other that WGA?

A couple of them were WGA.

One was booked as Basic earlier this week.

Same behavior by website.

You can't change BASIC

You're right... When I got to the one that was booked as Basic, I must have gone straight to just flat out canceling it.

So I guess that explains that website behavior.

And since Southwest now treats WGA as BASIC is many ways, that's probably the problem for the WGA "current fare" issue

I didn't go forward in the website but if I go into the fares I booked as Basic as new fares last week, there is still a "change flight" option. I can click through and it has the old chart of every other flight that day and the +/- cost. It appears I can click through and change. But I did not try to click through. May do a dummytest booking to try this.

Noticed this today. Rebooked a few flights for Thursday, for less then half the original cost with a 20% promo. Had to cancel and rebook. Lost my 2 checked bags, but got a CC so 1 per person should be enough.

Are any of you declining to refare? Basic would save me 30% of what I paid. But I need the ability to SDC as A-list on WGA for these specific flights. I want to avoid 6-months Basic credit expiration at all costs. I'd get $3 back with WGA+ but I'd end up with 12 months expiration.

I'm not refaring, but for a different reason; I want to keep AL+ for next year with ELR reservations (Extended Leg Room, I learned this acronym today :)). In late APR early MAY I even bumped up my existing 8 R/Ts to WGA+ for $20 each way...take my money! And with CP every year (cc spend) we fly way more that we would without CP. I'm their ideal (sucker) customer.

I book most my flights with points, and hold a CC. So Basic fares are not much different from the old WGA fares as I rarely have more than one bag. I have rebooked several flights into basic fares at a decent savings(This weeks CUN flight is over 50% less than my previously booked tickets).

I don't do same day changes often, as my schedule doesn't change much. But that would be a reason not to swap.

I noticed this too. Could have canceled a flight where I paid 8500 points (WGA) and repurchased as a BASIC for 5000 points. If 3500 points used to be worth $50 (approx) a cancel / rebook would have a net savings of $15 after you pay $35 for one bag. YMMV if you have a credit card. Not worth the hassle given the number of unknowns at the moment.

Southwest may have won this battle, but every future booking for me will have me checking F9 and UA to see if they have a better offer. I never used to do that. So is that winning the war? I don't think so.

If you plan to check bags, you probably don't want to re-fare a WGA to Basic...

If you're not sure if you will check bags, then you have to really think about it. I avoided doing a re-fare to save about 1,500 points on one leg of a flight (flight home) because I may buy liquids and may need to check the bag coming from that destination. But for the flight going there, I re-fared without hesitation as I try not to check bags on the way out on a trip anyway.

And inconsistent points difference
 

I get the new policy about not being able to change my WGA (now BASIC) to the lower BASIC flight and that I would need to cancel and rebook to get that new fare. However, I was looking at changing from basic to WGA+, which was still 3000 pts cheaper than my original flight . When I pulled up the schedule first (not through the Change flight, but just find a flight), it showed the Basic was 5000 pts and the WGA+ was 7000 pts. When I actually tried to change my existing flight to WGA+, it showed that the flight was 7500 points! I opened another tab, and confirmed that price on their system still showed 7000. Any idea what gives?

I have found this same type of discrepancy on several flights over the past week when refaring.