Early Bird Check-In DID NOTHING for $30

[JFGREEN72]

When booking my last flight to Denver, I purchased early bird check-in for the first time. It sounded like a good idea. It was supposed to check me into the flight 36 hours beforehand to ensure a better boarding position. LUCKILY I looked at my app 24 hours prior to the flight just to make sure. Well, IT DID NOT CHECK ME IN...in fact it did nothing for the return flight as well. I feel like I was ripped off. Fortunately I checked myself in on time and had a decent seat for both flights. Point being, I spent $30 for a service that did absolutely nothing "early" or otherwise. VERY DISAPPOINTED. If it doesn't check you in before everyone else besides A-List, then what is the point in spending $30 extra dollars?????

[DancingDavidE]

It does check you in at 36 hours, but you still have to use the "check in" button to claim your boarding pass, even though your position was pre-assigned.

If you go back to your boarding documents it should have EBCI on it to denote that EBCI was applied.

Whether you liked the boarding position that resulted from that or not is a different issue...did you get a poor number, higher than mid-B's?

David

[TheMiddleSeat]

Looks like @DancingDavidE already said most of what I was thinking, but I had it typed out already so here you go...

@JFGREEN72, it sounds like there is some misunderstanding about how EarlyBird Check-in works and how the overall Southwest check-in process works.  EBCI secures a boarding position (letter and number) for you 36 hours before departure.  At that same time A-List members are also assigned their boarding position.  This is not visible to the customer and at this point in time you can not determine what your assigned boarding position is.  At 24 hours prior to departure all customers can start the check-in process and must check-in at some point (up to 10 minutes before departure) regardlesss of whether or not they were already assigned a boarding position.  Again, being assigned a position at 36 hours does not change any of the process and you still have to click the button that says "check-in".  If you were assigned a number at 36 hours prior to departure you can check in at 24 hours prior or 1 hour prior and you will still get the same boarding position.  In summary, the system works, it's just not visible to the customer what is happening and the wording used during the process doesn't do a good job confirming that EBCI did anything.

Please let us know if you have additional questions or want anything else clarified.  I'm also curious what boarding position you got.

--TheMiddleSeat

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