Skip to main content

Southwest Airlines Community

Changing from Wanna Get Away to Anytime

gabelogan99
Explorer B

I have about $50 in credits that I'm going to lose if I don't use them. They expire in May. I was able to use them to book my flight, but because of fare differences I now have that amount back and, like I said, it expires in May.

 

I don't see myself being able to use it by then. I could write a whole page on why I should be able to use them a year from my flight, which is next month, but I'm not going to do that. They gave me the fare difference for these flights back in flight credits which expire in May despite the fact that I used the credits for both a flight last September as well as (initially) the current flight next month which I have a question about. But, again, I digress and I'd like to know if upgrading to Anytime might be worth it as that is currently $50 and it would be better to do that than lose the money entirely.

 

This would just be for one leg of of the trip. I'm hoping that the other leg will come down considerably for a better time flying out, but it's currently a $233 difference which, I know, I could use my credits for as well but I'd still have to pay the difference and I'm really hoping the price comes down to something reasonable so I can zero out the credits and get a better flight time in the process. But, if that doesn't happen, maybe the $50 could go to switching to the Anytime fare.

 

If I do that, will all of the money for that leg of the trip become refundable or just the additional $50? I'm pretty sure it's all of it, I just wanted to make sure. Will I also receive 10x the points on the total fare amount for that leg? Sorry for the somewhat long post, I'm just having expiring credit woes and I'm highly disappointed in the policies that have lead to the headache.

8 REPLIES 8

Re: Changing from Wanna Get Away to Anytime

dfwskier
Aviator A

My understanding is that if you use a travel fund to partially pay for an anytime ticket, and then cancel that flight, then the amount of the travel fund returns to you as if travel fund with the old expiration date.

 

what

you pay in @addition to the TF amount would be refundable

 

Re: Changing from Wanna Get Away to Anytime

gabelogan99
Explorer B

 


@dfwskier wrote:

My understanding is that if you use a travel fund to partially pay for an anytime ticket, and then cancel that flight, then the amount of the travel fund returns to you as if travel fund with the old expiration date.

 

what

you pay in @addition to the TF amount would be refundable

 


I think I understand what you're saying. You're saying that if initially paid $250 on my credit card for the Wanna Get Away ticket and then paid an additional $50 using credits to upgrade to Anytime, the entire amount would be refundable, but I'd only get $250 back on my credit card and the $50 would just end up back on the original travel fund credit. Right? Again, I'm REALLY hoping that this isn't my only option to use these funds for and I'm not even thinking I'm going to do it in the end BUT it would be good to know for the future.

Re: Changing from Wanna Get Away to Anytime

dfwskier
Aviator A

@gabelogan99 wrote:

 


@dfwskier wrote:

I think I understand what you're saying. You're saying that if initially paid $250 on my credit card for the Wanna Get Away ticket and then paid an additional $50 using credits to upgrade to Anytime, the entire amount would be refundable, but I'd only get $250 back on my credit card and the $50 would just end up back on the original travel fund credit. Right?

 

Ahh Nope. If you paid $250 to buy the WAGA ticket, cancelled it and then used the TF to buy an Anytime ticket -=- and then cancelled that ticket -- the $250 would remain a TF with it's original expiry date. The $50 TF you would use to buy the Anytime ticket (when combined with the $250 TF) would remain a TF

 

WARNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you use two TF's to buy any ticket and then cancel that ticket, then the resultant new TF assumes the earlier of the two expiry dates. 

Re: Changing from Wanna Get Away to Anytime

TheMiddleSeat
Aviator A

There's no magic way to get a cash refund for any amount currently held in a travel fund.  I understand you are interested in switching your flight to a better time, but what I don't get is why not just buy the Wanna Get Away fare on that better time flight?  Unless that fare is sold out?  Seems like you could just apply the $50 credit towards switching the flight to the better time while staying in the WGA fare class which would surely be cheaper than the Anytime fare.

Since the credit was because of a price drop you could also just acknowledge that you were willing to pay the original higher fare and it's just a bummer that you couldn't take advantage of the discount which appeared.  Since you paid the higher price willingly there's no harm in just "pretending" the price never dropped and you let it expire without fretting over spending every last bit of it.

 

--TheMiddleSeat

Re: Changing from Wanna Get Away to Anytime

gabelogan99
Explorer B
@TheMiddleSeat wrote:

why not just buy the Wanna Get Away fare on that better time flight?  Unless that fare is sold out?  Seems like you could just apply the $50 credit towards switching the flight to the better time while staying in the WGA fare class which would surely be cheaper than the Anytime fare.

 

--TheMiddleSeat


I hope to be able to do that when all is said and done. When I first booked it, my times were perfect. My outbound flight was only $153 which for one way to Vegas from Columbus is an amazing price. And then I had to change it because we found out we can't be gone the original week we wanted to. I'm pretty sure that if I would have just known our dates up front I would have got the good deal. Now the price for that same flight a week later is over $400.

 

So, the reason I don't want to do that right now is because I want that price to go down before I make changes. (If the price goes down after I make the changes, it's not going to do me much good because unless it's over $105 I'm not going to get anything back in credits that I'd be able to use before they expire.) So, it would cost an additional $160 per person in real money for me to make the change right now. Then again, I'd be using up all the credits.  It's complicated stuff, but I'm glad I'm learning about it now.

 

The base price for the original flight I booked (for the week before) did go up but it's now $260 (up from $153) instead of over $400. The exact flight just a day later from my current one is $153. So I'm hoping my flight can come down to that level or something reasonable and I can rebook. I have a threshold of about $100 per ticket that I'm willing to pay in real dollars to make the change, and I'll just have to wait and see if that happens now. Like I said, I'm hoping it all works out in the end.

 

I've already made once change that resulted in an actual fare difference that I had to pay for with real money for this trip and I'm highly disappointed that I had a $4 credit and a $15 credit and the system for some reason chose to take the $4 credit as opposed to the $15 credit. That's another reason I have so many credits right now.

Re: Changing from Wanna Get Away to Anytime

dfwskier
Aviator A

Why not just leave a day later and snag the $153fare?

Re: Changing from Wanna Get Away to Anytime

gabelogan99
Explorer B

@dfwskier wrote:

Why not just leave a day later and snag the $153fare?


That’s definitely not a horrible idea, since that time for me would be perfect so it does solve that problem. It creates problems in the process though. It doesn’t solve the problem of using up my credits, and will add even more credits to what I already have. If I had a year to use them, it would be less of a problem. But I’d only have until May.

 

I also don’t want to cut my trip a whole day short in order to get that flight at that price. I could potentially add a day at the end since I’m taking away a day at the beginning but there aren’t any direct flights the day I’d come home in that scenario, and I’d incur additional hotel fees because it would be the weekend.

Re: Changing from Wanna Get Away to Anytime

gabelogan99
Explorer B

@TheMiddleSeat wrote:

There's no magic way to get a cash refund for any amount currently held in a travel fund.

 

--TheMiddleSeat


And I'm not exactly trying to get a cash refund for the travel funds. All I was saying was that if for any reason I had to cancel the original ticket, I could get the cash that was paid for it back but I already knew I wasn't ever going to get the travel funds back in cash... just wanted to make that clear. It would probably prove useless in the end, but at least it'd be using the travel funds for something rather than nothing.

 

I have enough credits now to where I can actually switch that particular flight to Business Select and it won't cost me anything at all and I'd be using nearly all of my credits. For some reason, the system is not letting me do it. I get all of the way to the end and get a weird error message after I hit confirm. Any idea why that is? Am I only able to change fare types if I'm changing BOTH flights on a round trip ticket? That's the only thing I can think of.