Disheartening Voucher Policy

[megoins]

I have been a Southwest Airlines customer for many years and have always had the highest regard for the company. Great staff, great service, and great flight experiences. However, I was crushed by SWA today when I called customer service to request a name change on a voucher I had purchased for a family member (Mom) who can no longer travel. The voucher amount represented by the confirmation numbers is not an insignificant amount. SWA would not provide me a generic voucher for these funds and now I'm just out the money I spent for Mom's ticket for a flight that she did not and cannot take. I'm still in a state of disbelief! I just cannot believe that is the position that SWA would take for their regular valued customers! Right now, I don't feel like a valued customer; and according to customer service I'm just out the money and I have no recourse. This is just not acceptable; it's not!

[bec102896]

Southwest is currently working on a feature where you can exchange your travel funds in to rapid rewards points hopefully that will work for you because once your mom exchanges the travel funds those points will be usable by anyone. This was announced in an email back in April 

I'm not sure when the feature will be available but stay tuned.  

-Blake

[chgoflyer]

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@megoins wrote:

I have been a Southwest Airlines customer for many years and have always had the highest regard for the company. Great staff, great service, and great flight experiences. However, I was crushed by SWA today when I called customer service to request a name change on a voucher I had purchased for a family member (Mom) who can no longer travel. The voucher amount represented by the confirmation numbers is not an insignificant amount. SWA would not provide me a generic voucher for these funds and now I'm just out the money I spent for Mom's ticket for a flight that she did not and cannot take. I'm still in a state of disbelief! I just cannot believe that is the position that SWA would take for their regular valued customers! Right now, I don't feel like a valued customer; and according to customer service I'm just out the money and I have no recourse. This is just not acceptable; it's not!

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I assume you're talking about Travel Funds, from a cancelled flight? Vouchers are a completely different thing at Southwest, fyi.

Just like tickets are non-transferrable, Travel Funds are limited in use to the originally named passenger. This is standard across the industry.

However, in response to the pandemic, Southwest is offering some accommodations that may help in your situation.

First, check the expiration date of your travel funds. If you canceled the flight recently due to COVID, they should now have the extended expiration date of September 7, 2022. (If not, let us know -- there's a way you can extend them yourself.)

Southwest has announced that, coming soon, you'll be able to convert travel funds to Rapid Rewards points. Once this service is live, you can convert your mother's funds into points that can then be used to book flights for anyone. Points are also fully-refundable, meaning that if you cancel a points booking the points simply return to the holder's RR account.

Keep checking your email and the Southwest website for an announcement of when this conversion service is available. Hopefully, it will be soon.

Hope this helps!

[DancingDavidE]

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@megoins wrote:

I have been a Southwest Airlines customer for many years and have always had the highest regard for the company. Great staff, great service, and great flight experiences. However, I was crushed by SWA today when I called customer service to request a name change on a voucher I had purchased for a family member (Mom) who can no longer travel. The voucher amount represented by the confirmation numbers is not an insignificant amount. SWA would not provide me a generic voucher for these funds and now I'm just out the money I spent for Mom's ticket for a flight that she did not and cannot take. I'm still in a state of disbelief! I just cannot believe that is the position that SWA would take for their regular valued customers! Right now, I don't feel like a valued customer; and according to customer service I'm just out the money and I have no recourse. This is just not acceptable; it's not!

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There is also the unadvertised and subject to change option that if the travel funds expire, you can call and pay a fee to have them reinstated as a voucher which could then be used by yourself or anyone else. The fee as last reported was $100 which they would deduct from the value, assuming the travel fund is worth more than $100.

Wrinkle at this time: the travel funds may be extended quite some time. You may need to wait for this, make a booking with them when the extension is lifted in order to shorten the wait time, or call to see if your mom can opt out of the extension.