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Seeking clarification about flight credits

NeedALittleHelp
Explorer B

I posted last night in another thread, explaining some of my situation as I was trying to put together a way to capitalize on the companion pass offer. That ultimately did not work, and I still need to book flights. Just seeking clarity about what I need to do before I make any moves.

 

I have almost $800 in LUV vouchers. My husband and I, our son, his wife, and our grandson are taking a trip next month. My husband and I are going a day ahead of them and leaving a day later.

 

I have some miles with another airline we'll be using to get them home, and to get us there. I want to use our LUV vouchers to get our son's family to our destination, and to get my husband and I back home.

 

The vouchers expire 10/13. We are traveling the last week in October.  If I have them extend the vouchers by 6 months, we may not receive the replacements in time to book the flights at the current rates.

 

If I book and cancel dummy flights to convert the LUV funds to flight credits, we can just book them as soon as we do the cancellation, if I understand correctly.

 

I have two questions:

 

1) If I log into my own account to book the flights for my son and his family, and I provide their RR numbers at the time of booking, when I cancel those reservations, will the LUV funds become flight credits for each of them, associated with their own accounts and ready to use to book the flight they actually want to take?

 

2) Do I need to wait 24 hours to cancel? I've seen a policy that mentions if you cancel a paid-for-with-your-own-money flight within 24 hours of booking that you'll receive a full refund, so I'm just making sure that within the first 24 hours they don't just put the money back on the LUV voucher if that's how you paid.

 

Thanks for any insight!

8 REPLIES 8

Re: Seeking clarification about flight credits

TheMiddleSeat
Aviator A
Solution

1. Yes

2. No

 

--TheMiddleSeat

Re: Seeking clarification about flight credits

TheMiddleSeat
Aviator A

To expand now that I have a little more time... 

 

1. It's not so much the RR number that matters, the name needs to be what name will be used when booking with the travel credit. If there's a RR number on the reservation and the name of the passenger matches the name of the RR account referenced then the travel credit will conveniently appear in that person's RR account, but it's possible to utilize a credit that does not appear in a RR account just by providing the passenger name and confirmation number of the reservation that generated the travel credit.

 

2. Default is always travel credit. No business is eager to give you your cash back so that's never the default option. When requesting a less than 24 hour refund on a purchase made with voucher you actually have to call Southwest if you don't want travel credit as their system is not setup to automatically refund back to a voucher. Credit card purchases can get a refund within 24 hours without a call, but again you have to specifically select that non-default option. 

 

--TheMiddleSeat

Re: Seeking clarification about flight credits

NeedALittleHelp
Explorer B

So... new problem.

 

I found and reserved flights of equal value for our son and his family (listed as $148/ea, which was actually $115 + $33 in tax, which I paid with a cc). I used their RR numbers. Son then logged into their accounts (since the reservations no longer showed up in my account, though I did get a purchase confirmation email) and cancelled them.

 

They now each have what the webpage says are $115 flight credits each, which never expire.

 

He went to book the flights they actually want to take, and entered the flight credit info.

 

And... got a message saying the credits expire before the trip he is trying to book.

 

Now what?

Re: Seeking clarification about flight credits

NeedALittleHelp
Explorer B

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Re: Seeking clarification about flight credits

dfwskier
Aviator A

Are these vouchers or travel funds?

 

Vouchers expire. Travel funds do not.

Re: Seeking clarification about flight credits

NeedALittleHelp
Explorer B

The funds were originally LUV vouchers. We booked flights with them that we then cancelled as a means of converting the funds into flight credits so that we could eliminate the expiration date and use them asap. I had called and inquired about having the LUV vouchers' expiration dates extended (expiry was 10/13 and our trip is 10/26), and they said they'd be happy to do that and would send us paper vouchers in the mail, which would take 6-10 days, and we really needed to lock the flights in asap, which is why we went with the book / cancel / refund-as-flight-credits method. 

Re: Seeking clarification about flight credits

NeedALittleHelp
Explorer B

Update: I just tried again, and it went through just fine. WHEW.

 

Thanks to those who contributed above.

Re: Seeking clarification about flight credits

DancingDavidE
Aviator A

@NeedALittleHelp wrote:

Update: I just tried again, and it went through just fine. WHEW.

 

Thanks to those who contributed above.


There is a periodic update of the system to revert the travel credits to non-expiring so I believe that's what happened and the problem solved itself.

 

 

 

 

Home airport MDW, frequent visitor to MCO to see the mouse.