Just read through all of these and, while I understand the "industry standard" blah blah blah, I don't care. Frankly, Southwest has distinguished itself by NOT being like all the other carriers. As well, I would need to see an ATC/IATA ruling about not allowing these funds to be used at the consumer's direction to buy that as a rationale. The bottom line, in my opinion, is that Southwest should allow the funds to be applied as dollars to another ticket by the purchaser - who, you know, paid for the ticket in the first place - rather than converting those funds to points. My original intent in paying for someone else's ticket (aka, our two daughters traveling as college students) is to buy a ticket, not to buy points. I earn points for buying their tickets on my SWA Rapid Rewards credit card but I'm not really interested in having to use any of my points to recoup my spend for a plane ticket that needs to be canceled. Again, I do appreciate that SWA has a provision to reserve the travel funds for a canceled ticket in my name. That's awesome. I just think it should also apply for a canceled ticket that I clearly purchased for someone else.
