Southwest Airlines Community

EBCI (or, Early Bird Check In) is not refundable even when I am required to make a small change to the booking. I was booking one of my friend's flights for the first time and spelled the name wrong (it had a capital letter in the middle which I did not capitalize). I cancelled it so I could fix this error, as is the typical process, and suddenly found I was paying $50 for this mistake since I added EBCI to the original flight. There is a reason that there is a 24 hour cancellation policy! Also, this was not at all obvious from the booking screen that EBCI is not included in the typical 24 hour cancellation policy, nor in the cancellation screen. This predatory behavior from Southwest should not be tolerated. I see that the community has learned a way to avoid this by instead rescheduling a flight into the future and then re-rescheduling a flight back to the flight time when they might have made an error. In that case, this is basically a tax on the uninitiated.   This is a matter of law. I recommend anyone who is impacted by this problem to file a complaint as stated here: https://secure.dot.gov/air-travel-complaint and see https://www.cntraveler.com/story/24-hour-flight-cancellation-rule  ... View more