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Early Bird Check-in C Group?

crpalmer0627
Explorer C

Has anyone else had a situation where they've purchased Early Bird and gotten stuck in C group? I purchased my tickets (with early bird) just shy of 2 months prior to departure, and when I got my boarding pass, it was C-29!

 

Note that this is the return trip, and the first trip was canceled/rebooked twice in a 24 hour span and I had to cancel that leg completely and go to Delta to get to the wedding I was attending on time. When I was checking my boarding group at the 24-hour mark, it didn't show anything and said to call the customer service line. A 70-minute wait later and the agent "reset" the reservation, at which point it was C-group. She insists that the boarding pass shows early bird was applied, but when I open it in the app/website, the boarding pass does not say that. The trip itinerary does, but the boarding pass does not. She said that there must just be a lot of early bird, but pretty much the whole stupid plane?! This may all be moot if I get stuck in the cancel/rebook cycle again, but if this is actually legit, then early bird is completely a scam.

 

I get early bird because I have anxiety and something about sitting by the window/wall helps that. So all I need is a window seat somewhere (not picky where). I've always found that early bird is enough to get that, until now. Now I don't know what to do, and I really don't want to trigger the anxiety more than it already is by dealing with all of this.

3 REPLIES 3

Re: Early Bird Check-in C Group?

bec102896
Aviator A

You could pay for upgraded boarding at the gate which gets you in the A1-15 group and after travel send an email to southwest requesting a refund because something may have failed with the EB. Could the whole flight be full of A List and EB passengers sure do I think it would be enough to get you C29 no. When sending an email include the proof of EB purchase so they can take that in to consideration when looking in to things 

 

did you ever cancel and rebook after you bought EB if so you would lose the EB check in but if you make a change at least 36 hours before your flight you should still Keep the EB 

Re: Early Bird Check-in C Group?

crpalmer0627
Explorer C

I checked for A1-A15 upgrade, but the app says there's none left. I'll check at the gate though.

 

To detail the cancel/rebook, the timeline of events went:

 

  • Original flight scheduled departure 6:50pm Thursday.
  • At 4am Thursday, flight was canceled/rebooked to 6:15am Friday. Which meant I lost the $ for lodging for that night at my destination, and I'd either have to pay more $ for a hotel by the airport, or leave at 2am to get to the airport on time.
  • At 11pm Thursday, rebooked flight was canceled/rebooked for 8pm Friday.
  • This did not work with the wedding plans, so I booked a flight with Delta and canceled the Southwest flight out using the customer service line. I triple checked with him that the return flight/early bird were not affected by this.

So this change was more than 36 hours in advance, and shouldn't have even affected this flight anyway.

 

Honestly, this is all probably enough for me to swear off Southwest in the future, even though I hadn't had any issues before.

Re: Early Bird Check-in C Group?

DancingDavidE
Aviator A

@crpalmer0627 wrote:

Has anyone else had a situation where they've purchased Early Bird and gotten stuck in C group? I purchased my tickets (with early bird) just shy of 2 months prior to departure, and when I got my boarding pass, it was C-29!

 

Note that this is the return trip, and the first trip was canceled/rebooked twice in a 24 hour span and I had to cancel that leg completely and go to Delta to get to the wedding I was attending on time. When I was checking my boarding group at the 24-hour mark, it didn't show anything and said to call the customer service line. A 70-minute wait later and the agent "reset" the reservation, at which point it was C-group. She insists that the boarding pass shows early bird was applied, but when I open it in the app/website, the boarding pass does not say that. The trip itinerary does, but the boarding pass does not. She said that there must just be a lot of early bird, but pretty much the whole stupid plane?! This may all be moot if I get stuck in the cancel/rebook cycle again, but if this is actually legit, then early bird is completely a scam.

 

I get early bird because I have anxiety and something about sitting by the window/wall helps that. So all I need is a window seat somewhere (not picky where). I've always found that early bird is enough to get that, until now. Now I don't know what to do, and I really don't want to trigger the anxiety more than it already is by dealing with all of this.


My suggestion is to always book one-way tickets separately, there seems to be some problem with a part of the reservation being canceled while you are still completing the remaining portion.

 

Anyway, the reset seems to have clearly removed any boarding position that you may have had from EBCI I would definitely call to get a refund of that portion of the fee, use the specific boarding pass as your exhibit, if it doesn't show it on the boarding pass itself then it wasn't used to get your position.

 

Talk to your doctor, if you have a legitimate medical condition that requires a certain seat then you should preboard. I don't know if you feel that it's that strong of an anxiety though since you've been willing to pay for early boarding instead before now but you can chat with your medical professionals about that. 

 

Also keep flying and eventually earn A-list and it will be moot, you can basically always get a window somewhere on the plane with A-list status. Or even choose that 3-seat row without a window if you really can just use the wall instead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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