Southwest comes through

Last year, on our return trip from Portland, Southwest Air had problems with airplanes and we (and others, of course) spent many hours in the Portland airport. For our troubles, SWA issued the passengers $100 vouchers on other SWA flights taken within the calendar year.

John made reservations for our upcoming flights to and from Los Angeles several months ago, but forgot to use the vouchers. Now it seems like we probably won’t be making other flights before the vouchers expire.

This afternoon, John called SWA to try to get the $100 vouchers applied to our already issued tickets as a refund.

Since this was happening on the phone, he expected that it would take quite a while. Somehow, he didn’t expect 1 ½ hours (with supper during that time), and three different phone calls.

The first folks he talked to kept telling him it couldn’t be done. He kept saying, “Surely it can. Let me talk to someone who can make it happen. We always travel Southwest, and they can always do it.” And the agent would say, “No, it can’t.” So, as his voice kept getting louder, he kept getting sent to the next person up the management chain.

And then, finally, he obviously got to the right person - the one who was able to accomplish this and to do all the steps required to do it. It wasn’t easy - things had to be done with tickets, vouchers, credit cards, reissuing this, changing that. John gave her huge amounts of praise and kept telling her to tell her supervisor that she had made at least one customer very, very happy. And that she had renewed his confidence in Southwest.

All’s well that ends well.