Complaint Review: Southwest Airlines

I've always enjoyed the fun, friendly front-end customer service of flying with Southwest. Little did I know their back-end customer service is misleading, non-responsive and totally unprofessional.

I booked a trip last year, then had to cancel my flight when the date drew closer, realizing I couldn't afford to take that whole week off from work as planned. Southwest website allowed me to keep a travel credit for the $385 spent, which I could use any time until a full year after original flight booking date. 

When I contacted my friend who I'd planned to visit, she urged me to contact SWA customer service and ask them to extend my flight credit for 6 more months--a service they offer on their website, for a non-disclosed fee. I heard this offer repeated several times as well when I was on long holds with their general Customer Service number.

I contacted them a month or two before the credit was due to expire, to have them help me pay the change fee and extend my voucher. However they said "The only department who can help you do that is Customer Relations in Dallas. Oh, by the way, they're really hard to get a hold of." Really!!?? One rep told me I had to call ON the expiration date. Repeated calls to customer service on the expiration date led to a busy signal...Only one of my 20 calls went through to their voice mail system, and I was put on hold for 45 minutes before the call spontaneously disconnected. 

I called back the general Customer Service number and another rep told me she couldn't help me in any way--that I just had to keep trying Customer Resolutions until I got through...And she said "I'm pretty sure you have to call day after it expires, not on the day it expires." She didn't make any effort to check with a manager, however, so I had to take her "pretty sure" as the last word. I called repteatedly--every hour--on the day after my credit was set to expire--and only reached a busy signal all day long. I know I did not misdial, because I was hitting the Recent Calls button of my iphone, which had reached the endless hold message the day before. 

I called BACK to regular customer service over the weekend. The nice lady on the phone reassured me they'd been having technical issues with the phone system all week, and that I could call back at 7am Monday morning...So I SET MY ALARM clock for Monday at 6:50 am...When I called back at 7, 7:15, 7:30 and 7:50, guess what I got?  That's right...BUSY SIGNAL.

SO, it looks like the 40th birthday trip I was planning to visit one of my best friends in Seattle this summer has been canceled. Ruined by Southwest's sloppy, unprofessional handling of the Customer Resolutions Dept.

Icing on my birthday-fail cake? When I tried to send them a complaint letter through the website's Contact Us link, I was led to a dead-end of FAQs and links to the Customer Resolutions Dept phone number. I guess they really don't value their customers the way they love to advertise they do...

SO very disappointed in what used to be my favorite airline. I will make a point in the future to shop for airline travel elsewhere.