Southwest is one of my favorite airlines since they allow you to get a difference if the price drops after you have booked your ticket. This is for both paid fares and flights booked with points! The process is really simple and takes no more then a minute or two. Here are the two scenarios on how you will get the fare difference back:
- Paid Flight:Â If you paid for your flight you will receive a voucher for the difference in fare price to be used one year from the date the flight was originally purchased (NOT the date the change process took place). This voucher is non-transferable and can only be used for the same passenger the original flight was booked for. The voucher will be tied to the confirmation number of the original flight. There is NO fee for this.
- Using Points:Â If you booked your flight using points, the difference in points will go back into your account immediately. Although, due to recent changes in Southwest’s booking reservation system, I suggest canceling the flight (the points go straight back into your account) and then re-booking. This will keep your reservation refundable. I love using points for Southwest flights!
While this is a huge perk with Southwest (since you do not ned to worry about booking during the lowest price ever), they will not automatically re-price your ticket for you, you will need to manually check out your Southwest flight price on a daily basis.
With that being said, a blog reader created a site that will do all the leg work for you! The site Southwest Monkey will allow you to to set up an alert and will text you if your flight decreases in price. You’ll then have to manually change/rebook your flight to save the money, Southwest Monkey will not do it for you. And since prices can change often, you’ll want to make the update as quickly as possible to ensure to get that cheaper price.
There is a charge for the service – $3 per alert, but you’ll only pay IF they are able to save you $10 or more on your flight. The site states that they check Southwest prices daily, so the chances of you saving money is incredibly high, especially during a fare sale. I personally have not yet used this site yet as I actually do not have any Southwest sites booked at the moment (gasp!).
To get full step-by-step directions on how you get your money/points back, make sure to read this post “If a Southwest Flight Goes Down in Price…â€
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This probably won’t last long as WN cracks down on these types of sites/tools
That is so true. You can make your own thou..
You do realize that when these sites pop up that Southwest (Legal Dept) is pretty quick about sending cease and desist letters the shut them down. Especially ones like this that try a different charge for this type of service. Mostly likely won’t last the week……
@Christopher – Yeah, I know. I did advise the owner of the site, but they still asked me if I’d post about it.
I think it depends on whether the author is scraping the prices using an automated process, or is doing it by hand. I think WN’s TOS forbids any sort of scraping, but if someone were to hand-check the prices… Don’t know how scalable that is, but it is theoretically possible.
Dang! For the first time in living memory, I have no SWA flights scheduled.
Maybe we need a contest, to see who can guess closest as to when the monkey site is forced down by SWA.