A few days ago Southwest announced a pretty awesome fare sale. While these fare sales give you a great opportunity to book a future trip at a discount, it is also a great way to get a refund on flights you’ve already booked! One of the best perks about Southwest is that if the flight goes down in price, you get your money back!! While you need to manually check to see if the price has gone down, Southwest has made it much easier for you! Just remember that this awesome fare sale ends today!
Steps to see if your price has decreased…
- Sign into your Southwest account and click on My Account. You’ll see all your flights currently booked mid-way down the page.
- Click on the “Change Flight” link for each individual flight.
- After you select your flight it will show you the amount the flight has increased or decreased in price.Â
- If the price has in fact gone down (will be displayed with a negative sign then a point or dollar amount), you can go ahead and get a price adjustment!
Getting a price adjustment…
If you booked with points OR cash, you can go ahead and get a price adjustment on your already purchased price. It does not matter how many days it has been since you have booked or when the flight departs (you just need to do it at least 10 minutes prior to your departure!). Southwest has one of the most flexible change and cancelation policy! While Southwest makes it incredibly easy for you to simply change your flight to get the price adjustment, if you booked with points or a fully refundable fare you are actually better off canceling and re-booking (again, no fee to cancel). If you booked a paid “Wanna Getaway Fare”, then you can just change your flight to get the price adjustment. The reason for this is because if you change a flight, Southwest will make your fully refundable fare non-refundable which isn’t great if you later on want to cancel your flight. You can read more about the exact process and steps to go about this here: Changing and Canceling a Southwest Flight. Essentially if you…
- Paid for the flight (non-refundable fare)… 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. The voucher will be tied to the confirmation number of the original flight. There is NO fee for this.
- Paid for the flight (refundable fare)…Â If you cancel the flight first, the amount you paid will go back to your credit card. You can then re-book the same flight with the less expensive fare.
- Booked your flight using points… The difference in points will go back into your account immediately. Although, you will want to cancel and rebook. Again, there is NO fee for this. This is why I love booking Southwest flights using points!
I personally was just able to get over 7,000 points back on this most recent fare sale. Make sure to always check your already booked Southwest flights to see if your flight went down in price!
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Love this in theory, but keep in mind that if you A) Have a companion booked, you will have to rebook them, B) if you are a user of Early Bird (I do, carry-on or bust), you lose it (it is NON-refundable and lost on a change) and C) if don’t have the points to cover a change & cancel then you risk losing it if the flight is near full or the tier is near sold out. Love saving points & cash, but its not worth the cost if all of these items apply.
@Mike H – A) Yes, if you have a companion booked, you need to cancel and rebook. But still need to do that even if you change a flight, so doesn’t matter if you cancel and rebook or change the original persons ticket, still need to go through the same steps for your companions ticket. B) Having early bird check in is the biggest impact of canceling and re-booking. You are correct that you lose it, but that is why I suggest not adding Early Bird until you are 100% sure you are taking the flight and as the flight gets slightly closer. No reason to add on Early Bird now for a flight in October, for example, can wait until August. C) If the flight is near full or the tier is near sold out then the chances of the flight going down in price is slim.
I think the major impact is B, which is big definitely. The biggest downfall of the system.
Thanks. You just got me back 9,000 points. Much easier now, you are right!
@Kent -Great!