Southwest Airlines
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conned out of Earlybird seating
Booked Roundtrip flights for September 2023. We had also purchased the early bird for both legs of the trip. When it came time 36hrs before flight to check in for seat assignments we received a notice that we could nt get seat assignments until 24 hrs and that Southwest would let us know are boarding numbers. Then we received and email that said they could upgrade us to A boarding if we paid another $50 a piece.... which added up to an additional $100 dollars each for both legs of flight. That was $200 extra for both of us.....on top of the $100 dollars we already paid for the earlier Early bird fee when we booked the flight. We booked our flights four months prior to departure. I tried to find out what was going on but no one would answer my questions. There were several passengers with the same issue. Southwest had decided to change the way they do the early bird and the increased fee without any prior notification. Tried to get answers to what was going on from boarding person but she told me to contact the airlines directly. had to email because no one answered the phones and I was told sorry but there was nothing they could do since the fee's had changed literally like a day or two before our flight. I tried to get them to refund the early bird fee's that we had already paid earlier since we did not get early bird seating after all and could not pay an additional $200 at that point. Basically I was told there was nothing they could do. I have flown Southwest for many years but this last experience was enough to make me look elsewhere. To ask us to pay an additional $200 each for the flight.... was totally unreasonable. And I could have booked thru another airline for less than they wanted me to pay for the Southwest airlines increase and would have gotten assigned and reserved seats in the process. Will definitely being flying with another airline in the future