Okay, since some of you are discussing Southwest more than I intended in this thread, I might as well tell you about my two bad experiences with them. The second was a lot worse than the first, but both indicate how poor their customer service is when something unusual occurs.

Keep in mind I only bought Southwest tickets twice in my life, and both experiences sucked.


Incident #1

In 1993, I flew them for the first time. It was a short flight from Sacramento to LA.

You didn't have assigned seats, but instead got boarding passes with numbers on them, and the lower numbers boarded first and got their pick of seats.

My number was low and I was happy, and I got there very early so I could get that.

Then I was standing there waiting to board and saw that my pass was purple and everyone else's was blue.

I brought this to the employee in charge and was told that I was erroneously given the wrong flight's boarding pass. They then replaced it the right color with a high number!

I asked, "Wait, I should have a low number, it's not my fault you gave me the wrong pass", and they refused. They steadfastly told me that it was too bad, and that it "wouldn't be fair to everyone else" if they let met get a low number at that point. I kept explaining that I was there before everyone else, and that was why my original pass had a low number. They said they understood, and that the mistake was their fault, but tough luck on me.

I actually backed down because it was only an hour flight, but then got a terrible seat (couldn't recline), and faced directly to other seats in this weird configuration near the back of the plane, and regretted not making a bigger deal about it.


This was an inconvenience and not the end of the world, but still indicative of their attitude.

I'll post incident #2 in the next post, which was much worse and far more frustrating.