21. How can I recover an expired award? How about expired drink coupons? Will expiration of credits be increased from 12 months to 24 or 36?
a. (southwest.com)
http://southwest.com/rapid_rewards/r...#award_tickets states: "An Award may be extended for a $50 fee. You can simply mail the expired Award and a check or money order for the appropriate amount to:
Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards
P.O. Box 972739
Dallas, TX 75397-2739
It will take up to 30 days from the date we receive your request for Rapid Rewards Customer Service to process the new Award, which will be valid for 12 months from the date of reissue and will be deposited in your account with the new expiration date. All paper Award Tickets will be reissued as Ticketless Awards
[and they will have capacity controls, the same as any other new award]. Please note that extension requests will only be accepted from the Member who originally qualified for the Award. Extension requests from anyone other than the Member who originally qualified for the Award will be denied."
b. (nsx) If your award is expiring soon and you want to save the $50 fee, you may be able to trade it on Coupon Connection for someone else's award that expires later. If the other person is about to burn his just-earned award, why not burn your about-to-expire award instead?
c. (nsx) Drink coupons have expiration dates printed on them, but it's a bluff. They don't actually expire. Furthermore the old coupons are redeemable at the old (higher) value.
d. (nsx) Discontinuation of the online booking bonus at southwest.com made it much more difficult for the occasional traveler to earn 16 credits before the oldest ones expire. Therefore Southwest has extended the expiration time to 24, effective August 10, 2005. Any unexpired credits in your account at that time got an additional 12 months of life.
e. (DallasBill) If you use only the A coupon of an RR and the B coupon expires, you can still reinstate it for the same $50 fee. It's still cheaper to have as a future option then to let it go unused. If you do this after it expires, the only way to get the RR number is to look at your past RR activity to find where you used the A coupon. If you have RR's about to expire, then print off your Awards list online -- they will no longer be listed once they expire. Don't reinstate multiple awards all at once if you think you will use them further out in future than 12 months. Time the reinstatements at whateever monthly intervals going forward you think you need. With this strategy, of course, there is always the (unknown) risk that Southwest ends RR reistatement at a future date with no notice.