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Re: Saving Seats

spacecoastbill
Frequent Flyer B

@BlueInKansas wrote:

Traveling during the holidays is stressful at best.  Having just completed a 4 segment round trip via Southwest and encountering the saved seat syndrome on each and every segment, we're thinking that we're just done with Southwest.  Better to pay the price for a reserved seat and avoid the irritation of row after row of cheaters who paid for one EB boarding, but are saving as many additional seats as they want.  Southwest takes the cowardly position of not backing up their customers who paid the extra fee for the privilege of early boarding.  Seat saving is a form of on-board bullying.   


There is a solution.  Ignore them and sit where you want.

Re: Saving Seats

Dtloper
Explorer C

It's very simple. Open seating. If a seat is unoccupied by a body and their not in the bathroom it's your seat  sit down. Move coats if you have to. SWA clearly dosen't want to deal with it and flight attendants do nothing .Let's make them.

Re: Saving Seats

Lazyboy311
Explorer C

I’m literally shaking mad about this right now, I’ll spare you the details but THREE of my wife and I’s requests for seats were denied by the articles of clothing deemed more human than I to which the attendant simply stated that SWA “has no policy against it” and asked me to move on. 

 

I want to turn this around and explain how this hurts SWA. I have a party of 4 traveling together and paid early bird for each, so say $60 total. I would have been better off booking one business select ticket at a cost of, say $40, and saved the other seats. This results in a 33% reduction in revenue from my purchase. As I said before, this happened three times to me within 5 minutes, I can only imagine what the lost revenue was on this flight alone. Additionally, I’m going to try to be as polite as possible on this one, but the “savers” appear to not be your best customers. 

 

I, a SW Premier Card holder who booked my tickets honestly and fairly, lost out on true “open seating” due to rules that are ambiguous at best. Not only does it negatively affect customers such as myself, it results in less overall upgrades because people are aware that they only need one “good” ticket, regardless of the size of their traveling party.

 

This policy (or lack thereof) results in frequent abuse of the system by “savers”, undermines loyal and honest customers like myself and many others out there, and results in less accessorial revenue to the company. 

 

 

Re: Saving Seats

dfwskier
Aviator A

@Lazyboy311 wrote:

I’m literally shaking mad about this right now, I’ll spare you the details but THREE of my wife and I’s requests for seats were denied by the articles of clothing deemed more human than I to which the attendant simply stated that SWA “has no policy against it” and asked me to move on. 

 

I want to turn this around and explain how this hurts SWA. I have a party of 4 traveling together and paid early bird for each, so say $60 total. I would have been better off booking one business select ticket at a cost of, say $40, and saved the other seats. This results in a 33% reduction in revenue from my purchase. As I said before, this happened three times to me within 5 minutes, I can only imagine what the lost revenue was on this flight alone. Additionally, I’m going to try to be as polite as possible on this one, but the “savers” appear to not be your best customers. 

 

I, a SW Premier Card holder who booked my tickets honestly and fairly, lost out on true “open seating” due to rules that are ambiguous at best. Not only does it negatively affect customers such as myself, it results in less overall upgrades because people are aware that they only need one “good” ticket, regardless of the size of their traveling party.

 

This policy (or lack thereof) results in frequent abuse of the system by “savers”, undermines loyal and honest customers like myself and many others out there, and results in less accessorial revenue to the company. 

 

 


As you can tell if you read others' posts on the topic, seat saving is a controversial topic. Southwest does not prohibit it because families/companions  use it to sit together. Why? Because Soutwest does not use assigned seating and differences in asigned boarding positions might prevent those people from sitting together, absent seat saving..

 

Since this is a customer to customer forum, you will get no resolution to the issue here. If you feel strongly about t, I'd suggest that you e-mail the company. If you feel real strongly you could mail a letter to the CEO, Gary Kelly. To obtain e-mail and street address information, click on "contact us" at the bottom of this page and then pick your contact method from those listed on the top left of the ensuing page.

Re: Saving Seats

spacecoastbill
Frequent Flyer B

@Lazyboy311 wrote:

I’m literally shaking mad about this right now, I’ll spare you the details but THREE of my wife and I’s requests for seats were denied by the articles of clothing deemed more human than I to which the attendant simply stated that SWA “has no policy against it” and asked me to move on. 

 

I want to turn this around and explain how this hurts SWA. I have a party of 4 traveling together and paid early bird for each, so say $60 total. I would have been better off booking one business select ticket at a cost of, say $40, and saved the other seats. This results in a 33% reduction in revenue from my purchase. As I said before, this happened three times to me within 5 minutes, I can only imagine what the lost revenue was on this flight alone. Additionally, I’m going to try to be as polite as possible on this one, but the “savers” appear to not be your best customers. 

 

I, a SW Premier Card holder who booked my tickets honestly and fairly, lost out on true “open seating” due to rules that are ambiguous at best. Not only does it negatively affect customers such as myself, it results in less overall upgrades because people are aware that they only need one “good” ticket, regardless of the size of their traveling party.

 

This policy (or lack thereof) results in frequent abuse of the system by “savers”, undermines loyal and honest customers like myself and many others out there, and results in less accessorial revenue to the company. 

 

 


Probably should have picked up the clothing and asking if they belonged to anyone then handed it to them and sat down.