Luke learned two interesting things recently while booking his Vegas vacation through Southwest Vacations. First, Southwest Vacations isn’t a part of Southwest Airlines, as he had assumed. Second, deals that are available when you first begin your online transaction aren’t necessarily available once you finally check out. Not knowing that second bit of information cost him the “free” show tickets that were the reason he chose a more expensive booking through Southwest Vacations in the first place.

A few weeks back i booked a package through Southwest Vacations. the package was a few bucks more then booking SW for air and the hotel I wanted independently, but the show tickets made it a great deal.

During checkout it is explained that the booking of the show tickets occurs 3-5 days after competed purchase. Well i’m writing you so i guess you can imagine that a week and half later when my hotel and air tickets arrived there was no mention of show tickets. I called customer service and learned a couple of things:

1. Despite using the logo and similar branding Southwest vacations is not a part of southwest airlines (they use SWA exclusively for air travel though)

2. The free ticket promotion expired and i’m using their words “23 minutes prior to completing your purchase.”

Not one to rush to extremes I sent a letter to their (SW vacations) customer service asking to correct this issue as the offer was made at the time I began my purchase

I received an email from SW vacations acknowledging the time difference (again 23 minutes ) and that they would ask the MGM grand to provide me with two tickets but there would be no guarantees.

Yesterday I received an email from SW Air stating they were aware of my incident and that i was instructed to call a different company (Mark Travel Company) to see about getting show tickets issued. The number they provided is 1800-243-5683 when I dialed i was given a message telling me where the best live talk is happening. -great info to know, but not the response i was looking for.

I’m hoping you could post this or provide contact info for an EECB, as i couldn’t find one on your site in a way to get this issue handled. i leave for vegas in two weeks and am bummed i’m not receiving what i was promised.

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