Hello Customer Service
I am a Southwest A List Preffered customer,using SWA for personal and business pleasure, despite having many options. I have enjoyed your service over the past several years. Customer service has been very good and I like to recommend SWA to friends and family. I often choose Business Select and also take advantage of early bird check in on frequent occasion. This helps me Save precious time.
Today however have experienced a very unpleasant incident that I would like to relay to you. This concerns very inappropriate operations execution of your flight 2123, on Jan 10. My confirmation #is XXXXX.
The flight boarding time provided was 6:25 pm, for a 6:55 departure. It was a bright clear day. No weather issues. I arrived at the gate 3 mins earlier than provided boarding time. To my utter surprise , the flight seemed to have been boarding earlier than my arrival. Approximately 25-30 passengers had already boarded ahead of me. I boarded the flight at 6:24 and the first empty bin at row 12. I’ve never faced this situation with a business select boarding as I prefer to take the first 2-3 rows. Hence I pay that extra fare.
This was not enough. The first empty seat on the aisle with bin space was 11 A, an exit row. Gentleman ahead of me grabbed the seat towards the window and kept his bag on the seat towards aisle. I requested to take that empty seat and he retorted “I have that reserved”. I asked where the passenger was and he responded, not here. I asked whether he felt it was ok to “reserve” seats and he became very aggressive stating “are you **bleep**tIng me”? This is Southwest, I can do what I want to do, there is no assigned seats, so I can grab more than one seat. I did not want to argue with an unpleasant co-passenger and preffered to take the next seat, although my bags were not close to me. I generally prefer to have my bags right above me, based on your claim that Business Select fare offers you better access to preffered seating option. With a A2 Boarding position earlier than a pointed time arrival at boarding gate and attempt to get a less than desired preffered seat, I did not get what you claim from the Business Select experience. In addition, I approached the Flight Attendent, Steve to relay my concern of “reserving seats” and Co passenger sweating and using unpleasant language, Steve responded Southwest had no policy on this matter. The only policy was “We expect passengeRs to behave like adults”.
i called my SWA # to file a complaint and they confirmed there are policies in place for no seat reserving, and asked me to fill a form on the website to file a complaint. This is the only form I found, since no email is listed on the contact us tab.
clearly there are huge gaps somewhere that compel me to know that your claims of Business Select were wrong for this flight. I’d like to know your policy on all these matters - early departures and how you inform Business Select passengers
- no assigned seating and passengers reserving seats for later boarding positions
- your training of staff to respond to co passenger unpleasant behavior.
Kindly contact me at the earliest, since I would prefer to hear from you directly rather than have an attorney involved in the matter. Your timely response will be appreciated.
I can be contacted via the email provided.
