[Update: 4:40 p.m. ET] Southwest Airlines has updated their Facebook page with information for customers affected by a computer glitch that has caused excessive credit card charges for countless people taking part in a 24-hour deal on Friday, and according to our readers writing in, during normal transactions as well .
"Information and update for Customers who recently experienced multiple bookings in error:
The overwhelming response from Customers who took advantage of our August 3 limited time offer launched to celebrate three million Fans on Facebook, created website performance issues at various times during the day. We realize that some Customers were charged more than once for the same reservation and we want to ensure you that we have all hands on deck, actively working to process refunds for any duplicate charges incurred.
Here is a status of those efforts:
First, we want you to know that we are working to identify duplicate bookings and charges and are proactively cancelling those additional reservations, actively processing refunds to the Customer. In order to process the refunds as quickly as possible, we have called in additional staff to support these efforts.
For those Customers who used debit cards and have received overdraft fees as a result of the additional charges, we will process a reimbursement for all overdraft fees that were caused by duplicate charges from Southwest for a single purchase. If you incurred overdraft fees, please fax documentation of those fees via a letter from your bank or a copy of your account showing the fees to 877-506-0154.
Southwest Airlines is committed to providing Customers with exceptional service both online and onboard. It is our goal to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and minimize any inconvenience to you, our valued Customers."
When Southwest Airlines offered a limited-time promotion on Friday to celebrate reaching three million fans on Facebook, it seems they accidentally racked up duplicate charges on the credit cards of their loyal customers.
The LUZ2LIKE promo code was meant to offer customers 50% off when booking a round-trip with their "Wanna Get Away" fares during seven specific travel dates in the fall. The promo, which arrived by e-mail to customers, only lasted until midnight on Friday.
On Saturday, their Facebook page was flooded with differing stories describing the trials, unresolved issues and even a few happy endings for customers trying to shake off the excess charges. Some lucky folks even posted that they sailed on through the process without a glitch.
When Southwest became aware of the problem, they offered a statement on Twitter, and a similar, expanded version on their Facebook page.
"Thank you for your excitement in taking advantage of the limited-time offer we shared today in celebration of reaching three million Fans on Facebook. Due to the overwhelming response, we experienced some site performance issues at various times throughout the day. We apologize to our Customers for any inconvenience and are proactively cancelling any duplicate itineraries that may have occurred."
Bobi Fox, a customer who wanted to take advantage of the promo code, shared her experience with CNN. She purchased directly off of Southwest's website.
"Customers who purchased tonight got no tickets, no confirmation, and many, like me, were charged on their credit cards repeatedly until credit card companies stopped the purchase process – some customers say they have been called by their credit card companies questioning fraud purchases," she said. " My credit card might be typical, my purchase was repeated 9 times (cost in excess of $2300 for a one pair of round trip tickets from STL to SLC). This is not unlike what everyone else is experiencing. Current wait time hold with Southwest customer service: More than two hours."
Southwest interacted with commenters to let them know that customer service representatives were working around the clock to help reverse the transactions and cancel the excess flights.
But that didn't soothe all of the complaints, and it seems that people are doing a lot of waiting - waiting for charges to be erased, flights to be cancelled and even ticket confirmations for the flights they want.
"I had $4000 limit on my card, I now have zero available because of 25 confirmations," John Seymour wrote on the airline's Facebook page. "I called when I was having errors, and the CS rep told me the website was slammed, and to keep hitting purchase and it would eventually go through. Looks like all of them went through.
"I waited almost three hours last night to speak to someone. Finally got someone on the phone, and I had to remember which specific flights I had picked so that she could look up the flights and cancel the duplicates. She had to send the confirmation for the one flight I did want twice before it ever made it to me. I woke up this morning to 25 or so confirmations, and 25 or so cancellation emails. The charges remain pending on my credit card, so I can't use that card to book my hotel room in Vegas for my trip. Thanks for ruining my Friday night. Wish I had never seen this deal. And I was so glad when you came to Atlanta...."
"36 confirmations," Bella Ventresca shared. "Over $7,000.00 in charges to my account, and 2 hours on the phone with SWA. I thought that this was just me, but apparently SOMEONE really dropped the ball here. PLUS it will take 7-10 days to process returns? Unacceptable."
One of the common threads of discord? Waiting on the phone for hours to speak with a customer service rep, and then being cut off the phone call when a human voice finally answered. The comments even spread to other activity on the page, like when Southwest changed their Facebook cover photo from the promotion to a banner showing the airline.
"The Flash Sale made a nightmare out of my day," June Wood wrote. "It just happened to be on a day that I needed to make arrangements but not one of the Flash dates. I was on hold the first time for 3 1/2 hours; then someone picked up the phone and click it was gone again. I tried numerous times throughout the day and evening I was put on hold again for 45 minutes. I was working on the booking from 6pm 8/3 until 2am 8/4. The reps seemed to be exhausted and not able to think clearly. Nice try but don't repeat."
Others were not amused when some Southwest fans began posting comments in support of the airline, such as "Best airline out there," and "I love Southwest."
"More disturbing than being charged $5000 dollars for a flight to Cleveland and waiting to see if I'm charged over limit fees as a result, is the number of people who are posting pointless "I love Southwest" comments or telling people not to be upset," Steve Kafkas wrote on the Facebook page."
"I'm a loyal Southwest customer, but at the moment I don't know that I would risk buying another ticket from Southwest. How about a statement with a few more specifics than "we're working on it" and that hours after the fact. For example, can people really cancel their flights online and get refunds? If so, why not post that here or on your website? If not, then tell people, because there are people suggesting it on this page."
Because of being charged multiple times, sometimes upwards of 30 separate occasions, customers complained that the strain on their credit cards for the unexpected charges had a domino effect on their finances.
"I was sympathic [sic] to the situation before I actually spoke with a rep from Southwest who said, there is nothing she can do...southwest will refund the charges when they get to it and it will take 8 -10 business days before I get my money back and now I have to call customer relations to get the overlimit fees back, and I was charged interest on the $1400 on the duplicate charges and I have to pay for the long distance fees to call customer relations as they do not have a 1-800 number...SERIOUSLY?!?!? Are you freaking kidding me?" Suzanne Worrell wrote in a blazing post.
"You guys screwed up, took MY money through no fault of my own and now you are telling me I have to work to get it back and I am gonna be out more money??? For a company that prides itself on customer service you guys are falling on your face!! I spent over 5 hours last night on hold just to be disconnected, I can't buy groceries or gas because you guys have taken all of my money and there is nothing you can do about it??? This is CRIMINAL!!! I get there was a glitch but compensate me, fix it, don't tell me I have to call someone else on Monday to get it fixed! I am so disappointed and angry at Southwest!"
People also complained in their comments about not receiving the LUZ2LIKE email promotion to even know about the sale, and that because of the glitch, Southwest should extend the promotion. Others immediately responded by saying they were lucky they didn't receive the promotion because of the charge errors that resulted for many of them.
Teri Landrum shared her experience on the Facebook page for how to try cancelling the flights online, but other users said that the site hasn't been working for them.
"Hopefully this will help someone – Go to southwest.com, log in to RR Account, click My Account link under "Hello Teri", click View All next to Upcoming Trips, click Cancel Reservation, Under Travel Funds, it should say "Refundable" and the $ amount." Landrum wrote. "Select "Request a Refund", then click Yes, Cancel. When you go to cancel the next one, make sure you select the next one in the list because the list doesn't remove your cancelled ones and when you have 17 to cancel, it can get confusing."
Perhaps the complaint that resonates the most is how Southwest's customers felt punished, rather than rewarded, for being fans of the airline.
"I appreciate your generous sale but this is the last time I will ever fly southwest," Christine Ylan Ho wrote. "Maybe you've made this mistake yesterday but the lesson here is how you've dealt with it, which is poorly. Good intentions but you should have been prepared to deal with the ramifications of charging thousands of dollars, especially to those who need access to that money to survive. Egregious really. IMPROVE YOUR RESPONSE TO THIS KIND OF CRISIS. I do not like your facebook page."
Readers have also written in, telling CNN that the problem is not solely aligned with the promotion.
"I bought a one-way ticket at the regular price, and got 14 confirmations and 14 charges on my credit card," Cathy Gallagher commented. "SWA hung up on me after a 3 hour wait. I am much more concerned about the national security implications of the problem than the overcharges. What kind of computer system can confirm me 14 times on the same flight? How do they know who is actually on those planes?"
Are you having issues with the Southwest promo? Let us know in the comments below. And if you are with Southwest and want to add to the conversation, our audience would like to hear what you have to say, too.
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Went on last night around 11:00pm to get 2 round trip seats to Las Vegas. Every time we would submit our order, we waited, and then would get an error message concerning our credit card. Would enter cc info again and repeated with the same, some times different "Ooops" message. We ended up trying 3 different credit cards before our reservation finally went through...note, at a slightly higher price. Woke up to an email box full of confirmations, 54 total!! The confirmations started coming in at 5:30am, sometimes 6 per minutes and stopped at 6:25am. Our 3 credit cards were all used and the total was almost $35,000!! Which of course, is over the limit on these cards. Can't wait to see the charges for that and what this will do to our excellent credit rating. Husband was on hold for over 5 hours this morning and couldn't get through to SW. This totally disgusting and I will never, ever fly Southwest again!!
Is that how you respond to all of your lifes problems, quit?
and that SueG, is why you never press the back button your web browser during credit card transactions.....
God you people are thick, blaming southwest for your own ignorance
Seriously Keith? You think it's quiting? So, you're saying, that had you used some service (taxi, airline, bus, whatever), and it was horrible and the customer service hung up on you after being on hold for multiple hours trying to resolve the issue, that you'd continue to use this service over and over? The only way you speak to a company is by paying for thier services, or choosing to take your money elsewhere. If everyone just dealt with it and continued to use Southwest, do you honestly think they would change the behavior? How much in interest do you think Southwest made in one day on all those funds? And they are saying it may be 8 to 10 days. Southwest just made a bunch of free money off of it's customers. The smart thing for consumers to do is to take thier business someplace else. It's not quiting, it's economics.
This sounds a bit more serious than a mere "glitch" to me...
Yeah, SW messed up but they are still heads above the other airlines in customer service. I ran into this problem last night and end up with 3 duplicate tickets and couldn't get through on the phone so I just waited until this morning can called and got it all straighten out, no fuss. If you had 90 charges it was because you tried purchasing it 90 times despite the error you received on the website. I pretty much figured that after 3 times I better stop punching the purchase button. Like I said the SW rep took care of it for me this morning in a very efficient manner. Knowing SWA, they will come up with some way to make up for this, so everyone cool your jets and be thankful there is an airline like Southwest still out there!
we only hit submit, after getting an error message them, they we tried to correct. We did not submit 54 times!! Also, why did all the confirmations come in 6 hours later?? I'm glad you like and are loyal to SW...they will need people like you after this situation.
Yes, we had the same result you had, after the second refusal we called our bank. We had it straightened out in less than an hour and the hold on our Debit card will be taken off on Monday.
Yes, I'm totally with your take on this, Phil
I agree with you Phil. Southwest has the best customer service in the business. How anyone would think an airline would do something like this on purpose is mindboggling....just for the float? Southwest is a reputable airline renowned for its Customer Service. Not in a million years would they put their reputation on the line. Obviously this problem has caused an enormous headache for many people, but it will be cleared up and my bet is that their customer service representatives are working around the clock to help every customer affected by the glitch. If you fly a lot like I do, I've developed an appreciation for airlines like Southwest and JetBlue. The legacy carriers don't seem to care about their customers.
Most of the excess charges were caused by impatient users clicking the "Book Now" button more than once because the page didn't respond quickly enough for their liking.
This one is the consumers' fault, not Southwest's.
No that is not true, the qlitch was with their system or they wouldn't be willing to cover expenses. You should read more carefully, that was all explained in the article.
Are you omniscient? How do you know what "most" people do?
This is not true. I pushed the purchase button only ONCE and still got charged 14 times for the same flight. Once the error message appeared, I called the 800 number. Don't assume the problem is with the customer.
I checked my SWA Rapid Rewards account when I read this news and found that my account that had 50,000 miles in it had shown that the miles expired. These miles were not due to be expired for until 2015. Fortunately I only used a corporate credit card to purchase tickets and I returned that credit card to my former employer. The only question I have for Southwest is Where are my miles?
Well hello dazzle. How the heck you doing ? I wondered if you were going to show up today.
That is SO not Jeff Frank.
They may be under a company reward program, in which case the former employer could have transferred them back to the company pool. I'd raise hell- if it was a personal Rapid Rewards account under your own name, check again in a week, since they could be auditing the system. United did the same thing last week when they made an error in awarding miles as part of a promotion. They said "sorry for any inconvenience". I responed by cancelling over $400,000 worth of Business Class tickets for my employees, and switching them to another airline, then sent them a copy of the cancellation email and the new receipts with a "Sorry for the inconvenience" letter. Those 5,000 miles they burned me out of (that cost them virtually nothing) cost them half a million in actual lost cash revenue. Morons. It's good to have purchasing power (I own an oil & gas company).
We had the problem too, but within an hour we had the tickets we wanted, we informed the airline and the bank of the problem and as usual, Southwest Airlines took care of the problem.
@bobcat in a hat ©, worked an early one today, just in. How are you?
@ dazzle
I'm doing well thank you. Are you still doing the double shifts ? I've got to get cranked up for my class tonight, so I'll be here off and on. Take care. I'll talk to you later.
Damn pizza troll give it a rest.
@Kenny Rogers, is this his work? He said he was working on his impulse control.
Yes RJ, I did the same thing. I only clicked the "Purchase" button one time, got a "Declined" message and then immediately called SW.
They told me I hit the button TEN times and I had 10 charges for ten tickets. I assured him I only hit it once and they should be looking in to that.
After hearing that this happened to so many people yesterday I am surprised that there were ANY more promotion tickets left to book after a few minutes of so many people being booked on so many multiple tickets? Wouldn't all the cheap seats be gone in a matter of minutes of doing multiple bookings?
Hey, they don't charge bag fees!!!
Let's do some math. They were overcharging in some cases by thousands of dollars, and they did it to a LOT of people. SO that money, though eventually refunded, sat in THEIR bank drawing interest for 8-10 days. I wonder what 10 days of interest on millions of dollars comes to? Probably enough to make up for bag fees. I believe they did this on purpose. They made a lot of money and then only had to pay back the duplicate billings, which they were not going to get anyway......
They are reimbursing overdraft fees to customers who used debit cards. Plus the overhead cost of add'l staff to issue refunds. Interest rates on a money market are running around .5%? So that's around 1 cent each day per $100,000.
Please refrain from driving and stay away from sharp objects.
"Let's do some math"
Where's your math? 8-10 days? This was yesterday. That's assuming they even got paid, which they probably didn't.
Southwest is one of the only companies that I know would never do that. One of the very few that wouldn't I'm sure.
I got stuck in this mess. After trying 3 times over 5 hours to book a single flight from Denver to Houston (each time gettingt a" Credit Card not valid" message, which Ii knew was incorrect, ( and it's a Southwest rapid Rewards card!!) I gave up around midnight. BOY! Was I suprised this morning to find FIVE confirmations for 5 of the same flights! And My Credit card was charged for each one! That card may not be vaid now!!
I spent 4hrs and 45 minutes on hold with customer service, and finally ( I hope!) got it resolved. What a clutser ____.! I 've love and bragged abt SW for years. Now, I'm not so sure! BUT- the conversations onthe planes on those special dates outta be worth reporting on!
I wonder how many people where using tablets or phones to make these purchases. I've had similar problems on multiple websites using android devices.
Is he the one who was trying to yank my chain yesterday ?
So what is Southwest going to do if the overdraft/exceeding the credit limit on their credit cards causes the customers APR to automatically increase to a higher level, i.e. 6% to 34% APR? Read the fine print and check your next credit card statement where it says 'APR on purchases" compared to last month's and see if it went up- this mistake on their part may cause a lot of people to pay a much higher APR on that card, and lower their credit score. This is a class action lawsuit waiting to happen, if that's the case. This could really cause financial hardship for a lot of people if they have a high balance and their interest rate triples.
I would believe that since most major credit card companies have gotten wind of the error, they probably will reverse overlimit fees and it would be as if you never exceeded your credit limit. And due to the new rule under the CARD act, any interest rate increases would only be assessed on NEW purchases.
Count me in on a class action lawsuit. My APR and Credit Rating at the two main things I'm concerned about, and it's solely due to their incompetence.