This is going to be useless info for most people, however, just wanted to let everyone know that if you have travel funds from before the pandemic that are set to expire in the next 6 months or so…you can book a flight with those now and then cancel the flight (presumably anytime up to sept 30) and those funds will be replaced with funds that expire 9/2022. At first, when you cancel, it will just show an expiration date of 1 year from the booking date but within 24-72 hours it will change to the 9/2022 date. Hope this is useful info for someone.
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I’ve been thinking about this for another carrier. Aulani still isn’t taking reservations last I checked. Thanks for the reminder
So just curious since you seem to be a southwest flier. I have 5 travel credits times 5 people from this past spring break. ( I kept rebooking and rebooking as the flights got cheaper and cheaper until I realized that the trip just wasn’t happening.)I do have all credits expiring 9/2022. What are your thoughts on changing these all to points by December 15th. Keep the travel credits or change to points?
Good question. I don’t have a good answer. I did convert some of my husbands excess funds to points since the points can be used to book travel for anyone and I like booking with points to avoid dealing with funds that have expiration dates when plans change…I have left the rest of the family’s funds as funds for now figuring that I have until sometime in December to decide to convert them points or not. There was a recent “the points guy” article on whether it is better to convert to points or leave as funds that is worth a read if you have not read it already. Tried to link but had issues, It is entitled: 4 types of travelers who should convert Southwest funds to points. What are your thoughts on converting?
I converted to points. It was only 1 ticket for me for a couple hundred dollars and it’s one less thing on my “to do list“ to have to think about between now and December. I personally travel SW enough (in normal conditions) I’ll use them eventually but really not sure if I will before 9/2022.
If it was the whole family, it would be a harder decision since we tend to be more sporadic in airline selections for our family trips so the kids have a few points scattered everywhere that aren’t really being useful.
The only thing with converting to points, and maybe this has changed, I haven’t looked in a year, is that there arent many price points. We have a corporate SW rewards cc and it was like 10k, 12.5k, 20k, 35k, 40k. It didnt seem to be as diverse as the equivalent for $ amount. Like a flight $50 apart, 1 way were the same points price. Maybe this has changed. But Id check into that. My SW credits also got pushed to Sept 22 and Im sure well use by then, already planning to use some in Dec. But the positive to points would be, like someone else said, you could use that for a different passenger than the original.
From the picture on the Points Guy website, you could convert any amount in travel funds to points.
This is correct. There are a couple 11 dollar funds on my daughter’s rapid rewards account that I’ll likely end up converting to points.
She actually has one travel fund that only has 20 cents left in it that I just converted to 16 points
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Thanks for the reminder. I converted ours to points.
We were going to try to use funds for Panama City Beach for a quick 2 night stay and Southwest changed my flights. Again. Took 5 hours out of what was already a very short trip and I gave up.
My main hesitation is that they will devalue their points. I paid all told $2200 for these flights for the 5 of us. I want to make sure that i can reap at least that much benefit from them. I did not see the points guy article but will look for it. Thanks for the info.
The other day, I converted my points and cashed out for some gift cards. So today I signed DH up for a Rapid Rewards account to transfer his travel funds to points and then went to redeem the points.
I got this message:
Due to circumstances resulting from COVID-19, we have temporarily paused the ability to redeem points in More Rewards. We are sorry for the inconvenience and hope to resume normal operations soon. Thank you for your patience and grace during this time.