If you ever get targeted emails from Capital One Shopping, you might’ve seen ‘Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards’ listed either as the primary focus of an email, or a little further along as you scroll down the email.
That might give the impression that you can earn rewards when booking flights, but that’s sadly not the case.
I first noticed this in my emails a couple of weeks ago. I’d initially assumed it related to points purchases through Points.com, so I ignored it at first. However, I later paid more attention to the fact that it was being listed as ‘Southwest Rapid Rewards’ or ‘Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards.’
Several other shopping portals list Southwest as being eligible for rewards, but when you click through it goes to the page on Southwest’s website relating to Rapid Rewards points purchases. Some portals also explicitly list Southwest as ‘Southwest Rapid Rewards – Points’ or ‘Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards – Points.com’, thereby making it clear that it’s only valid for points purchases.
That’s not the case with Capital One Shopping though. They list it as ‘Southwest Rapid Rewards’ and link to the main Rapid Rewards part of Southwest’s website rather than the page that’s devoted to selling points. That made me hopeful that Capital One Shopping might be unique in rewarding people when booking Southwest flights. After all, a few months ago they were initially the only portal that offered rewards when booking Hyatt stays.
There are a couple of ways to ascertain what’s an eligible purchase. If the email you receive from Capital One Shopping has Southwest as the focus (e.g. with a subject line of ‘Offer at Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards for you!’), when opening the email you’ll see something similar to the screenshot at the top of this post. There, you’ll see a link to the offer exclusions and clicking on that will open a page on the Capital One Shopping website that states the following:
Not eligible for the purchase of flights, hotels, cars, vacations, cruises or gift cards. Only eligible on the purchase of Rapid Rewards Points.
It’s not always quite as straightforward as that with the emails though. If it’s listed among a group of offers at the bottom of an email, there won’t be a link to the exclusions listed there.
It’s easy enough to access the terms though in instances such as these. All you need to do is click through from the email. Then, once on the retailer’s website, click on the Capital On Shopping browser extension. Here’s how to find that in the Chrome browser:
When clicking on the Capital One Shopping extension, you’ll see a popup that lists any important terms and conditions along with any applicable exclusions.
This is something you can do for any retailer that Capital One Shopping targets you for in case you ever need to verify the specific terms and conditions of any given offer.
As you can see though, purchases of Rapid Rewards points are the only eligible transaction type to earn rewards through Capital One Shopping, not flights.
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