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We posted a few weeks ago about how Southwest is handling 2020 Companion Pass and elite status qualification by essentially adding some qualifying points (not redeemable points, just imaginary points that get you closer to the goal) to all member accounts. We also noted that it would take some time for the IT systems to implement this. Good news: Southwest has started updating accounts with the extra points. My wife was over 100K Companion Pass qualifying points on the year and today she received the email that she now has a Companion Pass:
I had checked her online account just last night and it did not reflect this change then. However, her online account now reflects that she has earned the Companion Pass (oddly, it doesn’t show how many points she earned, but that doesn’t matter for our purposes).
As you can see above, she now also has 16,500 points toward A-list status. That reflects the 15,000 points Southwest added for all customers and 1500 that she had already earned from credit card spend this year.
It’s good news to see Southwest has finally gotten the IT in place to implement their solution. I noted when we wrote about how they are handling the Companion Pass that I find it disappointing (read more about why in that previous post), but it’s great to see accounts reflecting the juiced up points before travel picks back up. While we still don’t know when travel will return to normal, at least now those who have qualified for the Companion Pass under the new requirements can speculatively book summer or fall travel and add their companions. Given Southwest’s lenient cancellation policy, it makes sense to book while flights are cheap and decide when the time comes whether or not it makes sense to travel.
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Looks like they added 25k. I was at 69,041 and now at 94,041. Cheers!
Yup! That’s exactly what they’d announced they’d do:
https://frequentmiler.com/southwest-extends-status-companion-pass-will-let-some-vouchers-convert-to-points/
We earned the Companion Pass in February but we are seniors with health issues and had to cancel all our travel plans. We may not be able to use it till we get a vaccine…..which will mean over 1/2 to 3/4ths of the length of the pass is wasted. SW needs to extend the earned companion pass at least a year. Not really fair.
Yeah, it stinks in a situation like that. Since we’re expecting a baby in September, we likely won’t be using our this year either (out of caution while my wife is pregnant and I can’t imagine we’ll feel more confident in travel with a newborn any time this year). So I feel your pain to some extent anyway.
The total number of points earned for CP can be seen by logging on to your account on the Southwest mobile app. From there go to “View Account”. Expand on the My Rapid Rewards section then the summary for A-List and CP is shown. I now have 130,000 of 125,000 required pints and earned CP.
Thanks!
Not sure if points had anything to do with it….My wife was also notified she had earned the companion pass, but she already had it until the end of this year…She barely had any points earned toward another one…and contrary to the original e-mail about extensions, we only got a 6 month extension on CP and A-list….so now instead of CP expiring the end of the year it does so 6/21 and our a-list was good until june now expires the end of the year……better than nothing but not what they initially promised for extensions.
That’s exactly what they promised for existing CP holders whose pass was set to expire 12/31/20. See the post I linked to in the first paragraph that explains exactly what they are doing.
Short version (see the original post for more):
-CP holders whose pass was set to expire 12/31/20 get extended to 6/30/21
-To qualify this year for a CP valid until 12/31/21, they are juicing accounts by 25K imaginary points so you only need to earn 100K instead of 125K. My wife’s account was at 120K out of the 125K required as of yesterday. Her account was juiced to CP status today.
See the post for the rest of the details on status as well. The IT solution got implemented today and matches what they announced based on what you said I believe.
I mentioned the CP not because the extension was wrong, but because we got the congrats e-mail for earning CP (with instructions to pick a companion) even though we currently have it. I think they just went in and changed the exp date on it which triggered an unneeded e-mail from their system.
I think the CP stuff was right, but not the a-list. I can’t dig up the original e-mail from SW, but I thought if you had a-list it got extended to 12/21 but it is now showing 12/20 exp on her account….not that we can complain we were given a-list for the first 6 months of this year for no apparent reason….didn’t meet the requirements or sign up for any promotions, it just popped up for us.
I see. Weird that it just “popped up” for you. Don’t think I’ve ever seen a promotion pop up on Southwest.com — they’re usually found under the promotions tab and require registration.
However, it nonetheless sounds like you got enrolled in some sort of promotional status offer and the way they are handling it also follows what Southwest said. Again, full details are in the post linked to in the first paragraph of this one, but here is the pertinent quote from Southwest that you’ll find in that post:
“For A-List and A-List Preferred Members who earned A-List or A-List Preferred status through December 31, 2020 and not through any type of promotion, we are extending your current earned status through December 31, 2021.
For Members enrolled in a promotion granting promotional A-List status or challenging a Member to extend promotional A-List status such as Status Match, Tier Challenge, Tier Experience, or a Corporate Status Challenge and who met the flight requirements by the promotion end date, we are extending your current promotional status through December 31, 2021. However, for Members enrolled in any of the above promotions and who to date have not met the flight requirements, we are extending the deadline to meet the promotion’s flight requirements to October 30, 2020.”
From what you said (“we were given a-list for the first 6 months of this year for no apparent reason….didn’t meet the requirements or sign up for any promotions”), it sounds like you were somehow enrolled in something granting promotional A-list status but did not yet meet whatever requirements they had in mind to extend it.