Southwest Gift Cards. Can they be combined?

[mickeyhereicome]

Southwest gift cards are on sale on Target, but only the $100. SW only allows 4 payment methods per transaction. Is there a way around this?

 

[momto4obkids]

I haven't seen anything mentioned anywhere saying you can combine them.

Depending on how many tickets you need and the cost, you could split up the booking.

Book your tickets down and pay with 4 gift cards and then book your tickets back home seperately and use 4 gift cards.

Or book everyone's tickets seperately.

 

[happily single]

Before you purchase the gift cards you may want to see if JetBlue has a cheaper flight. The last two times we flew it was much cheaper to fly JB.

 

[mickeyhereicome]

I haven't seen anything mentioned anywhere saying you can combine them.

Depending on how many tickets you need and the cost, you could split up the booking.

Book your tickets down and pay with 4 gift cards and then book your tickets back home seperately and use 4 gift cards.

Or book everyone's tickets seperately.

The only problem with this is my kids would have to be on their own reservation and SW rep just told me there is no way to link them
I've read online that people book using the limit of 4 and then immediately cancel resulting in travel funds. They do this a few times until they are together. Then they book all tickets together. I have no experience in this so not exactly sure how it would work. They did mention the funds are only valid for a year and gift cards never expire. That seems to be the only down side

 

[cjnix29]

I have usually had to book all separate flights and have always been able to link DS's ticket to ours. Weird that the rep said you couldn't do it. When you book a child separate, it will ask you if there is someone over 18 traveling with them. The thing that gets complicated is when you go to check in...you will have four separate reservation numbers.

 

[disneypanda11]

Ugh, I ran into a mess of an issue with this earlier this year because we had SW gift cards and travel funds (which count as a payment method). I called and spoke with a representative and she was unable to override the system's limitation. Her solution was to not use some of the gift cards we had already purchased (which was not going to "fly" with me). The only way we got around it was booking each of us separately (which for some reason the representative was telling us we couldn't do because she said you couldn't pay a flight in full with a gift card, which is false). Good luck, I think this is the only really "bad" thing I've ever encountered with SWA- it had me SO frustrated!

 

[sunflare]

The Southwest FAQs state that the cards can't be reloaded, so I would assume that you can't combine them either. Booking separately might be your best option.

 

[Jedimom]

I've read online that people book using the limit of 4 and then immediately cancel resulting in travel funds. They do this a few times until they are together. Then they book all tickets together. I have no experience in this so not exactly sure how it would work. They did mention the funds are only valid for a year and gift cards never expire. That seems to be the only down side

Hmm...that's an interesting way to do it, though I question whether that would work based on the experience I had (admittedly, slightly different).

My story: last year, I booked tickets for my family of 5 using 2-3 SW gift cards plus a debit card for the extra. I'd booked as soon as flights came out and lo and behold, a few weeks later SW cancelled our flight and rebooked us on another, later flight. I wasn't happy with the time -- I didn't want to get into Orlando in the dark of night -- so I decided to look at other dates and times. When I'd found something, I quickly learned that I couldn't just rebook online (because it was SW who made the change to my itinerary) so I had to call them and have them make the change. When I did that, they had to separate us across multiple reservations to make it go through. It seemed like they had to enter in a travel voucher (credit) for each traveler? I'm not sure, but it seemed like somehow, I was exceeding the 4 "payment slots" available. I ended up rebooking again later, finding a better date and time slot for us (thought a tad more $), and with that change it separated us into 3 or 4 reservations. I was on the phone a full 30 minutes to make all the changes, a hassle indeed, and had to do the check-in 24 hours in advance times 3 or 4 times for all the reservations (which broke us up when it came to pre-boarding assignment, but with older kids it was no biggie), but it all worked out in the end.

 

[suefly]

you can combine the travel funds, I did it. Not sure if it would work for gift cards. You book a fully refundable flight using the 3 travel funds and another form of payment, then cancel the flight. The travel funds would be combined and the extra would go back on the other form of payment you used. The use the travel funds for the flight you want at the lower price. However travel funds are only useable by the person that originally was booked for and had to be use by 1 year from date use.

you maybe able to book individual flights for everyone using gift cards then cancel them and use travel funds to book together. book down and back separately. hopefully that works.