$40 southwest credit shows as 4 $10 credits

[smacky1]

I booked flights yesterday and had 3 different credits I needed to use. All of them were from my family of 4 and were being used to book tickets for the same family. I was thinking that since sw allows 4 "payments" per booking I could use the 3 credits, then use the last payment for my credit card. I was surprised to discover that within each credit, sw broke down the amount by each passenger on the ticket. So instead of having a $40 credit on confirmation number XYZ, I had 4 $10 credits on confirmation number XZY. When I tried to apply my credit from XYZ, it applied it in those 4 $10 credits and came up as 4 payments. It then prompted me to remove a payment so I could pay the rest with a credit card. I ended up booking us all seperate tickets and then applying only our individual portion of each credit to the ticket. So instead of inputing XYZ once, I booked us separately and used $10 of each of our tickets. Because I had 3 credits to use, I was able to apply each credit to each ticket, then use a credit card for the 4th payment.
Another thing I notices was once I applied $10 and used my name to pull up the credit, I could not use my name again to pull up the credit for the other passengers as my portion from that credit was gone. I did not have to match the credit with the person the ticket was for (which will happen in January), but once I used a name, I could not reuse it to pull up the credit.
Anyone else notice this and have trouble booking credits. Is there an easier way then what I did? Makes me think I need to start booking us all individually for now on, except my son is only 3 and cant be booked alone.

 

[SDSorority]

You did the right thing- you can't apply more than 4 (or is it 3?) credits per booking. I ran into that yesterday as well.

 

[lawgs]

I booked flights yesterday and had 3 different credits I needed to use. All of them were from my family of 4 and were being used to book tickets for the same family. I was thinking that since sw allows 4 "payments" per booking I could use the 3 credits, then use the last payment for my credit card. I was surprised to discover that within each credit, sw broke down the amount by each passenger on the ticket. So instead of having a $40 credit on confirmation number XYZ, I had 4 $10 credits on confirmation number XZY. When I tried to apply my credit from XYZ, it applied it in those 4 $10 credits and came up as 4 payments. It then prompted me to remove a payment so I could pay the rest with a credit card. I ended up booking us all seperate tickets and then applying only our individual portion of each credit to the ticket. So instead of inputing XYZ once, I booked us separately and used $10 of each of our tickets. Because I had 3 credits to use, I was able to apply each credit to each ticket, then use a credit card for the 4th payment.
Another thing I notices was once I applied $10 and used my name to pull up the credit, I could not use my name again to pull up the credit for the other passengers as my portion from that credit was gone. I did not have to match the credit with the person the ticket was for (which will happen in January), but once I used a name, I could not reuse it to pull up the credit.
Anyone else notice this and have trouble booking credits. Is there an easier way then what I did? Makes me think I need to start booking us all individually for now on, except my son is only 3 and cant be booked alone.

in essence, SWA is already booking you all separate but on one confirmation, that is why it breaks out as 4 credits instead of one big credit for the confirmation

if you look on your credit card ......even though you pay one full price for a confirmation, when they bill the card it breaks out the number of people and charges for each of those separately to make up the whole total