A Rather Phenomenal SW Companion Pass offer

[AlohaNow]

Last week Southwest released a rather amazing little offer that will get you 30,000 points plus a companion pass if you are new to their credit card. The companion pass is only good through 12/31/19 but they just hand it to you after meeting the required spend of $4,000 in the first three months of having the card. I nearly fell over when I found this, as we are cruising in October so this offer is perfect for us! I also really wanted to take my husband to San Francisco this year – that is now totally happening! DH already has this card, it is our everyday card, but since I’ve never been the primary cardholder for Southwest I just applied and will be starting my minimum spend as soon as it arrives. For anyone with travel plans later in 2019 this could potentially be a great offer for you. You must apply for the card by 2/11/19 to get this deal and it is good for all three versions of the card, at varying annual fees. This one kind of got buried in the massive ‘I love credit cards’ thread, but I thought it could benefit some Budget Boarders who aren’t major churners, like my family.

I cannot believe we’re going to have companion pass for practically zero effort. I truly do not understand how SW stays in business. We fly them all the time and I hardly ever hand them money!

 

[AgentMama]

The companion pass is only good for 2019 on this offer, unlike how regularly when you qualify for companion pass it is good for the rest of the year you qualified and all of the following year. So depending on when you qualify for it, you may only have it for a couple of months. The other deals where you get larger up front bonus points number and can qualify for the year you're in and all of the following year are actually a better deal. I would assume SW is saving money on this incentive instead of people who qualify on the larger bonus and sometimes have it for almost two years.

 

[Alynw]

If u wait, SW will offer 60,000 points and only require u to spend $2,000 in 60days to qualify. Then u get 6,000 pts annually. Not sure if it better or worse than the companion offer.

 

[mmbrad02]

I found the whole Companion Pass to be tricky to get the other way, so I think you for posting this! I have a Southwest regular card, do you know if you can still apply for a business card or have they changed that? DH does not have a Southwest card so I'm still tempted to open and do this through him. We were dabbling with a cruise this year andI had dabbled with flying to Chicago also so this would help. But beyond that we are not big flyers so I truly wonder if we would really get our monies worth.

 

[AlohaNow]

I know that the double card plan will almost always result in holding CP for a longer period of time. But I am a small-time churner and this offer will work well for us based on our upcoming plans. I will not be keeping this card through a second annual fee so I’m just taking the low hanging fruit that SW is offering! Brad, I believe that you can still do the business card as well. One nugget that I did find out is that you can change your ‘companion’ up to three times in a year, though you can only have one designated at a time. I’ve never had the CP so I was unaware of all the specifics. I know this offer might be a good fit for a couple of other low level churners, so that is why I mentioned it on here. I consider this the lazy churner path to a CP!

 

[gottalovepluto]

A good rundown of why this might is not be the "phenomenal" offer it appears to be is here https://www.doctorofcredit.com/why-...00-point-companion-pass-offer-isnt-that-good/ (I don't mind positing this blogger's links as they don't use affiliate links to sell credit card sign ups.) The post covers the upside and downside of this offer vs other Southwest offers.