Southwest Airlines can be expensive

Note to self: when purchasing air travel for someone else, make sure you list them as the passenger, not yourself.

This is the mental note I made this morning after an Internet Special fare, originally $118 round trip from San Diego to Sacramento, ballooned into a Reality Nightmare fare: $284.80 round trip for the same ticket. All because I had to change the name of the passenger at the last minute.

Even though I swear I listed the passenger name correctly--i.e., not myself, but the person I was buying the ticket for--somehow I must not have done so and so I got a phone call at 7:30 alerting me to this fact.

So, I called SWA to change the name but they said they cannot do that without me shelling out more dough--they would have to create a new reservation with whatever rates prevailed at that time. And so, I ended up paying an extra $166 for the tickets.

I guess it could have been worse.

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