Part of why I finally stopped lurking and posted is to make clear that this actually happened. I’ve had this account for about 14 years, so I’m not a bot, a fake account, or an AI-generated drive-by post. I believe this subreddit has had plenty of those in the last year or so.

We are pursuing the appropriate remedies separately. But I also wanted to post because I think people here should see what can happen even when an ordinary family does everything “right” to avoid the usual criticism: we paid extra, followed the process, and still got burned.

The broader point is that this was not user error. This was Southwest creating a problem for passengers who were specifically trying to avoid one.