When Romance Ruins Your Southwest Companion Pass Master Plan

Clearly, even the most alluring credit card rewards programs can end up being more trouble than they’re worth.

Rather than making people feel like they’re receiving a perk for their loyalty, rewards programs can sometimes make people feel like they need to fulfill a contractual obligation. “If I feel like I’m only getting a reward because I’m owed it, that’s not going to create loyalty,” said Michael Lewis, a marketing professor at Emory University's Goizueta Business School. Instead, Lewis said, the strain of feeling obligated to use the rewards can feel like a low-paying part-time job.

Lohaphaisan fulfilled her side of the contract. She spent enough on her Southwest credit card to get the pass. “Now this pass feels like a chore,” she said. “It feels like, ‘Shoot, how do I recoup the value of this?’”

Plenty of other credit cards require a significant amount of work to snag the perks. You may get a hotel room in Costa Rica, but you have to put in the work to plan the trip, not to mention pay for all the other travel expenses besides the hotel room. You may get airline lounge access, but you may need to hoof it to a separate terminal just to access the lounge.

“The Hilton Aspire card is another one that gets a lot of people to say, ‘Oh, I need this card,’” said Holly Porter Johnson, co-author of the book Zero Down Your Debt: Reclaim Your Income and Build a Life You'll Love. “It has a $250 statement credit, but it only works at Hilton resorts. Suddenly you have people taking vacations just to spend it.”

There comes a point where the work involved to redeem a reward becomes a burden that is too great to bear.

“Customers end up having to search and hunt for the options to redeem the points, which does not always make them feel they are treated as valuable customers,” said Matilda Dorotic, a marketing professor at the BI Norwegian Business School, whose research focuses on loyalty programs.

That’s exactly the case for Lohaphaisan, who now has to coordinate travel schedules with a complete stranger to squeeze the value out of her Companion Pass.

“These people already know they’re going to be traveling for their mom’s birthday, so now I’m going to feel obligated to also go to Burbank that weekend,” she said. “If it were just me, I could be able to be more flexible and go to Burbank whatever weekend I feel like.”

For its part, Southwest’s program has eliminated some barriers to redeeming its Companion Pass. You can change your designated companion up to three times a year. And indeed, Lohaphaisan said she may end up selecting a few lucky strangers to cycle through over the course of the year.

Lohaphaisan realizes her predicament is far from the worst problem she could have.

“It’s not like I’m losing out on money if I don’t end up finding a companion,” she said. “I would just lose out on the 50% savings I would have gotten from the other half of the ticket.”

And if she does find a companion whose schedule meshes with hers, she’ll get the rest of her 2019 airfare at a massive discount.

“You can make credit cards rewards work hugely in your favor if you use them in conjunction with your budget,” Porter Johnson said. “If you were going to spend the money anyway, then these rewards credit cards are actually better than paying with cash.”

Here are some ways you can make rewards programs help you, not hurt you:

Stick with a straight cash back credit card

You’ll be rewarded for your purchases, without any confusing points portals to navigate. Many cash back cards issue rewards as a statement credit or electronic deposit every month, so you get a bonus from your bank without having to do any extra work.

Higher-tier travel rewards credit cards can also be worth the effort, as long as you use them to book travel expenses you would have made anyway regardless of whether you had the card, Porter Johnson said.

Be prepared to sacrifice points if your rewards program has barriers like spending thresholds or expiration dates

Dorotic said that rewards programs that tend to cause the most headaches either require customers to reach a spending threshold to get elite status or allow points to expire if the account is inactive. If you’re close to attaining status or accruing enough points to redeem a bonus but won’t reach it without spending more than you intended, it’s okay to sacrifice the freebie. Even though you lose out on the hotel room or flight, you’ll probably end up saving money and avoiding inconveniences.

Assess how often you’ll actually use your perks—and be realistic

Lewis said he belonged to a loyalty program at his gym that gave him points every time he checked in. “If I went to the gym five days a week, then after a year I could earn a free month of membership,” he said. But “over time, most customers realize they don’t actually go to the gym enough to earn any meaningful rewards.”

If you know you’ll get enough value out of the program (say, a free month at the gym), it’s probably worth signing up. But if you suspect that your New Year’s resolution to hit the gym will end by February, don’t complicate things by signing up for a rewards program that’s a poor fit for the life you actually live, rather than the fantasy one.

After vetting the travel schedules of the applicants in her pool of 17 candidates (and interviewing the most promising ones), Lohaphaisan finally settled on who she hopes will be the perfect Southwest companion: a female co-worker whose family also lives in Burbank. Lohaphaisan said that her travel schedule seemed flexible, so it would likely be easy to coordinate flight plans.

Lohaphaisan is hardly the first person to undertake this strategy. She got the idea to post on Square’s email list because a co-worker posted a similar message last October seeking someone who would share her Companion Pass on frequent flights to San Diego.

That email went out at 10:52 a.m. By 3:28 p.m, Lohaphaisan’s colleague sent a follow-up note letting everyone know that the pass was taken.

And although fantasies of traveling the country with her boyfriend have been quashed, the whole saga has given Lohaphaisan a new fantasy: making a new platonic friend, all thanks to the Southwest Companion Pass.

“All the people who reached out to me are in a relationship,” she said. “But what if we go on a flight to Burbank together and all of a sudden we end up sharing an Uber from work, and then picking a seat next to each other? I could make a really good friend out of this.”