Yesterday I was reserving a flight from BNA (Nashville) to LAX (Los Angeles) and realized that I hadn’t ever used my ‘Rapid Rewards’ membership (Southwest Airlines’ version of frequent flier miles). In fact, I had thought that I had never actually gotten a login for the membership area from them, so I decided to go through the signup process. When I made the attempt to signup for the rewards program, the system said that I already had an account. (not unlikely… I have memberships and accounts all over the place, and frequently will forget my logins or even that I had an account to begin with)

No big deal… Southwest’s Rapid Rewards site has a small link that says ‘password help’. So I clicked that, assuming that I could retrieve my password. The next screen presents me with a form requesting my name, account number, and zip code. I expected that on the next screen, I would be told to check my email for my password, but instead:

Your password request is complete!

You will be receiving your new password within 7 to 10 days at your designated MySouthwest mailing address.

wow. 7 to 10 days via the USPS. welcome to the information superhighway SouthWest Airlines!

so I decided to send them an email… after looking around for a contact page, I came across one with a couple of phone numbers and an address, but no email address or contact form to be found. Instead, at the very bottom of the contact page:

Important Note About E-mail: We are hard at work designing a system that will allow us to accept and respond to e-mail, yet maintain that personal touch that you have come to expect from Southwest.

nice. what are they doing, rewriting the POP3 and SMTP RFC?

So i figured maybe i could call them… but then saw this:

‘For your security, Southwest Airlines and its Employees cannot access your password. Thus, they cannot remind you of your password over the phone.’

Amazing.