This is probably TL;DR; so if you're short on time, here's the gist: @southwestair customer service sucks.

My wife and two young kids are flying home from California tomorrow. I wanted to ensure that they'd all be able to sit together comfortably, so I tried to add "Early Bird" check-in to their reservations. Something went wrong with their computers and my wife got a really lousy boarding position (much worse than if I hadn't paid extra to reserve a good spot!)

I called Southwest customer service hoping they would fix it. First they gave me the run-around saying that paying extra for "Early Bird" doesn't guarantee anything. I've completed 20 flights with them this year alone, so they cut out the BS quickly once I called them on it. Then the customer service people went into an infinite loop of "We apologize, but there's nothing we can do about it." and "Call our refunds department tomorrow and get your money back."

I don't want my money back, I want my family to comfortably fly together.

Southwest used to be up there with Amex and Apple for great customer experiences, but that has changed. I'll switch in a heartbeat to any airline with a decent flight schedule out of Denver that can solve problems and care about their customers.