[MosesLuna]

I received an e-mail this evening regarding a sale on Southwest. I purchased a single ticket and NO I did not press "submit" repeatedly. Southwest has taken out the charge for single my ticket 18 (EIGHTEEN) times in a single evening. I have been trying to reach them all evening. I got a busy signal at first and now the phone has rung, telling me that I will be on hold for one hour and fifteen minutes to one and a half hours. DON'T EVER USE A DEBIT CARD with SOUTHWEST. Perhaps your best bet would be to stay away from this airline entirely.

[Ombudsman]

It looks as though Southwest's webstore issues continue:

• An error has occurred. Please visit southwest.com or southwest.com booking for more help.
• If this issue persists, please call 1-800-I-FLY-SWA (1-800-435-9792).
• Reference code: 999999999

I initially received this error when trying to price a round-trip itinerary in October but now I cannot even get past this error when selecting cities and dates from the home page. Hopefully Southwest will extend their "sale" as a result of this "fail" but that remains to be seen.

MosesLuna, sorry to hear of your over-charge. Have you contacted your bank? I'm sure they will be much easier to reach than Southwest and will see this is an obvious error. Hopefully they can release most of the holds on your funds while this gets sorted out with Southwest. As for the airline, if multiple tickets were indeed issued they will hopefully see it is a glitch/error and cancel/refund the multiples. Did you receive multiple confirmations with multiple booking numbers?

[Ombudsman]

Computer glitch causes booking trouble for Southwest Airlines
Washington Business Journal

Date: Tuesday, August 7, 2012, 1:00am EDT

Southwest Airlines was trying to celebrate reaching 3 million friends on Facebook, but its promotional effort turned into a promotional nightmare over the weekend when passengers trying to buy discounted flights on Friday got multiple bookings and multiple credit card charges, the Dallas Business Journal reported.
The airline said it was all because of a computer glitch that created duplicate bookings every time a customer refreshed the Web page. The problem was resolved by Sunday, and Southwest said it already had begun processing refunds.

[Gromit801]

SWA said they're also going to cover any bank fees customers encounter for over drafts and such.