My son and I, along with friends, flew SWA Flight 1842 from Denver, CO to Raleigh, NC on April 17, 2019. I have flown SWA for 17+ years, enough to get A List standing from time to time. My family and office peers have been pretty faithful customers but have seen a steep decline in quality, flight experience and customer service in recent years. I am 6'6" tall so purchase Early Bird boarding when I do not already have A List status. In this case, we all checked in on April 16th at 11 AM, 24 hours before the flight. I had paid $25 for Early Bird boarding and was surprised to see myself in spot B38, some 20-40 spots behind my son (B18) and friends ahead of him. I called SWA reservations and, after some discussions, they passed me along to Customer Service where a recording said there was a 64 minute wait until the next agent would be available. I finally gave up on holding. The next morning, I went to Denver International Airport, early, to speak to customer service at the departure gate, C41. I showed my ticket, B38 position, and my son's, B18 position, and explained that something was wrong. The desk agent went into a standard explanation about how the Early Bird position was based on when we booked the flights (we booked on the same day in March) and how many A List or other Early Bird bookings were ahead of me. Our friends were 10+ spots ahead of my son. I later spoke with other passengers in line who shared similar experiences with Early Bird boarding and the indifference of SWA customer service personnel. The desk agent would not let me see her nametag, and threw up her hands when I tried to take her photo, but said her name was "Dion." She kept trying to sell me a $40 upgrade to an A position, while loudly saying "you're not listening to me" (which I repeated back to her in softer tones), rather than simply giving me what I had already paid $25 to purchase. I have purchased Early Bird boarding dozens of times and it usually works but I have had this system glitch happen as well -- where family, friends or co-workers are all ahead of you and have neither A List status nor Early Bird boarding. When the issue arises, SWA representatives simply repeat their script, even when the evidence overwhelmingly reflects an issue in their software system. They could simply look a the evidence in front of them and say, "sorry, not sure how that happened, here's a A spot"... and fixed the problem. Instead, they continue to follow a far fetched script that claims that every non-A list / non-Early Bird person in front of you somehow got a better position because someone cancelled those 30-50 seats when you were checking in 24 hours in advance of the flight. Preposterous? Yes. Perhaps a class action suit will finally convince SWA to fix the issue.