I was impacted by this. I had three flights canceled in four days. My bags are still somewhere in Denver. I ended up rebooking on American. I'm certainly going to try to make Southwest pay for it, once their phone lines clear up. Southwest is going to need to go above and beyond to fix this or they're done in my book. I will choose a more expensive option over them. I'll choose a less direct route. This Russian Roule…
I hope your damages are minimal. What would it take for southwest to remedy the station for you? I know it's hard to say. You may never get your bags. I'm basically valuing any future southwest credit as $0. All of my air miles at $0 too :(
This year, I've had a perfect record: 3 air trips, and my luggage got lost on all 3. And yet every single bag got delivered eventually.
If you think about it, it's a matter of geometry: Airports don't have infinite storage space, so much as they'd like to lose luggage permanently, airlines have to deliver it to customers to make room for new lost luggage. And as bad as most carriers are, they wont resort to outright wanton destruction of luggage.