Wednesday, July 18, 2007

 

Bloody murphy

Ah, Air Canada, my frustrations continue.

Woke up this morning to my weekly email from Air Canada "Flights to Vancouver -- only $203!!". I'm flustered, but click on the link. Lo and behold, all the flights from Toronto to Vancouver are now $203 versus the $259 "Seat sale" I bought a mere 5 days ago.

Well - good on me. Following Laura's sage advice I *didn't* click on the "Save $5 - no changes or cancellations". So, well aware that there would be a $40 per way change fee, I still figured that if I called I'd be able to "cancel" the 259 + taxes, pay the $40 change fee and "buy" the 203 + taxes ticket, and get the difference as a credit for future use. We're not talking about a whole swack of money, but $23 or so on each ticket * 3 = $70 credit which would atleast make me feel better about things.

So I call only to be informed that my ticket is "non-refundable". Well yes, but I'm not *asking* for a refund, I'm asking for a credit. "Well, we'd be glad to give you the credit, but your credit can only be applied to one flight, and any REDUCTION in price is forfeited, but any additional fare price must be paid."

Now, I had read all of the rules about this very carefully on the website when I chose that $5 option, and nothing stated anything about losing money -- their terminology was that when using the credit "a $40 fee applies plus any additional fare difference". But she was insistent and wouldn't budge as I suppose any good customer service agent would.

So I'm a little peeved about things - at a minimum, I should have chosen the Save $5 option, which would have saved me $15+tax.

As an aside, I subsequently looked at trying to cancel / change the flight myself online, and the rules / information on *those* sections of the website were quite clear that changing to a lower price ticket would forfeit the difference...they should really make that clearer on the PURCHASING side of their site.

Comments:
Ah yes, today was Westjet's (quite misleading) 40% off sale that Air Canada matched. Who would've thought airplane tickets would be just like the stock market? It is a shame you couldn't switch the dates of your trip by a day to be able to save the cash.

-janet
 
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