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A friend of mine had a rather disquieting experience with WestJet this past week.
They booked a Westjet flight on the weekend using Expedia.ca for $310 r/t. Receipts were received and confirmations issued. They received a Westjet E-ticket/Invoice/Receipt for the original $310 amount ticketed. However, when they saw the charge on their credit card, Westjet charged $475. At no time were they contacted to confirm a higher fare would be invoiced. .
The one unique aspect of this itinerary is that they have a 3 hour connection in YVR. However this connection is still allowable under the fare rules. There is no other flight I can take before my departure and it is under the 4 hour connection rule, a stopover should not be a factor. For some reason Westjet counts this as a stopover. The 'normal' connections sold on Westjet.com are in the range of 15 or 20 minutes.
The good news is that Expedia immediately took the case to Westjet. They will now get a refund for the additional $165 Westjet charged without any approval.
Some words directly from the friend:
There are still two problems with booking Westjet:
1)They went above the agreed to contract price and activated the credit card for a significantly higher dollar amount. The credit card is not a personal bank account for Westjet to adjust as they please. Definitely unnerves me to think that this could be standard practice and I expect a lot better.
2)Westjet appears to not be following standard IATA practices for stopovers. I wonder if there is anything else they do differently from industry practice. Yes its their prerogative not follow IATA, but every GDS is based on IATA rules.
Expedia was excellent in taking my case to Westjet for resolution. I realized immediately that my disgruntled state would likely lead to a long lecture to an entry level call centre employee.
I would definitely book with Expedia again, Westjet I am a little uneasy but will restrict my activities to Westjet.com. For instances where I combine Air and Hotel, this means Westjet would lose my business.
Caveat Emptor and check your credit card entries.
exAC: Instead of complaining in a forum about a mistake that was corrected, did your friend (or you) ever contact Westjet?
Yes, exAC. The nerve. Only AC can be criticized here. Not WS!!!
A2)Westjet appears to not be following standard IATA practices for stopovers. I wonder if there is anything else they do differently from industry practice. Yes its their prerogative not follow IATA, but every GDS is based on IATA rules.
Disturbing story indeed.
I wonder if this is because Westjet is not a membe of IATA and hence feels no need to be bound by its guidelines - even if they are "industry standard" (see http://www.iata.org/membership/airlines/regairlinemembership.htm?area=nam for a list of North American IATA members)
What Westjet did to you was uncalled for. You should only pay what was quoted to you.
More to the point, I think charging the customers's credit card an amount that differs from the invoice is just plain fraud.
[QUOTE=Shareholder] Didn't think WestJet was a member of IATA, so such things don't matter. [I doubt Jet Blue or South West are IATA members either.[QUOTE]
True, Westjet is not a member of IATA, however they are the only North American LCC that is available for selling on the GDS. This is where minimum connection times begin to matter. Westjet should be accepting the IATA rules if that is what the GDS uses to match flights.
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In the JetBlue and Southwest examples, they only sell tickets through their own websites and do not participate in the GDS.
The Also the fare rules must otherwise have allowed the fare to be ticketed. The routing must have been valid and the fare basis available on both segments.
..or simply an unintentional error. It's possible that there was no human contact involved in the billing of the fare and the interface between Expedia and Westjet isn't programmed to flag fare differences between the two pricing engines.
I am afraid if it's a programming issue then it's not a single case of a honest mistake but a systemic issue. Just plain fraud. Like these US medical bills.
this is an ongoing problem with some westjet flights and I will tell you why. Normal IATA carriers publish minimum connnecting times that are published by city. So what most CRS systems do is look for flights that meet minimum connections times and offer the most choices. If a certain pair of flights is not built into the Westjet computer system as a connection then they consider it a stopover. I think in this case the person got lucky and they honored the fare....alot of times I had been told that it is not a legal Wesjet connection and that they can pay the higher fare or get a refund.
And this brings about an interesting question -- how many people would have corporate credit cards and how many would use their own? If it's corporate, I would argue that the assistant would see? (I'm a bit naive in this area admittedly... In some government shops that I have been at, transportation tickets were always charged to the ADM's corporate card.)
I think what you'll generally find that in the federal government airfares are billed to a corporate (departmental or branch) credit card. Someone will (or should) reconcile the credit card statement to known travel purchases that month. The theory is, then, that a billing error would be detected and questioned.
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The federal traveller pays all of their other costs, such as meals, hotels, and taxis using cash, the employer-offered credit card (Amex, isn't it?), or their own cc. They file their claim and use the refund to pay the credit card. I don't think you are obliged to use the Amex card, so you can put all of your expenses (other than airfare) on your personal card, such as an Aerogold card, and collect the points. The challenge, though, is to get your claim processed fast enough to pay off your cc balance by the due date.
Well, things like these matter if everyone else's system who is IATA-compliant is defaulted to a certain standard while WS standards are different. Essentially, you run into problems like these.
As for the feds, each branch assistant is to check for their own people. Or if an employee does their own travel and charges it to their own credit card, you can bet your @$$ that there will be very pissed off silly servants if this happens to them.
More to the point, I think charging the customers's credit card an amount that differs from the invoice is just plain fraud.
..or simply an unintentional error. It's possible that there was no human contact involved in the billing of the fare and the interface between Expedia and Westjet isn't programmed to flag fare differences between the two pricing engines.
Didn't think WestJet was a member of IATA, so such things don't matter. [I doubt Jet Blue or South West are IATA members either.] Suspect this is a glitch as WS's own systems only work with those short connections noted, and this one was "exceptional" when it came through from Expedia. Anyhow it was corrected and the TA went to bat for the customer.
As for watching one's credit card statements, I wonder who's going to do that for the feds on those new billings they'll start getting from WS?
exAC: Instead of complaining in a forum about a mistake that was corrected, did your friend (or you) ever contact Westjet?
True, Westjet is not a member of IATA, however they are the only North American LCC that is available for selling on the GDS.
That's not true. CanJet also particpates in a GDS. Down south, Independence Air, Frontier, AirTran, America West, among others, all participate in GDS.
[QUOTE=Shareholder] Didn't think WestJet was a member of IATA, so such things don't matter. [I doubt Jet Blue or South West are IATA members either.[QUOTE]
True, Westjet is not a member of IATA, however they are the only North American LCC that is available for selling on the GDS. This is where minimum connection times begin to matter. Westjet should be accepting the IATA rules if that is what the GDS uses to match flights.
In the JetBlue and Southwest examples, they only sell tickets through their own websites and do not participate in the GDS.
The Also the fare rules must otherwise have allowed the fare to be ticketed. The routing must have been valid and the fare basis available on both segments.
SWA has been available through SABRE since 1990.
...did your friend (or you) ever contact Westjet?
Yes they did............. through Expedia.
That was how they got their money back, not through some altruism of WestJet. They only returned the money when they got caught with their hand in his pocket.
SWA has been available through SABRE since 1990.
But not bookable through travelocity, expedia, etc.
They booked a Westjet flight on the weekend using Expedia.ca for $310 r/t. Receipts were received and confirmations issued. They received a Westjet E-ticket/Invoice/Receipt for the original $310 amount ticketed. However, when they saw the charge on their credit card, Westjet charged $475. At no time were they contacted to confirm a higher fare would be invoiced.
What Westjet did to you was uncalled for. You should only pay what was quoted to you.
In this case the expense claim would have been for the lower amount but the credit card statement (which the EA cannot access) is for the higher amount. It would take the card holder a while to discover the issue.
And this brings about an interesting question -- how many people would have corporate credit cards and how many would use their own? If it's corporate, I would argue that the assistant would see? (I'm a bit naive in this area admittedly... In some government shops that I have been at, transportation tickets were always charged to the ADM's corporate card.)
I don't think AC is complaining -- he is telling us to keep an eye out for such potential incidents.
And I for one (although I have yet to buy a WS ticket) really appreciate this.
As for the feds, each branch assistant is to check for their own people. Or if an employee does their own travel and charges it to their own credit card, you can bet your @$$ that there will be very pissed off silly servants if this happens to them.
The Westjet situation does pose a problem for Executives, Lawyers, and other professionals who frequently travel or submit a lot of expense claims. At the senior levels of a lot of organizations, the traveller's executive assistant makes the booking and completes the expense reimbursement form by using the airline provided e-ticket/receipt. In this case the expense claim would have been for the lower amount but the credit card statement (which the EA cannot access) is for the higher amount. It would take the card holder a while to discover the issue.
I doubt most senior executive reconciles their credit card statement on a monthly basis. Even a cursory review of said statement would be insufficient as the correct flight would appear and the executive would be unaware of the actual flight cost.
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