Hello Supporters,

 

Thank you for your signatures.  I have been working to develop a story to share with the media surrounding this cause.  I have contacted Sophia Harris the business reporter from CBC News https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/sophia-harris-1.2750728

She has thus far not contacted me back.  

In the meantime, I have attempted to contact Bookit.com (my travel agency), multiple times. After waiting for long periods of time on the phone with a bookit.com travel agent who is trying to contact WestJet on my behalf, bookit.com ended up telling me they would try again on my behalf tomorrow and give me a call back since the lines were so busy and they were being bounced around.

I have asked for ANY of the following to rectify the situation.

1) A FULL refund. (Although I see this as the best solution, I also recognize it to be the most unlikely given that I never purchased traveller's insurance). Although there may be hope. Read below.

2) An extension on the timeline for the voucher that was offered beyond a year to allow me to rebook for the same time period next year. The current timeline they gave on the voucher would force me to rebook and complete the travel before the end of October 2020. This is completely unfair as I had initially scheduled my travel for March break. 

3) A discounted or removed rebooking fee. They want to charge a rebooking fee of $125 for each person which amounts to $500 for my family of four.  This price is gouging and should be ideally waived or at the very least substantially lowered given the circumstances.

My colleague at work who always travels with WestJet is surprised by their slow response but the public's view may be having an effect as he recently received an email suggesting the following:

"To help you continue to book with confidence, we had already instituted a flexible change policy giving those guests who booked between March 3, 2020 and March 31, 2020 the ability to change their flight without the applicable change fees.

In addition, we are temporarily removing the normal change and cancel restrictions for guests who had previously booked a Basic fare for travel beginning on or before March 31, 2020. More information can be found on the WestJet travel advisory page. If you have any questions regarding your reservations, there are a number of ways to contact us that you can find here. If you booked with a travel agent, please contact them directly." -- Ed Sims, WestJet

I looked into this here:

https://www.westjet.com/en-ca/travel-info/advisories?j_cid=email%3ATeal%3ACoronavirus%3ACoronavirusEmail%3A20200309&deliveryName=DELMSG_20200309_8218

That last part looks more promising but amounts to fees still being charged for changing or cancelling at the Econo rate.  About $118 per person.  

I would opt for that but now I have another problem given that I have a voucher that I would rather make into this suggested refund (along with the cancellation penalty attached).  I would do this but now I have to use my travel agent and switch the voucher over to a cancellation. 

We'll see what is to come from all of this.