Your blog was very informative and spot on.

I love that you compare frequent fliers to causal fliers.

Everyone is watching their dollars and cents, but I firmly believe in “knowing where you’re spending your money.” Don’t blindly splash your cash! Once you’ve determined your budget, you can get a better idea of where you have financial wiggle room. Flights aren’t simply transportation, they are part of your travel experience. No sense in being a basket-case at the end of a long-haul journey if it means scrimping and saving. There’s an old saying that goes something like, “If you’ve truly enjoyed yourself, the great memories will outlast the price.”

~Meghan

Not so with the Allegiant Airs, Ryanairs, Southwests, and Westjets of the world.

However, follow Anil. Use traditional airlines like American and Delta only when they are “a bit more expensive,” not when there is a significant difference.

DAY 1 Experience

With my complete regret, I am disappointed to report that Westjet has been the worst experience on my first trip ever. Never in my travel history, I have felt so helpless and abused. I do have to say that I had heard great things about the airline and it’s service so either I am the most unluckiest person to face this dilemma with your airline or it might be that your passenger’s expect this kinda of experience once they have chosen to fly with you.

Due to a urgent matter, all I wanted was to change my return flight to an earlier day and was willing to pay the price or any fees. I tried reaching the 1888 Westjet number for constantly 9 hours starting at 11AM while I was visiting family. It’s now around 8:30pm. Not only it defeated the purpose of spending any time with my family but the experience to try get to an agent was simply a torcher. All I got was that “our system is going through change we will not be able to take any calls”.

Here I am furiously writing, I do not expect any response. Left with no solution but to buy a new one ticket to get back to Edmonton tomorrow in time is what I have chosen to do at this 11th hour. This is no threat but you leave me with no other option but to share my experience with friends and family and of course keep Westjet as a last resort to fly. I am an executive running an organization myself and all I will say is that I challenge the executives to call in the 888WESTJET number and make an attempt to get through an agent to help you. May that will be a good immersion to really understand the VOC (voice of the customer) to no further get such disappointing message and starting a new year.

DAY 2 Experience
AFTER Day 1′s torcher bieng stranded on airport for 4 hours, I choose to spend time sharing my experience so no other passenger goes through this pain ever. Having limited time, I came to spend just 2-3 days with my family and I have barely a day peacefully with them. I spend hours on the phone while they waited around home all day for me to get a confirmation. I didn’t sleep all night in hopes of trying to get through Westjet and confirm the change. After constantly trying for 16 hours, I gave up around 8am today and decided to drive straight to the airport to personally deal with a west jet staff. i paid almost $100 cab drive and got there around 8:45am First the ticket issue counter rep said that they couldn’t change the airports (Abbottsford to Vancouver) as their system is not allowing to make the airport change and issue me a ticket- it was not almost 9:05am now. I asked to speak to a manager and with one click she showed the rep how to issue a change, it was a training issue. They charged me another 86 CAD dollars. I guess it was better than spending another $150.

Airline staff OK’d my 1 carry on and a laptop bag. It was now 9:20am. By now money and any service expectations wasn’t even a factor as I was just looking to finish this journey and make my connection to SF from Edmonton to get home. Finally, I headed to the security and who knew it wasn’t over for me.

I felt pleasant after being greeted with a smile by a security gentleman until a security women by the name of “Satinder” in her loud pitched voice asked me to go back to the airline counter to check in my carry on. I defended explaining that I got the same bag on my inbound flight without any problem and the westjet crew cleared my bags to be carried on the flight while issuing the boarding pass.

It was now 9:35ish when another security women took a look at my bag and she said well if the airline has ok’d and we have cleared the security check on the bag we should let the bag go and then if need be then westjet staff will check in at the plane gate. They went on contradicting each other, it sounded like they were in some sort of conflict among themselves. I pleaded to let me go as I can’t miss this flight.

I got to the gate A3 at 9:48 and the GATE was closed. I do have to apologies at my conduct as I was loud and lost my temper at the attendant. My hopes of getting home doomed and disappointment of having to choose Westjet to fly just made me feel so angry and helpless.

Not sure what the resolution to this pain and trauma is. At the least, I am expecting Westjet to refund full amount of my ticket.

I sit here wondering if this feedback would be taken constructively and there would be any follow up action to fix the process to assist passengers in similar situation as mine or it will merely be a DELETE command used to only make WESTJET closer to failure.

I expect to hear from a some executive team member at Westjet but I doubt that kind of leadership and accountability exists.

I surely will be reaching the blogs, feedback’s, friends, family and strangers to narrate this horrible experience until I have a resolution and hear from someone at Westjet.