A deal is a deal, right?
Most people would say individuals and companies should honour their agreements. Tom Comeau of Toronto agrees.
In mid-March, he and a colleague were returning from New York City where they attended the St. Patrick’s Day parade.
When they showed up at La Guardia airport to check in and fly back to Toronto on Sunday, March 17, gate agents said the flight was overbooked. Air Canada was looking for volunteers willing to take another flight, in exchange for compensation.
Comeau and his travelling companion inquired with agents. The offer to delay their return to Toronto by one day included a US$600 voucher toward future travel on Air Canada, plus accommodations and meals at an airport hotel.
Comeau and his colleague accepted the offer, which was confirmed by a printed voucher he was given spelling out the details.
But a few hours after showing up at the hotel, Comeau got a perplexing email from Air Canada. It said that he’d receive a US$400 cheque for delaying his flight. Comeau was confused and wanted to be sure his voucher was valid.
After finally reaching someone at Air Canada, Comeau says he was advised that he would not get the $600 in free travel, only $400.
“I told them that this was unacceptable. How can they simply change their minds and do this?” Comeau wrote in an email to Global News asking for help.
Days after returning home, a $400 cheque from Air Canada arrived in the mail. Comeau said he had no plans to cash it.
Global News contacted Air Canada several times in an effort to get an explanation for why they would change the terms of their denied boarding compensation offer after someone had accepted it. Air Canada did not respond to multiple telephone and email requests for comment for more than a week.
But a few days after the original Global News report, Air Canada contacted Comeau to change its plan — again. Now, it turns out, the airline was prepared to offer the $600 in compensation originally promised and rescind the $400 payment.
“Air Canada just called and advised the cheque was an error and that the voucher they originally cancelled has been reactivated,” Comeau said in an email.
Comeau went on to say he’s “thankful that Consumer SOS made viewers aware of my incident with Air Canada (and) I’m also happy with the end result.
But Comeau said he doubted this was the first time Air Canada had made a mistake of this kind.
“Hopefully, any other consumer that experiences a similar fundamental breach of a basic contract, whether with Air Canada or another large business, recognizes the error and demands fair treatment. Consumer trust in a brand is so very important: it can take a long time to establish and only seconds to destroy.”