At least you got a response.

Last winter, I was flying YQB-EWR, and decided to do a SDC from my 12:45 PM flight to the early 6:00 AM departure. I was staying pretty far away from the YQB airport, so I checked the flight status before leaving my hotel on my computer...on time.

As I was driving, I checkd the pda site, and also everything showed on time.

Got to the airport, noticed the CoEx ERJ-145 sitting at gate 33, returned my rental car and went to check in...flight cancelled.

I went to the ticket agent who told me (what else?) that the cancellation was due to weather. The weather issue certainly wasn't at the YQB end, since this was the only departure not leaving on time that morning. Later, I also checked weather at EWR and en route, nothing (EWR arrivals were completely normal), and no weather of any kind along the route.

So I asked to be put back on my original 12:45 PM departure out of YQB, but was told that the flight was now full (obviously, since the 6:00 AM pax were already reaccommodated).

I was put on the 3:45 PM departure and when I asked the ticket agent to refund my $50 SDC fee she told me I could not do it. Of course, the CO ticket agents at YQB are contract employees, so that wasn't really a big surprise.

Since I had a bunch of time on my hands, I called CO and explained the situation to them. What do you think the response was? Since this change was due to "weather" they could not refund the SDC fee...

After I got home I wrote a correspondence to CO, and am still awaiting a response of any kind months later...

Of course, it wasn't just the $50, since I was stranded at YQB for over six hours. I decided to get a hotel room and rest and work.

The bottom line? My attempt to get on an earlier flight actually got me home almost seven hours later and ended up costing me about $180...all based on a highly dubious "weather" incident.