Originally Posted by
sokolov
In my case, when I tried to use the companion voucher for a trip to the US and back, there was a significant extra charge (about $75) that the Superagent was unable to explain. It was discussed here:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/westj...-vouchers.html
(The apparent markup was $64, but since the fare was 99 and not 318, there should also have been about $11 savings in GST. 318-99*0.05=10.95 )
I do not have a PNR because I refused to book.
And that was a markup on the already higher fare of $318+tx&fees=$499 per person. If I had booked a single ticket, it would have been less than $499 because I could have taken the last seat in a cheaper fare bucket. I don't remember the exact price, but as I recall, two tickets (one fully paid, one with companion voucher) were about double the cost of a single, fully paid ticket. The difference was around $20. Woohoo!
While we are on the topic of unexplained charges: Whenever I spent my WestJet Dollars, HST/GST was assessed on the FULL price. Why is that? WestJet Dollars are not actual money, I never gave you that money, so why tax it?
Example for illustration: A ticket (without taxes and fees) costs $100. GST on that is $5. OK, so $105 altogether. Now I use 50 WestJet Dollars. This would mean a $50 payment plus 2.50 GST = $52.50. In reality, WestJet charges $55.
This doesn't make sense to me. Everywhere else, loyalty-discounts are tax-free.
As per the discounts, the government does not like NOT getting their share of collecting taxes because of rebates.
As an example, there used to be tire companies that offer rebates right on the invoice. We would charge the rebate before taxes. Apparently that was a no-no and a certain tire company got an interesting bill.
Rebates should be considered after tax, so in your example, the charge is $100 + 5%, for $105 minus your $50 so you pay $55.
If you don't like that definition, you'll have to take it up with Revenue Canada, not Westjet.