Originally Posted by Fiordland

It is a WS issue because they have taken this families money for a service that the family will not be able to use. A family that has some young kids and one of the bread owners off sick for an extended period of time. It is WS issue because the general public will have zero sympathy for any corporation in this situation.

There would be more sympathy for WS if these seats were guaranteed to go our empty or if WestJet managed to sell them to someone else, this family would get their money back. There probably would be more sympathy if the family were permuted to try to sell the tickets on e-bay or somewhere else, however that would also violate the rules. The family can't even give the tickets away to friends and family they way they can with concert tickets or most other goods that can not be returned to the vendor.

WS created this problem when they designed their Basic fare structure. They now have to take a public relations hit every time a story like this come up. Hopefully the revenue from having Basic as a product is worth the hit in goodwill.