Originally Posted by guessaaa

Following up on this, I recently had a 014 reward ticket that included SIN-(SQ)-HKG-(AC)-YVR. I got standard reward because I was ok with the first bag fee of $75 CAD as stated on the ticket vs. the amount of points they wanted for flex. At SIN, I was able to print off the baggage tag at the kiosk, but the automated bag intake machine wouldn't move the bag onto the belt. I went to check-in assistance and to make a long story short, I was told by SQ that I had to pay SQ's excess baggage fee because "Air Canada is forcing us to collect payment for them". SQ's excess baggage to North America is $150 USD per piece, or $15 USD per kg ($300 USD for a 20 kg bag) to HKG. SQ said there's no way around it, that's what the computer was providing, and that there is no recourse because there's no AC ticketing office in SIN since they don't fly there. I was able to call AC reservations and handed the phone to the SQ agent. After a 10 min discussion, the AC agent said they are to charge me $75 CAD for the bag, while SQ said that AC can charge me the bag themselves and amend the ticket to include that bag. AC said they can't take payment for the bag through reservations and they can't change the ticket, so I can only go through SQ. I had no choice but to pay the $150 USD, which they converted to $200 SGD.

I'm not familiar with AV's baggage policies, but for SQ, I think the biggest problem with this relatively new policy of not including a bag with reward tickets lies in that SQ provides 2 bags free for all cash tickets between SIN and North America. It makes sense that their excess baggage fees are so high because it is used to discourage multiple bags after the first two. In North America and Europe, the trend is to typically not include bags with the ticket, so the first and second bags, while technically excess baggage, are not priced as high as the third or higher bag. SQ has no excess bag tiers. AC would have charged $225 CAD for a third bag which is just over and more equivalent to $150 USD that SQ wanted. So SQ charged me an equivalent of a third bag for just my first one.

I've since wrote in to SQ asking for the difference back, still waiting for a response from them. It's also interesting that OZ and NH did not enforce a paid first bag on a standard reward ticket. I'm wondering if it's like the old days where some airlines charged YQ and not others. Perhaps there is a group on airlines that include SQ and AV that charge excess baggage equivalent to a third piece when on a standard reward, regardless of what the 014 ticket says.