Originally Posted by
gcashin
Completely agreed that the new economy product is awful and heading in a direction that I don't like. This gets compounded by WestJet's poor reliability (~64% on-time in March) and awful IRROPS handling.
I've booked either a preferred seat or Premium for my recent WS flights. Out of the past 8 flights, my preferred or premium seat was switched to a regular economy seat on 4 of the past 8 flights. 3 were outright IRROPS where I was rebooked into economy minus, while another one they swapped a 737-8 for a -700 and my exit row became a normal economy minus seat. WestJet's response? Either suck it up and fly in economy minus, or take a refund (on the day of departure and cancel your trip).
And if passengers book those Extended comfort seats and WestJet downgrades you to economy minus 28.5" pitch on the day of departure? Sadly, that's not a rare occurrence with the on-time performance and IRROPS handling.
This happened to us on our Puerto Plata flight. They issued a refund, but their either didn't tell us or buried in a generic email message talking about the Premium Class cabin being different. And so we spent a significant amount of time trying to find out why we were not getting the advanced boarding that was the driver for us paying for Extended Comfort or the free alcoholic beverage even though we had paid extra and were sitting in a row that was supposed to be Extended Comfort. Also, across eight separate agents in three airports, none of them seemed to understand how Extended Comfort worked.