Group wants to sue Air Canada for not reflecting actual ticket price
 

http://www.montrealgazette.com/sport...199/story.html

A Montreal group is seeking permission to launch a class-action lawsuit against Air Canada for failing to comply with new consumer laws that went into force at the beginning of the month.

The suit was filed Friday afternoon in Quebec Superior Court on behalf of the Union des consommateurs and Notre Dame de Grâce resident Michael Silas.

It claims that Air Canada has violated the new consumer protection law because the airline does not include all extra fees, like a fuel surcharge, in the price of a ticket when advertised online, which is against the new consumer law.

^ But why stop at AC; all airlines do this (well, except the fuel surcharge thing :mad: ).

My thoughts on this are split:

As a consumer, it drives me nuts when prices aren't all in. I don't mind separating out government mandated fees and taxes (but... every single cent listed as a tax or fee should be going straight out the door to a government agency, none of this $47 fee when only $12 goes to the government), but everything else should be included. So I like the premise behind this law.

However, as someone with a long background in IT, rules like this worry me:

• How is jurisdiction determined?
• Is it the location of the server?
• The location of the Company HQ?
• Or are they saying the fact that a Quebecer can see the ad/website, means the ad/website must comply with Quebec laws?

If the latter, think what kind of situation that opens up. If we're going to try to get foreign companies to produce websites/ads that follow our rules, are we going to be ok with it if a random country says that because its citizens can access aircanada.com, Air Canada needs to ensure that women can't book tickets without their husband's permission? And even just practically, that could require a company to offer a different version of its website for every country/province/city in the world. Trying to enforce rules beyond one's border is futile.

Alternatively, if its the location of HQ or the servers, that results in a separate problem of unequal competition. Because WJ, and most of their servers, are based in Calgary they could still advertise base fares online, and greatly mislead the general public (FFs are already aware that the advertised price is useless for comparison purposes).

So I like the thought of the law, but it just doesn't seem practical.

Airlines are a special case under law it seems sometimes (I am not a lawyer I have just noticed). They are generally obligated to oblige by the consumer laws of the country in which they sell tickets.

SO

If you sell tickets in Canadian dollars to residents of Canada, you are obliged to abide by the rules.

It would seem that the rules then extend to any entity that sells tickets in Canadian dollars in the province of Quebec. There are two ways to get around this if the airlines don't want to:

1. Stop offering tickets in Quebec (not unlike many contests which don't care to abide by the rules there) in Canadian dollars.
2. Abide by the rule.

As another option, they can simply fight the rules in court for a few years.

Foreign airlines could possibly avoid the rules by pricing and ticketing from another juridiction, but they wont, because people prefer to shop in their own currency (though many Canadians will put up with the US$).

BUT

I've noticed that there's some rules that are applied to airlines in a different way. For example, if Air Canada has a mechanical in Europe they are bound by European law for compensation etc, even if they sold the ticket in another jurisdiction and are a Canadian flag carrier.

Really all this should stop. It should be like Australia, where the price of the ticket is the price of the ticket (though they will show you what fees you pay, the advertised price is the bottom line, except for credit card surcharges, which thankfully aren't allowed in North America yet).

Because that's how it's done in Canada (and the US); stupidly so IMO. If AC loses the case or it gets certified class action, then everyone else will fall into line PDQ, else the law firm will just move on to extract more fees from the other airlines.

There are some past cases that come to mind when some jurisdictions pass laws that help change corporate policy. One that comes to mind is the way gift cards used to have an expiry date until Calf. in the U.S. and Ontatio here in Canada (IIRC) adopted more pro-consumer legislation and set the trend that soon applied throughout the land and now in all states & provinces GC's have no expiry. Perhaps this ruling could be a template for AC to change how it does things in all locales not just Quebec.

I hadn't thought of that comparison, but is quite good. In that case it wasn't that all the states or provinces changed their laws, but there was enough of a PR stir caused by Cali/Ont that everyone just applied those laws to all their gift cards.

If Quebec can successfully force AC to change its advertising the media will certainly pick it up as a big story, and hopefully that would change things across the country.

I believe that all costs where the revenue goes to the airline as a part of it's cost of doing business should be included in the ticket price (i.e. base fare, misc surcharges, etc.). I don't mind if costs collected on behalf of governments (GST/HST/PST, security fees, etc.) and airport authorities are excluded from the price.

I am curious to see how this plays out in terms of provincial laws applying to federally regulated jurisdictions. Can this law even apply to AC?

Yes, at least that's the way I recall it happening, though given the large population in Ont. having it set the trend no doubt had a large impact on deciding to change corporate policy and apply those rules country-wide. It would've been different, for example, if PEI had passed such legislation, no offence to that magical island.

Yea, that's what I was thinking.

Why does everyone see this as a big challenge for AC? In case you forget AC offers their website in about 50 different editions for different countries. On each edition, they must comply with whatever regulations are in effect for that country.

Go and change your edition to a country which uses tax/all-inclusive pricing (i.e. Australia, UK etc). Then go and search for any flight (Canadian domestic, US, or international). On the page where you choose your flights, the price listed is the final all-in price, within a dollar/pound etc (including fuel surcharges on international flights). (You still get the breakdown on the final page)

If Quebec requires airlines to advertise and sell using all-inclusive pricing, then AC has two options:

1. Create a 'Quebec edition' of the site that uses all-in pricing (probably not that hard to do)
2. Change the Canada edition to use all-in pricing for the entire country.

lets hope they sue Worstjet and Transpat at the same time I assume they are no doing it properly either.

Class-action suit approved against Air Canada over pricing
 

http://www.montrealgazette.com/busin...402/story.html

MONTREAL — Quebec’s Union des consommateurs won an appeal Friday authorizing a class-action suit against Air Canada for advertised fare prices between 2010 and 2012.

Philippe Viel, spokesperson for the consumer advocacy group, called it an “excellent decision” but one that only starts a long process, not ends it.

“The judicial game is just beginning,” he said. “This is a process that generally takes several months and years.”

The consumers’ group filed the request to proceed with a class-action suit on July 16, 2010 in Quebec Superior Court, which denied it. The Quebec Court of Appeal overturned that decision Friday.

The suit represents only Quebecers, or others who bought tickets while in Quebec, because the motion is based on Quebec’s consumer law, Viel said.

Some people's lives are so pathetically empty they'll let an airline ruin it. As if it wasn't already.

Whenever I go to the Transat or Nolitours website to check vacation packages I notice that from Montreal all prices are quoted with all taxes and fees included. From other origin cities (Edmonton, Toronto, etc.) prices are quoted without the taxes, but with the taxes and fee amount displayed in small print nearby.

It seems there is no technical issue here. Air Canada obviously is defending their particular policy on this point.

We're here to listen if you want to talk about it.