Halifax718

Can someone offer clarification as what dollar amount counts toward your tier status.

From what I've read it's only the base fare amount, for tickets that are in YOUR, is this correct?
- So if I purchase tix for me and my wife, I will only get credit for MY base fare, not total base fare spend.

Also curious if this amount includes any flight credits/vouchers or Westjet dollars used toward purchase?

Thanks in advance!

V1213

Correct - you only earn on fares for yourself.

Any base fare that is charged in a legal tender currency should count. That includes Westjet credit on your account (ie. in CAD), but does not include WestJet Dollars.

SKYEG

I'm having a hard time going from Gold to Plat due to dirt cheap FLEX fares that add NOTHING. Why sell something above basic if $1 goes to the qualifying spend? Last $3000 in upgrades and flex fares that gave me like $200 in qualifying dollars, what a joke.

WS really needs to add UG prices to part of spend...this is getting silly, can't hit when buying up to J and I'm not going to pay Full Flex Y just so I can meet spend requirements for Plat...

smilee

Econo Flex ($146 --> earns $86) Econo ($109 --> earns $51)

SKYEG can you clarify what you mean by FLEX fares not adding much over ECONO fare. The fare itself should be considerably higher between ECONO --> FLEX So although you don't earn on the YQ, AIF and Tax the fare itself should be significantly higher. Or am I missing something from your comment. (I also agree that upgrade spend should also count as spend, in fact I think it would be much easier for the consumer to understand if it was ALL spend on your ticket counts as it is hard to see the base fare when buying)

SKYEG

Hi,

Sorry I'm meaning Flex fares, as the one up from econo where you can upgrade and select seats, earning WJD.

YYC-YYZ-YYC // YYC-YWG-YYC // YYC-YVR-YYC. I spent $3k total in fares + upgrades and got $200 in qualifying dollars. That's why I was so surprised, because I would think better earn on Flex fares. But when YYC-YYZ-YYC is selling for $250 r/t FLEX and YYC-YWG-YYC selling for $180 r/t, I can understand nothing is going to dollars. This program definitely has some issues with how the spend is calculated. And ZERO clarity. I can see on AA and DL exactly how much EQD I will earn on a flight. WS still a LCC.

Adam Smith

Just bought a J ticket to Europe, and saw that over half of what I paid is YQ, i.e. money that goes to WS, directly to WS, and does not pass Go. Even though WS collected far more than $200 in YQ.

YQ, of course, earns no Tier Qualifying Spend credit or Rewards dollars.

No other airline does this. Why does WestJet? Is it a deliberate attempt to screw customers out of status and rewards? Or is it a byproduct of the days of low to no YQ that no one there has thought of, because they have such a domestic FOTSG mentality?

I actually wrote in back in 2019 when I first got bitten by this on a YYC-CDG trip (and that $1000-ish of YQ would have been the difference between me making Platinum, or earning another companion voucher, I forget which), and never heard anything.

I may be tilting at windmills, but I was so annoyed at this bloody stupid policy that I sent a strongly worded e-mail to their executive contact centre that I was escalated to for a completely different issue a couple years ago. Figured I might as well actually try to effect some change rather than just venting on FT.

smilee

Also wondering what earns tier dollars. I received an email recently saying that there is a promotion where using your Westjet Dollars will earn tier spend.
Would Member Exclusive fares paid with WJD count for this promotion? Or would it just be regular fares with a portion paid with WJD count.

V1213

As per the promotion T&Cs, yes:
Also a friendly reminder that, although WestJet doesn't often refer to them as such, there are now two types of qualifying spend; Tier Qualifying Spend and Milestone Qualifying Spend. Like other bonus qualifying spend promotions, this one only gives you Tier Qualifying Spend, which gets you status, but does not give you Milestone Qualifying Spend, which is what is required for the Milestone Awards.

YYCfasha

Recent trip YVR - LHR in J

Base Fare $3,300
NavIns $1,124

I actually called in when making the booking to get an explanation of NavIns, after holding for about 20min and being passed around to other agents was finally told that this is WS profit and they need to charge it to remain competitive. Honest I guess but seems silly and appears they are trying to reduce their exposure to status or rewards.

Adam Smith

I received a phone call from someone at WS about this last week. He caught me at a bad time trying to sort out a mess with a rental car, and agreed to call me back in 15 minutes. Unfortunately, he called me back about 5 hours later when it was the middle of the night in CPT, so I didn't get to speak to him, but he left me an incredibly stupid voicemail.

The guy clearly had no idea what YQ was - he said he looked it up on WestJet's internal site and it covers third party charges like navigation and insurance (blatantly false), explained to me how the program worked (YQ doesn't count - yeah, I know that, numbnuts, which is why I wrote in), and said he had no idea what other airline programs were like.

I was initially annoyed to have missed his call because I had hoped to have a useful conversation about this, but the guy was so uninformed and unprepared that it's probably better that he just got my voicemail. I don't necessarily blame this guy, because clearly he was out of his depth and should not have been deputised to phone me, but who's running the loyalty show over there? When they receive a detailed and technical critique from a customer, they have someone who knows nothing about it respond to it?

Adam Smith

After the debacle above, I sent WS a follow-up e-mail to note my displeasure with the utterly useless response from the first guy. Last night, I got another call from them. The woman I spoke to this time was much better prepared, and had talked to the supposedly right people in the loyalty department (she was still just a general customer service agent), although she still wasn't very familiar with the concept of YQ or other airline programs.

One incredibly annoying talking point she had been fed by the loyalty people was that WS's program is simpler because it's only based on spend, and how it's different that other programs are based on mileage, so people earn the same for a flight regardless of what they spend, whereas WS what they earn is based on spend. Did those people really think that someone who is AC SE, DL PM, and BA Silver (which I had mentioned in my e-mail) doesn't know how earnings in other programs usually depend heavily on what fare you've bought? Or are they dumb enough that they don't know that you earn a vastly different number of qualifying miles and points on an AC Standard Fare vs a Business fare (as just one example)?

I was also peeved that they said it was somehow easier for customers to see what the base fare was. Actually, on both the website and app, the line that's big and bold and easy to understand is "Air Transportation Charges", i.e. base fare + YQ, i.e. what should constitute qualifying spend.

The bottom line is they have no intention of changing this any time soon.

I suspect most customers don't notice because YQ is fairly small on most North American fares. And obviously this benefits WestJet to reduce qualifying spend and reduce the number of rewards dollars they award to program participants. But do they not expect that as they supposedly do more international flying with the 787s, and try to attract elite members of other programs, that people might start to notice? For a Platinum, this policy can easily screw them out of $100+ in WSD on a TATL ticket, not to mention what it might cost a member at any status in making that next tier or hitting another milestone.

As with so many things WS is doing right now, it's inconsistent with other things they're doing and doesn't seem like they really know what they're trying to achieve.

arf04

Thanks for the update. Very interesting, and a little depressing. Indeed, WS does seem to be in a position where they are not clear what it is they want to achieve and I am finding that I don't even really think of them much when I am looking at TATL flying even though I quite like their J product.

Adam Smith

If they were to get a lot of feedback on this point, perhaps they would consider taking action. For now, they might just think I'm Don Quixote and not worth paying any attention.

smilee

The flights I took using the Member Exclusive Fare posted but I received 0 Tier Qualifying Spend. I of course was expecting 0 Milestone qualifying spend, but I also received 0 Tier too!

russkiflyer97

Hi everyone,

wondering if anyone has encountered this before, but my girlfriend and I booked a trip to Palm Springs on an Econo ticket using her account and her WSD. We also used a World Elite companion voucher for my ticket. Just wondering if I would be earning anything at all in terms of eligible spend as I�m close to getting gold status, and I�d like to have some sort of knowledge before the spend gets applied. Thanks in advance!