Ken M.

A sickening blend of abusive policies and staggering incompetence were on full display in my recent experience with Westjet.

I checked in at Toronto Pearson on Sunday, expecting to get home to Nanaimo that evening. A stunning series of Westjet fiascoes later, I finally staggered into Nanaimo on Tuesday afternoon, sleep-deprived and wrecked. An itinerary scheduled to take 7 hours ended up taking 45 excruciating hours from my life.

Forget the flight cancellation for "unscheduled maintenance." Forget the hundreds of dollars extra I had to spend because the Westjet "vouchers" were mostly unusable. Forget the queueing after midnight in Westjet's Calgary hub from hell, watching Westjet managers haplessly herding the dozens of us trapped there like zoo animals, with nothing happening for an hour. Forget the 20 or 30 minutes of sleep on a bench at 3am. Forget all that, because that was not the worst of it.

The worst of it was the indifference, the "Why are you here?" and "You know, my life would be so much better if you just vapourized" manners of most of the Westjet ground employees. The one exception I encountered was a kind and helpful young woman who had only been on the job for a few days -- apparently not long enough to have her soul mangled beyond recognition.

My outbound flight was on Air Canada. I'm no fan of theirs, but on this trip, the score was Air Canada 500, Westjet 0. I'll be avoiding Westjet like the plague from here on out.

Warning: Avoid the International Society of Female Professionals (ISFP). Fraud, fraud, fraud. They charged us US$500 out of the blue, apparently because they just felt like it. They started with an unauthorized US$39.99 charge a few weeks after the initial service contact. Then, six months later, they processed another unauthorized charge, this time for US$499.99. They get your credit card number and just milk it for all they can. When you try to get your money back, you're told "Please allow 15-18 business days for the refund." Fat chance. Read the complaints on the BBB site. Again, avoid The International Society of Female Professionals (ISFP).

Fake accounts. Unauthorized charges.
Lies in their Terms and Conditions. Lies from their "support."
Shameless fraud.