‘Prepared and persistent’: Customer took on Air Canada, RBC and won

A man who took on Air Canada and RBC over cancelled seats and lost hotel rooms says he came out with a win — and you can, too.

Mike McLennan tells CityNews he tried to check in for his flight in September 2021, only to find his seats were cancelled.

“I tried to phone Air Canada, and that’s not very useful. … I said, it’d be reasonable to expect you to pay for my hotel room, and they weren’t having any of that,” McLennan said.

The airline said they’d emailed him in August, but after being stuck in the system, he didn’t receive that email until September — outside of the required notification period — and McLennan says he’d been reassured everything was rebooked. It wasn’t.

He ended up on later flights but lost his hotel booking, so made a claim against Air Canada and RBC Rewards.

McLennan says he was denied by the airline, so took the claim to arbitration.

The airline rejected everything McLennan claimed, saying they’d done their duty and emailed him. But McLennan is a retired computer engineer.

“They argued that because they had sent the email, therefore, I had received it. But for the last 20 years of my working career, I was a Microsoft engineer, so I understood what was happening.

“You could send me all the emails you want, but if it doesn’t get to you, you should have the NDR (non-delivery) report, and then you can act on that, and they didn’t have that,” he explained.

McLennan says the arbitrator ruled in his favour, saying that because Air Canada and RBC Rewards couldn’t prove that he had actually received the email, he was eligible for compensation.

“They could’ve confounded the normal layman pretty easily by just saying they sent the email, and the person would’ve thought that if they sent it, I must’ve received it.

“That’s not the way those systems work.”

McLennan was awarded $1,400 in compensation and says while his knowledge of technology helped, a win against major airlines is possible if you’re prepared and persistent.