Cheapo Air Appropriately named - desrcibes customer service as well New York New York

I recently booked travel through CheapOair to travel to Vancouver, BC on the 14 of March and return to Birmingham on the 16 of March.  What I needed to do in Vancouver would take all day on the 15, so I purchased tickets through Cheapo to accomodate that.  I guess I should have known better, because this was my second bad experience with Cheapo.  They did however, after a lot of phone time and arguing with them, sort of resolve the previous issue I had several years ago.  I decided that anybody can make a mistake, so I continued to use them for air line booking.  Things went fairly well until this latest trip that they sold me for 478.41.  That trip wound up costing me 1,318.41.  I could have flown first class for less.

The out bound flight from Birmingham was cancelled due to the weather (I have the emails from Cheapo saying that all three legs of the flight - Birmingham to NY to Toronto to Vancouver were cancelled).  So, I bought a ticket on Delta to get to Vancouver, because I had to be there to provide testing services for a non-profit I'm a part of. Cheapo then sent me an email saying that my flight was re-scheduled for me to arrive in Vancouver at 10:13 PM ON THE 15 and depart on the 16 at 6:30 AM.  This schedule was not workable and was useless as a substitute, plus it was not what I had paid for.  The email asked that I click on a button to accept the change or contact Cheapo.  I did not click because the itenerary they chose was useless.  I tried to contact Cheapo most of the day by phone and on their web chat line, but was unseccesful, due I'm sure to thousands of people just like me trying to call them as a result of cancelled flights.  The last time I tried their chat line it said the wait time was 303 minutes, no that's not a misprint, it said 303 minutes.  I was not notified that the return flight was cancelled, therefore I assumed that I still had a booking and apparently so did Cheapo because they they told me so on the morning I was supposed to return.  I travelled to Vancouver, did the testing and went to the airport the following morning.  A West Jet rep informed me that I did not have a ticket and the flight was full anyway. 

I called Cheapo from the airport and was told that yes i did have a ticket and was given a ticket number to give to West Jet.  West Jet stated that my ticket had been cancelled, because I didn't show up for the CANCELLED flight.  West Jet blamed Cheapo and Cheapo blamed West Jet, all the while, I'm stuck in Vancouver.  After two hours on the phone with Cheapo and West Jet, I was forced to buy a 394.92 ticket from Delta (through Ceapo) in order to get home when I needed to be there.  Cheapo's "customer service" rep stated repeatedly that they could do nothing except sell me another ticket for what he called a "discounted rate".  The fact is, Cheapo's supposed discounted rate was not much less than what I paid Delta full price to fly in after Cheapo cancelled my flight. 

I asked to speak to a supervisor, which was a continued and total waste of time.  He simply repated the line of denying responsibility, blaming West Jet and steadfastly refusing to consider reimbursing me for either the money I had spent initially and gotten no service for or for the flight I had to purchase to travel home.  He continued to repeat his rehearsed lines and interrupt me until I said, finally, I'm not finished speaking, he then abruptly hung up on me.  Both individuals I spoke with had heavy Indian accents and were somewhat difficult to understand and both were emphatic to the point of rudeness.  I had to ask repeatedly for clarification and for them to repeat what they were telling me.  I will admit that this did contribute to my frustration on top of the travel issues.  

The bottom line here, Cheapo says that I didn't pay them, I paid the airline, so Cheapo has no responsibility.  West Jet said it was Cheapo's responsibility to re-book my travel.  The right thing for them to have done is refunded my money and helped more with the cost of my return flight.  The "supervisor" said he was "escalating" my issue, which sounded to me like double speak for dodging the issue and passing off my complaint in an attempt to get me off the phone.  I repeatedly expressed my disatisfaction with their response.  I'm disgusted with both Cheapo and West Jet frankly and as it stands right now, I will not do business with either of them again and will do everything I can to inform others that they should avoid them as well and spend the few extra dollars to book through the airline.  I'm hopeful that my credit card company can offer some assistance with this.