Of course, we only had ourselves to blame for deciding to go on vacation with Sunwing, rather than Expedia whom we used for various outings for more than a decade – but isn’t trying something new a part of the thrill? Little did we know about the consequences of this decision, although a bell should have rung when, striking off one family member from the booking (the kid had an exam scheduled during our leave) within mere hours from the moment it was made, we received a voucher instead of refund and, thus, got tethered to the company for a year. When we also changed the destination of our trip, as covered by insurance we’d purchased, the booking somehow stayed the same, so applying the voucher proved to be impossible. Still, away we went.
The first to emerge from Cancún airport and be met by a Sunwing representative, we nevertheless had to stew in the Mexican heat for about 45 minutes, watching the other customers invited to vans which whisked them off to different hotels. No, it wasn’t a case of waiting for additional passengers to share the vehicle with; when our driver eventually arrived, we were the sole family to be driven to the place where we would stay.
In a couple of days, we opted to embark on a shopping tour included in our package, but arranging it through the Sunwing app (there was no company representative in our hotel) turned out to be quite a difficult task. The built-in chat kept either freezing up upon switching to other applications – and switching was inescapable, because the company agents asked for a booking number, even though apps like this, that require logging in, are supposed to grab such data automatically – or timing out, because the agents weren’t in a hurry to respond. Finally, I got through only to be advised to send our request via email, which emphasized the app’s uselessness.
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It was the older kid and yours truly that went on this tour, with the wife and the little one staying back at the hotel. Looking at the itinerary we received, we surmised we’d return in around five hours: one hour max to get to the shopping point, 45 minutes to spend there, one hour to return to Cancún, two hours of free time, and around 15 minutes from the city center to the hotel. If only! After 45 minutes of potential shopping, our group began to gather, but the driver was nowhere to be seen. A couple of fellow Canadians mentioned that what he’d said before leaving us might have meant 45 minutes in one store and 35 in the other. Indeed, in about 90 mins after our disembarking the driver appeared… and took off in his van without uttering a single word. Another 15 minutes, and we got picked up by a different person – and taken to Playa del Carmen, which was completely different direction from Cancún. Naturally, on our return journey we hit the rush-hour traffic, got stuck and were back at the hotel 2.5 hours later than expected, when the wife was worried sick. Mind you, we didn’t use roaming for our phones, since we went on vacation all together.
A few days later, time for online check-in, which, unsurprisingly, couldn’t be done via the app and involved using the Sunwing website. Once completed, there was no option to download our boarding passes; displayed on the site was a suggestion to contact agents in the airport. Back to the app, and the agent in the chat states they handle solely ground transportation, since it’s not Sunwing we deal with in the Sunwing app but Nexus, their partner.
On to email – to learn that, if check-in is done within 24 hours of departure, the passes can’t be downloaded, the fact overruled by the almost simultaneous arrival of a message announcing the start of check-in.
I contacted the company via tweet on X, yet upon their reply, wasn’t able to take the conversation to private messages because my counterpart didn’t realize they had to follow my profile back to enable this option.
Once private communication got established, they confirmed that check-in wasn’t possible more than 24 hours before departure, which contradicted what the agent had written and which confirmed what the company website says:
We got our passes in the airport, and safely returned home – with that outstanding voucher to never be used, because flying with Sunwing is not an option anymore for us: too nerve-wracking for vacation.
