A wedding party had their suitcases ransacked. They want Sunwing to take responsibility
CBC
Lisa and Dave Parsons were in Jamaica for their son's destination wedding, a week-long dream vacation that was picture perfect — until they unpacked their bags.
Travelling with 40 wedding guests from Ocho Rios, Jamaica, to Lindsay, Ont., on Monday, the couple says that nearly half the group had expensive gadgets, fragrances and clothing stolen from their suitcases, and that the lining of their baggage was left in tatters.
"We normally would leave our valuables at home, but it was a wedding, so we were dressing up," Lisa told CBC News in an interview.
The entire trip was booked through Sunwing Airlines, a discount carrier headquartered in Toronto and owned by WestJet. Now, the couple — and their guests — want the airline to take responsibility.
"It was not about the money," Lisa said. "It's more about the fact that now there's this dark cloud when we all were on a high note."
On the final day of their trip, the group gathered in the lobby of the Hotel Riu Ocho Rios, loaded their bags onto a bus and drove two hours to Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay. Once they arrived, they stood with their baggage in the Sunwing line for a while before they checked it, still with three and a half hours until takeoff.
They went through security, boarded their flight and flew back to Toronto, where they were bused to the main terminal without incident. They grabbed their luggage at the carousel and arrived home at about 11 p.m.
But some of the travellers had a nasty surprise waiting for them the next morning: A text from a member of the group who found several watches missing from his bag as he unpacked.
The rest of the group quickly took inventory.
"We have a big group chat that we had going while we were on the trip," said Bryan Williams, a close friend of the groom who had a $200 cologne bottle, some dress shirts and pants stolen. "And everybody was like, yeah, I'm missing this, missing that. We realized that there was more than just one or two of us were missing some things."
The Parsons were missing a $550 Bulova watch, two sets of $300 AirPods, and a laptop cord valued at $120. Others were missing expensive perfume, cologne and clothing, and about half of the group had their luggage tampered with
