Dear Sir,
Thanks for the article on page 3 of the September 19-25 issue entitled “Legal Residents forced to pay illegal tourist tax.” A better title might have been, “Volaris is up to their old tricks, again”.
We started flying between San Jose California and Guadalajara in 2005. We became legal residents of Mexico in 2009. My wife was flying every four to six weeks to visit her elderly mother. After 20 some odd flights, we started booking through Alaska Airlines. Why? Alaska would give you a form to fill out and you could get a refund of the tourist tax. Volaris offered no assistance. I had figured back then that Volaris had collected between US$400-500 dollars of tourist tax from us that should have been refunded.
At some point, Volaris changed their policy about charging tourist tax for legal residents, and things were great until this February. When booking my recent flight to San Jose California, Volaris would only accept a Mexican passport. If I wanted to book the flight, I had to pay the tax. It was about US$53 in my case. I looked online for assistance. It was suggested that if I made a couple of copies of my residence card, the counter representatives at Volaris might be helpful. They weren’t. I got four different answers to how to get a refund. My favorite was the last one. ”After your flight to GDL, walk across the street to the SAT (tax) office,” a representative in San Jose told me. I didn’t.
Keep up the good work.
Rodney Brooks