Air Canada Held Liable for Its Chatbot's Invented Refund Policy

Jake Moffatt asked Air Canada’s chatbot about bereavement fares after his grandmother died. The bot said he could book a full-fare ticket and claim the discount afterward. Air Canada’s actual policy requires the discount request before travel — the bot’s answer directly contradicted the airline’s own published policy.

Air Canada refused to honor the chatbot’s answer and offered a $200 coupon instead. Moffatt declined and took the airline to BC’s Civil Resolution Tribunal. Air Canada argued the chatbot was “a separate legal entity responsible for its own actions.” Tribunal member Christopher Rivers rejected this outright, ruling Air Canada responsible for all information on its own website and ordering it to pay the $650.88 refund plus interest and fees.

Pattern match: the chatbot completed a technically-successful interaction (answering a policy question) while violating the company’s actual, documented policy (Business-Policy Mismatch), with no mapping back to the real bereavement-fare rules that would have caught the contradiction (No Policy Mapping).

The fix: wire customer-facing agents to the same policy source of truth that human agents use, and treat any agent-stated policy as a binding commitment the business will be held to — because, per this ruling, it legally is.