All this talk about pacing the frontier of artificial intelligence overlooks a reality that travelers experience every day.

An algorithm already determines your airfare. Another sets the hotel’s rate. And another answers your complaint with a non-answer, hoping you’ll give up. 

AI arrived in the travel industry years ago, and consumers are paying higher prices and enduring worse customer service because of it. Why isn’t anyone pacing that frontier? 

AI became a topic of conversation last week when Dario Amodei, who runs Anthropic, said the race is moving too fast, and the companies running it ought to agree to ease off — to “pace the frontier,” in his words. Sam Altman at OpenAI said he agreed. So did Elon Musk. When three men who spend their waking hours trying to out-build each other all suggest tapping the brakes, it’s worth a look.

Here’s the problem with this conversation: It’s the wrong conversation. 

We should be talking about how AI is already making our lives worse. Case in point: the travel industry.

The chatbot defense

Airline AI shenanigans go back at least four years. When Jake Moffatt’s grandmother died in 2022, Air Canada’s chatbot told him to book right away and claim the bereavement discount later. That wasn’t true. The airline’s real policy, posted on another page of its own website, says the discount can’t be claimed once you’ve flown, and it refused him the refund. When Moffatt took his case to British Columbia’s Civil Resolution Tribunal, Air Canada’s defense was that the chatbot is, as the tribunal put it, “a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions.”

That’s right, an airline filed a legal document blaming its own AI.

The tribunal wasn’t buying it and awarded Moffatt about $575. The decision remains the closest thing the traveling public has to a rule about AI mistakes, and it came from a small-claims body in a Canadian province. The Federal Trade Commission says there’s no AI exemption from the laws on the books, which is true, but also leaves every traveler to prove it one $575 case at a time.

Call it the chatbot defense: A company keeps the savings from automating and hands you the risk. You’ll hear it again.

A fare set for an audience of one

Last year, senators demanded answers from Delta Air Lines about reports it planned to price seats using AI. Delta claims it doesn’t use personal information to set individual fares and won’t start. 

But the senators wrote that letter because the technology works. Someone will eventually use it. New York already requires sellers that use personalized algorithmic pricing to say so on screen, in capital letters: THIS PRICE WAS SET BY AN ALGORITHM USING YOUR PERSONAL DATA. The law took effect last November and survived a retail industry challenge in federal court. Roughly two dozen states have introduced something similar this year.

There’s a catch. Federal law bars states from regulating what airlines charge. No court has tested whether these disclosure laws apply to your airfare. The industry that invented dynamic pricing may turn out to be the one industry these disclosure rules can’t touch.

When the software is the conspiracy

In July, the Third Circuit revived a lawsuit against Atlantic City casino hotels. Guests alleged the hotels fed current, nonpublic room rates and occupancy figures into Cendyn’s Rainmaker pricing platform, then accepted its recommendations about 90 percent of the time. Between 2017 and 2019, room rates climbed $15 to $60, occupancy dropped 8% and revenue rose 22%.

The court didn’t find the hotels guilty of anything; it ruled only that the guests get to make their case. And it made a point worth carrying into every other corner of travel: You don’t need a smoke-filled room when everybody’s feeding the same machine.

Who gets the last seat to Denver?

Here’s the one nobody’s writing about: When a hub melts down, software decides the rebooking order, also known as a reseating algorithm. It takes into account elite status, fare class, connection value, and probably your lifetime spend. The airline calls it optimization. It’s an unappealable ranking of human beings by profitability, and you will never see where you stood in line.

I’m not asking anyone to turn it off. Sorting a rebooking queue by something is better than sorting it by nothing. But shouldn’t the airline tell us where we are in that line? Disclosure alone would improve behavior, because a few of those factors would look ugly on a viral social media post.

What’s the fix to the travel industry’s AI madness?

The fix? Make the bot’s promise binding, the way that Canadian tribunal did, so no U.S. carrier gets to try the chatbot defense here. Give travelers a right to see the base along with the “just for you” fare set by an algorithm. And the next time when there’s a delay, let passengers know where they’re standing in line instead of making them guess. 

In travel, AI isn’t going to end the world. But it sure isn’t making our world any better. 

Amodei is right to worry about rogue software taking over the internet. But back here in coach, our ambitions run smaller. We’d settle for an airline willing to take responsibility for its own AI.

Janice Lintz thought the travel insurance on her credit card covered her. But on recent trip to Nepal, she discovered it didn’t.

Lintz heard about civil unrest at her destination and decided to cancel her flight. She filed a claim for her disrupted itinerary, assuming the breakdown in safety and infrastructure would be a slam dunk. But her policy, like many others, only covered security events if they’re officially classified as terrorism.

Protests and civil unrest? Unfortunately, those are explicitly excluded.

“The distinction felt arbitrary,” says Lintz, a disability advocate who lives in Washington, D.C. “The outcome was the same as a terror event—closed airspace, canceled flights, and no way to proceed. However, the label determined whether I had coverage.”

It’s a gap that’s becoming a chasm in 2026. Travelers are increasingly caught in an era of pop-up instability, where a peaceful strike can turn into a riot. Some standard travel insurance policies remain stuck in the past, built around a narrow set of named perils that haven’t necessarily kept pace with the modern world.

“Today’s world is more volatile; shifting geopolitics, extreme weather, cyber threats, and civil unrest are common,” says Frank Harrison, regional security director for the Americas at World Travel Protection. “As travelers seek risk-free journeys, more are turning to specialized insurance, especially for high-risk destinations.”

The terrorism trap and other coverage gaps

The biggest misunderstanding in travel today is the belief that your trip is unsafe, you’re covered by travel insurance. Most standard policies focus on named perils like a sudden illness or lost luggage rather than dynamic security events.

Indeed, when it comes to security, the fine print is a minefield. If you’re not reading it, here’s what you’re likely missing:

• The terrorism threshold. Many policies, including those offered through credit card ownership, only trigger security benefits if an event is officially designated as “terrorism” by the U.S. government. If it’s “civil commotion” or “unrest,” you’re often on your own.

• Advisory vs. action. A U.S. State Department Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory alone often doesn’t trigger coverage. You typically need a hard trigger, like a government-mandated evacuation order, before an insurer will help you..

• The “known event” exclusion. If you buy a policy after a protest or strike is already in the news, it’s a “known event.” The insurance company won’t cover any losses related to that because, in its eyes, you bought the policy knowing the house was already on fire.

“Insurance policies are built around specific, defined events because that’s the only way to price them fairly,” says Joe Cronin, president of International Citizens Insurance. “A hurricane has a clear start date and measurable impact. Political unrest exists on a spectrum. Policies need to draw the line somewhere.”

Why pandemic exclusions are still here

You’d think after the last few years, every policy would cover pandemics. It’s actually the opposite. Pandemic exclusions are more explicit than ever.

The reason is simple math. Insurance works when a few people have bad luck. It fails when everyone has bad luck at the same time.

“A global crisis like a pandemic causes everyone to claim at once, which would bankrupt the system,” says Terry Boynton, president of Yonder Travel Insurance. By excluding these massive events, companies can keep rates affordable for other emergencies. While some policies might cover you if you catch a virus, they won’t cover the broad disruption of a country shutting its borders or an airline canceling all its flights.

What’s the fix?

For the modern traveler, the real question is whether standard insurance is enough. If you’re heading to a region with known political volatility or fragile infrastructure, the answer is likely no.

There’s a growing gap between financial reimbursement (what insurance does) and physical safety support (what you actually need when the rioting starts).

The answer is a security membership that focuses on operational response—getting you out, coordinating extraction, and providing real-time threat monitoring. This isn’t insurance, but a supplement that closes the gap standard plans leave wide open.

A security membership can provide emergency assistance more quickly than traditional travel insurance. You don’t have to wait for a government order. You can call the moment you feel threatened.

“Security emergencies can arise unexpectedly, so having a plan and understanding who you can call for help is crucial,” says John Gobbels, chief operating officer of Medjet, a company that offers security memberships.

Demand for these memberships has surged lately. Dan Richards, CEO of The Global Rescue Companies, has seen requests for nonmedical security evacuations jump 31 percent in the last year. 

“People don’t only want reimbursement after the fact,” he says. “They want a response capability when conditions shift fast.”

What does the actual coverage look like? 

Redpoint Travel Protection, for example, says a political or security evacuation is only activated when a traveler faces imminent physical danger and a specific event occurs, such as a formal written recommendation from the U.S. State Department instructing travelers to leave the country. 

Coverage is also available if a traveler is expelled from a host country or becomes a victim of a felonious assault. However, Redpoint notes that acting on your own can be a mistake; any evacuation must be authorized, arranged, and coordinated by the company to be covered. Coverage generally does not apply if a Level 3 travel warning or higher was already in place before the traveler entered the country.

“We see confusion most often around political unrest, protests, strikes, and rapidly evolving security situations, where travelers feel endangered but don’t realize coverage depends on formal triggers,” explains Raymond Yorke, a spokesman for Repoint Resolutions.

How to protect your next trip 

If you’re planning a trip don’t just check the box on travel insurance. You need to be your own advocate before you leave:

Read the exclusions first. Don’t look at what’s covered. Instead, look at what’s not. Search for terms like “civil unrest,” “commotion,” and “government advisories.” If they’re excluded, you might have to self-fund your exit.

Remember the 21-day rule:. If you want real flexibility, look for “cancel for any reason” coverage. It’s the only way to get a refund if you simply feel it’s unsafe to go. But you must buy your policy within a specified number of days (typically 15 to 21 days) following your first deposit.

Careful with your credit card. Credit card insurance is a limited, “named-peril” policy. It’s better than nothing, but it’s rarely enough for international travel to volatile regions.

Follow the rules. If you have security coverage, don’t be a hero. Most policies won’t pay if you arrange your own way out. Everything must be authorized and coordinated by the company.

As the world gets more unpredictable and less safe, the travel industry is getting more creative at selling you peace of mind. Just make sure that when the protests start and the flights stop, that peace of mind isn’t just on a piece of paper.

Luke Gilbertson’s dog, Stewie, falls ill after a Rover pet sitter allegedly leaves him unattended. Despite veterinary proof of a foreign object ingestion, Rover won’t cover the veterinary bills. Is Gilbertson barking up the wrong tree?

Question

My dog, Stewie, was healthy before I booked a pet sitter through Rover, a pet care service. While he was under the sitter’s exclusive care, he ingested a foreign object and became critically ill. 

I have Ring camera footage showing the sitter isolated herself in a bathroom or bedroom for 17 hours out of a 24-hour period. She left the dog completely unattended. During that time, Stewie began vomiting repeatedly. The sitter failed to supervise him, failed to respond to the medical emergency, and failed to seek veterinary care.

Veterinary diagnostics confirmed a gastrointestinal foreign body with a bacterial infection. The object eventually passed, and I have the photographs to prove it. My vet even provided a written statement confirming the condition was caused by foreign body ingestion.

Despite this, Rover denied my $5,272 reimbursement claim under the Rover Guarantee. It claims the injury wasn’t directly caused by the sitter’s omissions and labeled it an “undetermined cause illness.” These conclusions contradict the video evidence and medical findings. Can you help me get Rover to honor its guarantee or at least explain why it’s ignoring the facts? — Luke Gilbertson, Santa Ana, Calif.

Answer

I’m sorry about Stewie and I hope he’s feeling better. 

The Rover Guarantee is not pet insurance. It’s a reimbursement program to protect pets under its care. In certain circumstances, it can also cover vet care for a pet care provider’s pets or damage to a pet owner’s property. 

You would think that when a sitter leaves a dog alone for 17 hours—more than two-thirds of the day—and something happens to the dog, the guarantee would apply. But there’s an important exclusion in the Rover Guarantee for what it calls “undetermined cause illness.” Basically, if a veterinarian can’t verify that the ingestion occurred during the booking, the claim might be denied.

You did the right thing by gathering a mountain of evidence. Most people forget the paper trail, but you kept the videos, the vet notes, and the photos. Proving the cause of a dog’s illness is notoriously difficult. It is a lot like a food poisoning case in restaurants or on cruises. Unless you have a lab report or a video of the dog swallowing the exact object, companies like Rover will try to classify it as an “undetermined” illness to avoid paying.

You could have started by sending a concise appeal to a Rover executive. I list the names and emails of the Rover leadership team on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org. Sometimes the “final” decision from a front-line adjuster isn’t actually the last word if you reach the right person.

I reached out to Rover on your behalf and asked about the discrepancy between your vet’s findings and its denial.

A spokeswoman for Rover told me the company conducted a “thorough investigation” of your case. While it maintained that the situation did not meet the criteria for the Rover Guarantee, it decided to refund $276, the cost of your pet sitting as a “one-time customer service gesture.”

Deborah Keck books an upgrade to a suite on a Princess cruise and receives a confirmation showing she “paid in full.” But then the cruise line adds nearly $4,000 to her bill and threatens to cancel her trip if she doesn’t pay. Can a company change the price after you’ve already settled the tab?

Question

I booked a cruise on the Star Princess about 18 months in advance. A few months later, I called to upgrade to a suite. A Princess representative quoted me a $1,449 price, and I paid the additional amount that day. My confirmation sheet showed my cabin and stated “paid in full” with a zero balance. It also noted I was entitled to suite benefits like accessing the Sanctuary and specialty dining. 

The trouble started when I tried to make dining reservations. The website tried to charge me for things that should have been included. I called for help and ended up making more than 20 calls to various departments. During one of these calls, an employee told me I hadn’t been charged enough for the upgrade and wouldn’t get the benefits unless I paid more. 

Later, I discovered Princess had added $3,967 to my booking without my permission. When I called to protest, the cruise line gave me an ultimatum: pay the extra money, move back to my original mini-suite with a refund of the upgrade fee, or they would cancel my cruise entirely. I even offered to give up the suite benefits just to keep the cabin I had paid for, but they refused. 

I feel like I was bullied and threatened into releasing my suite. I’ve reached out to customer relations and corporate management multiple times but have received no response. I am a Platinum cruiser and have never been treated this way on 70 cruises. I want the suite I paid for at the price I was quoted. —Deborah Keck, Sunnyvale, Texas

Answer

Princess should have honored the price it quoted you and confirmed in writing. When a company sends a document stating a booking is “paid in full,” that’s a contract. It shouldn’t decide later that it made a math error and demand you cough up another $3,967 to cover its mistake. 

Most cruise contracts have clauses that allow them to change prices due to fuel surcharges or government taxes, but they don’t usually include a we-forgot-to-charge-you-enough-for-the-room fee. Under basic contract law, once there’s an offer, acceptance, and payment, the deal is done.

You did the right thing by keeping all the paperwork. You also attempted to resolve this through the proper channels, contacting customer relations and even executives at Princess headquarters, which I publish on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org.

I’m deeply concerned about the lack of response from the cruise line. You contacted Princess multiple times for help, but you say no one responded. My team followed up several times about your case. I also contacted Princess on your behalf. The response: nothing.

It’s a disappointing result. Despite multiple inquiries, Princess refused to provide a resolution or even a comment on why it added $3,967 to a confirmed booking. 

This left you with one last option: You could have taken your case to small claims court. I should note that you’re a Platinum-level customer, which means you’ve been on a lot of Princess cruises. You’d think the cruise line would be bending backward to take care of you. But apparently not.

You accepted a downgrade to your original cabin and didn’t pay anything extra for your cruise. Not exactly the resolution either of us were hoping for. Come on, Princess.

Benjamin Khoury knows how to follow instructions. So when he prepared for his Frontier Airlines flight from Dallas to Phoenix, he made sure his carry-on luggage was regulation size. He even measured it before his trip.

But at the gate, things took a strange turn. Despite Khoury’s bag fitting into the official measuring tool, the agent insisted it was an oversized personal item. 

The price for this alleged transgression? A cool $99—practically a Benjamin for Benjamin.

Khoury paid under duress. He took a photo and documented the bag sitting snugly in the sizer, proving that the laws of physics were, in fact, on his side. Yet, when he reached out to Frontier’s customer care, he was met with a wall of boilerplate “nos.”

His case raises several important questions:

• Why do airlines ignore photographic evidence of a bag fitting in the sizer?
• Do gate agents have a financial incentive to charge passengers for bags?
• What are your rights when an airline’s “assessment” contradicts its own published rules?

Why do airlines ignore photographic evidence?

Khoury, a science teacher who is also enrolled in a graduate engineering program, cares about details. So before his Frontier flight—knowing how strict it was about luggage allowances—he made sure that his luggage was the correct size and weight.

It didn’t matter. A gate agent pulled him aside and gave him the bad news: He needed to pay $99 or his bag wouldn’t fly.

Khoury’s regulation-size backpack in the Frontier luggage sizer. 

“They weighed it at the time and there was no problem,” he says. “The charge was solely based on the size.”

Even after Khoury showed the Frontier employees a photo of his regulation-size bag, they didn’t care.

“After reviewing your case, we confirmed that the charge was applied because the item was assessed as oversized or overweight at the airport,” a representative wrote. “Per Frontier Airlines’ policy, these fees are non-refundable.”

When a passenger like Khoury presents a photo of his bag sitting perfectly inside the sizer, you’d think the case would be closed in his favor. In any other industry, that’s called proof. In the airline industry, not so much.

Airlines like Frontier rely on the agent’s assessment at the time of boarding. This creates a “he-said, she-said” dynamic where the carrier almost always sides with its employee. From the airline’s perspective, a photo taken by a passenger might not show the full context. Maybe Khoury forced the bag in, or maybe it was protruding in a way the camera didn’t catch.

But let’s be real: Khoury isn’t out here trying to pull a fast one on the aviation industry over a $99 backpack charge. He followed the rules, used the sizer, and documented his compliance. 

By ignoring this evidence, airlines like Frontier are sending a clear message: Our “assessment” is the only one that matters, regardless of what your lying eyes (or iPhone) tell you.

One other problem: The assessment happens in the heat of a boarding process where speed is prioritized over accuracy. Once you pay the fee, it’s entered into the system as a legitimate charge for an oversized item. Reversing it requires a human in a distant call center to override the “facts” reported by the gate agent—something they are loath to do because it undermines their own staff.

Wait, do gate agents have a financial incentive to charge you?

Here’s where things get interesting: For years, rumors have swirled that budget airline gate agents receive commissions for every bag they catch. But in Frontier’s case, these aren’t just rumors. The airline has previously admitted to paying bonuses to employees for collecting carry-on bag fees.

Think about that for a second. The person standing between you and your flight has a direct financial stake in finding something—anything—wrong with your luggage. It’s like a traffic cop getting a cut of every speeding ticket he writes. It changes the nature of the interaction from customer service to revenue collection.

Frontier’s bounty system creates an adversarial environment for passengers like Khoury. If agents see a bag that’s a tight fit, are they going to give the passenger the benefit of the doubt, or are they going to see an extra $10 in their next paycheck? When you combine this with the high-stress environment of a boarding gate, of course there will be conflicting reports.

What are your rights against an airline’s incorrect luggage assessment?

Technically, when you buy a ticket, you agree to the airline’s terms and conditions. Frontier’s policy says that baggage dimensions are verified at boarding and that their determination is final. This gives the airline a massive amount of wiggle room to charge you whatever they want, as long as an employee says the bag was too big.

But does that make it right? Under Department of Transportation (DOT) guidelines, airlines must be transparent about their fees and apply them fairly. If an airline is systematically using sizers that are smaller than advertised—a claim passengers have made in the past—they could be in hot water for deceptive trade practices.

Khoury did the only thing a consumer can do: He created a paper trail. He contacted the company, got a written refusal, and then reached out to an advocate (that would be me). By the way, I publish Frontier’s executive contacts on this site, just in case something like this ever happens to you.

Frontier doesn’t want to talk about this

I contacted Frontier on Khoury’s behalf. 

The response? Silence. 

My team contacted Frontier again and again over three months, but heard nothing. Finally, I decided to try one last time before writing this story, and Frontier responded. 

A Frontier representative said there were “conflicting reports” about Khoury’s bag. Specifically, an agent said it was too big and Khoury said it wasn’t. But there was that photo, too. Kind of hard to ignore.

“As a gesture of goodwill, we are issuing a refund for the oversized bag fee,” a Frontier representative told me.

Khoury finally got his $99 back. It shouldn’t have taken a syndicated columnist and several weeks of back-and-forth to honor the evidence of a simple photograph. But in the world of “budget” airlines, goodwill is often the only way to overcome a bad assessment.

My advice: Keep your tape measure handy, keep your camera ready, and if the sizer says yes but the agent says no, don’t just get mad—get evidence.

Bob Gourley works with technology every day, but for a recent trip to Muscat, Oman, he turned old school. Instead of booking his flights online, he hired a travel advisor. And instead of taking pictures on his phone, he used a 35 mm camera. 

You know, with film.

“I had 36 shots,” says Gourley, who works for a computer security company in Washington, D.C. “I stopped more. I observed more.”

The result was a completely different trip than the one he’s used to. Instead of taking an endless series of images for his social media feed, Gourley slowed down to enjoy the experience. His photos of the Grande Mosque were more contemplative. Having a travel advisor curate the trip made it less algorithmic and more, well, human. He saw more things that interested him, like the historic Mutrah Souq, and fell into fewer tourist traps.

In an era of AI-driven itineraries, a growing number of travelers are trading digital efficiency for analog adventures. By returning to film cameras, paper journals, and human travel advisors, they’re finding that removing immediate digital gratification makes a trip more memorable, meaningful—and maybe even better.

Why are travelers going analog?

New research from ALG Vacations found that among people who use AI to plan a trip, 77 percent still want a human to make the final call. Among millennials who use AI, 51 percent have also booked through a travel advisor, the highest rate of any generation.

Travelers aren’t necessarily anti-digital. They’re just opposed to being optimized into numbness. They want experiences that feel real and human, not endlessly mediated through a screen.

The response is subtle, but if you pay attention, you’ll notice it. It’s people carrying paper notebooks instead of tablet computers. They have Polaroid cameras instead of phones. They’re actually experiencing the trip instead of just curating a video of it.

You can see the evidence everywhere. Like the “no videos” rule for travelers. Richard Campbell, founder of 10Adventures, says he never watches videos of a destination before he travels there. 

“I want to be surprised and amazed seeing something for the first time,” he says. “I think this is a key part of travel.”

Hotels have noticed. Hotel Rangá, a countryside property in southern Iceland known for northern lights viewing, sells guests an “Analog Menu” for 20,100 kroner (about $165). The package includes two disposable cameras, a deck of the hotel’s playing cards, a coloring book about Icelandic history with crayons, and three postcards. The best thing in it may be the map of South Iceland, marked by hand with the staff’s own favorite stops, which is the kind of recommendation no algorithm will give you.

The return of travel advisors?

Perhaps the most visible sign of our analog adventures is the resurgence of human travel advisors. While booking a flight is a simple transaction, a customized trip of a lifetime requires empathy that a chatbot can’t offer.

Michael Johnson, president of Ensemble travel agency consortium, says planning has come full circle for the most discerning travelers.

“In a world that’s increasingly automated, people are craving that human connection more than ever,” Johnson says. He says advisors provide perspective and reassurance—telling you, for instance, whether a 500-guest or 140-guest ship is right for your Antarctica expedition.

It’s not just the affluent older travelers. Other people want a human connection, too, says Jacquie Whitt of Adios Adventure Travel. She’s seen an increase in people younger than 40 who turn to her for travel advice.

“Although travelers seem to like the convenience that digital offers for making online reservations, they contact me for advice to help organize their tours, activities and to get information about special documents,” she says.

How to have an analog adventure 

Making the most of analog travel doesn’t mean you have to be a Luddite. Here are a few strategies:

Practice delayed gratification. Like Gourley, try a 35 mm camera with limited shots. The wait to have the film developed keeps the trip alive long after you return home. It’s something you can look forward to. “When people finally revisit old travel pictures, it often changes how they think about their trips,” says Mitch Goldstone the CEO of ScanMyPhotos.com.

Keep a physical record. Architect Laura Intscher sits for hours sketching ancient ruins instead of snapping photos. “I notice more detail and my memory of a place I have drawn is always more vivid,” she says.

Write a postcard. The Moana Surfrider in Waikiki offers a “One Year Wave” experience where guests write a postcard to themselves that the hotel mails a year later. It’s a tangible memory that reconnects you with the feeling of the trip.

Take a time-out from your devices. Put down the phone or the video camera, stop thinking about posting to your social media accounts, and just take in the place you’re visiting. 

Reality check: This doesn’t mean you will leave your phone at home. Joe Cronin, president of International Citizens Insurance, says smartphones remain an indispensable travel tool.

“The reality is that most travelers need their phones for practical reasons, like boarding passes, translation apps, and emergency contacts,” he says.

The question is, when do you use the phone—and when do you leave it in your pocket? 

The goal of an analog adventure is to return home feeling fulfilled but not exhausted. In a world optimized for immediacy, the ability to unplug and engage with the physical world has become the new ultimate luxury.

The government is about to let airlines off the hook for some flight delays.

The change, which takes effect Oct. 19, moves 10 categories of delay and cancellation out of the airline’s column in federal reporting.

The Transportation Department published a final rule on Sept. 3 that amends its regulations to create a new category for specified causes of airline delays. It implements Section 511(b) of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, the law that created the list.

The list covers everything from cleaning an aircraft after a passenger dies to an airport closed by volcanic ash or wind. 

And there’s also this one: “Unscheduled maintenance, including in response to an airworthiness directive, manifesting outside a scheduled maintenance program that cannot be deferred or must be addressed before flight.”

Wait, isn’t that the one that gets you a hotel room and meal vouchers? Yep.

On the DOT customer service dashboard, every large U.S. carrier promises a meal or voucher once a mechanical flight delay keeps you waiting three hours, and every one except Frontier promises a hotel and a ride to it for a longer delay. But those promises apply only to delays “within the airline’s control.”

The department says Congress left it no discretion, which is why the rule skipped public comment.

What does this mean for you?

The rule only governs reporting categories, and it doesn’t order any carrier to rewrite its customer service plan. It just changes the definition those plans depend on.

Airlines have argued for years that charging every mechanical hold to their account punishes the one that makes the cautious call. Cleaner categories, the argument runs, give travelers more honest numbers.

Congress wrote the list, and it makes sense on one level. An airline can’t stop a volcano, a cyberattack, a passenger’s heart attack or a government computer going dark. When the FAA issues an airworthiness directive, the airline grounds the aircraft because compliance with that government order is mandatory.

DOT’s analysis says the number of delays and cancellations for which air carriers provide amenities and compensation to consumers “is expected to be reduced.” 

It also concedes it can’t estimate the effects of the revisions, because it has no visibility into how often the 10 causes occur. So DOT is handing out an exemption without knowing how big it is.

What do you think?

If you answered yes

• Should Congress amend Section 511(b) to put maintenance back in the airline’s column?
• Should DOT require cash instead of vouchers for overnight strandings?
• Should airlines have to show you the reason code for your delay in the app?

If you answered no

• Should the exemption apply only when the FAA ordered the repair?
• Should airlines publish how often they use the new category?
• Would your answer change if you knew the aircraft had a history of maintenance problems?

My take

Volcanic ash, sabotage, a death on board, a passenger who won’t sit down — none of that is the airline’s fault, of course.

But aircraft maintenance is a different matter. Unscheduled maintenance “that cannot be deferred or must be addressed before flight” describes most mechanical delays, including the ones that follow years of deferred upkeep. A carrier that runs its fleet hard or cuts corners on maintenance and waits for parts to fail now gets filed beside the carrier shut down by a volcano.

Europe settled this question years ago. In Wallentin-Hermann v. Alitalia in 2008, the European Court of Justice held that technical problems that surface during maintenance, or because maintenance didn’t happen, are not “extraordinary circumstances.” The regulation covers anyone departing a European airport, whatever airline they’re on. United owes compensation for a maintenance delay out of Frankfurt. Out of Chicago, it gets to file the occurrence under a category that doesn’t carry the same promises.

DOT priced the rule out before issuing it. Airlines pay $112,567 once, across 13 carriers, to reprogram their reporting systems. Set against that are the savings, and one of the items the department counted on the benefit side is a ‘reduction in negative reputational impacts.’ It scored the rule at total costs less than zero.

Hmm. Less embarrassment for airlines counts as a public benefit? I’m not sure about that. Embarrassing as it may have been, it was also useful information when you picked a carrier. The department has scored its disappearance as a gain.

Your turn

Have you ever been stranded overnight by a mechanical problem? Did the airline cover the room, or did you? Tell me what happened, and whether you think the new categories get it right.

A federal advisory committee will spend two days this month telling the Transportation Department how to protect air travelers.

Don’t hold your breath. It has four members, one of whom represents consumers, and it hasn’t met in more than three years. According to the government’s own notice, it won’t vote on a single recommendation when it meets on September 22.

Congress created the Aviation Consumer Protection Advisory Committee in 2012 to give passengers a voice inside the agency that regulates airlines. What’s left is a two-day webinar about paperwork.

What does the committee plan to do?

Only three items are on the agenda. They’re all disclosure documents Congress already ordered in the 2024 FAA reauthorization law: the one-page passenger rights summary airlines must post, the online dashboards for delays, family seating and seat size, and the know-your-rights posters airports must display.

That’s it. And the notice says the meeting is only for “topic presentations.” Deliberation on recommendations comes later, on a date nobody has set.

Compare that with Jan. 12, 2023, the last time the committee met. There were six substantive items in one day, with the words “deliberation and recommendation” next to every one: baggage fees, change fees, family seating fees, refunds.

Is anyone representing you?

Who’s representing passengers? Not Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers, who holds the state and local seat. Not Mark VanLoh of the Jacksonville Aviation Authority, who has the airport seat. And certainly not Doug Lavin of the airline trade group IATA.

Consumers get one seat. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy gave it to Jennifer Rykaczewski of the Affordable Skies Foundation, which launched in December 2024. She spent five years in the airline industry and started the group after Allegiant Airlines CEO Maury Gallagher encouraged her to. The Digital Democracy Project describes the coalition as primarily funded by member organizations within the aviation and travel industry.

Cheaper airfare is a worthwhile cause, but it isn’t the same as enforcing the protections passengers are already supposed to have.

What happened while the committee was dark

Between January 2023 and this month, the Transportation Department dismantled much of what it had built for passengers. The committee charged with evaluating those programs never met.

• DOT withdrew the rulemaking in late 2025 that would have made airlines cover cash, rebooking, meals and hotels for delays they caused.
• A few months later, the department stopped enforcing refund rights when an airline renumbers a flight, and in July it extended that pause to July 2027.
• Early this year, the DOT’s consumer protection office announced enforcement would focus on compliance “rather than finding and penalizing entities for violations.” An airline that reports its own violation can avoid a penalty.
• A month later, based on a technicality, a federal appeals court threw out the 2024 rule requiring airlines to show bag and change fees alongside the fare. Rather than fix it, DOT restored the 2011 standard in July. Search a fare today, and the bag fee needn’t appear.
• Last month, for the second time, the department delayed the wheelchair rule to April 30, 2027. It makes damaging or delaying a wheelchair an automatic violation of the Air Carrier Access Act.
• On Sept. 4, DOT closed its review of airline privacy practices and found no violations, nine days after Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Shontel Brown asked the Government Accountability Office to examine the department’s “systemic abdication of its consumer privacy enforcement mandates.”

That’s six developments in 14 months. Not one appears on the September agenda.

Why it’s a rubber stamp

DOT picks all four members. Its own consumer protection office supplies the committee’s federal officer and writes the agenda. The committee has no staff and no budget, and nothing in the law requires the secretary to answer a recommendation, let alone follow one. Of its 46 lifetime recommendations, 30% were fully implemented and 22% partly. Nearly half went to the shredder.

So what should be on the agenda?

The statute lets the committee recommend “any additional consumer protection that may be needed.” Here are three places where it could start:

Fee transparency. The court struck down the rule on procedure, not the merits, and DOT can write it again. The committee’s own 2013 report recommended full fee disclosure across every sales channel. More than a decade later, the department threw it into reverse.

Compensation. With that rule making withdrawn, the U.S. has no delay compensation standard. The European Union, Canada, Brazil and India all do. A passenger flying Madrid to Frankfurt has more rights than one flying Chicago to Newark.

Fares set by algorithm. Airlines are testing pricing built on data about individual travelers. The FTC is taking comments through September 25, but only DOT regulates airfare, and nobody has asked it whether a price built from your personal data is deceptive.

One thing the committee could do

The one-page summary is a statement about what rights you have. Its silence implies there’s nothing more to say. But there is. The committee could recommend the summary disclose that federal law requires no compensation for a delay, no meal and no hotel room, then point you to the DOT complaint form. If you have no rights, let’s be transparent about it.

You can say something, too. Written comments go to docket DOT-OST-2018-0190 at regulations.gov any time. For three minutes on the record during the meeting, email ACPAC@dot.gov by Sept. 21.

Nobody at that table has to listen to what you have to say. But if you plan to fly anywhere in 2027, maybe they should.

The night sky at the Kinloch Wilderness Retreat on New Zealand’s South Island is so bright that owner Toni-Anne Glover says guests sometimes instinctively look for a light switch to turn off the stars.

But there they are: Carina, the keel of a ship; Phoenix, the bird-shaped constellation; and, of course, the Southern Cross. There’s no off switch.

Glover is reaching for the stars, too. She runs one of several key eco-lodges on the remote northern head of Lake Whakatipu that are pushing the boundaries of sustainability. 

“It’s really about bringing guests in so that they can experience nature and restore nature and really feel part of the environment,” she says.

Transfixed by the skies—and sustainability

Guests arriving from North America or Europe are often transfixed by the sprawling, brilliant dust of the Milky Way. For many, it’s the first time they’ve seen it in real life, and for most, it’s the first time they’ve seen the stars of the Southern Hemisphere. The surrounding Tāhuna Glenorchy Dark Sky Sanctuary is promoted as a place where you can “touch the stars” from the tops of its mountains.

Glover and her husband, John, who is also currently serving as mayor of nearby Queenstown, have dedicated more than two decades to stewardship of this remote outpost. They wanted to create a space where guests can reconnect with nature, but they ended up doing more than that. Visitors to the retreat connect not only with their environment but also with the future.

And they are not alone. Across the lake, the Headwaters Eco Lodge is engaged in an equally ambitious form of sustainability that may be one of a kind. Together, these properties are at the vanguard of Queenstown’s efforts to establish itself as one of the world’s most sustainable destinations.

The living room at The Headwaters Eco Lodge, a space designed with repurposed wood.

Net positive philanthropy in Glenorchy

The Headwaters Eco Lodge is testing the limits of what it calls “net positive” engineering. It’s believed to be the first lodge designed to the Living Building Challenge standards, a strict set of rigorous sustainability guidelines. Its massive solar garden was the largest in New Zealand at the time of construction, generating more energy over the year than the property uses and feeding the excess back into the grid.

The property is filled with nature-inspired innovations. Guest chalets feature composting toilets that use natural microbes and air-flow systems to break down waste into compost without using water. High-tech light panels are designed to pipe sunlight into the rooms, providing a natural glow that often has guests searching for a nonexistent light switch.

The aesthetic of the lodge is deeply rooted in the local landscape. An indoor stone river is built into the floor to emulate the surrounding riverbeds, and the walls of its main meeting room are crafted from reclaimed driftwood collected after a local flood. 

“You’re using materials that would otherwise go into a landfill, and you’re making something beautiful out of it,” notes Kirsten Murray, the lodge’s groups and events manager. “It’s got a rustic feel, but it all kind of fits together.”

Perhaps the most innovative aspect is its business model. It funnels all profits into the Glenorchy Community Trust to fund local projects like school initiatives and native tree planting.

Kirsten Murray, The Headwaters Eco Lodge’s groups and events manager, in the resort’s main meeting room.

Retrofitting heritage with high-tech

Kinloch, on the other hand, is a study in respecting the past while powering the future. The heart of the retreat is an 1868 pioneer tavern originally built for sawmill workers that the Glovers painstakingly restored. The restoration was a labor of love that involved dipping original kauri wood doors to remove decades of thick gloss paint and installing period-correct brass fittings.

Contrasting with this heritage is the property’s modern Ecoscapes. These solar-powered units are constructed from New Zealand-sourced materials and finished with nontoxic vegetable oil rather than polyurethanes. This choice is crucial for guest wellness, because it eliminates indoor air pollution and helps guests sleep better, they say. The Ecoscapes even feature a high-tech passive ventilation system that continuously brings in fresh air, removing the need for open windows while maintaining a perfect climate.

The retreat’s energy goals are equally ambitious. The Glovers are building an embedded local energy network with a planned 500-kilowatt solar microgrid. That’s an upgrade from the current 171 solar panels operating across five projects, and it will allow the resort to offset costs and eventually give power back to the grid. 

The restoration of Kinloch Wilderness Retreat suggests that even a 19th-century pioneer tavern could lead a 21st-century green revolution. Glover says she isn’t interested in just being a museum curator, but instead wants her guests to feel the hum of the future. 

“I want people to live it and feel the difference,” she says.

A road map for the travel industry?

These two outposts at the head of Lake Whakatipu represent two sides of the same regenerative coin. As Kinloch upgrades its pioneer bones with high-tech cabins, the Headwaters Eco Lodge is building sustainability from the ground up. 

Together, they’re proving that the bleeding edge of tourism has nothing to do with flashy gadgets or overpriced amenities. Instead, it’s about a deep, borderline obsessive commitment to the community and the dirt beneath their boots.

Eco-friendly hotels check off a lot of boxes by using recycled materials or getting rid of single-use soaps. But true luxury here isn’t found in the fine dining or the alpine views—though you’ll get plenty of both. The real perk is the peace of mind that comes from traveling lightly. You can sleep soundly knowing your stay actually leaves the South Island better than you found it. And if you happen to find yourself fumbling for a light switch to turn off the Milky Way, just remember: That’s what it’s supposed to look like.

After sustaining an injury, Andrew Greenman tries to return a pair of shoes to Amazon that he can no longer wear. Amazon promises him a refund in writing, but then reneges. Can a company do that?

Question

I purchased a pair of Cloudmonster Sneakers from a third-party seller on Amazon for $179. I didn’t know that a future injury would make them unusable for me. A few months later, I suffered a work-related ankle injury, and my doctor advised me against wearing this type of shoe for safety reasons.

I contacted Amazon to see if I could return them. I went through multiple chats with different agents who gave me conflicting guidance. Some told me to work with the third-party seller, while the seller told me the return window had expired. Amazon support continued to handle the issue and eventually escalated it.

A few weeks later, I chatted with an Amazon agent who seemed to solve everything. He sent me a follow-up email stating, “$179 will be refunded to your original payment within 24-48 hours.” He even mentioned it was being re-issued due to a “system” issue. I felt relieved and trusted that the matter was settled.

But the refund was never posted. When I followed up, Amazon’s executive customer relations told me the refund “did not comply with policy” because the return window had closed and the item was from a third-party seller. It refused to honor the written confirmation a representative had sent me.

I’m not trying to break the rules, but I relied on Amazon’s written word. It seems wrong that it can promise a refund in writing and then just change its mind because of an internal policy error. Can you help me get Amazon to honor its commitment? — Andrew Greenman, Washington, D.C. 

Answer

Amazon should have honored the promise made by its representative. A written confirmation from an authorized agent creates an expectation that the company is bound to follow, regardless of the return policy. If an agent makes an error it should be on Amazon—not you.

I can’t advocate for returning a pair of shoes months after you bought them from a third party on Amazon—my advocacy powers have limits—but if Amazon said it would let you return the item, you should be able to return it. And it did.

You did the right thing by getting that promise in writing. Without that email, you wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on given the long-expired return window. When you’re dealing with third-party sellers, it is always best to double-check the return policy before the window closes, even if you don’t plan on returning the item immediately.

You also followed the correct escalation path by reaching out to the Amazon executive contacts I list on my site, Elliott.org. Keeping a meticulous paper trail of your chats and emails was the key to proving your case. Unfortunately, the VP you contacted never responded. That was a missed opportunity for Amazon, and it would have prevented your case from ever being in my column.

I contacted Amazon on your behalf to ask about your refund. I pointed out that you had a written confirmation and had relied on it in good faith.

Amazon agreed and refunded you the full $179. As a bonus for the trouble, Amazon also added a $50 credit to your account. It’s good to see that even a retail giant can admit when it needs to make things right.

A few weeks after Dennis Drake returns his Dollar rental car in Albuquerque, the company bills him an extra $1,858. The car rental company claims he kept the vehicle. Can a paper trail fix this bill?

Question

My wife and I recently reserved a Jeep Compass from Dollar Car Rental to be picked up in Phoenix and returned to the Albuquerque airport. When we arrived in Phoenix, we verbally declined the extra insurance and roadside assistance because we already have coverage through our own insurance. 

The car had issues. We had to fill a tire with air daily and the “check oil” lights flashed a warning while we were driving. We returned the car a few hours later in Albuquerque. 

An employee checked the car with a laptop, we unloaded our bags, and we told him about the leaky tire and engine light. He took the keys and told us we were good to go. He didn’t give us a receipt. 

When we looked at our paperwork, we saw we’d been charged for the insurance we declined. We tried to fix it at the desk, but they told us to call customer service. We flew home to Texas that afternoon.

A few weeks later, we got a text saying the car was overdue. We called and explained we’d returned it. Then we got a letter threatening repossession. We called again and were told the matter was “under review.” Eventually, Dollar claimed we returned the car “in person” a few days after we returned home. 

Our credit card company eventually posted a charge of $3,656. We disputed it, and for a while, it seemed resolved. But now, Dollar has sent us a new invoice for $1,858. It won’t acknowledge our airline tickets or any proof that we were home in Texas. It feels like no human has ever looked at our evidence. Can you help us stop this bill? — Dennis Drake, Carrollton, Texas 

Answer

Dollar should have closed your contract the second you handed over those keys in Albuquerque. When a car rental company accepts a vehicle, its internal systems ought to reflect that return immediately. If a car needs maintenance—like yours did with that leaky tire—it’s the company’s job to track its movement to the repair shop without blaming the customer. 

You made several errors that I’ll tell you how to correct. First, you should never drive a rental car with mechanical problems. Pull over and call the car rental company. If it’s a minor issue, they’ll ask you to drive to the nearest location. But if it’s serious, you might have to get the car towed. 

Also, you left the lot without a printed or emailed receipt. Always wait for that piece of paper or email confirmation. If the handheld scanner isn’t working, go to the counter for your paperwork. That receipt is your “get out of jail free” card.

You also were charged for insurance you didn’t want. That’s another car rental “gotcha”—and easily avoidable. Rental agents often bury those charges in the digital signature pad. In a follow-up email, you admitted that you signed the rental contract without reading it carefully, which is why your initial credit card dispute likely failed. 

But you also did a few things right. You did a great job keeping your paperwork once Dollar tried to charge you extra. You had your flight itineraries and Southwest Airlines documents proving you were in the air while Dollar claimed you were still joyriding in its Jeep. When a company ignores your logic, you can find executive contacts for Hertz (which owns Dollar) on my advocacy site, Elliott.org. A brief, polite email to one of them might have turned this around for you. 

I reached out to Hertz on your behalf.

“Our internal review found that the customer’s contract was not properly closed and processed when it was returned,” a Hertz spokeswoman told me. 

The vehicle went to a maintenance lot for service and sat there for several days. Because it didn’t have tracking technology enabled, the system assumed you still had it. 

Hertz has apologized and issued a full refund for the rental and the insurance you didn’t want. It also dropped the $1,858 “overdue” bill.  Next time, please don’t leave the lot until the computer says you’re home free—even if you have a plane to catch.

Have you heard about the car rental industry’s latest trick to pad its bottom line? You return a car, get a clean receipt, and then—sometimes days later—an email arrives claiming you turned the backseat into a cigar lounge.

Ray Oswald didn’t know about it until he and his wife, Denise, returned their Mazda CX-5 to Budget at O’Hare International Airport. They were in town to attend a family funeral. And this rental was handled by the book: They say they drove the car safely and returned it. 

Oh, and they don’t smoke—and neither does their adult son, who was with them. Even so, Budget insisted the car smelled like a chimney and demanded $450 to clean the vehicle.

Seriously? Yes, seriously.

Their case raises several important questions:

• How do car rental companies prove a vehicle smells like smoke? 
• What should you do if you’re charged for damage or cleaning you didn’t cause? 
• Can a rental company charge you a fee after providing a clean receipt? 

A few blurry photos—and a $450 charge

The Oswalds are still puzzled by what happened to them. When they returned the vehicle, an agent told them to leave the keys and that they were free to go. At the time, they received an e-receipt showing a total of $312. No mention of ash, no mention of odors.

Five days later, the Oswalds got some bad news. An email from the “ERS Billing Team” arrived with a $450 surprise for “excessive cleaning.” Budget claimed there was “smoke-related ash residue” and a heavy smell. 

The evidence? A few blurry photos that Oswald says could have been taken inside any white Mazda.

“The pictures they attached did not show proof of their charges,” says Oswald. “I read online that many people have had similar instances of unjust excessive cleaning fees from Budget.”

That’s true. We’ve covered a few on this site, including $450 to clean floor mats and $450 for vacuuming a car. Seriously, folks, you can’t make this stuff up.

But the worst charge is for something you can’t even see.

How do car rental companies prove a vehicle smells like smoke?

Proving a smell is a bit like proving ghosts exist. It’s largely in the eye—or nose—of the beholder. In the case of the Oswalds, Budget relied on a vehicle inspection report filled out by an agent after the couple had already left the airport. The report checked a box for “Smoke Smell” and labeled the severity as “Heavy.”

The problem is that smell is subjective.

Picture of a cup holder allegedly taken in Oswald’s car. But this doesn’t prove a smoke smell.

Budget tried to back its claim up with photos, but as Oswald pointed out, the images showed nothing definitive. Unless there’s a photo of a lit cigar resting in the cup holder, a picture of a cup holder doesn’t prove a scent exists. Oswald noted the drop-off area itself was an underground garage with a high exhaust smell. It’s entirely possible the agent’s nose was just confused by the fumes—or from a cigarette smoke smell coming from somewhere else. 

When a company charges a $450 cleaning fee, the burden of proof should be high. But rental companies often act as judge, jury, and executioner, using their own internal reports as proof. 

If you find yourself in this spot, look at the metadata of the photos. Often, the photos provided aren’t even of the car you rented, or they were taken hours after you dropped it off. Oswald was correct to question whether the photos were even of his vehicle, since they lacked any identifying features like a license plate or a VIN in the frame.

I asked Oswald if he recognized the photos and he said he couldn’t be sure they were images of the car he rented.

What should you do if you are charged for damage or cleaning you didn’t cause?

If you get hit with a surprise cleaning fee, don’t just pay it. You may be dealing with a corporate bureaucracy that relies on most people being too busy to fight. To beat Budget—or any rental firm—at this game, you need to be more organized than its billing department.

The Oswalds’ first instinct was correct: they immediately challenged the premise of the charge. Oswald contacted the company and laid out the facts. But beyond just saying “we don’t smoke,” you need a tactical approach. Here is how you handle it:

• Demand the evidence immediately. When a company hits you with a fee, it must provide proof. Ask for the vehicle inspection report and any cleaning invoices. If Budget says it cost $450 to clean the car, it should have a receipt from a cleaning service showing that amount was paid. Often, these companies use a flat-fee “penalty” structure that bears no relation to the actual cost. If it can’t produce a third-party invoice, the fee is likely a profit center, not a reimbursement.
  
• Audit the photos. Most rental companies now provide photos as “proof” of smoking. Look at them with a skeptical eye. Check the metadata of the digital files if possible to see when and where they were taken. In the Oswalds’ case, the photos were of floor mats in a generic car. There was no VIN, no license plate, and no timestamp that proved the vehicle in the photo was the one they rented. If the photos aren’t clearly of your vehicle, tell the company you don’t recognize the car in the pictures.
  
• Check the timeline. This is where most rental companies trip up. If you returned the car at 8 a.m. and received a clean receipt, but the inspection report showing “smoke” wasn’t filed until 4 p.m., then the car was sitting in a lot for eight hours. Anyone could have opened the door, or a lot attendant could have moved it while smoking. A clean receipt at the time of return is your strongest weapon. It shows the company’s own agent signed off on the car’s condition.
  
• Escalate to the executives. Front-line customer service agents are often trained to just repeat the company’s position. They have no power to waive a $450 fee. If the initial appeal goes nowhere, move up the chain. You can find the names and email addresses of the executives at Avis Budget Group on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org. A polite, concise email to a vice president of customer experience often yields a much faster result than a dozen phone calls to a generic help desk.
  
• File a credit card dispute as a last resort. If the company refuses to provide evidence or ignores your emails, contact your bank. A credit card dispute forces the rental company to prove to the bank that the charge is valid. Since “smell” is subjective and many of these companies lack solid documentation, they often lose these disputes. But remember, winning a dispute can sometimes land you on the company’s Do Not Rent list.

The Oswalds were dealing with a heavy smoke allegation based on what they described as a garage-smelling environment. By refusing to accept the generic photos as proof and keeping the pressure on the operations team, they started a conversation that the company eventually had to take seriously.

Remember, the goal of these fees often is to see who will pay without asking questions. Once you start asking for timestamps, cleaning receipts, and VIN-specific photos, you become a difficult case. In the world of corporate collections, difficult often leads to a “one-time courtesy” refund just to make you go away.

But hang on: Is this kind of charge even legal?

Can a rental company charge you a fee after providing a clean receipt?

Technically, yes, but it’s a terrible business practice. When you return a car and get a receipt for $312, most reasonable people assume the transaction is closed. But the fine print in most rental contracts allows the company to audit the vehicle later and add charges for damage or cleaning.

The Oswalds received their receipt five days after returning their vehicle. During that time, the car could have been moved, cleaned, or even rented to someone else.

To protect yourself, you need your own evidence. I always advise readers to take 360-degree photos and a quick video of the interior and exterior of the car at drop-off. If the Oswalds had a photo of the clean vehicle from the moment they handed over the keys, this would have been an open-and-shut case. Without those photos, it’s your word against a company that has already taken your money.

Will they get a refund?

Budget had the Oswalds’ credit card number and a report from an agent claiming the car was a biohazard. The Oswalds had their integrity and a receipt that said they were good to go. It looked like a stalemate that would end in a credit card dispute—unless I did something.

I contacted Avis Budget Group on behalf of the Oswalds. And I pointed out that the renters were non-smokers and that the evidence provided by the local office was, shall we say, less than convincing.

The resolution? Budget says it conducted an internal investigation that resulted in a full refund of the $450 cleaning fee. An Avis representative even extended an apology, stating the experience “was not typical” and that they were taking “corrective actions” with the local manager.

Look, it shouldn’t take a nationally syndicated columnist to get a rental company to realize that two people in their late 60s attending a funeral probably weren’t hot-boxing a Mazda. But in the world of advocacy, sometimes you have to blow a little smoke back at the companies to clear the air.

Kishore Bitra thought he’d found the perfect hotel in Hershey, Pa. The detailed customer reviews praised the property’s “upscale” amenities and “attentive” service. But when Bitra checked into his room, he found something entirely different: a broken air conditioner, dirty sheets, and a property in a state of disrepair.

Then he took a closer look at the user comments and noticed that they were all posted the same week. To the average guest, that might not seem strange. But to Bitra, an engineer who works for the city of Baltimore, it raised a red flag.

“These aren’t real people,” he concluded. “They’re AI agents managed by reputation management firms.”

More than 20% of luxury hotel reviews were AI-generated in 2025, according to Originality.ai, a content verification tool that detects AI-generated text. That’s double the rate in 2022. And the fakes skew flattering: 57% of them carried five stars. A recent survey by WalletHub shows that 83% of Americans are concerned about being manipulated by AI.

“It’s become very difficult to sort the actual customer reviews from the auto-generated ones,” says Joe Cronin, president of International Citizens Insurance.

Beware of travel slop

I’ve been tracking travel scams for decades, but what we’re seeing now is alarming. It’s a tidal wave of travel slop that uses generative AI to create a filtered reality. Dumpy motels can pass themselves off as Ritz-Carltons. Airlines that hate their customers can masquerade as customer-focused Pan Am in the 1960s.

“The industry is using generative AI to flood the zone with synthetic praise and bury legitimate complaints,” says Jack Charman, a private investigator who leads a London intelligence firm. 

The goal: Make sure consumers never see any negative feedback about the travel product. 

Companies use AI to remove blemishes from photos. Power poles and brick walls get one-click deletion from an Airbnb listing. Crowded resort beaches get Photoshopped until they look abandoned and pristine again. Travel companies create AI sock puppets—fake digital identities with credible histories that post across multiple platforms to drown out real voices.

One-third of adults in a recent study couldn’t tell the difference between an AI-generated image and a real one. 

“AI now allows companies to influence search results, automate reassuring responses, and control the flow of information in ways that make it harder for travelers to understand what the experience is really like,” says WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo. “AI helps travel providers charge consumers more as well, from the booking price to how much you pay for incidentals after the fact.”

These are the new tools of deception

Here’s how some in the travel industry may be using AI to manufacture trust at scale.

“We’ve moved past simple fake reviews generated by content mills,” says Rafay Baloch, CEO and founder of REDSECLABS, a cybersecurity company. 

He says companies are using AI to seed entire discussion threads on platforms like Reddit and Quora. These posts subtly promote specific hotels or airlines while pretending to be neutral travelers. You might be reading a Reddit thread entirely written by AI bots.

AI can also customize your view of a website based on your browsing habits to make a product look more appealing. 

“It’s sophisticated—and somewhat sinister,” says Bob Gourley, a cybersecurity expert. 

He says travel companies use this technique to soften your skepticism, especially when clicking your way toward the fine print.

“That way, you’re already halfway convinced everything is fine by the time you study the contract,” he says.

How to spot the bot

Spotting a fake reputation takes some detective work.

The text looks almost too perfect. AI writes in a particular way, using lots of dashes and “not x but y” sentences. Scott Dylan, founder of an AI venture capital company in Mountain View, Calif., looks for these linguistic patterns and other telltale signs a person wrote the review. “Real people mention staff names or specific, messy details,” he says. “AI prefers generic praise like ‘exceptionally attentive.'” 

The reviews are too close together. Check the timestamps. Legitimate reviews trickle in over months. AI reviews arrive in massive coordinated bursts, to give a hotel or restaurant a quick boost. If a hotel gets 20 glowing reviews on a Tuesday and nothing for the rest of the month, it’s likely a bot farm.

They repeat an error. AI review bots don’t know when they’ve made a mistake, so they often repeat the mistake. Nicky Zhu, a product manager at an AI accessory company in Golden, Colo., recently found one beachfront resort with 47 consecutive five-star reviews that all mentioned a restaurant three blocks away. The restaurant had been closed for two years. “Real people could not have written these reviews,” Zhu says. 

“I ignore 5-star and 1-star reviews,” Bitra says. “The 3-star review is usually written by a rational human being who actually stayed there.”

He’s right. As a public service, I publish a site that lists the names, phone numbers and email addresses of the top executives at travel companies. We’ve seen such a deluge of AI-generated positive reviews that we had to remove our comments section last week.

A real reviewer mentions the bed and the shower. Nobody writes “excellent service” about a place they stayed.

These strategies will work—for now. But Derek Leben, who teaches business ethics at Carnegie Mellon, says AI-generated content is getting harder to distinguish from human-generated text.

“Some platforms like Amazon have implemented practices like ‘verified purchase’ badges for reviews, and this could be one approach to managing the problem,” he says.

Other types of AI, like the ones operating behind the scenes to change the website you’re browsing, are pretty much impossible to detect. (You could run a side-by-side test in “anonymous” mode, but who has time for that?)

It’s time to channel your inner skeptic

I’ve always said that if a deal looks too good to be true, it’s probably a scam. In the age of AI, here’s another one: If it looks like an AI, it probably is.

“Become a skeptic when evaluating a travel product,” says Susan Sherren, founder of Couture Trips. “Human intel remains superior to AI-generated content.”

I’ll go further. Treat every online review like it was written by the hotel’s marketing department until proven otherwise. Look for the human touch—the mentions of noisy ice machines, broken elevators, or terrible service.

That’s what guests like Bitra are doing. He says he studies user reviews and photos of vacation rentals. 

“I try to spot inconsistencies in the images, shadows that don’t make sense, furniture arrangements that seem to violate physics,” he says.

When it comes to AI, adopt the “X-Files” rule: Trust no one. 

The travel industry is using AI to deceive you. Airlines, hotels and cruise lines are hoping you’re too busy to notice the travel slop they’re dishing out. Don’t give them the satisfaction. 

Dirk Shearer got scammed out of $15,000, and I couldn’t do a thing about it.

Shearer, a carpenter from Glen Rock, Pa., wrote to us recently about a transaction he made through Western Union. He said it was a fraudulent money transfer. He’d filed a claim with the company and a report with his local police department. 

I couldn’t help him get his money back, and I’ll have the reason in a minute. But first, let me tell you why I’m writing about Shearer. Today we’re relaunching our Elliott Confidential podcast. The new format takes a theme from our advocacy (like criminal complaints or failed cases) and expands on it.

Today’s episode, which you can listen to below, is about an alleged crime that we decided not to get involved in. And there’s an improbable twist at the end that, to be honest, I never saw coming.

WARNING: This episode contains adult themes. Listener discretion is advised.

Why we can’t help you recover your money

We sent Shearer a standard request for his paper trail: the emails between the customer and the company. Why? Because without a record, there’s no case.

Shearer wrote back that he’d already given us his reference numbers. 

“You should be able to check it yourself,” he said.

Actually, we don’t have access to Western Union’s internal files. That’s way above our pay grade as advocates.

Our leverage is pretty simple. When a reader hands us a documented dispute, and it passes our rigorous review, we share it with the company, and we politely ask that company to take a look.

Most of the time that’s enough. The record does the arguing. But without the record, I’m just another person calling a customer service line with a story.

The bigger problem is that his complaint alleges a crime. Somebody took his money. Deciding who, and whether what happened meets the definition of fraud, is a job for police, prosecutors and eventually a judge. I’m none of those. 

Our advocates don’t have the authority to weigh evidence, and my opinion about who’s telling the truth doesn’t carry that much weight. Even if I believed Shearer — and I have every reason to — that’s not a finding of fact. 

Beyond that, Shearer had already filed a police report, and that almost always stops my team in its tracks. Once law enforcement is involved, there’s almost nothing we can do to help. It’s an issue for the company’s legal department and law enforcement officials.

Three strikes and you’re out. So sadly, his case went into our infamous F-File. 

The bizarre case that refused to go away 

The F-File (“F” as in Failure) is the subject of this week’s episode of the Elliott Confidential podcast. It’s the case that refused to close.

A woman we’re calling Connie wrote to us after a popular vacation rental platform banned her. She said it was a case of mistaken identity. The platform runs periodic background checks on its guests, and Connie’s photo had come back flagged as someone who was a member of the world’s oldest profession.

She insisted the flag belonged to someone else, a woman who happened to look a great deal like her. She sent us the side-by-side images, and she wasn’t wrong about the resemblance. She also sent her ID and her teaching certificate, because Connie taught elementary school. Our team wanted to help her.

Then the platform did something companies almost never do. A representative asked to get on the phone with us. Our cases move by email, and a request to talk is rare enough that everyone here sat up straight. 

After our call, we had no choice but to send Connie’s case straight into the F-File.

That’s the part I can tell you. Two years later her name turned up in our newsfeed, and that’s the subject of our episode. I’ve been doing this work for about 30 years and I’ve seen a lot of strange cases. This is one of the strangest.

My co-host Iden and I take the whole thing apart on the show.

(One warning before you press play. The episode is for grown-ups. There are adult themes, and we’re not shy about them. Listener discretion is advised.)

Tell me whether we called Connie’s case right. And tell me about Shearer, while you’re at it. Should a consumer advocate back away when a complaint turns criminal, or is that the moment somebody needs help most?

If you have a failure of your own you’d like us to dissect on the show, send that too. The cases we lost often make better listening than the ones we won.

For the last 25 years, if you wanted to know what was wrong with the airline industry, you could point at the two airlines that refused to play along.

Southwest checked your bags at no extra charge and let you sit wherever you wanted. JetBlue gave everyone in coach more legroom than any other domestic airline and put a TV in every seatback. 

Neither one had a first class or a lounge.

Both of those airlines ended this week — at least as we know them.

What happened

On Sept. 1, JetBlue announced BlueFirst, a domestic first class cabin. It has 12 seats on the A220 and A320, and 16 on the A321, arranged two by two, with seven more inches of legroom than a Main seat. You’ll also get a generous five inches of recline and a 13.3-inch screen. 

Booking opens this fall, and the first aircraft with the new first class section will fly before the end of the year. 

“Domestic first class has become easy to predict,” CEO Joanna Geraghty said. “We think it’s time for a fresh take.”

The next morning, Southwest said it’s opening its first airport lounges in Austin, Baltimore, Honolulu and Nashville in late 2027, with at least seven more to follow. You get in with a new premium Rapid Rewards credit card from Chase.

Both these developments are part of a bigger story. Southwest started charging $35 for a checked bag in May 2025 and switched to assigned seating for travel starting in January. JetBlue’s cabin now has four tiers — that’s enough to make an 18th century French aristocrat squirm.

Why is this happening?

It’s the money.

JetBlue has lost money six years running. Premium revenue per seat grew 13 percent last quarter, and the airline expects BlueFirst to add close to five points to its unit revenue. 

Southwest’s Tony Roach calls the lounges “a strategic investment in Rapid Rewards.” Both arguments come down to the same point: An airline that can’t make payroll can’t give anyone free bags, and the passengers willing to pay for more are the ones keeping the lights on for everybody else. (There is, of course, all the revenue an airline will earn from selling miles to credit card providers, but let’s not go there today.)

But there are still some unanswered questions …

JetBlue’s news release describes the new cabin in detail and says nothing about the main cabin. But 12 seats at that pitch have to come from somewhere on an airplane that isn’t getting any longer. 

The obvious answer is that JetBlue will take it out of the rest of the seats, moving the main cabin seats closer together, probably from 32 inches to 30 inches. I asked JetBlue what the main cabin seat pitch will be after the retrofit, but it did not respond.

Southwest’s lounge, meanwhile, requires a credit card application if you don’t have a new Rapid Rewards Credit Card issued by Chase. I know — just what we need, more credit cards.

What do you think of these developments?

That brings us to this week’s question. Are these changes going to be good for air travelers?

If you said yes:

• Would you pay for a JetBlue first class seat, or is this for somebody else?
• Does a lounge make up for a $35 bag fee?
• Which airline now treats you best?

If you said no:

• What did you lose that you’d pay to get back?
• Have you switched carriers over any of these changes?
• Is there an airline left that still does it the old way?

My take

First class seats and lounges aren’t new. A seat with more room in front of it and a quiet room near the gate both existed before, on other airlines, for a price. 

What changed here is that the two airlines that did things differently — JetBlue and Southwest — aren’t doing them anymore. It’s the end of an era.

In a decade or two, when we’re arguing over pay toilets and credit card readers in the overhead bins, we’ll probably look back on this week as an important milestone. There are four major airlines serving the domestic market, but alas, the differences between them are few and far between.

Your turn

Have you flown Southwest or JetBlue since the changes started? Tell me what’s different, and whether you’d pay for any of it.

Like many people, Debra Beasley is frustrated by the rising cost of travel insurance. Every time she books a trip, she gets an offer to buy optional coverage—and it all adds up.

“I’ve shelled out thousands of dollars,” says Beasley, an accountant from Fort Collins, Colo. 

Beasley says she’s tried using coverage from her credit card, but her tour companies wanted to charge her more to pay by credit card, “and sometimes the credit card coverage was insufficient to cover the trip,” she adds.

It’s a common problem. The cost of travel insurance has been rising steadily, as have travel costs in general. Travelers are looking for ways to save money on their next trip without sacrificing essential coverage.

“Rising premium prices are a direct result of higher overall travel costs and inflation,” says Chris Carnicelli, CEO of Generali Global Assistance. “Most travel protection plans are priced as a percentage of the total trip cost, so as airfare and accommodations become more expensive, premiums naturally increase. Travelers are insuring a larger financial investment than they were even a few years ago.”

Why are travel insurance premiums rising now?

It feels like everything related to travel is more expensive, and insurance is no exception. Some travelers report premiums jumping 10 to 20 percent over last year. 

“Most rate changes reflect claims experience from the past 12 to 24 months, particularly as medical costs rise, airline reliability declines, and hurricane seasons grow longer,” says Wendy Stahl, director of product development at Axatravelinsurance.com. She says that’s prompted travelers to take a hard look at their existing coverage that might be useful when traveling, including health insurance, auto policies, and credit cards, as well as what parts of your trip are nonrefundable.

There are no reliable numbers related to the price increase. But experts say one cause is medical inflation, which is outpacing regular inflation by 3 to 4 percent. Also, people are traveling more since the pandemic, leading to higher claim volumes, which has led to higher rates. And the actual cost of providing some services has also risen.  

“Remote area evacuations cost anywhere from $150,000 to $300,000,” says Cody Schuiteboer, a financial advisor who has helped clients lower their travel insurance costs. “Insurers are offsetting these costs with higher premiums.”

But simply shopping by price can be problematic, according to industry experts.

“Like any plan, you have to fully understand what you are getting beyond coverage limits,” says Brandon Bates, president of the U.S. Travel Insurance Association, a trade group. “Look closely at the benefit limits, policy exclusions, covered perils, and coverage time frames. Do your research to find the plan that best fits your type of trip and your specific concerns.”

But how?

A tailored approach to saving on travel insurance

To combat these price hikes, some insurers are offering specialized products that allow travelers to pay only for the specific risks they face. 

Daniel Durazo, director of communications at Allianz Partners USA, suggests that travelers may want to consider if a policy that only covers medical emergencies or only covers trip cancellations fits their travel needs.  He adds that it’s important to understand what you’re giving up if you don’t select a policy that covers both cancellations and post-departure problems.

For example, Allianz’s OneTrip Emergency Medical plan provides up to $50,000 in emergency medical coverage for travelers who aren’t worried about losing their nonrefundable trip deposits. Conversely, its OneTrip Cancellation Plus plan is for travelers who may already have health coverage but want to protect up to $5,000 in trip costs. 

“If you’re traveling with kids, buying Allianz’s OneTrip Prime can save money by covering kids 17 and under for free when traveling with a parent or grandparent,” Durazo adds.

Beyond traditional reimbursements, new digital tools are being integrated to save travelers both time and out-of-pocket expenses. Durazo notes that insured Allianz customers with emergency medical benefits may have access to the Allyz mobile app, which includes up to three virtual or in-person doctor visits per trip at no additional cost. This can be a significant money saver if you need to see a doctor while traveling.

The Three-Trip Rule for annual insurance

Insurance experts say if you leave home more than twice a year, you are likely overpaying for your policy. 

“Buying protection trip-by-trip is inefficient and expensive,” says Bill McIntyre, a director at Global Rescue. He says an annual travel insurance policy may align with the way people are traveling today: frequently, unpredictably, and often more than once a year.

Jacob Charles, a personal finance expert, uses what he calls the Three-Trip Rule. If you travel three or more times a year, single-trip plans are a waste of money. He pays about $380 for an annual plan that covers everything. 

Schuiteboer, the personal finance expert, saw this work for a client who was spending $85 to $120 per trip on insurance. Since she traveled six times a year, her bill hit $600. By switching to a $300 annual plan, she cut her costs in half with the same coverage. 

Save money by eliminating overlap

Most travelers are over-insuring their trips without realizing it. For example, you might have a premium credit card that covers trip cancellations. Your primary health insurance might work overseas. Your homeowner’s insurance might even cover your stolen laptop. 

“Many travelers buy the same item twice without the slightest idea of it,” says Paul Ferrara, a senior wealth counselor based in Toronto. 

That’s because travelers seldom review their primary health plan regulations before booking a trip.

“For example, the majority of people have twice the evacuation coverage they require on a typical vacation,” he says. “Reducing these overlaps is the quickest method to reduce your premiums while maintaining your actual safety net.”

This kind of insurance unbundling has been going on for a while, where travelers pick and choose the coverage they want instead of buying a gold-plated, comprehensive policy.

“Skip comprehensive if all you need is medical,” says Andrea Woroch, a money-saving expert. She says standalone medical plans can cost under $10 per day and still provide emergency care and evacuation. 

Charles, the personal finance advisor, says he saved $240 on a recent trip to London by realizing his credit card already covered the $10,000 trip cancellation portion. He bought a cheap, medical-only policy instead. 

The solution: A careful audit of your coverage—and maybe an annual policy

Saving on travel insurance starts when you book, according to experts.

“Don’t check the box at checkout,” says Suzanne Morrow, CEO of the travel insurance marketplace InsureMyTrip. “One of the biggest mistakes travelers make is purchasing trip protection directly at the point of sale through an airline, cruise line, or booking site. These plans are often more limited and more expensive than third-party policies.”

Also, be careful about what you insure.

“Most travel insurance cancellation policies only refund nonrefundable trip expenses,” says Lauren McCormick, a spokeswoman for travel insurance site Squaremouth. “So you should only insure the amount you’ve paid that is ineligible for a refund. If your purchases can be refunded without travel insurance, then it makes sense to exclude them from your policy to save money overall.”

Beasley, the accountant who complained about overpaying for travel insurance, says she conducted a full audit of her coverage. She reviewed the things that mattered most to her, including medical, trip interruption and evacuation.

“I finally bought an annual plan that will cover the losses of my most expensive trips,” she says. “And never looked back.” 

She estimates she’s saved thousands of dollars in travel insurance. And now, when she gets to the last checkout screen, she just clicks “continue.”

Adriana Gores accidentally overpays her Comcast bill by nearly $5,000 and receives a prepaid debit card as a refund. When the balance mysteriously plummets to $82, she finds herself trapped in a customer service maze. Can she escape?

Question

I accidentally overpaid my Comcast Xfinity bill online—I meant to pay my credit card but sent the money to Comcast instead. It was a massive mistake, totaling $4,762. Eventually, Xfinity issued a refund via a prepaid debit card for the full amount.

Initially, I forgot about the card. When I found it, I realized it had an expiration date. I had to demand a new one because the company tried to tell me the funds would expire. I was afraid to carry the card around because it was as good as cash, so I barely used it. I did manage to transfer $1,000 to my bank account, but the system wouldn’t let me move any more than that. 

When I checked the balance again recently, the card claimed I only had $82 left. I’ve spent hours on the phone with various Xfinity departments and even went to a brick-and-mortar store. Absolutely no one can validate how my balance went from over $4,000 to double digits. Every method they offer for listing transactions—the website, the phone tree, the issuing bank—has been a dead end. 

Meanwhile, the bank noted a $1,400 charge for patio furniture that I’m certain I didn’t buy with this card. The transaction list on the phone tree initially said there were no transactions, then suddenly showed that purchase. 

I feel that if this is Xfinity’s method for refunding customers, it should be able to show proof of how the money was spent. Since it can’t, I believe it still owes me the money. I want a detailed list of transactions or a refund by check. I don’t want another debit card. — Adriana Gores, San Francisco

Answer

Comcast should have handed over your money without the high-wire act. When a customer overpays, the company shouldn’t treat the refund like a gift card to a mall. It’s your money, not a reward.

Ideally, a company should refund you via your original payment method. If that’s not possible, it should issue a check. 

But a prepaid debit card that expires? Nope. 

You have certain legal protections against errors on accounts (check the Electronic Fund Transfer Act for details) but prepaid cards can be a regulatory gray area depending on how they’re branded and where you live.

You did the right thing by calling and visiting the store, but quickly hit a roadblock. The workaround is to stop talking and start writing. A thorough paper trail can vault you over the wall. When you’re using the phone, the promises vanish into the ether the moment you hang up. 

Next time, consider sending a brief, polite email to one of the Comcast executive contacts I list on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org. (It looks like you tried to find the contacts on my site, but couldn’t. I’m going to have to talk to my developers about that!)

I contacted Comcast on your behalf. A representative from its support team reached out to you and finally provided the transaction information you were looking for. 

“Our support team connected with the customer and shared the requested transaction information related to the refunded prepaid debit card, which they did not dispute, thus resolving their concerns,” a spokesman told me. 

It turns out the money hadn’t vanished into a black hole. It had been spent (along with a few other purchases), though the lack of a clear statement made it feel like a heist. If a company tries to refund your thousands with a piece of plastic, just say “no.” Demand real money. It’s harder to lose, it doesn’t expire, and it doesn’t require a login to see if your money is still there.

Oh, and be more careful the next time you pay your credit card bill online. 

Aaron McIntosh thought he was following the rules of the Avis Uber Partner Program until his bank flagged the rental company’s aggressive billing as fraud. By the time he was able to explain the situation, Avis had repossessed the car and banned him for life. Can a consumer advocate get this driver back on the road?

Question

I was renting a car through the Avis Uber Partner Program so I could drive for Uber. The arrangement was simple: it cost $349 a week, which was supposed to be deducted from my bank account. 

But things went south when Avis started charging my card for different amounts, several times a day. My bank, assuming this was fraudulent activity, blocked Avis and locked my account for security. 

This created a major problem. I had to wait for a new card to be issued and mailed to me, which meant I couldn’t access my funds to make my weekly payment on time. I didn’t go silent, though. I communicated this clearly to the Avis office where I rented the vehicle, through a text line provided to drivers. I also spoke with a representative from the Recovery Team who said she would note my account. 

I explicitly asked an Avis representative if I should keep the vehicle until my new card arrived. or if I could pay via Bill Pay. He didn’t tell me to bring the car back; he just replied, “Text when you’re ready.” I took that to mean I was okay to keep the car until the card arrived. 

A day or two later, as I was getting into the car to go to the office and pay, I saw a tow truck drive past with the car I had been renting. I followed him and waved him down at a red light. It was Avis coming to repossess the car. The company called it a repossession even though I had provided payment for the previous two weeks. 

Now, Avis has placed me on its “Do Not Rent” list for two years, claiming the payment was 14 days overdue and that its Loss Prevention department had to step in. This ban effectively ends my ability to earn a living as an Uber driver. I’ve already paid the outstanding balance in full, including $1,895 in additional charges and fees. I just want to be removed from the DNR list so I can get back to work. — Aaron McIntosh, Philadelphia

Answer

Avis should have read its own notes in your records. When a customer explicitly asks, “Should I return the car?” and a staff member tells them to “text when you’re ready,” the company shouldn’t call the repo man.

(Before I continue, just a note about your case. I normally handle consumer disputes in this column. But your billing issue has broader applications, so my advocacy team and I decided to handle your case, even though technically you’re a business.)

While rental companies have a right to protect their assets, they also have an obligation to provide clear instructions to their customers. If a payment fails because of a bank’s fraud detection—triggered by the company’s own erratic billing patterns—a little human intervention would be helpful. Unfortunately, you didn’t get any.

You established a paper trail early by texting the office and followed up with the Avis recovery team. However, “text when you’re ready” is dangerously vague.  

When you’re dealing with a rental company, if you can’t pay, return the car immediately to the lot, get a bill, and then wait for your new debit card. 

If you ever find yourself blacklisted, you can appeal the decision to the executives at Avis. I publish their contact information on my advocacy site, Elliott.org. 

I contacted Avis on your behalf to see if it could take a second look at your case. The company’s security team performed a manual review of your account. 

“Our records indicate that we’ve received a response from our security team confirming that all outstanding fees had been paid and that his removal from the DNR list was authorized,” a representative from Avis told me. 

You’re now off the Do Not Rent list and free to rent again. Just two tips for the future: First, let your bank know about your arrangement with Avis so it can whitelist the transactions. And if your bank still flags your car rental payment as a crime spree, it might be time to switch to a credit card—or a different bank.

It’s every airline passenger’s worst nightmare: You’re about to board a flight when an airline agent stops you. You’re not flying today—in fact, you’ll never fly on the airline again. 

It happened to Athena Smith when she tried to fly from Fort Lauderdale to Hartford on JetBlue. As she was waiting to get on the plane, an agent approached her and said she couldn’t fly that day because she’d used an expired travel bank voucher to book her reservation.

If she didn’t pay $468, she would be banned from JetBlue forever.

Smith is the latest victim of a sophisticated airline ticket scam in which a shady third-party site takes your hard-earned cash, then turns around and pays the airline with a stolen or fraudulent voucher. The airline gets its money back when the real owner of the voucher reports the theft, and you? You get the boot.

This case raises several important questions:

• How can I get unbanned from an airline?
• How do I spot a travel booking scam before I pay?
• What should I do if my travel agent goes silent after a problem?

“I had no clue what he was talking about”

Smith travels at least twice a month from Hartford to Fort Lauderdale to care for her 95-year-old mother. JetBlue is the only carrier that offers a nonstop flight for that route, making it her go-to airline. But as she prepared to board her recent flight home from Florida, a JetBlue official intercepted her.

The airline claimed she owed money for an “outstanding travel bank voucher” used on a previous reservation.

“I had no clue what he was talking about as I had never used a voucher but paid via credit card,” Smith told me.

JetBlue had more bad news: Until she paid for her ticket, she was banned from flying on its planes. 

How did this happen? The trouble started with a site called Farehub, she says. Smith used her credit card to book a round-trip ticket for $468. She has the statement to prove it. 

But JetBlue’s records told a different story. According to the airline, the ticket was purchased with a JetBlue Travel Bank credit voucher—one that didn’t belong to Smith.

“What is puzzling is that JetBlue’s records indicate that the form of payment was a fraudulent travel voucher,” Smith said. “Presumably Farehub would have submitted the credit card payment to JetBlue.”

When Smith tried to contact Farehub, the company went silent. She tried WhatsApp, emails, and phone calls. 

“Either customer service deliberately hangs up on me or does not return my phone calls,” she said.

She was stuck in a classic squeeze play. She had paid for a ticket, the airline said it was stolen, and the middleman had vanished into a digital haze. Desperate and banned from the only airline that could get her to her mother non-stop, she reached out to my team for help.

Would JetBlue see reason, or would it continue to hold Smith responsible for a third-party scam?

How can I get unbanned from an airline?

Getting banned from an airline is usually reserved for people who try to open emergency exits at 30,000 feet. But lately, carriers are using the No Fly list as a high-pressure debt collection tool. When an airline bans you for a financial discrepancy, it’s about leverage.

To get unbanned, you first have to identify which department holds the keys to your freedom. Usually, it isn’t the front-line customer service agents or the people at the ticket counter. You need the risk management or corporate security department. These are the folks who look at spreadsheets and see fraud where you see a family vacation.

In Smith’s case, JetBlue’s travel bank team flagged the reservation. When a ticket is identified as fraudulent, the airline’s internal system automatically blacklists the passenger associated with the passenger name record. (Although it would be nice if they notified passengers before they got to the airport.) To reverse this, you must provide a preponderance of evidence—a fancy legal term for proving you aren’t a crook.

Specifically, that means you need your original credit card statement showing the charge from the travel agency, the confirmation email from that agency, and a clear explanation that you are a victim of a third-party scam. 

If the airline still refuses to budge, and if there’s no way to contact the ticket agent, you have to escalate. I recommend sending a polite email to the airline’s executives. We publish the names and numbers of JetBlue’s executives on this site. 

As you can imagine, airlines take a dim view of these third-party sites and the people who use them. They often take the position that because you benefited from the transportation, you owe the money, regardless of who you paid. If they refuse to communicate, your only leverage is public advocacy or legal action, which can be more expensive than the debt itself.

How do I spot a travel booking scam before I pay?

The internet is a dark ocean of shady deals and, unfortunately, many of them are lures set by digital pirates. Scammers create professional-looking websites that mirror legitimate agencies. They use search engine optimization to appear at the top of your Google results when you search for “cheap flights to Fort Lauderdale.”

The first red flag is the price. If every major airline is quoting $500 and a site you’ve never heard of is offering $350, it’s probably a trap. These sites often operate a “bust-out” scheme. They take your credit card info, book your flight using a stolen voucher or a compromised corporate account, and pocket your cash. By the time the airline realizes the voucher was stolen—which can take weeks—the scammer has shut down the site and moved to a new domain.

The “contact us” page warning. If there’s no physical address, or if the address is a PO box in a country you can’t find on a map, run away. 

Shady payment methods. If a site asks you to pay via Zelle, wire transfer, or cryptocurrency, it’s a scam. Legitimate agencies take credit cards. But that’s no guarantee, as Smith discovered. Even paying with a credit card doesn’t protect you from being banned by the airline if the agency uses fraudulent means to settle the back end of the transaction. 

Before you click “buy,” search for the site’s name plus the word “scam” or “complaints.” And remember, you’re almost always better off booking directly.

What should I do if my travel agent goes silent after a problem?

The silent treatment is a classic move for bottom-feeding agencies. Once they have your money and the airline flags the fraud, they have no incentive to help you. In fact, talking to you only increases their risk of being caught.

If your online travel agent goes MIA, your first move is a credit card chargeback. Under the Fair Credit Billing Act, you have the right to dispute charges for services not rendered. 

Since the airline is refusing to let you fly because the agent didn’t pay them properly, the agent has failed to provide the service you bought. Call your credit card company immediately. Don’t wait. There’s usually a 60-day window to file a dispute. Here’s more information on credit card disputes.

While the chargeback might get your money back, it won’t fix your relationship with the airline. For that, you need to act as your own advocate. Gather every scrap of paper—emails, chat logs, bank statements—and present them to the airline as proof that you were defrauded by the agency. Smith did exactly this, keeping a meticulous record of her attempts to contact Farehub.

If the agent is a member of an organization like the American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA), you can file a formal complaint. But let’s be real: the Farehubs of the world don’t join professional organizations. They exist in the shadows. When they go silent, your best bet is to stop chasing the ghost and start working the airline’s corporate ladder. If the airline ignores you, it’s time to call in the cavalry.

Our advocate, Dwayne Coward, reached out to JetBlue on Smith’s behalf. He presented the evidence of the Farehub transaction and the credit card statement. He explained that Smith was a victim, not a perpetrator.

The response? Nothing.

He reached out again, and again, he got radio silence.

Finally, as I was preparing to write this story, I contacted JetBlue. 

“We’ve shared the note with our support team who will be reaching out directly to the customer to gather additional details and help advise her on options to ensure she’ll be able to fly with us in the future,” a representative told me.

JetBlue also said it encourages customers to visit its site “for the best experience and fares” and if you’re booking through a third party, “be cautious of unknown or unverified resellers offering deals too good to be true.”

“While we work with the rest of the industry to proactively try to stop fraudulent travel agencies, new sites, unrelated phone numbers, and social media profiles do pop up online attempting to steal and use your personal and financial information,” the representative added.

I followed up with Smith and she said JetBlue had been in contact with her to restore her flying privileges. Unfortunately, JetBlue would not refund her money. For that, she turned to her bank, which promptly accepted her credit card dispute and refunded the money.

Here’s the thing: JetBlue knew—or should have known—about Farehub. But it’s easier to shake down a caregiver for $468 than it is to chase a ghost in a digital shell game. 

The guy Lachlan Brown met in a Tokyo departure lounge thought he had a high travel IQ, but he didn’t.

True, he clutched a color-coded itinerary and screenshots of every boarding pass. He wore a pair of noise-canceling headphones and rolled the newest luggage into the waiting area. But when the airport Wi-Fi froze and a gate change flashed on the monitor, Mr. Know-It-All Traveler came apart.

“It was like someone’s operating system crashed,” Brown remembers. “He started arguing with staff in English, louder each time, as if the volume could translate into Japanese. He spiraled into blame and panic over a five-minute problem.” 

Brown knows a thing or two about meltdowns: He’s a behavioral psychologist. And he’s spent some time thinking about what separates smart travelers from everyone else. 

Turns out, it’s a fine line.

Brown says another passenger handled the problem differently. She simply glanced at the screen, walked to a counter, and asked for directions to the next gate. She was halfway to the new gate before the prepared traveler had finished his first rant.

She had a high travel IQ, says Brown.

What is travel IQ? It’s the gap between what you think you know and how the world works. You might be smart, but if you can’t navigate a simple gate change without a meltdown, your travel IQ is low. 

This is the time of year—the waning days of summer—when everyone’s travel IQ is on display, including yours. So how do you know if your travel IQ needs some work? Here are a few signs. 

You’re not flexible

People with a high travel IQ can roll with the punches. The world doesn’t end when Wi-Fi goes down or their gate changes. Travel is chaos held together by duct tape (believe me, I know). If a five-minute delay feels like a personal attack, trying to control an environment that doesn’t care about your schedule is not that smart.

You fail to read the fine print

The worst travelers are the ones who are uninformed. They don’t have a clue about what’s in their rental agreement, their airline contract of carriage or their cruise ticket contract. They assume their travel insurance will cover anything that goes wrong on their trip. They can’t be bothered with the details. They end up paying more and getting less because of their ignorance.

You’re oblivious to cultural differences 

Here’s a scenario that plays out in places like Paris: Tourists march up to ticket windows and demand to speak to a manager when things don’t go their way. In the U.S., that might get you a voucher. In France, it often gets the window slammed shut. “The employee will just close the counter and walk away,” says branding strategist Yesim Saydan. “Literacy means watching how locals queue and interact before you dive in. If you aren’t observing, you’re just a bull in a china shop.”

You make assumptions you shouldn’t

Berkita Bradford, a professor at North Carolina Central University, once had a student in Havana who lost her passport. Her plan: Just use her North Carolina driver’s license to get home. You can’t do that. “I had to quickly coach her on acceptable travel documents,” Bradford says. You’re flying blind if you don’t know the entry requirements for your destination.

You dress like a tourist

Your travel IQ is visible before you say a word. Walking through a historic cathedral in zip-off cargo pants and a neon-yellow souvenir shirt broadcasts your status as an outsider. “Travel literacy means dressing for the destination instead of just for the airplane,” says Mitesh Jain, a psychologist based in Mumbai who specializes in travel. When you dress like a tourist, you invite the wrong kind of attention. Scammers can spot a low Travel IQ from three blocks away. Literate travelers aim for cultural camouflage by wearing muted colors and modest styles.

You panic easily

Travel coach Becky Livingston recalls a passenger who freaked out the moment his plane landed in Seattle. He was fidgeting impatiently while the plane was taxiing. “This is taking so long,” he muttered from his seat in economy class. She says having a high travel IQ means knowing that it will take a while to get off the plane when you’re in row 25—and not panicking.

You think volume is a translation app

If you’ve ever found yourself shouting “WHERE! IS! THE! TRAIN!” at a confused clerk in Rome, you might need to work on your travel literacy. Shouting doesn’t make someone understand English. It just makes you a loud American. High travel IQ individuals know that a smile, a few local words, and a real translation app—downloaded for offline use—work far better.

If you recognize yourself in those signs, don’t worry. You can raise your Travel IQ with a little effort.

“It is entirely possible for you to have a high IQ and a low travel IQ, particularly if you rarely place yourself in unfamiliar or challenging situations,” says Lisa Pittman, a licensed psychologist and travel coach. 

She says practice makes perfect. Gradual exposure to travel can help build your travel IQ. Don’t start with a solo trek through rural India. A weekend trip one state over is better.

You can avoid most of these traps by practicing the “three-second rule.” When something goes wrong, wait three seconds before reacting. If you’re in an unfamiliar place, and run into problems, ask yourself: “How would a local handle this?” (Usually, the answer isn’t “shouting.”)

How to be a smarter traveler

Developing a high travel IQ is about realizing you’re a guest. Whether you’re navigating a luggage mishap or a gate change, or negotiating a ticket error at a train station, you want to play it smart.

Most importantly, stay informed. I know because I wrote a book called “How To Be The World’s Smartest Traveler,” and what they say is true: Information is power. If you do your homework before your next trip and pay attention to the fine print, you’ll avoid the breakdowns and meltdowns on the road.

“To me, high travel literacy looks like emotional regulation plus situational awareness,” says Brown, the psychologist.

Of course, travel isn’t for everyone. If you can’t handle a delay without having a tantrum, you can always stay home. But if you want to see the world, learn to read the signs—especially the ones that aren’t written.