Michelle Girasole thought she knew Rhode Island’s Beavertail State Park well enough to leave her phone in the car. It was a warm summer morning and she wanted to catch the sunrise with her terrier, Scooter. She was looking forward to a digital detox—a few minutes without calls, texts, or notifications.

But when she followed Scooter off the path, she lost her bearings.

“I ended up being stranded with no water, sunscreen, or way to call for help,” says Girasole, a software developer from North Kingstown, R.I. 

She spent the next nine hours lost. It wasn’t until a fisherman spotted her on the shoreline that she finally made it back to safety. 

“If I had my phone,” she says, “none of that would have happened.” 

Girasole’s experience is a warning to anyone considering the travel industry’s latest wellness obsession: the digital detox. Hotels and tour operators are aggressively marketing the idea that the only way to truly be present is to lock your phone in the hotel safe.

TripIt’s latest Travel Trends Report suggests people are buying it. It found that nearly all travelers say they want to disconnect on vacation (98 percent), with 85 percent hoping to unplug from their phones. The intention is understandable: People are overwhelmed and looking for a true mental break. 

But fully disconnecting can unintentionally create more risk than relief. A smartphone is not a distraction you need to escape. It can be a digital bodyguard. And for the average traveler, leaving it behind is more than just inconvenient—it could also be reckless.

Your phone is a safety device

“Why anyone would travel, especially internationally, without their cell phone is beyond me,” says John Gobbels, chief operating officer of Medjet.

He warns that going offline removes your safety net. If you have a medical emergency, you can’t rely on finding a landline or a hotel computer to communicate with your travel insurance company.

“If a member doesn’t have a cell phone, it makes it incredibly difficult to triangulate all the communications needed between hospitals, family, and the crews involved in getting the member moved home,” Gobbels adds.

Harding Bush, a former Navy SEAL and associate director of security at Global Rescue, agrees. He advises travelers to treat their phones as essential safety equipment, not optional accessories.

“Your phone is a powerful safety device,” he says. “Don’t discard it during international travel. Turn off the distractions, but keep it ready for emergencies and the unexpected.”

Disconnected travelers are soft targets

Beyond medical emergencies, there’s the issue of physical security. Rafay Baloch, a cybersecurity expert and author of the book Web Hacking Arsenal, says that criminals specifically look for travelers who appear disoriented.

“Lost and disconnected people become targets for criminals who seek to isolate them,” Baloch says.

When you walk around with a paper map—or worse, just wandering aimlessly—you broadcast vulnerability. A smartphone allows you to look like you know exactly where you are going, even if you don’t.

“The practice of going without technology does not lead to greater presence because it creates a pattern of behavior that criminals can identify,” he warns.

The digital detox is a luxury myth

If going phoneless is so dangerous, why is it being marketed as a luxury experience?

Don Aviv, a security expert and CEO of Interfor International, says the trend is a luxury concept that only works for the ultra-wealthy.

“A true digital detox is a luxury because the wealthy can outsource risks,” Aviv explains. “They have fixers who know the local terrain, drivers who handle logistics, and assistants who monitor alerts. In other words, they can turn off their phone because someone else’s phone always stays on.”

Ari Lightman, a professor of digital media at Carnegie Mellon University, notes that the trend has been commercialized by high-end resorts looking to capitalize on our anxiety. 

“But for the rest of us who don’t have a security team, the phone is our lifeline,” he says.

You may also need your phone for insurance

There is also a practical financial reason to stay connected. Lauren McCormick, a spokeswoman for travel insurance provider Squaremouth, says your phone is the most efficient tool for protecting your travel investment if things go wrong.

“Keeping your phone with you allows you to quickly submit insurance documents, photos, and receipts in real time,” McCormick says.

If your flight is canceled or your luggage is stolen, you need immediate access to your policy information and emergency assistance numbers.

“It gives you access to your important information about the claims filing process and what documentation is needed,” she adds. 

Trying to handle a travel crisis from a hotel lobby computer hours after the fact is a recipe for frustration—and, potentially, another security risk.

How to disconnect responsibly

You don’t have to choose between safety and mindfulness. Lachlan Brown, author of Hidden Secrets of Buddhism, learned that on a recent trip to Kyoto, where he stayed in a traditional Japanese inn. He decided to be “more present” by locking his phone in his ryokan’s safe.

“Within twenty minutes I had taken a wrong turn, misread a wooden sign I couldn’t translate, and walked straight into a residential neighborhood,” recalls Brown.

That’s when he realized that presence without safety is just vulnerability.

Now, he advises a “middle way.” Keep the phone with you, but use it intelligently.

“Put it on airplane mode for an hour if you want quiet, but don’t ditch the lifeline,” Brown says. “For the average traveler, the smartphone isn’t a distraction. It’s a digital bodyguard.”

You’ll also want to be sure that your phone works when you’re abroad. The easiest way is to get an eSIM from a company like Celitech. (You can buy its cards when you book through sites like Kayak and Expedia.)  

Don’t leave home without your phone

The verdict is clear: The “digital detox” travel trend is dangerous advice for anyone who doesn’t have a private security detail.

Whether you are hiking in Rhode Island or navigating the streets of Kyoto, your phone may be the only thing standing between you and a potential disaster. Download your maps, keep your insurance app handy, and turn on “Do Not Disturb” if you must. But it’s a dumb idea to leave your smartphone behind.

Mark Christensen sells two-day Metallica concert tickets on StubHub and follows all the rules. But when the buyer gets confused, StubHub sides with them, costing Christensen not only his sales proceeds but also charging him for the buyer’s new tickets. Can he undo this $1,782 injustice?

Question

I’m a loyal StubHub customer of over 20 years, and I’m hoping you can help me with a situation that has me at my wits’ end.

I sold a pair of two-day tickets recently for a Metallica concert. I bought the tickets originally from Ticketmaster and knew how they worked. For this particular tour, a single ticket transfer is valid for both days of the event.

I listed my tickets on StubHub, found a buyer, and transferred the tickets exactly as required by StubHub’s policy. The buyer accepted the transfer and successfully used the tickets for the first day of the concert.

But then things went sideways. For some reason, the buyer apparently didn’t try to use the same tickets for the second show. They seemed to think they needed a separate transfer for the second day, which was incorrect. Instead of contacting me or StubHub, or even just trying the tickets at the gate, they bought new tickets for the second day.

Then StubHub dropped the hammer on me. It sided with the buyer, claiming I hadn’t fulfilled my responsibilities as a seller. Not only did StubHub withhold my payment of $844, but it also charged my credit card $600 for the cost of the buyer’s new tickets. To add insult to injury, it also reduced another payout I was expecting from an unrelated sale by $338. The grand total of this error: $1,782.

I immediately filed a dispute, but StubHub sent a vague rejection from a “no-reply” email address. I have proof from Ticketmaster that the tickets were valid for both days. In fact, I sold a second pair of tickets to the same concert, transferred them in the same way, and that buyer had no problem attending both days. This clearly shows the first buyer either made a mistake or was trying to get a free ticket upgrade at my expense. Can you help me get my $1,782 back? — Mark Christensen, Fremont, Calif.

Answer

StubHub should have understood the product being sold on its platform. A quick check would have revealed that Metallica had a “no repeat weekend,” where one ticket granted access to two distinct shows. Instead, StubHub automatically sided with the confused buyer and penalized you.

StubHub’s FanProtect Guarantee claims to protect both buyers and sellers. But in your case, it protected a buyer’s mistake while punishing a seller who followed the rules. I wouldn’t call that a guarantee.

You did almost everything right. You kept a meticulous paper trail and tried to resolve the issue yourself before reaching out to me. You even tried to contact the StubHub executives I list on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org.

The big lesson here is about the quality of your evidence. StubHub noted that some of your initial proof was not from an official source. When you’re in a dispute, always go to the primary source for documentation — in your case, that would be an official confirmation from Ticketmaster or the venue, not a screenshot of a chatbot conversation.

I contacted StubHub on your behalf. A representative reached out to my team and reopened your case.

“We’ve reviewed the details of this case, including the format of the Metallica 2-day pass and the seller’s delivery method,” StubHub told me in a statement. “We can confirm the seller has now been paid out. 

The representative reiterated that StubHub is committed to protecting both buyers and sellers through its FanProtect Guarantee. 

“When questions arise around multi-day events, we take care to ensure resolutions are consistent with the facts and event requirements,” the representative added.

Shortly after, you received a notification from StubHub. The company apologized for the error and paid you the full $1,782.

This is a good reminder that even when a company’s system fails you, a well-documented appeal to the right people can still save the day. And sometimes, it just takes a little nudge from an advocate to get them to act.

Michael Cawley and his wife book a Rhine River cruise that’s cut short after mechanical failure forces their ship to dock two days early. CroisiEurope refunds the cruise fare but offers a credit, not cash, for the couple’s nonrefundable train and hotel expenses. Can it do that?

Question

My wife and I have been looking forward to our six-day Rhine River cruise with CroisiEurope. It was supposed to be a relaxing trip before we continued on to Dublin. What we got instead was a series of mechanical problems — and a lot of anxiety.

The trouble began almost immediately. On the first night, the ship stopped cruising early. The next morning, scuba divers worked under the hull. We departed late, and a scheduled excursion to Heidelberg was canceled. 

That night, around midnight, the ship hit something. The hull shook. At 1:30 a.m., all passengers were woken up and sent to the lounge. This lasted for an hour before we were allowed to go back to our staterooms.

The final announcement came the next morning: the cruise was canceled because of a bad motor.

Our original disembarkation was Amsterdam, and we had nonrefundable travel booked from there to Dublin. My wife and I did not want to risk further delays. We immediately booked noncancelable train travel to Amsterdam, plus two nonrefundable nights at the Hotel des Arts. Later that afternoon, a CroisiEurope representative advised that some guests would continue by bus, but by then, we had already made firm commitments and could not join that alternative trip.

CroisiEurope refunded the original cruise fare of $4,792, but we have additional expenses of about $1,400. Can you help us get a refund? — Michael Cawley, West Chester, Pa.

Answer

I think CroisiEurope should have reimbursed you for all of your expenses.

Mechanical failures, an interrupted night’s sleep after the ship struck something — these are not minor inconveniences.

Under EU Regulation 1177/2010, a European consumer protection law, passengers on inland waterway journeys are entitled to reimbursement in cases of cancellation because of technical faults, which includes meals and, if an overnight stay becomes necessary, reasonable accommodations. 

But the regulation for inland waterways is a little tricky. Once an event like yours happens, the operator must offer two options: either rerouting you to the final destination free of charge or providing a full refund of the ticket price. 

CroisiEurope offered a bus reroute after you had already committed to the nonrefundable train and hotel to Amsterdam. This timing is important. You were forced to make arrangements because the company did not provide the necessary assistance immediately. The offer of a bus came too late. 

What could you have done differently? The moment the cruise was officially canceled, you should have contacted a manager at CroisiEurope and ask that it book and pay for your rerouting, which the regulation implies it should do. Booking nonrefundable tickets on your own, especially without a clear paper trail confirming CroisiEurope’s refused assistance, makes recovering that money harder.

Since CroisiEurope has already issued the full cruise refund, your dispute is over the out-of-pocket expenses. After we contacted the company, CroisiEurope offered you a $1,400 credit for a future cruise.

“Per our legal analysis, the Regulation (EU) No. 1177/2010 does not apply to Mr. Cawley’s case, as this law concerns a package travel contract and not merely a river transport service,” a representative told us.

That’s not the resolution you were hoping for — and frankly, it wasn’t for me, either.

Lindley Kinerk’s last morning in Dresden, Germany, seemed fairly routine. She and her traveling companions packed their bags, checked out of their hotel, and headed to the airport for their scheduled 8:25 a.m. Lufthansa flight back to Boston. 

They’d received a standard notification email from Booking.com the night before, reminding them to check in for their flight.

The rest of the story — well, that wasn’t so routine.

When Kinerk arrived at the airport, she learned something that would cost her nearly $6,000: Flight LH209 didn’t exist. Not that morning. Not any morning.

In fact, it hadn’t been on Lufthansa’s schedule for months.

“We were not able to quickly reschedule our flight to make our connection,” Kinerk recalls. 

Her troubling case raises several important questions about booking flights through third-party websites:

• When an airline eliminates a flight from its schedule, who’s responsible for notifying passengers?
• What are your rights when a third-party booking site fails to communicate schedule changes?
• Can you get reimbursed for a replacement flight you had to purchase at the airport?

When a good deal goes bad

Kinerk had done what millions of travelers do every year. She’d used Booking.com to find affordable flights for a summer trip to Germany. 

She’d paid $2,552 for roundtrip tickets from Boston to Dresden months ago. Everything had been confirmed. She had a booking reference and the flight details. It was all there in black and white.

She had no reason to believe there would be a flight problem on her return. After all, her outbound flight had gone off without a hitch. 

Even the email from Booking.com seemed reassuring. 

“It’s almost time to fly!” it said. “”Have you checked in for your flight to Boston?”

Kinerk and her companions showed up at Dresden Airport the next morning, ready to head home. That’s when they got the devastating news: LH209 wasn’t just delayed or canceled. It didn’t exist.

Lufthansa later confirmed what had happened in writing: LH209 was already “out of the flightplan.”

It turns out the flight had been eliminated before Kinerk’s travel date. And apparently, Booking.com had rebooked them on an earlier flight — without telling them.

Lufthansa says it wasn’t at fault. Booking.com had changed the reservation, and the passengers were no-shows. Further complicating matters: Booking.com was working through another ticketing agency, Gotogate.

“The responsibility in this case is not on behalf of Lufthansa,” a representative told her.

With no other option, Kinerk bought three new tickets on the spot. The cost: $5,894, more than twice what she’d originally paid.

That’s a lot of money. And it happened because someone in the booking chain — either Booking.com or its partner Gotogate — failed to do one simple thing: notify its customers about a critical change.

When an airline eliminates a flight from its schedule, who’s responsible for notifying passengers?

When you book a flight directly with an airline and it changes your schedule, the responsibility is clear: The airline must notify you. 

Under U.S. Department of Transportation rules, airlines must tell you about “significant” changes to your flight. (The 2024 DOT regulations define “significant” as three hours or more for domestic flights and six hours or more for international flights.)

But Kinerk’s flight wasn’t just changed. It was eliminated entirely and replaced with an earlier flight. That’s not a schedule adjustment. That’s a cancellation and rebooking.

When you book through a third-party site like Booking.com, you’re entering into two contracts: one with the booking platform and one with the airline. When an airline notifies an agency about schedule changes or cancellations for tickets they “own,” it’s the travel agency’s responsibility to notify you.

That’s how it’s supposed to work, anyway.

In practice, the notification system is not exactly the most reliable. Many travelers discover that their flight schedules have been altered or canceled without any warning.

The problem isn’t new. A significant proportion of flights are subject to schedule modifications. And while airlines may adjust their timetables for operational reasons, the essential information about these changes frequently doesn’t always flow efficiently from airlines to third-party platforms and then to passengers.

In Kinerk’s case, the breakdown was complete. The airline changed the flight, the booking platform supposedly rebooked her, but nobody told her.

Lufthansa pointed the finger at Booking.com. But when Kinerk tried to reach someone at Booking.com who could help, she got the runaround. First, customer service told her to contact Lufthansa. Then they sent her forms for disputing charges for a hotel stay. Oops.

So who is responsible? 

Booking.com should have told her, of course. But Kinerk should have also checked her flight directly with Lufthansa. In fact, Booking.com asked her to do that in an email before her flight. (“Make sure to check in through the airline’s website to avoid extra charges at the airport,” it noted.)

But in this case, no one wanted to own the problem. 

What are your rights when a third-party booking site fails to communicate schedule changes?

Your rights depend on where you are, who you booked with, and which airline you’re flying.

Let’s start with the good news. Under European Union Regulation 261/2004, if you’re notified about flight changes less than 14 days before departure, you have rights to compensation depending on the circumstances. 

The regulation applies to flights operated by European airlines or flights departing from European airports. Here’s more information about EC 261.

Kinerk’s flight originated in Dresden and was operated by Lufthansa, a European carrier. Under EC 261, airlines must either rebook you on a comparable flight or give you a full refund if they cancel your flight. So EC 261 should apply, right?

Not really. Lufthansa didn’t cancel Kinerk’s flight. It eliminated it from the schedule months in advance for operational reasons. (You can recognize a flight cancellation versus a schedule change by checking if the flight number has remained the same. If it changed, it’s a cancellation.)  

Booking.com reticketed Kinerk from LH209 to LH207 — two different flight numbers. 

But when you book through an online travel agency, EU regulations are less clear-cut, at least when it comes to notifications. And that’s the legal limbo in which Kinerk found herself.

Lufthansa said it wasn’t responsible because she booked through Booking.com. But Booking.com kept deflecting her queries to the airline.

What about U.S. consumer protections? The Department of Transportation requires airlines to notify passengers about cancellations and significant changes, and passengers have the right to a refund when flights are significantly changed or canceled. 

But again, that applies to airlines, not necessarily to booking platforms.

The harsh reality is this: When you book through a third-party site, your rights become murky. You’re at the mercy of the booking platform’s terms and conditions, which often state they’re just facilitating the booking and aren’t responsible for airline operations.

Kinerk paid a high price for that lesson.

Can you get reimbursed for a replacement flight you had to purchase at the airport?

That’s the $5,894 question.

When an airline cancels your flight and can’t get you home in a reasonable time, you have options. If the airline can’t rebook you on their flights, you can ask if they’ll endorse your ticket to another carrier. Some airlines will pay for you to fly on a competitor if their next available flight is too far away.

But Kinerk wasn’t dealing with the airline. She was working with Booking.com, which in turn was working with another party, Gotogate, which was supposedly dealing with Lufthansa. That’s a lot of fingers in the proverbial decision-making pie.

Here’s how I see it: Whoever took your money should fix this problem.

Fortunately, Kinerk had plenty of written documentation of this failure. She had emails confirming her original booking. She had the check-in reminder from Booking.com for a flight that didn’t exist. And most importantly, she had written confirmation from Lufthansa, explaining exactly what went wrong.

Armed with this evidence, Kinerk wrote Booking.com a polite but firm email. (Here are Booking.com’s executive contacts.)

“I booked with Booking.com,” she noted. “I paid Booking.com. Booking.com confirmed my reservations. Booking.com sent me the ‘Now it’s time to check in for your flight LH209 tomorrow’ notice. But now Booking.com is saying that it is not Booking.com’s responsibility that there was no flight LH209.”

Booking.com’s robo-responses were textbook infuriating. It sent her dispute forms for hotels. It told her to contact the airline. Booking.com essentially did everything except the one thing it should have done: apologize and refund her money.

And that’s when Kinerk contacted us.

The lesson: Book direct, or be prepared to fight

This case reveals everything wrong with booking flights through third-party platforms. The promise of savings comes with a hidden cost: When things go wrong — and in air travel, things go wrong often — you’re on your own.

You’re almost always better off booking directly. Sure, third-party sites might save you a few bucks, but you stand to lose more. 

Like, $5894 more.

If you do use a booking platform, here’s how to protect yourself:

• A few days before departure, check your flight status directly with the airline, not just with the booking site. Airlines often update their websites before they notify third parties.

• Save all your receipts. Every email, every confirmation, every piece of correspondence. When you need to prove your case, documentation is everything.

• Know who you’re dealing with. Booking.com partners with other platforms like Gotogate. You might think you’re booking with one company but actually dealing with another. Online agents must disclose these partnerships when you book, but people often ignore them.

• Escalate quickly if you hit a wall with customer service. I publish executive contact information for major travel companies on this site. A well-written email to an executive can work wonders.

• Consider travel insurance. Most policies include robust trip cancellation and interruption coverage. (Although this case had a lot of gray areas, it might have qualified as a cancellation.)

But where does that leave Kinerk?

Here’s how this case ended

My advocacy team sent Kinerk’s case to Booking.com. We included the paper trail — all of it. The original booking confirmation, the check-in reminder for the nonexistent flight, the letter from Lufthansa, and the receipts for the replacement tickets.

Sometimes, just the fact that a consumer advocate is watching is enough to shake loose a resolution. Companies don’t like bad publicity. They especially don’t like bad publicity when they’re clearly in the wrong.

Two weeks later, we got the answer, but not the one she hoped for.

“Our customer service team has been in touch with the customer on this matter and the refund of the return flight has been processed,” a representative told our advocate Dwayne Coward.

After months of runaround, after Kinerk had done everything right — documented everything, appealed to executives, explained her case clearly — that’s all it took to get Booking.com to do what it should have done from day one.

But wait, was it really the right thing? 

Well, Booking.com refunded the $2,552 she’d paid for her original tickets, but still left her $5,894 out-of-pocket for the replacement flight.

Come on, Booking.com.

It was a $12,000 vacation to Bali, booked late one night after a stressful business meeting. 

Sydney Ceruto, a neuropsychologist, remembers it well, because it happened to one of her patients.

“She told me later she didn’t even want to go,” says Ceruto, “She just needed to feel like she was escaping.”

It’s a “rage-cation”

We’re living in the age of “rage-booking” — impulsive travel purchases driven by negative emotions rather than a healthy wanderlust.

More than half of American travelers say they feel exhausted, according to research by Faye Travel Insurance. One in five admits they’ve booked a trip out of anger, stress, or heartbreak.

It’s a pattern that’s reshaping the travel industry, according to Lauren Gumport, a spokeswoman for Faye. 

“This habit is most popular among millennials,” she adds. “More than a third of them say they’ve booked a rage-cation.”

Ceruto says her patient realized her mistake and canceled the Bali trip in time. Others aren’t so lucky — and it’s costing them a lot of money and time. 

“Emotions absolutely influence travel spending, sometimes more than we realize,” says Kristen Zavo, a career coach and author of “Job Joy.” “We live in a culture where stress is high and time off feels scarce, so it’s easy to turn travel into an emotional pressure valve.”

What’s fueling this trend? Stress. Research from Hilton found that 56 percent of global travelers cite rest and recharge as their number one motivation for leisure travel in 2026. Half say they’d take a pay cut for unlimited time off. And 44 percent would leave a job if denied a vacation.

There’s another obvious explanation: We live in angry times, and people just want to get away from it all. Can’t blame ’em.

When your brain hijacks your wallet

When stress takes over, you lose control. 

“When your cortisol spikes from burnout or chronic stress, your prefrontal cortex — the part that handles rational decision-making — basically gets hijacked by your amygdala,” explains Ceruto. “Your brain’s threat response system takes over.”

Travis Pittman, CEO of TourRadar, sees the pattern in his booking data. He says about half of travelers book their trip within two weeks of first starting to browse. That’s fast, especially when the average organized adventure runs more than seven days and often involves traveling internationally. Solo travelers tend to book even quicker.

“Emotion is driving these decisions,” he says.

And some unscrupulous companies are banking on your burnout.

“Unfortunately, this is a very bad time for travelers to be rage-booking,” warns Bill McGee, senior fellow for aviation and travel at the American Economic Liberties Project. “Recently it’s been made clear that airlines and other travel companies are capitalizing on consumers’ personal information and even employing AI to supercharge such snooping.”

For example, if you’re listed in the obituary of a recently deceased loved one or have publicly filed for a change in marital status, chances are a travel company may know. And it might be targeting you with a specific, stress-relieving vacation or just charging you more for your flight.

So how do you know if you’re rage-booking? 

Watch for these warning signs:

You’re desperate for an escape. Ishdeep Narang, a psychiatrist, says the telltale sign is a feeling of desperation rather than joyful anticipation. “It’s less ‘I’m excited to explore this culture’ and more ‘I have to get out of here now,'” he says.

You haven’t done any research. Nassira Sennoune, a travel coordinator, says rage-bookers often choose the first destination that pops up without checking visa rules, travel times, or even why they chose that place. “They just need to get away,” she says.

You’re making the decision during a personal crisis. Daniel Glazer, a clinical psychologist, says making travel arrangements during a time of emotional hardship is a classic rage-booking symptom. “Deep down, you know you’re relying on the trip to resolve or escape emotional issues.”

You’re browsing well past your bedtime. Alex Veka, founder of Vibe Adventures, says late-night scrolling through flight deals is a classic red flag. “You’re organizing by how soon or far you can get,” he notes.

If you’ve done any of these things, maybe you’ve rage-booked a trip.

The aftermath of impulsive booking

The consequences of rage-booking depend on the type of reservation you’ve made.

Michael Benoit, an insurance agent from California, recently responded to a brutal quarter by booking an “emergency” vacation to Hawaii.

“I did it, more because I was exhausted rather than being logical,” he says. “It was not organized based on convenience and price, but necessity to disconnect.”

Although it was a textbook rage-booking case, he was fortunate. The getaway helped him recharge.

Others, like Ceruto’s client who booked a spur-of-the-moment trip to Bali, are just lucky.

But many travelers  — and I deal with them every day as a consumer advocate — pay a high price for rage-booking. Most airline tickets are nonrefundable. Many hotels and vacation rental homes are, too. Once you’ve rage-booked, you’re stuck. 

Smart strategies to avoid rage-booking

It’s possible to harness travel’s restorative power without falling into the rage-booking trap.

• Pause before you purchase. Thomas Plante, a psychology professor at Santa Clara University, recommends sleeping on big decisions. “Best to sleep on these things for a day or two before making a big decision and purchase, as well as talking it over with a trusted friend or family member,” he says.

• Take a deep breath. Now do it again. That’s the advice of Karen Canham, a wellness coach. “Take a walk outside, do some breathwork or journaling,” she advises. “Often, when your nervous system settles, the clarity about why you want to travel changes.”

• Get a second opinion. Talk to someone you trust about your travel plans. “”If you’re booking a trip thinking it will solve your stress, or doing it when you feel so drained that you ‘just can’t take any more,’ that’s a sign you’re trying to escape burnout, not recover from it,” notes Marissa McKool, a burnout coach.

And that’s the thing: Your pricey trip may feel restful while you’re away, McKool notes. But the relief fades quickly once you’re back, because the underlying causes of exhaustion haven’t shifted.

There’s a better way to plan your trip

Calm down, says Usman Malik, a financial advisor with Northwestern Mutual. He urges travelers to consider their budget before booking. Ask yourself: Do I have the money for this impulse decision?

Instead of waiting until your breaking point to book a trip, start a travel fund and plan ahead.

“Even $50 or $100 a month adds up,” he says. “So, when you feel the urge, you can treat yourself to travel — not stress.”

Wherever you go, there you are

“Vacations rarely fix what’s underneath,” says psychotherapist Avigail Lev. “You bring yourself wherever you go. The scenery may change, but your mind and body come with you.”

How true. I’ve learned something about rage-booking over the years: The impulse to escape is usually telling you something important. But the solution isn’t always a plane ticket.

Sometimes it’s a day off. Sometimes it’s a conversation with your boss about workload. Sometimes it’s just admitting that you’re not OK right now and you need help.

Sure, a vacation can be transformative. It can heal, inspire, and restore you. But when it comes to travel, getting angry doesn’t solve anything.

Peace negotiators in Switzerland may be dotting the i’s on a deal to end the Iran war, but air travelers are paying attention to something else: the cost of their checked bags.

Remember when jet fuel prices spiked after the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran earlier this year? Every major American airline rushed to raise its checked bag fees. United, American, Delta, Southwest, JetBlue—they all went up. Southwest, which had only just killed its beloved “Bags Fly Free” policy last year under investor pressure, raised its first-bag fee to $45. United pushed its airport counter fee to $50.

The airlines blamed the war, and they had a point. Jet fuel jumped from about $99 a barrel in late February to as high as $209 a barrel by early April.

But then the ceasefire came, and a peace deal appears to be within reach. Oil prices have pulled back from their highs.

And guess what? Not one airline has announced it’s bringing its luggage fees back down.

I’ve called this Elliott’s Luggage Rule: fees rise when oil goes up, and they rise when oil goes down.

How did checked luggage fees get so high?

Airline luggage fees were already ridiculously high before the war. Checking a suitcase had hit $50 at major carriers, and baggage fees brought in an extra $7 billion in revenue in 2024. The fees had long been untethered from any actual relationship to what it costs to move your bag.

Then the war gave airlines cover to raise fees again, and they took it.

Airlines raised fares, hiked baggage fees, added fuel surcharges and cut flight schedules. That may have made sense this spring, but makes considerably less sense now that the worst of the crisis appears to be over.

The airlines will tell you costs are still elevated and that fuel prices haven’t fully normalized. Technically, that’s true. Although oil prices retreated after the ceasefire announcements, they haven’t returned to their pre-war levels yet. But they are coming down quickly.

A coincidence worth noting

The war-fueled fee increases arrived just as the baggage landscape was about to get a lot more interesting.

EU ambassadors reached a final agreement earlier this week requiring airlines to include the cost of a standard carry-on bag in their base fare, with passengers able to opt out for a discount instead of paying a penalty to bring one.

In other words, you get a fare quote with the bag included. You uncheck a box to pay less if you don’t want it.

That’s how it always should have worked.

Airlines claim they need the revenue. But consider what’s happening at the gate this summer, where agents have quietly been tightening enforcement of carry-on size limits and shifting toward a strict 22 x 14 x 9 inch standard. 

That means the spinner you’ve flown with a hundred times might not make it past the gate sizer in July. Airlines are now measuring bags at the gate with automated scanners, and gate-check fees range from $60 to $100.

So even if airlines lower their checked baggage fees, they can make up for it by charging you extra for your carry-on.

What the airlines should do

Now that the war is winding down, airlines should roll back the fee increases they attributed to the conflict.

I know, you can stop laughing now.

While they’re at it, U.S. airlines could take a page from Europe. Why not include the carry-on in the base fare? Let passengers opt out for a discount. And maybe tie checked bag fees to something resembling actual costs. 

I realize that’s a lot to ask.

But it might actually be good for business. Travelers are increasingly sophisticated about total ticket costs. They’re comparing all-in prices. An airline that rolls back its war surcharge and says “the crisis is over, and we’re passing the savings along” would make headlines for the right reasons—and probably fill a few more seats.

The war gave airlines an excuse to raise fees. Peace gives them an opportunity to lower them. We all know which one the airlines should choose; we also know which one they will choose.

Iran and the United States have agreed to end more than 100 days of war. If you’ve been sitting on a summer trip you were afraid to book because of the turmoil in the Middle East, the temptation now is to click the “buy” button before the ink dries. But you might want to slow down.

A closer look at the deal

The agreement stops the shooting and reopens shipping lanes, but it isn’t a finished peace agreement. Mediated by Pakistan and Qatar, it was officially signed last week. 

President Trump said the Strait of Hormuz will reopen to shipping and the U.S. naval blockade will be lifted. 

There’s a little fine print on this one. The two sides signed a Memorandum of Understanding, not a treaty, and it’s the start of 60 days of negotiations, including over Iran’s nuclear program. Most experts who reviewed the terms said the deal doesn’t yet amount to a peace agreement.

The travel advisories tell the same story. As of this week, State Department warnings for the region haven’t been relaxed:

• Iran: Level 4, do not travel 
• Lebanon: Level 4, do not travel 
• Iraq: Level 4, do not travel
• Israel, the West Bank and Gaza: Level 3, reconsider travel 
• Saudi Arabia: Level 3, reconsider travel 
• United Arab Emirates: Level 3, reconsider travel 
• Jordan: Level 2, exercise increased caution 

A worldwide caution from the State Department remains in effect on top of these.

Is this a green light?

The travel industry would like you to read the ceasefire as a starting gun. Reopening the Strait of Hormuz matters because the waterway carries a large share of the world’s seaborne oil, and the closure drove up fuel costs that airlines passed straight to passengers. 

The argument goes that cheaper jet fuel means lower fares, pent-up demand gets released, and destinations that felt off-limits in the spring are back on the table. Pakistan’s prime minister called the deal a breakthrough that gives confidence to global markets. Airlines, cruise lines and tour operators will want you booking before prices adjust.

What will you do?

If you answered yes:

• Where are you now considering that felt off-limits a month ago?
• Are you booking sooner because you expect prices to climb?
• Would you travel to the Middle East itself, or just feel better about traveling in general?

If you answered no:

• Were your plans already set regardless of the war?
• Does the “do not travel” advisory for the region still give you pause?
• What would it take for you to consider a trip to the wider Middle East?
  
  

My take

A signed agreement does not ensure a safe destination, and you shouldn’t treat Friday’s ceremony as permission to travel. The advisories haven’t budged. Iran, Lebanon and Iraq are still Level 4. The fighting stopped this week, but the deal that’s supposed to make it last is still just words on paper.

The surveys are worth a clear-eyed look too. Americans weren’t waiting on a ceasefire to book. One poll by Numerator found 78 percent of Americans planned a summer vacation, and the percentage of travelers planning to go abroad jumped 10 points to 22 percent. Generali’s Holiday Barometer found plans split nearly evenly between domestic and international trips, with Europe the top overseas destination. But every one of these surveys was conducted in the spring, while the war was still on. None of them captured a post-ceasefire mood, so anyone selling you a “peace bump” is guessing.

If you were already planning Lisbon or Lake Como, this deal changes almost nothing for you, and it shouldn’t. Europe was open before Friday, and it’s still open.

If you were eyeing the Gulf or the eastern Mediterranean, a fragile two-week-old understanding isn’t the moment to commit money you can’t get back. 

Do the research. Pull up the actual advisory for your destination, not the summary of what some travel blogger wrote. 

Work with a travel advisor. Find someone who tracks this for a living and can rebook you fast if the ceasefire wobbles. 

Consider travel insurance. Make sure your policy includes coverage for cancellation in case of civil unrest or a government warning. Most standard policies don’t unless you specifically add it.

Your turn

The official summer travel season starts July 4, just days away. Will you change your plans? Our comments are open.

Vicky Tohopu’s quiche defies French tradition. She binds it not with butter and flour, but with a grated breadfruit shell harvested steps from her open-air kitchen. Inside there’s a fragrant mixture of coconut, basil, and lime pulled from the valley’s volcanic soil. 

Under the table, a puppy named Cleopatra, marked by natural eyeliner, chews on a guest’s slipper.

“Everything is vegan,” Tohopu says. 

She gestures to the jungle surrounding the NIU Shack on the island of Raiatea. The air smells of wet earth and heavy rain, worlds away from the manicured, overwater-bungalow fantasy of French Polynesia.

NIU Shack’s open-air kitchen in Tahiti. (Photo by Aren Elliott)

Survival in the mountains 

Tohopu built this mountain refuge to survive. Fifteen years ago, doctors gave her two months to live. She rejected the diagnosis and returned to her ancestral land. She unplugged herself from the grid, installed solar panels, and pumped fresh water from the river.

She healed herself through a radical return to nature, and now she feeds visitors the proof: fresh coconut water that fizzes on the tongue like soda, a natural carbonation that occurs as the nut dries and the sugars turn.

“This is the beginning of the process,” she tells visitors who come for yoga and plant-based cooking. “The real change happens when you get back home.”

Tohopu offers a hard reset. It is a sustainability measured not in carbon credits, but in human survival.

A different reality thrives on Tahiti’s outer islands. Here, sustainability is not a slogan, but a rhythm of life dictated by the land and the ancestors. In a world obsessed with speed and efficiency, these islanders believe real resilience requires a different currency entirely: patience.

Joe Maraama guides visitors through a fruit farm on the Tahitian island of Huahine. (Photo by Aren Elliott)

The rhythm of the vanilla bean

On Huahine, a short ferry ride from Raiatea, slowness drives the economy. 

On a plastic folding table at the La Mao plantation, the air is heavy and fragrant. Joe Maraama, a guide with a comedian’s timing, holds up a dark, wrinkled pod. Vanilla refuses to be rushed. The vine demands three years to mature. When the orchid finally blooms, it opens only in the morning; farmers must pollinate it by hand before noon. This clock dictates the island’s rhythm.

“You work only half a day,” Maraama says. “No rush.” 

Locals surrender the afternoon to the Pacific pace: fishing, swimming, drinking beer, playing ukulele.

Harvest deepens the commitment. Beans can’t simply bake in the sun. Farmers have to cure them for three hours a day over four months to capture the flavor. Then, to distribute the oils and texture, farmers rub every bean by hand once or twice a week.

Maraama grins and pantomimes the motion. “One massage, one shot,” he laughs, referencing the local brew, Hinano Beer.

Tahitian vanilla commands a global price because farmers won’t hurry. Its value lies not just in flavor, but in the refusal to trade quality for speed.

This ancient fish trap is a hallmark of the tradition of sustainability in Tahiti. (Photo by Aren Elliott)

Waiting for the tide to turn

Huahine’s landscape proves that working with the environment is better. Near the village of Maeva, ancient stone V-shapes cut across the water. These fish traps, some dating to 1888, catch mullet, snapper, and parrotfish riding the high tide back to the sea.

They require no bait, no lines and no fuel. 

“The fish come in at high tide,” Maraama says. “At low tide, they can’t go out.”

This sustainable technology lets the fisherman sit back with a cooler of beer for 30 minutes. The ocean delivers dinner.

Ancestral practice meets modern living

Erwin Eperania, the sustainability coordinator for Tahiti Tourisme, says Tahiti is looking beyond carbon footprints on the outer islands. 

“Sustainability is not just about conservation,” he says. “It’s about respect for land, sea, and the people whose hands care for them.” 

The government moves to protect this fragile economy of patience. It has applied for a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) to shield the hand-massaged Tahitian vanilla bean from cheap global rivals. 

Tahiti is also rewriting your itinerary. Officials encourage tour operators to send visitors to off-grid spots like the NIU Shack, perhaps to prove that luxury does not require air conditioning. 

Yet challenges remain. Fresh water is scarce, and trash gets shipped back to Tahiti Nui.

Eperania offers a spiritual directive: “Let the Mana of each island set the pace.” 

(Mana is a sacred force that embodies the life and spirit of the islands, the people, and the culture.)

Tourism officials hope travelers will stop rushing and settle into the local rhythm. 

“When travelers slow down,” Eperania adds, “they leave a lighter footprint.” 

On Raiatea and Huahine, locals measure their worth differently. They trade quick profit for quality, and connectivity for patience. The price of paradise is not a room rate. It is the willingness to slow down to massage a bean, or wait for the tide.

Sean Thomas pays SeatGeek $2,744 for concert tickets advertised as “premium” floor seating in the first 5 rows with a VIP merchandise bundle. Instead, he receives tickets for Section G, far from the stage, and a VIP package that doesn’t match the artist’s official terms. Can he get his money back?

Question

I purchased concert tickets to see The Weeknd from SeatGeek for $2,744. The listing advertised “premium floor seating in the first 5 rows” and a special VIP merch bundle.

When I received my tickets, they were for Section G. That’s significantly farther from the stage than advertised. The VIP package I received didn’t match SetGeek’s official terms, which require nontransferability, in-person ID check, and on-site merchandise pickup. The listing falsely stated merchandise would be “shipped post-show.”

I contacted SeatGeek. First, a representative claimed that “first 5 rows” referred to a general zone, not literal seat rows. When I disproved that, SeatGeek offered me a promo code for an upcoming event. I declined.

Then SeatGeek redefined the stage layout. A representative asserted that runways are now considered part of the stage, attempting to retroactively justify my seat location. The company even uploaded a new seat map to support this narrative after I filed my complaint.

This pattern of shifting explanations demonstrates clear false advertising. SeatGeek refused to issue a refund or escalate the matter to its legal department, despite my formal written demands. Its Buyer Guarantee should protect me, but it won’t help. Can you help me get my $2,744 back? — Sean Thomas, Murphysboro, Ill.

Answer

SeatGeek should have refunded your purchase. Looking at the seat map, Section G does not include the first five rows, no matter what the company claims.

SeatGeek’s own policies require sellers to accurately describe tickets. Its Buyer Guarantee states you’ll receive “the same tickets you ordered.” You didn’t. The company should have honored its guarantee without the runaround.

The shifting explanations you received are troubling. First, SeatGeek claimed “first 5 rows” meant a zone. Then it seemed to redefine the stage itself. That’s not customer service; it’s creative writing.

It looks like you had the basics in terms of a paper trail. You had the tickets and screenshots of your chats with SeatGeek. Keep in mind that it’s easier to fix a problem like this when you immediately start a paper trail, retain all of your receipts, and stay off the phone.

You probably should have escalated your complaint sooner. I publish the names, numbers and email addresses of SeatGeek’s customer service executives on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org. A brief, polite email to one of them might have resolved this faster.

I’ve handled several SeatGeek cases before. In one recent case, a reader bought tickets when an opening act was advertised, but the performer had already dropped out. SeatGeek initially offered only a promo code. After I contacted the company, it issued a full refund.

In another case, SeatGeek failed to deliver football tickets and offered a 20 percent discount on future purchases. The customer had already bought airline tickets and hotel rooms. After my intervention, SeatGeek provided a 120 percent refund.

Your case follows a similar pattern. The original offer doesn’t match what you received. The company tries to minimize the problem with promo codes. Only when pushed does it consider a real solution.

I contacted SeatGeek on your behalf. The company told you the package you purchased was separate from the normal VIP package and that the seat you received “does match the description provided by the seller.” 

“We can understand how your perceptions may have been different than the seller’s intentions in their listings,” a representative told you. The company provided you with a partial refund of $2,000 — $744 less than you’d paid. 

The lesson here? Companies don’t always get it right the first time. Or the second time. Sometimes you need to push back. And sometimes you need help pushing back.

Krupa Singampalli books a United flight home from Australia, but a last-minute schedule change never reaches her inbox. When she arrives at the airport, her airlines can’t find her reservation. After missing her original flight and buying new tickets out of pocket, Singampalli discovers the business class upgrades she paid for have vanished. Will United make this right?

Question

I recently experienced what can only be described as a travel nightmare with United Airlines. I had booked flights from San Francisco to Auckland, New Zealand, and back through Cairns, Australia, for my family of four. We purchased business class upgrades using 30,000 miles and a $600 copay per passenger. The outbound trip went smoothly, but our return became a disaster.

At 1 a.m. in Cairns, I checked the United app and discovered my 74-year-old mother’s status on the Cairns-Brisbane flight had changed to “waitlisted.” I immediately called United customer service. A representative told me the flight was “not operating” and rerouted all four of us through Sydney instead.

When we arrived at Cairns Airport, Virgin Australia, which operated the first leg of our return flight, told us only my mother had a confirmed ticket. The rest of us had nothing. I called United again. An agent said Qantas had my ticket but couldn’t explain what that meant. Qantas couldn’t find any reservation without a confirmation number, which I didn’t have. United then offered a three-way call with Qantas but disconnected, leaving me stranded.

While I was on the phone trying to sort this out, the flight departed without us. The next United agent claimed we had seats on a flight from Sydney, but couldn’t explain how we were supposed to get there from Cairns. Qantas staff at the airport were dismissive and refused to help.

Feeling unwell and desperate to get home, I purchased four one-way tickets on Virgin Australia from Cairns to Sydney for nearly $890, plus $60 in baggage fees. When we reached Sydney, I learned United had canceled our tickets because we didn’t board the assigned Qantas flight — which never appeared in my app, email, or texts. The Sydney United staff were helpful and rebooked us, but our business class upgrades were gone.

United claims they sent a schedule change notification weeks before to the email addresses on file. I never received it. When I contacted United’s customer service, a representative offered $100 travel certificates and said the matter was closed. United refuses to refund the $1,800 in upgrade fees or reimburse the tickets I had to buy.

I’ve been a loyal United customer for years. How can they change my itinerary, fail to properly communicate it, force me to buy new tickets, and then refuse to make things right? — Krupa Singampalli, Union City, Calif.

Answer

You paid United for a service it didn’t deliver. That’s the bottom line here.

When an airline makes a schedule change, it has a legal obligation to notify passengers. United claims it sent an email before your flight. But a single email sent six weeks before departure — especially for a complex international itinerary involving partner airlines — isn’t enough. Airlines should send multiple notifications as the departure date approaches, and they should require you to acknowledge them. 

According to the Department of Transportation, when a flight is significantly changed and a passenger doesn’t accept the new itinerary, the airline must provide a refund. United rerouted you through Sydney on partner airlines without ensuring you actually had confirmed seats. That’s a massive breakdown in coordination between United and its partners.

The situation at Cairns Airport was absurd. You bought a United ticket. United should have been responsible for getting you home — not Qantas, not Virgin Australia. Instead, you got caught in a blame game between three airlines, with United pointing to Qantas, Qantas asking for information you didn’t have, and Virgin Australia washing its hands of the situation.

Could you have been more proactive in monitoring your reservation? Maybe. On a complicated itinerary like this, you’ll want to check your itinerary frequently in the weeks before departure. Sign up for text message alerts in addition to email notifications. Save screenshots of your original booking and any changes.

You could have escalated this to a United supervisor when the first agent couldn’t help. I publish executive contact information for United on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org. These contacts often have more authority to resolve complex issues than frontline agents.

You did an excellent job documenting your case with confirmation numbers, time stamps, and the names of agents you spoke with. That paper trail is so important when you’re fighting for a refund.

After my advocacy team got involved, United refunded the $600 copays — a start, but far from what you deserve. The airline still refuses to reimburse your Virgin Australia tickets. United maintains that because it had rebooked you on a Qantas flight you knew nothing about, the case is closed.

This is exactly the kind of runaround that drives travelers crazy. Airlines hide behind their contracts of carriage and partner agreements while passengers get stuck with the bill. You paid United for a complete journey. United didn’t deliver. I recommend you contact your credit card company to see if you can recover the rest of your expenses.

When Barb and Steve Pfeffer returned their Jeep Compass after an eight-day hiking trip in the Pacific Northwest, the drop-off seemed routine. A friendly Budget agent verified the fuel, offered a brief thanks, and sent them on their way.

It was anything but routine. Two weeks later, they found a $125 cleaning fee on their credit card.

The reason? “Excessive” sand on the floor mats. Budget claimed the debris forced the Jeep out of service for detailing. 

Barb Pfeffer was stunned. 

“We’ve rented cars for over 40 years for business and leisure and never have we been charged a cleaning fee,” she complained. 

This case raises several important questions about rental car policies:

• What constitutes “excessive” dirt that warrants a cleaning fee?
• Should rental car companies warn customers at drop-off about potential charges?
• Are rental car cleaning fees a legitimate cost recovery or a revenue grab?

The perfect road trip that wasn’t quite perfect

The Pfeffers booked their rental through Costco Travel, a membership perk they’d used successfully for years. They picked up the Jeep in Portland and spent eight days hiking in national parks across Washington and Oregon. When they dropped the car off in Seattle, they knew there was some sand on the floor mats.

“We had been hiking in the National Parks over the eight days we had the rental car,” Pfeffer explained. “Our view is that floor mats often take the brunt of use and Budget shouldn’t be surprised that they get dirtier than the rest of the car.”

The return process seemed routine. A Budget employee checked the vehicle, noted the full gas tank, and completed the transaction without mentioning any cleanliness concerns. The Pfeffers even planned to write a positive review, but by the time they tried, the link had expired.

Then came the surprise email from Budget’s client relations team: A $125 cleaning charge for what Budget called “excessive dirt and sand” that required the vehicle to be sent out for detailing.

The Pfeffers contacted Budget’s customer service line, spent 15 minutes on hold waiting for a manager, and got disconnected. They reached out to Costco Travel, which promised to look into it. They wrote to Budget executives, making their case that two sandy floor mats didn’t justify sending a car to a detailer.

Budget’s response was a masterpiece of corporate evasion. It cited its rental agreement, which allows charges for vehicles returned in a condition that requires detailing, including “excessive odor, dirt, sand, trash and cigarette burns.”

And that’s when the Pfeffers contacted my team.

What makes dirt “excessive” in a rental car?

The rental car cleaning fee has become one of the industry’s most contentious charges. Companies defend these fees as necessary to maintain fleet standards. Customers see them as “gotcha” charges that appear weeks after they’ve returned home.

Budget’s rental agreement gives the company wide latitude. Section 2.6(c) states that customers will pay “a reasonable fee for cleaning the vehicle’s interior or exterior for what [they] determine in [their] sole discretion are excessive stains, trash, dirt, soilage, odors or pet hair.”

That phrase, “sole discretion,” is the crux of the problem. It means Budget is the judge, jury, and financial executioner.

The photos Budget sent showed sand and some grass or small stones on black rubber floor mats. The Pfeffers admit the debris was there, but they argue it could have been handled with routine vacuuming.

“I even thought about shaking off the mats myself but figured they would get vacuumed when they got the car washed,” Barbara Pfeffer told me.

She makes a fair point. It’s a rental car, not an operating room.

Rental car companies vacuum every returned vehicle as part of their standard turnaround process. Cars get wiped down, floors get vacuumed, and exteriors get washed. It’s built into the business model. So when does regular cleaning become excessive cleaning that requires a detailer?

The car rental industry offers little guidance. I’ve reviewed dozens of similar cases where companies charged anywhere from $50 to $450 for cleaning. Some involved dog hair. Others involved beach trips. A few cases involved customers who swear the photos weren’t even of their vehicle.

Ride-sharing companies like Lyft have clearer standards. They charge $20 for minor dirt on seats, $40 for moderate messes on the exterior or floorboard, and $150 for major damage. Those fees seem calibrated to actual cleaning costs rather than maximum revenue extraction.

But rental car companies aren’t required to follow Lyft. They can charge what they want, when they want, and dare you to dispute it.

Should car rental companies warn customers at checkout?

Let’s rewind to the Pfeffers’ return. The Budget agent looked inside the car. He had to, in order to log the mileage and fuel. Yet, he remained silent about the supposedly “excessive” sand. 

“There was no mention of a need for cleaning,” says Steve Pfeffer. 

A simple heads-up would have solved the issue immediately. Instead, Budget waited two weeks until the Pfeffers were safely home in Minnesota.

When I pressed Pfeffer on this point, he was clear: “No, there was no mention of a need for cleaning. The person was very nice, thanked us for our business, verified a full tank and then finished checking us out.”

If the mats truly required detailing and would take the vehicle out of service, shouldn’t the agent have mentioned it? 

A simple “Hey, there’s quite a bit of sand here. You might want to shake out the mats before you leave, or we’ll have to charge you a cleaning fee” would have given the Pfeffers a chance to fix the problem.

That’s not customer service. It’s an ambush.

Rental car companies will claim their employees are too busy to inspect every vehicle in detail at drop-off. Fine. But if you’re going to charge someone $125 for dirty floor mats, you should at least mention it while they’re standing in front of you.

The photos Budget provided to the Pfeffers raised another question: Were these even photos of their rental? 

The Pfeffers couldn’t be certain. They say the floor mats looked dirtier in the photos than they remembered, possibly because Budget used a flash or black light that made the sand stand out against the black background. 

“Perhaps some of the debris came from past users?” Pfeffer wondered.

Without a vehicle identification number visible in the photos, there’s no way to verify which car was photographed. I’ve handled cases where rental companies mixed up vehicles and charged the wrong customer. It’s rare, but it happens.

Are cleaning fees legitimate — or just revenue padding?

Let’s be clear about what’s really going on with rental car cleaning fees. Companies call them cost recovery, but customers see them as profit centers. 

Detailing is waxing, buffing, and interior shampooing — a lengthy process to restore a vehicle to showroom condition. Vacuuming sand off two mats is simply not detailing. It’s a five-minute job with an industrial shop vac. 

I’ve seen this kind of thing before. In one case I recently reviewed, a rental company charged a customer $450 for floor mat sand and justified it by claiming loss-of-use fees while the car sat in the detail shop. When pressed for documentation of the actual cleaning work performed, the company dropped the charge entirely.

When Budget told Pfeffer that the vehicle had to be sent out for detailing, placing the vehicle out of service, they were padding the bill. 

Budget’s claim suggests either the company doesn’t understand what detailing means, or it’s using inflated language to justify inflated charges. I suspect the latter.

How to protect yourself from bogus car rental cleaning fees

If you’re renting a car, here’s what this case teaches us:

Photograph everything. Take video of the interior and exterior at pickup and dropoff. Get a shot of the vehicle identification number on the dashboard. If the company later claims your car was filthy, you’ll have proof of its actual condition.

Clean before you return. I hate saying this because routine vacuuming should be included in the rental price. But rental companies have shown they’ll nickel-and-dime customers for floor mat sand. Spend five minutes at a car wash with a vacuum, or shake out the mats yourself. It beats a $125 surprise charge.

If you have any doubts, request an inspection at drop-off. Don’t let the agent wave you off with a “we’ll check it later” brush-off. Insist on a walk-around inspection while you’re there. If they find something, you can address it immediately.

Put everything in writing. The Pfeffers tried calling Budget and got disconnected while waiting for a manager. Their emails created a paper trail that proved they’d attempted to resolve the dispute. Without that documentation, I wouldn’t have been able to help them.

Escalate if necessary. Budget’s initial response was a form-letter rejection. The Pfeffers didn’t accept it. They contacted Costco Travel, reached out to Budget executives, and eventually contacted my team. Persistence matters.

Know your credit card rights. You have 60 days to dispute charges with your credit card company. If a rental car company refuses to provide documentation of cleaning work or hits you with obviously inflated fees, your card company may side with you.

The bigger picture here is that rental car companies have created an environment where customers can’t trust the checkout process. You return a vehicle, get a friendly thanks-for-your-business send-off, and two weeks later discover you owe money for issues nobody mentioned. That’s not how honest businesses operate.

An unexpected resolution, thanks to more bad math

After I contacted Budget, the company suddenly changed its tune. A representative confirmed the cleaning fee would be dropped. 

Then came the real surprise: Budget would refund the Pfeffers $162. 

Wait, what? Budget had only charged them $125. 

The excessive cleaning fee was somehow topped with an unexpected $37 bonus. It seems Budget’s accounting department operates with the same “sole discretion” as its cleaning crew. Steve Pfeffer called it a happy ending. 

Of course it is — sometimes bad math works in your favor.

Did you hear the one about the professor who spent 24 hours trapped in airport hell trying to reach a conference on happiness?

It’s not a joke. It’s what happened to Michal Strahilevitz.

By the time she arrived in Florida, she’d missed half of her meeting. 

The conference topic? Happiness and well-being.

When Strahilevitz, an expert on consumer psychology, told fellow attendees her story, they roared with laughter.

“When plans fall apart, laughter can help relieve the stress and put things in perspective,” she says.

That’s what a lot of travelers are discovering.

Humor is an essential travel skill

We board planes expecting the smooth efficiency promised in airline commercials. We get endless lines, snarky service, and tiny seats.

“Laughter is the brain’s way of saying, ‘I can’t control this, so I’m choosing to metabolize it differently,'” says Sydney Ceruto, a psychiatrist who specializes in stress. “It’s not relief. It’s surrender with dignity.”

Modern travel is a joke, and we’re the punch line. Laughing at the chaos gives travelers a sense of control when everything else feels out of reach.

Here are the funniest travel mishaps

When it comes to travel, the humor gap is often widest when things go terribly wrong.

Here’s one: Daniel and Gemma Ng thought they’d covered everything for their baby’s first flight. Extra formula. An iPad full of kids’ TV shows. Extra clothes for the baby.

The flight went perfectly. As they prepared to land, they congratulated themselves. They’d nailed it.

And then their baby projectile-vomited all over Dad.

“He didn’t miss a single clothing item,” remembers Daniel Ng, who runs a luggage company. “Hoodie, T-shirt, pants, socks. Everything I was wearing was dripping wet.”

Even the professionals can’t stop laughing at their travel experiences. 

Jeremy Nunes, a stand-up comedian, was boarding a flight with a five-minute connection window. Then a crewmember informed him that overhead space was gone and that all remaining bags would need to be loaded below.

There were lots of bags. The attendants started labeling the luggage and slowly removing them, one by one.

Nunes, worried he would miss his connection because of a flight delay, offered to help carry bags off while passengers stopped him with questions.

“Can I get a seat belt extender?” 

“Sorry, I don’t work here.”

Nunes made his connection with seconds to spare. The chaos, of course, became a comedy bit. “Even for non-comedians, they enjoy retelling the mishaps,” he says. “That common bond makes for great comedy.”

Here’s the real travel hack

What makes the humor of travel so powerful? You can use it to have a better trip.

Ceruto suggests the ultimate strategy is to laugh before things go wrong.

“When you board your flight already amused by the absurdity of airport culture, you’ve already inoculated your nervous system against panic,” she says. “Humor isn’t coping. It’s pre-coping.”

Travel these days is rarely pleasant or predictable.The humor gap isn’t going away. If anything, it’s widening. The trick is to step into it willingly and with a sense of irony instead of outrage.

I speak from experience. As a young travel writer, I used to take every problem personally. I’ve learned that negativity isn’t worth carrying.

Mila Schoun knew what his downgrade was worth, but his airline pretended it didn’t.

Schoun, a senior manufacturing engineer from Pompano Beach, Fla., recently flew from Prague to Miami with his wife. The couple had paid Swiss International Airlines for premium economy seats, but then the airline changed aircraft and downgraded them to the regular cabin for the 10-hour flight across the Atlantic.

Schoun asked the airline to refund the difference between regular economy and premium economy. Swiss refused.

But a 21-year-old European law called EC 261 protected Schoun. And that law said Swiss had to pay him for the downgrade, which it did, after I pointed out the requirement.

EC 261 has your back

If you’ve flown to or from Europe, EC 261 has your back, even if you’ve never heard of it. The regulation, on the books since 2004, requires an airline to pay cash when it cancels your flight, bumps you or strands you for more than three hours. The amount runs from 250 to 600 euros, roughly $290 to $700, depending on distance. 

Get downgraded, like Schoun, and you’re owed a partial refund.

The rule benefits American air travelers too, because it covers any flight leaving an EU airport, including ones operated by U.S. carriers. Millions of Americans cross the Atlantic every year. Most are protected and have no idea.

EC 261 has also improved the overall airline experience. EU passengers today are 70 percent less likely to face delays exceeding three hours and 20 percent less likely to face same-day cancellations than travelers in the United States, according to Tomasz Pawliszyn, president of the Association of Passenger Rights Advocates.

“It’s a framework that successfully prevents an estimated 8,400 hours of flight delays every year,” he adds.

The European consumer protection regulations are the strongest passenger-rights laws on the planet, and they are the rules the airlines hate the most. Any surprise that airlines are trying to eliminate them?

Are they about to undo EC 261?

For months, the smart money in Brussels said regulators were about to eviscerate EC 261.

The airline industry has lobbied for years to weaken the rule. It wanted to raise the delay threshold from three hours to four, or even nine, which would have erased compensation for most travelers who qualify today. One consumer group estimated that up to 70 percent of eligible passengers would lose their claims under the higher threshold.

The European Council, representing member governments, sided with the airlines. The European Parliament fought to keep the three-hour trigger, free cabin bags and the right of parents to sit with their kids without a surcharge. The two sides spent the spring deadlocked, facing a June 15 deadline.

Negotiators appear to have landed on a compromise that keeps the three-hour trigger and leaves the cash amounts largely intact. It even adds rules forcing an airline to tell you when you’re owed money and to pay within 30 days. A final decision is expected June 15.

So passengers dodged the bullet. Time to celebrate?

Not quite.

This consumer protection isn’t what it used to be

Here’s what nobody in Brussels will publicly admit. EC 261 is already weakened. It happened so slowly that nobody noticed.

The compensation amounts (250, 400 and 600 euros) were set in 2004. No one bothered to adjust them for inflation.

I call it silent shrinkage. It’s what happens when a consumer protection stays frozen while everything around it gets pricier. The number on the page looks the same. The protection behind it quietly shrivels.

Just run the numbers. The 250-euro payout would need to be about 390 euros today, and the 600-euro payout about 950 euros, just to hold its 2004 value. In real money, your three-hour delay is worth about a third less than it was when the law passed. 

The airline didn’t have to cut your compensation. Time did it, for free.

The industry spent years and millions lobbying to raise the delay threshold, loudly, in public, where consumer advocates could fight back. Meanwhile the amounts just sat there, slowly losing value.

“Passenger rights should move forward, not backward,” says Kaloyan Todorov, co-founder of SkyRefund, an air passenger rights company. “Travelers in 2026 should be better protected than they were in 2004.”

Consider what the law actually delivered for Schoun. After four months of back-and-forth, his downgrade compensation came to about 70 euros a person. That’s what a transatlantic premium-economy downgrade is worth in 2026 under the planet’s best passenger-rights law. In 2004 it would have stung the airline. Now it’s a rounding error.

Come on Brussels, you can do better

So here’s my proposal for Brussels, now that everyone’s congratulating themselves for not making things worse.

Don’t stop at “not worse.” Make it better.

Raise the amounts to match inflation, then index them so this never happens again. Tie the payouts to a price level the way pensions and minimum wages already are, so a delay in 2046 is worth what a delay is worth today. 

And while you’re at it, the Untied States should take notes, because we already wrote the outline and then threw it away. 

In December 2024, the U.S. Department of Transportation proposed its own version of EC 261. An airline that delayed your domestic flight three hours or more, through its own fault, would have owed you cash, starting around $200 and climbing to $775 for the worst delays, plus meals and a hotel if it stranded you overnight. It was the closest America has ever come to a real passenger protection law.

That lasted about a year. This past fall, the DOT withdrew the proposal, calling it an unnecessary regulatory burden and saying airlines should compete on the compensation they offer rather than be required to offer any. 

Schoun got his money because a two-decade-old law still had just enough teeth. The question for Brussels, and for Washington, is whether we keep those teeth sharp or let them wear down to nothing.

Airline passengers are tired of standing at the gate while agents hand out excuses. The Department of Transportation (DOT) has a fix: Soon, airlines will hand out a piece of paper instead. 

The DOT just finalized a rule requiring airlines to publish a one-page summary of your rights. Congress ordered it eight years ago. It still won’t get you a dime.

What the new rule requires

The new rule requires airlines to write down what they already do, and nothing more. It implements a 2018 law by ordering U.S. and foreign carriers to submit a one-page summary covering compensation for delays, diversions, cancellations and mishandled baggage, plus policies on overbooking and involuntary removal from a plane. 

Carriers have to post the summary in a prominent spot on their websites within 90 days of submitting it. 

Notice something missing? The rule doesn’t set compensation amounts. Nor does it require meals, hotels or rebooking when there’s a delay. Each airline only has to briefly summarize its own policies, whatever those happen to be, in whatever format it likes. 

DOT skipped the public comment period, saying it had no discretion because the rule codifies the statute. And in a detail you couldn’t make up, the summaries aren’t even due yet. Carriers don’t have to submit anything until the Office of Management and Budget approves the paperwork and DOT publishes a second notice. The one-page rule is waiting on more pages.

Is this a win for air travelers?

Regulators claim travelers win through transparency. DOT envisions a concise, user-friendly document posted where everyone can find it, replacing pages of legal contracts with a quick reference. 

Airlines have no reason to fight the rule. By DOT’s own estimate, the requirement creates “little to no additional burden” because carriers just reformat policies they already have. When the regulated industry shrugs at a new regulation, that means something.

These aren’t really consumer protections but disclosure requirements. Europe’s regulations have real teeth, but even there, airlines are trying to defang the rules. (I’ll have more on that in tomorrow’s commentary.)

Will this protect air travelers in the United States?

Does knowing your rights help air travelers? That’s the topic of our poll.

If you answered yes:

• Have you used an airline’s written policy to win an argument with an agent?
• Would a posted summary change which airline you book?
• Should DOT standardize the format so you can compare carriers?

If you answered no:

• Would you trade all this paperwork for automatic cash penalties for long delays?
• Have you ever tried to collect compensation an airline promised in writing?
• Should the U.S. adopt a European-style compensation law?

My take

This rule lets airlines off the hook with a printing job. Consider what Congress was responding to in 2018: It wrote this requirement a year after the world watched a passenger get dragged off a United flight. The legislative answer to forced removal was a disclosure form about forced removal.

In Europe, regulation EC 261 requires airlines to pay passengers from 250 to 600 euros for most long delays and cancellations within the airlines’ control. In America, what you get depends on what the carrier agrees to in its customer service plan. When a European airline cancels your flight, it pays you. When an American airline cancels your flight, it refers you to a website.

An airline that writes its own rights document controls the framing, so expect plenty of “may” and “at our discretion.” Once posted, that page becomes the carrier’s proof that it told you how little it owes. The rule says nothing about what happens to an airline that writes a vague or misleading document. 

Maybe DOT needs to stop acting like a printing company and start acting like a regulator. Until airlines pay cash for your lost time, this summary is one more meaningless document.

Your turn

Have you ever collected compensation from a U.S. airline for a delay or cancellation? Do you think this disclosure requirement would help? Our comments are open.

Walter Meyer is so concerned about hotel safety that he always brings “Dave” along.

“Whenever I leave my room, I turn the TV on at a low volume — preferably a talk show or news,” he says. “So if anyone listens at the door, they just hear voices talking and think the room is occupied.”

When he leaves the hotel, he turns to the room and says, “Dave, are you sure you don’t want anything? Ok, I’ll be back in a little bit.”

“If anyone is watching, I want to create the impression that there is someone in the room, and that I will be back soon,” he says. “Even if I won’t.”

When it comes to hotel security, guests are getting innovative. The tools and strategies range from simple (like Dave) to sophisticated.

Travelers are more worried than ever about hotel safety

Safety is the number one concern for business travelers, according to a recent survey by the Global Business Travel Association. But experts say there’s been a similar rise in concern among leisure travelers.

“Sometimes, the simplest products can go a long way towards hardening your hotel room against criminals,” says Philip Farina, a travel safety expert.

A recent survey of U.S. business travelers conducted by Opinium Research for World Travel Protection outlines the steps people take to stay safer:

• 25 percent say they carry a self-defense item such as keys or pepper spray when traveling alone for work.

• 21 percent have placed a chair or other obstacle against their hotel room door for added security. 

• 18 percent say they have used a doorstop alarm on their hotel room door.

Meyer, a frequent traveler and author of “If You Weren’t Here, This Would Not Be Happening,” says he doesn’t rely exclusively on his imaginary friend for safety. He uses the deadbolt to lock the door from the inside and sometimes will move a chair or table against the door, depending on the hotel’s location.

Make sure your hotel cares about safety

One way to stay safe is to check into a hotel that is known for its safety. 

“Peace of mind should come standard with every room,” says Helen Watson, the general manager of The Adelphi Hotel in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

At her hotel, everything is designed with security in mind. The features include:

• Guest identity verification: All guests must show valid identification at check-in. If a guest requests a replacement or additional room key, the hotel reverifies their identity every time — no exceptions.

• Enhanced room security: Every guest room is equipped with a deadbolt lock, a secondary security lock latch, and a full-view peephole.

• In-room safes: Each guest room is equipped with a secure personal safe for storing valuables, important documents, or prized possessions during your stay.

• Discreet security: The Adelphi has trained security personnel on-site and on call. Their presence ensures rapid response if needed and reassures guests without being intrusive.

• Private access areas: Certain guest floors and amenities are only accessible with a valid room key.

If you travel abroad, you know there’s even more a hotel can do. In Istanbul, for example, most full-service hotels have metal detectors and 24/7 security guards.

You can ask about these security features before you book. A knowledgeable travel advisor will know, but you can usually get that information from the hotel’s website. 

What other new tricks are travelers using to make their rooms safer?

Truth is, no hotel is completely safe. You have to take extra steps to ensure your own safety.

“Your hotel room may look secure, but subtle signs can indicate potential weaknesses,” says Frank Harrison, the regional security director of the Americas for World Travel Protection. “Physical security flaws, such as a lack of secondary door locks, outdated key card systems, insecure windows, and visible gaps in door frames, make rooms easier to breach.”

A portable door stop alarm (with a twist)

The battery-operated device will sound an alarm if pressure is applied from the outside, which will help scare off any intruders and let you know that someone is trying to enter your room. Savvy travelers are supplementing the alarm with a rubber wedge doorstop, says Joe Cronin, CEO of International Citizens Insurance. “Those wedges don’t lock the door, but they make it very hard for someone to sneak in quickly or quietly,” he adds. 

A lock (or two)

Georgia Fowkes, a travel advisor for Altezza Travel, always packs two portable door locks that she can use for extra safety. Why two? “Because you might have two doors in your room — the main entrance and the adjacent room door,” she says. “I won’t simply trust that no one will unlock the doors if there is no deadbolt.” One recent addition to her security arsenal is a wedge alarm that she packs on her travels to dangerous countries. It emits a piercing sound when triggered by an opening door.

Avoid these rooms

Perhaps the best way to stay safe is to ask for a safer room. Experts say the ground floor rooms are more vulnerable, as are rooms near a staircase. Echo Wang, who publishes a travel wellness site, avoids rooms with connecting doors or balconies. “They just seem like a free pass for somebody,” she says. 

I admit, I’ve been worried about hotel safety lately, too. My solution is to travel with two grown men, my sons. If someone tries to break into our hotel room, they’ll have to deal with all three of us. But if I were traveling alone, I would definitely use all of these strategies: no ground floor rooms, a doorstop, and an alarm. 

Hotel security is not an imaginary problem

Walter Meyer’s “Dave” might be imaginary, but his strategy isn’t. As travelers grow more worried about hotel safety, people seem prepared to try anything, including bringing a pretend guest with them.

Making your next hotel stay safer is a team effort. Your hotel should take security seriously, but so should you. Until then, keep talking to Dave. He’s cheaper than a security detail — and way better company than the guy jiggling your doorknob at 2 a.m.

Alyssa Klenotich orders clothing but accidentally sends it to her old address. She quickly contacted the shipper, SpeedX, to ask it to return the package to Shein for a refund. SpeedX confirms the request but delivers the package to the wrong address anyway, leaving her $153 poorer.

Question

I’m trying to get a refund for a Shein order, but it’s been denied twice now. When I initially placed the order, I sent it to the wrong address. I tried to correct it on the Shein website, but it was too late for them to do anything. 

I connected with SpeedX, the delivery company, to return the package to the sender, which they accepted. However, they still delivered the package to an old address and I never received my items. 

SpeedX keeps advising me to talk to Shein. What should I do next? I would like to receive my $153 back. — Alyssa Klenotich, Waterville, Ohio

Answer

Shein is ultimately responsible for this delivery — or lack of delivery.

It looks like you placed an order directly with Shein through its website, but autofilled your old address. You can avoid that problem by updating all your addresses on your computer so that you don’t send packages to an old address.

You quickly contacted the shipping company, SpeedX, and requested a “return to sender” so you could get a refund. SpeedX accepted this request, and you have that in writing.

Despite accepting the request, SpeedX failed to process the return. Instead, it delivered the package to your old address. You assumed the package was taken by someone else at that location.

You repeatedly contacted SpeedX for a refund, arguing that its failure to honor the return request was the direct cause of your loss. SpeedX was unhelpful, sending form responses. It insisted you contact the merchant. SpeedX’s direction to you is correct.

When a shipment goes wrong, we nearly always go back to the merchant first. That is the company with which you have a contract and that ultimately hired the shipper. Your goal is the refund, and the seller has the authority to issue it, not the shipper.

A quick escalation to a manager at Shein might have helped. I publish the names, numbers and email addresses of the Shein customer service managers on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org.

I reached out to Shein on your behalf. A representative responded, initially asking for your specific order numbers to cross-reference with the SpeedX tracking number. Once I provided the Shein order numbers, the company quickly confirmed a resolution.

“At Shein, one of our top priorities is providing a great shopping experience for our customers,” a representative told me. “We have connected with our customer service team, and we have confirmed a refund will be processed to the customer’s original form of payment.”

You’ve received your full $153 refund, closing this frustrating episode.

Robert Battaglia books a Panama Canal cruise through a travel agent for $2,369, pays his bill on time, but then watches his booking disappear two days later. Princess claims he owes the cruise line money. Can he salvage his vacation?

Question

I paid $2,369 for a Panama Canal cruise with Princess Cruises through a travel agent last year. My wife Norma and I made a deposit and then paid the final balance one day before the due date. 

Two days later, I checked my account on the Princess app and the reservation was gone.

When our travel agent called Princess, a customer service representative told her we were in default for nonpayment and owed approximately $2,000 more. Where was this new $2,000 charge coming from? Nobody at Princess could tell us.

After weeks of calls and emails to various Princess representatives, including their director of customer relations and VP of guest services, the mystery finally unraveled. Apparently, we were being charged for a “Princess Plus” upgrade that cost $1,440 — a 62 percent price increase we never authorized and didn’t even know about.

It turns out my wife tried to upgrade to Princess Plus, an optional add-on package that bundles several onboard amenities into a single daily price, through the website. The system returned an error message saying the purchase didn’t go through and instructed her to either contact the travel agent or pay for the upgrade onboard. We followed the system’s advice and planned to handle it on the ship.

Yet somehow, Princess was now treating us as if we’d purchased this upgrade and never paid for it. They canceled our reservation and kept $1,298 of our money as a cancellation fee. 

This feels less like a billing problem and more like a system failure that the company is exploiting. I’m a retired accountant. I know how computer systems work. When someone’s account shows “no balance due” and their travel agent can’t see a pending charge either, something is catastrophically wrong with Princess’s infrastructure. The company is hiding behind system failures they should have fixed.

We don’t even care about the cruise anymore. We just want our $1,298 back. — Robert Battaglia, Oro Valley, Ariz.

Answer

Princess should never have canceled your reservation. Full stop.

When your final payment went through, your account should have been settled. If the system later discovered a phantom charge that nobody could document or explain, Princess needed to contact you before taking action. Not after — before.

Instead, Princess relied on a billing system that gave conflicting information to different employees. Your travel agent couldn’t see the charge. The Princess customer service representative couldn’t explain what you supposedly owed. The company’s own portal told your wife the upgrade purchase failed. Yet somehow, all of this added up to a cancellation and a fee.

When a customer makes a payment by the due date and the company’s own statement shows “no balance due,” the burden is on the cruise line to explain any subsequent charges, before taking punitive action.

You did a great job of keeping records. A paper trail is essential when you’re dealing with any billing dispute.

You can appeal any rejection to the executive contacts at Princess Cruises listed on Elliott.org. A brief, firm email to a manager is the next step.

When my advocacy team and I contacted Princess on your behalf, the company directed us to your travel agent. That’s a common deflection in the cruise industry — many cruise lines prefer to have travel agents handle disputes rather than dealing with customers directly. The agency declined to comment, saying the matter was between you and Princess.

Ultimately, Princess agreed. A full three months after your cancellation, the cruise line refunded $1,298 to your credit card. Princess should tell its IT department to fix the billing software. This probably isn’t the first time  the cruise line has canceled a reservation because of a system problem — and it surely won’t be the last.

Roland Nazariyan paid $4,606 to see a UFC fight, but he missed the main event. Now he’s in a fight of his own with StubHub.

He’d ordered three tickets through the ticket platform. When they vanished, the billion-dollar reseller promptly delivered two refunds. But StubHub refused to reverse the charges for his third, and most expensive ticket.

Its rationale: A seller claimed the ticket had been transferred, and StubHub’s system simply erased Nazariyan’s paper trail of frantic calls and emails.

“They’re just playing games with me,” Nazariyan told me. 

This is when most people fold. The event is over, the money is gone. Fighting a corporation while the clock runs down on an event you couldn’t attend is a losing proposition. 

But Nazariyan decided to fight. He reached out to our advocacy team for help. And what we discovered was deeply troubling. (I’ll have details in a minute.)

This case raises several important questions:

• How can StubHub deny a refund when it doesn’t deliver tickets?
• Does a paper trail matter when you’re trying to get a ticket refund?
• Does StubHub’s FanProtect guarantee work?

First, let’s figure out what happened to Nazariyan.

“The seller said they transferred the ticket”

Nazariyan placed three separate orders for UFC 317 — Ilia Topuria versus Charles Oliveira — on the day of the event. He was a repeat customer so he knew his way around the platform. 

When the tickets didn’t arrive in time for the evening fight, he called StubHub. The company refunded the first two orders after he provided screenshots from his Ticketmaster account showing he’d never received them. 

But the third order sat in limbo. StubHub assured him it was “in final escalation” for a refund and said he’d hear back within 72 hours. But three days later, he was still waiting.

So he asked again.

“They claimed it got denied because the seller said they transferred it,” Nazariyan says. “But I had provided proof that I never received it.” 

What proof? Nazariyan says he had screen shots that showed no ticket had been delivered.

The sticking point: StubHub claims he never contacted them after he failed to receive the third ticket.

Nazariyan’s paper trail flatly contradicted that. In his emails, StubHub’s own customer service team asks him to provide documentation. He says he did.

“After a month of going back and forth, they’re claiming they know nothing about it from my end,” Nazariyan told me. “This is ridiculous!”

He’d done everything right. He’d called multiple times. He’d spoken with different representatives. He’d furnished written proof of his grievance. He’d escalated through available channels. And still, StubHub claimed he’d done none of those things.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Customer service roulette: Two refunds, one denial

When you buy multiple tickets for the same event through the same platform on the same day, you’d expect consistent treatment. Instead, what Nazariyan experienced looks a lot like customer service roulette.

Two orders got refunded. The third didn’t. All three involved the same problem: tickets that supposedly were transferred but never arrived. All three required escalation. All three involved a buyer actively communicating with customer service.

StubHub’s FanProtect Guarantee promises that you will get your tickets in time for the event, and if not, “you will receive tickets comparable to or better than the tickets you ordered, or your money back.” 

It’s a powerful guarantee. But guarantees are only good if the company honors them.

Here’s where the system breaks down: When Nazariyan called about his orders, he got escalations and eventually refunds for the first two tickets. On the third ticket, the customer service department pivoted to a different argument: the seller said the ticket was transferred, so case closed. 

The burden suddenly shifted: StubHub dropped its commitment to the buyer, making it Nazariyan’s job to prove the seller a liar.

This inconsistency is the real scandal. It suggests that StubHub’s refund decisions aren’t based on a clear, transparent policy. They appear to depend on who’s answering the phone, how persistent a customer is, or how many times they’re willing to call before giving up.

In the digital age, when everything is documented, when email is a permanent record, it’s hard to justify telling a customer they never contacted you when you have their emails in your own system. Yet that’s exactly what happened to Nazariyan. 

StubHub’s customer service had access to the same documentation he did. They could see his outreach. They could see his proof, but they chose to ignore it.

This raises a critical question: Is StubHub’s refund policy applied fairly? Or is it applied based on a customer’s persistence and willingness to endure multiple rounds of customer service hell?

The paper trail massacre: When proof becomes noise

In the pre-internet era, disputes were settled with signatures, receipts, and the classic “your word against mine” standoff. Digital commerce was supposed to change that. 

Today, every interaction leaves a trail. Email time stamps. Screenshots. Order numbers. Transaction logs.

Yet Nazariyan’s case suggests that documentation might matter less than you think, even when you have it.

He provided screenshots of his Ticketmaster account showing no tickets received. He had direct emails from StubHub asking him for exactly that proof. StubHub acknowledged receiving them. Then, when the refund didn’t materialize, the company’s final position was that he’d never contacted them about this order.

This suggests one of two things: StubHub’s internal systems are so fragmented that customer service reps can’t access information their colleagues had already collected. Or, the company’s definition of “contact” is narrower than any reasonable person would expect.

Neither scenario is reassuring.

The broader implication is that in the world of online ticket resales, a buyer’s documentation is useful mainly as a starting point. What actually matters is whether that documentation triggers an internal override — a manager willing to say, “Yes, this person clearly tried to resolve this, let’s make it right.” Without that human decision, without someone at StubHub actually choosing to honor what the FanProtect Guarantee says, the documentation is just noise in the system.

This becomes especially problematic for time-sensitive purchases like event tickets. Unlike most e-commerce disputes, you can’t resolve a ticket problem after the event. You see the concert or you don’t. You see the game or you don’t. The window for resolution is measured in hours, not weeks. A buyer who’s been shuffled between customer service reps for a month has lost that window long before a final decision gets made.

Nazariyan was left holding a $4,606 charge for tickets he never received and a company that seemed unwilling to acknowledge the obvious: the company failed to consistently apply its own refund policy.

The strategy: grind the customer down

Most customer service failures don’t happen because of a single bad interaction. They happen because of accumulated bad interactions — each one slightly worse than the last, each one chipping away at a customer’s faith that the company might eventually do the right thing.

Nazariyan’s month-long journey with StubHub suggests these failures aren’t a bug. They’re a feature. The strategy, intentional or not, is to wear customers down. Make it so exhausting to pursue a refund that some people will simply give up and accept the loss.

But Nazariyan didn’t give up. Instead, he contact our team. 

And here’s the thing: Companies like StubHub know this strategy works. The churn rate on customer complaints is a documented feature of corporate America. The longer a company can extend a dispute, the more likely the customer will move on to other problems.

This is galling in the ticket business because the event is a perishable resource. If you miss the game, you miss it. StubHub and other resellers operate with the certainty that most customers will eventually give up on pursuing a refund.

The escalation ladder he climbed — customer service rep, to supervisor, to “final escalation” — turned out to be a Potemkin village, a corporate facade with nothing behind it. Each level promised a resolution but failed to deliver. StubHub’s FanProtect Guarantee doesn’t always work.

The lesson for everyone else

I’ve been covering consumer issues long enough to know that one person’s story about a refund gone wrong is rarely about just that one refund. It’s usually a window into a system that works fine for some customers and fails for others. 

Nazariyan did everything right. He documented his outreach obsessively. He provided proof when asked. He called multiple times and spoke with multiple representatives. He escalated through available channels. 

What’s the lesson? If you buy tickets on StubHub and they don’t arrive, document everything. Keep your emails. Take screenshots. Save confirmation numbers from every call. Be relentless. Getting your money back will depend less on StubHub’s stated policy and more on your willingness to make the company decide that refunding you is easier than enduring your persistence.

That shouldn’t be how customer service works. But it is.

The resolution: Nazariyan’s persistence forces a refund

After weeks of failed promises and contradictory explanations, Nazariyan reached out to us for help. I contacted StubHub on his behalf.

A StubHub representative insisted the seller had fulfilled the order, but finally conceded that the company “could have done a better job assisting Mr. Nazariyan.”

StubHub agreed to provide a full refund. It also offered a 25 percent StubHub credit as a gesture of goodwill. It noted that Nazariyan had initiated a chargeback with his bank, and StubHub would honor the refund either way.

Nazariyan’s persistence paid off. But this case is not unique. Our case files are full of complaints just like his, raising the inevitable question: How many people simply give up?

The red zone is that anxious stretch from your front door to your airplane seat, where normal people turn into nervous wrecks.

It’s a blur of high-stakes, time-sensitive decisions that overloads your brain. And it’s so stressful that 73 percent of couples call travel the ultimate relationship test, according to a recent survey. It’s even given rise to the “airport divorce” — a trend where couples intentionally separate after security just to avoid an argument.

We’ve all seen it. The passenger screaming at a gate agent over a delay. The family sprinting through the terminal, shoes half-on. The quiet sob at the gate when the flight is canceled.

With air travel booming this summer, the red zone is only getting more intense. But what’s behind this chaos, and is there any way to escape its grasp?

The science behind your airport meltdown

The red zone is all about loss of control, according to experts.

“Airports are unpredictable,” says psychotherapist Malaysia Harrell. “Traffic, long security lines, delayed flights. For many, this uncertainty activates the brain’s stress response. Our nervous system begins preparing for a threat rather than travel.”

Your brain can’t tell the difference between a 45-minute TSA line and a tiger that’s about to eat you, explains psychiatrist Ishdeep Narang. And there’s the fear of flying, of course.

“The physiological response — the flood of cortisol, the racing heart — is identical,” he says.

Performance coach Graham Cherrett describes this as a “psychological cascade” that often starts subconsciously.

It begins with a core belief, often grounded in past travel nightmares: “This is going to be a disaster.” That belief triggers negative thoughts: “I bet it’s going to be busy,” “I’m going to get stuck in traffic.”

Those thoughts then give rise to physical feelings, including anxiety, a racing heart and shakiness. Your feelings then dictate your actions, like driving erratically, rushing through the terminal, snapping at your family.

Finally, those actions deliver the inevitable result: you trip, bump into someone, or encounter a simple delay, and … boom. Full red zone meltdown.

Even the pros lose it 

I should be immune to this. I’ve written about travel for decades, and I know the tricks. I have a passport with pages upon pages of stamps to prove it.

But the red zone doesn’t care.

My pulse quickens the moment I leave for the airport. By the time I reach the terminal, I’m scanning for threats that probably don’t exist: Will the kiosk work? Is that line moving? Did I attach the tag to my checked bag correctly?

It’s worse this summer because I accidentally left my passport in the laundry when I was in Singapore. One of the pages, an expired Laos visa, is smudged. I’m not sure if they’ll let me across the border into Thailand next week.

It’s a universal affliction. A few days ago in Sydney, I watched a family sprint through security. The father yelled at his wife. The wife snapped at the kids. The kids were crying. By the time they reached their gate, they looked like they’d been through the wringer, just like my passport.

Jon Morgan, a startup consultant and a planning expert, says some situations are avoidable. He recalls a man at check-in whose bag was 25 pounds over the limit. The passenger refused to pay the fee, holding up the entire line for 10 minutes to argue about a policy he could have checked online.

“This was a known variable, a predictable risk,” Morgan says. “Because of a deficit in preparation on his part, he became a problem to everyone else. That’s the essence of red zone chaos.”

The red zone survival guide

Experts say you can make it out of the airport red zone unscathed in a few steps:

Develop a preflight ritual. Here’s one developed by Angela Betancourt, a communications strategist who flies at least twice monthly with her toddler.  “I tell myself — and my toddler — that today is a travel day,” she says. “I literally say it out loud and then take a deep breath, and then I say, ‘Let’s do this!’ It puts me in a game-time mindset.” Other experts swear by deep breathing exercises. 

Build in absurdly long buffers. The most experienced travelers give themselves plenty of time — more than plenty of time, actually — to get to the airport. That usually means adding at least one hour to the required check-in time.

Eliminate micro-decisions. If you pack smarter, you can remove the last-minute fumbling for your documents. Stephan Blagovisnyy, a frequent traveler who runs a car rental agency, keeps his passport, phone, credit card, meds, and one charging cable in a mini sling that never leaves his body. “If a bag gets gate-checked, the essentials never leave me,” he says.

Accept that you’re no longer in charge. Robyn Sekula, who works for a nonprofit organization in Jeffersonville, Ind., and travels several times per month, has a mantra: “When I enter an airport, I tell myself mentally, ‘You are no longer in charge of what happens now.’ Just take a deep breath and smile.”

These strategies will help you get into the zone before you hit the red zone.

The bottom line: You can survive the red zone

Loss of control, high-stakes time pressure, and unpredictable obstacles can hijack your brain in the red zone. Your brain floods with cortisol and adrenaline, and even the smallest frustrations feel huge.

“Most people assume travel stress reflects a lack of discipline or emotional control,” says Ash Bhatt, a psychiatrist specializing in addiction medicine. “In reality, it’s the body’s biology responding to chaos.”

The solution isn’t to become superhuman, but to work with your biology.

Calm isn’t found at your destination. It’s cultivated each time you remind your nervous system that you’re not in danger. You’re just in transit.

Steve Brody is flying out of Newark this week, and he’s worried. 

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin is drawing up plans to pull U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers out of airports in cities the administration considers sanctuary jurisdictions. Newark Liberty International is first in line. Mullin wants to send those officers to a Newark detention center, where protesters have been camped out for days.

Brody, a retired government worker from Arlington, Va., is flying nonstop to Vancouver, Canada, but he’ll have to pass through U.S. Customs on his return flight. 

“Gimme strength,” he says. 

He’s not being dramatic. Customs officers are the people who let you back into the country. Pull them out, and international flights can’t unload passengers. The result will be chaos.

And that’s the part that should bother everyone, left, right and undecided. A passport doesn’t have a party affiliation. When a flight gets canceled, the system doesn’t check your voter registration before it strands you. You’re stuck.

Travel should be off limits to political maneuvering

The target list doesn’t stop in New Jersey. The administration’s sanctuary roster includes Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, Seattle and San Francisco — some of the largest airports in the country. Mullin has since said he’d focus on cities such as Newark first, which is a small comfort to the rest of America with summer vacation plans.

I’ve covered travel for almost three decades, and I’ve watched the government politicize everything from fees to airport security. But I’ve never seen the federal government threaten to brick an airport to win an argument.

Travel infrastructure should never be used as a political bargaining chip. Not by this administration, not by the next one, not ever.

Our transportation system isn’t a weapon for the executive branch to swing at politicians. There are better ways to do that. Messing around with people’s summer vacations is the fastest way to lose a midterm election.

A self-inflicted wound, visible from space

Then there’s the timing. The first World Cup game starts at MetLife Stadium in just a few weeks, a short drive from Newark, with hundreds of thousands of international fans flying into the region. Removing customs agents right as massive numbers of fans show up for the biggest sporting event on the planet would be a spectacular self-inflicted wound.

It’s also bad business, and the administration’s own people know it. Travel industry groups have lined up against the plan, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has reportedly pushed back on disrupting aviation infrastructure over a local law enforcement dispute.

The U.S. Travel Association warns the economic damage would be immediate and painful. It estimates a Newark shutdown would cost $8 billion in annual international visitor spending and put nearly 50,000 American jobs at risk. The group adds that Newark’s customs operations clear more than $30 billion in imported goods each year, so a stoppage would ripple out to shipping costs and store prices.

We almost did the smart thing

Here’s what should frustrate you the most if you’re traveling somewhere this summer. Congress already knows how to keep politics out of travel. It just keeps neglecting to finish the job.

During the long shutdown that left TSA employees working without pay, lawmakers introduced bill after bill to wall off aviation workers from the budget brawls, including the Keep America Flying Act and the Keep Air Travel Safe Act. The instinct was right. Security screeners and customs officers are essential to air travel. Without them, the system will sputter to a halt.

That’s the lesson Newark should finally teach us. Air travel is infrastructure, not leverage. You don’t shut off the water main to win a zoning dispute. And you don’t pull customs officers out of the terminal to make a point about a detention center.

How to protect your summer trip

In the meantime, you’ll need to take precautions if you’re flying somewhere this summer. Route around the hot zones if you can, but check your specific itinerary, because most of the obvious alternatives are also on the list. 

Buy travel insurance before you go, not after, and read the fine print. A standard policy may treat a staffing pullout as an administrative action rather than a covered disruption, which means a denied claim. A “cancel for any reason” policy gives you the most latitude, but you have to buy it early, and it costs more than standard insurance. And pay with a credit card, so the Fair Credit Billing Act has your back if a canceled flight never gets refunded.

But the real fix is bigger than any one traveler. Congress should pass a clean, permanent law that puts customs and air travel off-limits in political fights, full stop. Take the airports off the table.

Keeping politics out of your summer vacation should be common sense. Newark Airport belongs to the traveling public. If Washington wants to fight over immigration, it can do it on the floor of Congress—not in the airport terminal.