The government hasn’t assessed a single civil penalty against an airline for violating consumer protection rules this year. 

The Department of Transportation (DOT) has also summarily dismissed numerous formal complaints filed by passengers. 

On a single day this June, DOT closed out 10 passenger grievances, four of them refund demands filed back in 2020. Not one produced an enforcement action. The government took almost six years to tell those travelers what they already knew, which is that nobody was coming to help.

It gets worse. Instead of issuing fines, the government is giving money back to airlines. The DOT has forgiven nearly $28 million in the last five months.

What’s going on?

Earlier this year, the DOT rewrote its enforcement policy, shifting its focus to ensuring compliance with consumer protection rules rather than finding and penalizing companies that break them. Violations now draw a warning letter first. Civil penalties are reserved for conduct the office calls “widespread, systemic, egregious or intentional.” An airline that turns itself in gets strong consideration for no penalty at all.

It’s a sharp contrast with the rule it replaced, written three years earlier. That one promised to enforce the law vigorously and to intensify enforcement actions. It said penalties had to be large enough that airlines wouldn’t write them off as a cost of doing business.

That explains the lack of fines and the mass dismissals of consumer complaints. But what about that generous credit?

What airlines are getting

On December 5, DOT waived the final $11 million Southwest Airlines owed on its $140 million penalty for the December 2022 holiday meltdown that stranded more than 2 million passengers. That was the largest consumer penalty ever levied on an airline. The department credited Southwest for the $112 million it invested in its network operations center.

Four days later, DOT released American Airlines from nearly $17 million still owed to the U.S. Treasury. That money came from a $50 million penalty issued in October 2024 for mishandling wheelchairs and failing to assist passengers with disabilities. When the department announced that fine, it called it 25 times larger than any previous disability penalty and said it set a new precedent. Instead of paying, American now spends $16.8 million on lifts, tracking software and mobile devices it will own and operate.

Then came Frontier Airlines on April 17, the smallest but perhaps the most revealing of the orders. In January 2025, just before the new administration came into office, DOT fined the airline $650,000 for operating three chronically delayed flights. It suspended half the penalty and made the rest due in two installments of $162,500. Frontier paid the first one that March.

This spring, DOT canceled the second one. It credited Frontier $85,534 for compensating passengers on those three flights and $76,966 for improving push notifications in its mobile app.

Here’s how the credit worked: Frontier owed the Treasury $162,500. Instead of writing that check, the DOT allowed it to subtract what it had already spent on passengers and on its own app. Cash refunds counted dollar for dollar. Vouchers and travel credits counted at 80 cents on the dollar, so the government is at least conceding that a voucher is worth less than real money. Frontier added it up, had a company officer certify the total, sent in the paperwork, and the bill disappeared.

That’s nearly $28 million forgiven by the government in about five months.

Six thousand complaints but zero penalties

DOT reports consumer travel complaints every month. In May, the most recent month available, it logged 6,448 complaints. That’s a pace of more than 77,000 a year.

The top category was refunds, at 1,881 complaints, nearly a third of the total. Refund rules are the most specific consumer protections the department writes, but they’re the ones travelers say airlines keep breaking.

DOT notes in the report that a complaint isn’t proof of a violation. Fair enough. But 6,448 people sat down and filed in a single month, and the agency receiving them has fined nobody all year. You don’t have to be a consumer advocate to see that there’s something wrong with this picture.

Think of it as the highway patrol no longer enforcing speed limits. Then imagine a trooper pulls you over for doing 90 through a school zone, walks up to your window and hands you money. You get full credit for the new brakes you bought and 80 cents on the dollar for the defensive driving class you took on your own.

It’s actually worse than that. A driver who catches a lucky break still lives in a world with courts and a state attorney general who can enforce the law. Air travelers have none of that. Federal law hands consumer enforcement to the transportation secretary, and courts have turned away passengers who tried to sue on their own. When DOT gives the money back, there’s no second squad car up the road. 

Fix the deal instead of scrapping it

Congress could repair this with a quick tweak of existing statutes if it wanted to.

It can start by requiring the DOT to credit airlines only for cash that reaches passengers, at full value, never for a company’s own equipment or software. It can bar retroactive credits, so any offset gets negotiated into the original order in daylight. And it can require DOT to publish an easy-to-read annual scorecard: complaints received, cases opened, cases dismissed, penalties assessed and penalties collected.

And if you’re an airline passenger who runs into bad service, complain to the government. The DOT is required to record it and respond. If nothing else, it creates a full record of what the government is not doing for you when you travel. And at a time like this, everyone should be taking notes.

When something goes wrong on the road — a flight delay, vainshing luggage, illness — you file a travel insurance claim, expecting a quick reimbursement. 

Then your insurance company asks for documentation, and you realize you’ve kept almost none of it. 

If I had a penny for every time I’ve heard that as a consumer advocate, I’d be retired in the French Riviera by now. According to Squaremouth, one-third of travelers had their insurance claims denied in 2024. 

“The biggest reason travel insurance claims get delayed or denied isn’t the event itself,” says Suzanne Morrow, CEO of InsureMyTrip. “It’s missing paperwork. Gathering the right documentation while you’re still on your trip can mean the difference between a full reimbursement and no reimbursement at all.”

Your phone’s full of blurry photos. Emails are buried in your inbox. That receipt you grabbed at the hotel? Long gone. Your memory of what you actually spent? Even foggier. 

The difference between a fully paid travel insurance claim and a denied one often hinges on whether you’ve kept the right documentation—receipts, photos, emails, and timestamps that prove what happened and what it cost you. The good news is that staying organized requires nothing more than your smartphone, a folder system, and five minutes of nightly discipline.

It’s happening more than ever

The consequences of failing to keep good paperwork when you travel can be brutal. Missing bills lead to denied claims. Incomplete forms trigger requests for more information that slow everything down. Late reporting means missed deadlines. 

“One of the most common causes of a delay is incomplete paperwork,” warns Clayton Eidson, CEO of AZ Health Insurance Agents. “Make sure you furnish your travel insurance company or claims administrator with all the requested information. Otherwise, you could be looking at a lengthy delay.”

Eidson has seen thousands of dollars in refunds lost simply because paperwork didn’t tally.

“Good recordkeeping need not be difficult, but it needs to be done with deliberation,” he adds. “The clearer it can be shown what has happened and what the financial result will be, the easier the claim will be to settle.”

Experts say they’re seeing more travel insurance denials because of lax paperwork. But that doesn’t have to be you.

The process starts with a simple device almost everyone has: a phone.

Your phone is your secret documentation weapon

Using your smartphone in a smart way can spell the difference between success and failure.

“If one has a good phone, just taking tons of photos and maybe videos would be super helpful,” says Justin Gordon, a travel documentation enthusiast who runs a vacation rental website. 

OK, his advice sounds almost absurdly basic, but here’s why it matters. Photos create a timestamped, objective record. They’re harder to dispute than memory or paper receipts that fade over time.

Recent iOS updates make this even more practical. The latest version of Apple’s operating system introduced a game-changing feature: the ability to record calls — a lifesaver when you’re battling an airline or hotel over a refund. 

Apple Notes now automatically embeds call recordings, so you’re not juggling multiple files. You can attach related images directly to the same note. 

How to use your phone to keep better records

Basically, keep your phone out at all times and take pictures of everything. Snap receipts immediately after you get them. Photograph your luggage before you check it (make sure you get that bar code on the tag, too). Screenshot flight confirmations. Take a video of your rental car’s condition before you drive off the lot. Take another one when you return it. 

“I religiously take a picture of the dashboard before I hand in my keys,” says Jon Mest, a frequent traveler who’s learned this the hard way after being hit with several bogus fuel charges.

How to file the information you collect when you travel

Photographs are just the beginning. You need a system for organizing all of them, plus invoices, emails, booking confirmations and proof of incidents.

Experts say you should create a dedicated folder for everything related to your trip, both physical and digital. 

“Before each trip, I create a shared folder in Google Drive titled with the trip name,” explains Merna Emara, a frequent traveler who manages all her logistics digitally. “Every booking email, PDF, and invoice gets saved there automatically using a Gmail filter.”

Pay extra close attention to any invoice you pay with cash. 

“If I buy something in cash, I immediately snap a picture of the receipt using Google Lens and upload it to the same folder,” Emara says. This is crucial. Cash transactions leave no electronic trail, so you need to create one yourself.

For the old-school approach, travelers still swear by simple systems. 

“When traveling or at home, I keep all correspondence pertaining to the matter at hand in a specific titled folder on my desktop and my email page,” says Harry Wenkert, a retired pharmaceutical sales representative from Pittsburgh. “This obviously reduces the time spent searching for receipts, information and photos, as well as keeping information from being lost. For an extra layer of retention, I use an external hard drive as a backup.”

The common thread here is centralization. Everything in one place means nothing gets lost. Whether it’s a folder on your phone, a Google Drive, Dropbox, or an external hard drive at home, the system only works if you actually use it.

Apps can automate the work

If you prefer to let technology do some of the heavy lifting, there are several apps you can consider.

.

• Expensify stands out as a favorite among frequent travelers. The app uses optical character recognition to automatically extract transaction details from receipts. You photograph a receipt, and Expensify captures the date, vendor, amount, and category. It syncs across devices, and you can export everything as a spreadsheet for insurance companies or tax reports.

• Notion has become popular for building custom tracking templates. “I built a simple ‘Travel Tracker’ template with columns for item, cost, date, and category,” Emara explains. “It syncs across devices and allows me to export as a spreadsheet for insurance or tax reports later.”

• TripIt Pro also has its devotees. The app automatically tracks your flight details and sends alerts for delays, cancellations, and potential refunds. It also allows you to store and access up to 25 documents per trip, such as booking confirmations and passport information.

But how do you actually pull it all together? To find out, I asked insiders.

What travel insiders say about good recordkeeping

The travel industry perspective on this is: don’t overthink it.

“We recommend using cloud applications like Expensify or TripIt, which automatically store receipts, tickets, and reservations in one place,” says Vlad Polyanskiy, chief marketing officer at FlightRefunder. “This helps to collect all the evidence even in case of loss of phone or luggage.”

But apps only work if you use them. This is where discipline comes in — specifically, the nightly review.

For travelers on longer trips, a simple nightly spreadsheet session works wonders. 

“We take long trips: two months and more at a time. I bring my laptop and create a chart on Excel,” says Susan Stevens, a veteran traveler. “It is chronological but I have different columns for transportation, lodging, meals and tips.”

So here’s the routine: Each evening, review receipts from the day. Enter amounts into your tracking system (converting currencies as needed). File physical receipts into labeled manila envelopes by week. 

It sounds tedious, but it can save you a lot of headaches down the line, according to experts.

“It only takes a few seconds but saves hours later if there’s a dispute or reimbursement delay,” says Jonathan Dies, owner of DFW RV Rentals, who manages documentation for his business and clients dealing with insurance claims.

His key insight is to treat every trip like an insurance claim before it ever becomes one. 

“Every repair, refuel, and overnight stop is logged with date, mileage, and invoice photos,” Dies says. “When insurance or taxes come calling, you’ll have every proof you need at your fingertips.”

How keeping good paperwork can help you

Consider what happened to Yunna Takeuchi, co-founder of City Unscripted, a travel experience platform. A series of flight delays caused her to miss prepaid cultural workshop bookings across Italy. 

“My habit of photographing every receipt, saving all confirmation emails in dedicated Gmail folders, and maintaining real-time expense tracking through Expensify provided a complete evidence chain that our insurance required for full reimbursement,” Takeuchi explains.

For example, during a luggage delay in Barcelona, having digital copies of packing lists, purchase receipts for workshop materials, and photographic evidence of bag contents enabled full replacement reimbursement within two weeks. Total value of her claim: $3,500.

Kimberly O’Donovan, vice president of operations at Travelex Insurance Services, says the best recordkeepers tell a convincing story.

“Receipts, invoices, and even photos are critical pieces of evidence that support a travel insurance claim,” he adds. “Travelers who take the time to document their relevant expenses and incidents thoroughly — and submit all the evidence required — are more likely to have their claims processed sooner.”

Documentation also buys you speed. Claims adjusters are obsessed with paper trails because they reduce ambiguity. When you submit a complete package with receipts, screenshots, correspondence, timestamps and photos, the adjuster can approve your claim quickly. There’s no back-and-forth. 

The process starts before you leave your home.

Here’s what travel insurance companies want

Experts say the trick is to know what your travel insurance company will ask for and to anticipate it.

Before your trip, create a documentation checklist based on your travel insurance policy. What does your insurance company require? Medical records? Police reports? Airline incident reports? Flight confirmations? Proof of payment? 

Knowing in advance prevents scrambling later.

“Save all your receipts. Take photos of your travel receipts and store them in a dedicated album on your phone to keep them organized,” Nihan advises. “Save all your travel booking confirmation emails in a specific email inbox folder, too. This way, you can avoid spending extra time searching for the right receipt should you need to make a claim.”

For expensive items you’re bringing on your trip, take pre-trip photos. 

“If these items are lost or damaged, having proof of their original cost will help support your claim,” Nihan says. “If you want to be extra diligent, take photos or videos of the items you’ve packed in your suitcase before you leave in case they’re lost, damaged, or stolen on your trip.”

This might sound excessive, but it’s not. Lee Charlton, a commercial photographer based in England who travels extensively, approaches each documentation like it’s a legal case.

“Act like you’ll need to prove everything,” he says. “Don’t rely on memory or flaky Wi-Fi to pull stuff up later. Snap it, store it, and back it up.”

Bottom line: good records are mandatory when you travel

Travel documentation isn’t an optional best practice. It’s the difference between getting paid and getting nothing if you have to file a travel insurance claim. It’s the difference between a claim processed in five days versus languishing for months.

Fortunately, it doesn’t require elaborate systems or expensive apps. A smartphone, a Google Drive folder, and five minutes of discipline each night will get you most of the way there. Add an app like Expensify if you want to automate receipt capture. Create a nightly ritual if you want to ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

But do something. Because when your flight gets delayed and you’re stuck in a hotel for an unplanned night, or your luggage goes missing and you need to replace everything you packed, or you get sick abroad and need a $14,000 hospital bill covered, the receipts, screenshots, emails, and photos you collected will be the only thing between you and a financial loss.

Think of it as cheap insurance for your insurance. And unlike travel insurance itself, it’s absolutely free.

Stephen Stein arrives at his hotel for a family gathering only to find his reservation missing. Booking.com promises to cover the extra cost of a new room but then traps him in a cycle of endless paperwork. Is there a way out? 

Question

I reserved a two-bedroom suite at Homewood Suites by Hilton in Bonita Springs, Fla., through Booking.com. When our party of three adults arrived at the hotel, a desk agent told us he had no reservation for us, despite my providing him with the Booking.com confirmation number.

I called Booking.com, but the representative was not able to give me a quick resolution. This was critical because we were due for a family dinner in 90 minutes.

On our own, we found an alternative hotel nearby, but it only had regular rooms available, no suites. We booked two rooms directly, which cost $126 more than the original Booking.com reservation. I called Booking.com, and a representative promised to cover approximately half of the difference.

In the days following, I made many calls to Booking.com to confirm the payment. Each time, the company came up with a different excuse for not authorizing payment.

After over three hours of waiting time and talking with agents, I’ve given up. Can you help me get my money back? — Stephen Stein, Coral Gables, Fla.

Answer

That’s no way to start a family trip. Booking.com should have secured your reservation at the Homewood Suites, or, if the hotel was overbooked, it should have immediately found you comparable accommodations.

When you book through an online travel agency like Booking.com, you are adding a middleman to the transaction. Usually, this works seamlessly. (Also, an online agency can save you money.) But sometimes, this extra layer causes your trip to come apart at the seams.

It looks like you did everything right. You had your confirmation number. When the hotel turned you away, you contacted Booking.com immediately.

It’s standard industry practice for a booking agent or hotel to cover the difference in cost if they must relocate you to a different property due to an error. Booking.com agreed to this in principle but then trapped you in a bureaucratic loop.

The requests for proof of currency were particularly absurd. You were booking a hotel in Florida using a U.S. credit card; the currency was obviously U.S. dollars. You provided credit card statements and invoices from the hotel manager, which should have been sufficient.

You can prevent this in the future by calling the hotel directly a few days before your arrival to confirm your reservation, especially when traveling during peak periods. Don’t trust a confirmation from a third party. Get it directly from the hotel.

You escalated your complaint to the customer service executives using the Booking.com contacts on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org. When that didn’t work, my advocacy team reached out to Booking.com on your behalf.

The company reviewed your case and refunded $126, the full price difference between your original rate and the replacement hotel room, a much better resolution than the original offer.

Viva Aerobus cancels Carol Bartell’s flight to Mexico and insists on wiring her refund to a U.S. bank account. But the money disappears after a SWIFT code error sends the cash to the wrong credit union.

Question 

I booked flights with Viva Aerobus from Tijuana to Hermosillo, Mexico. The airline canceled the flights, and I requested a refund. Viva Aerobus would not refund to my American Express card. Instead, it said it had to wire the money to my U.S. bank account.

I sent the airline the details for an international transfer. My bank is Northrop Grumman Federal Credit Union. I found a SWIFT code for the bank online and included it in the forms.

It turns out my bank does not use a SWIFT code or an intermediary bank. To make matters worse, Viva Aerobus performed the transfer but used a different SWIFT code than the one I provided. It sent the money to Navy Federal Credit Union. I am not a member there, so that bank will not help me.

I have sent several emails to customer service and the CEO, but nobody will reply. I also filed a formal complaint with PROFECO, Mexico’s consumer protection agency. Can you help me get my $844 refund?— Carol Bartell, Carlsbad, Calif.

Answer

When an airline cancels a flight, it’s required under federal rules to refund you if you decide not to travel. But what we have here is a comedy (or maybe a tragedy) of banking errors, and it is difficult to know who gets the blame. 

Let’s start with the refund itself. Viva Aerobus should have simply reversed the charge on your American Express card. It is unclear why the airline insisted on a wire transfer, but that requirement set the stage for the confusion that followed.

You admitted in your correspondence that you searched for your bank’s SWIFT code online. That is dangerous. You should always contact your bank to verify wire instructions. As you found out, your credit union does not use the SWIFT system.

However, Viva Aerobus made a significant error as well. You provided a specific code, but the airline’s records show it sent the money to a different one. As you correctly point out, it directed your refund to Navy Federal Credit Union instead of Northrop Grumman.

When a wire transfer hits a bank where the beneficiary has no account, the funds are typically rejected and returned to the sender. This process can take time, and money often sits in limbo while banks reconcile the error.

You did the right thing by escalating your complaint. You contacted the airline’s executives (I list the names and numbers for Viva Aerobus executives on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org). You also filed a complaint with PROFECO, Mexico’s consumer protection agency. For Mexican airlines, PROFECO is often the most effective route to a resolution because it has regulatory authority over carriers like Viva Aerobus.

Since the airline stopped responding to you, it may have been ignoring you. When a consumer protection agency gets involved, your case may get transferred to a different department that handles government complaints. Unfortunately, that often freezes direct communication with the customer to instead handle the issue through official legal channels.

I contacted Viva Aerobus several times on your behalf. Finally, Viva Aerobus responded to you via your PROFECO complaint. It processed a new refund for $844, the full amount of your ticket.

Kim Calla has a superpower. According to her credit card issuer, she can sit in two airline seats at the same time.

At least, that is the only logical conclusion to draw from her recent dispute with Capital One. Calla fell for an old travel scam and booked two identical seats for a flight to Lisbon on TAP Air Portugal.

Common sense suggests a passenger can’t fly twice on the same plane. But when she asked Capital One for help, the bank sided with the airline.

“I’m still asking how we could physically sit in two seats, same flight, same passport number,” Calla told me. “It’s a very confusing situation.”

It’s a cautionary tale for anyone who relies on credit card disputes to fix their travel nightmares. In an era where artificial intelligence often adjudicates financial disputes, unfortunately logic is the first casualty.

A panic purchase

Calla’s trouble began with a Google search. Three days before her scheduled trip to Lisbon, she looked for TAP’s phone number to confirm her reservation. She dialed a number she found online, believing it was the airline.

It wasn’t.

“I was misled by someone posing as a TAP representative stating I had no tickets booked for that flight and I would need to rebook,” she says.

Calla had fallen for the fake call center scam. Her JetBlue Mastercard immediately flagged a fraudulent $16,935 charge, saving her from the initial theft. But the scammers had successfully terrified her. Believing she had no reservation and her trip was ruined, she went online and panic-bought two new tickets for $2,301 using her Capital One card.

Thirty minutes later, after the dust had settled, she realized her original tickets were valid. She called TAP to cancel the duplicate booking.

“They would not cancel the ones we purchased online,” she says. “We understand the cancellation policy, however, in this case, there should be exceptions to the rule.”

She’s right. But before we go there, let’s talk about those bogus call centers.

Are fake airline call centers still a thing?

Calla is the latest victim of a still widespread scam: fake airline call centers.

Here is how it works: Scammers purchase ads on search engines like Google or Bing. When you search for “Delta customer service” or “TAP Air Portugal change flight,” the fake number appears at the very top of the results, looking legitimate.

When you call, a “representative” answers. They sound professional. They ask for your booking reference and name. But then, the script flips. They claim your flight is canceled, or your ticket is invalid, or you owe a fee to “reactivate” your reservation.

Panic sets in. You hand over your credit card number. Sometimes they charge you a “service fee.” Sometimes, as in Calla’s case, they try to drain your card for thousands of dollars. And often, they manipulate you into making unnecessary purchases just to fix the problem they invented.

Fortunately, credit card companies are wising up to this problem. But are they smarter than the scammers?

The breakdown of the chargeback

Calla did what most consumers do when a merchant refuses a refund for an obvious error: She filed a credit card dispute.

The Fair Credit Billing Act protects consumers against unauthorized charges and billing errors. A duplicate charge for the same service usually qualifies as a billing error.

She sent Capital One proof of the double booking, pointing out the absurdity of the situation.

(I’ve exercised restraint in writing about her case. I refuse to crack a joke about her cat or to claim her maiden name is Schrödinger. Let’s just say she doesn’t have any superpowers that we know of. There was only one Kim Calla.)

Capital One closed the case in favor of the airline.

Why? Likely because a human being never looked at it.

Banks are increasingly relying on AI and automated logic trees to handle the volume of chargeback requests. To an algorithm, this didn’t look like a mistake. It looked like a “nonrefundable” purchase that Calla made voluntarily. The AI sees a valid transaction code and a strict airline policy. It does not see that Calla can’t undergo mitosis and occupy seats 18B and 20B simultaneously. 

Oh, dear. I did it, didn’t I?

The system works great for banks, which save money on staffing. It works poorly for humans like Calla, who was out $2,301.

Can this trip be saved?

Calla contacted my advocacy team as a last resort.

“I don’t expect you to advocate for us, but I’m hoping you will,” she wrote.

Our advocate, Dwayne Coward, contacted TAP Air Portugal on her behalf. He presented the paper trail, showing the duplicate tickets and the timeline of the scam.

It turns out, the wires had gotten crossed during the dispute process. A TAP representative explained that when Capital One initially opened the dispute, the money was temporarily removed from the account. TAP’s system saw this and assumed the refund had been processed.

When Capital One ruled against Calla and reinstated the charge, the credit card company didn’t notify it to fix the duplicate booking.

After our inquiry, TAP reviewed the case manually—something the credit card company should have done. It acknowledged the flight showed a duplicate booking.

Calla received a full refund.

How to win your next dispute

Calla’s case is a reminder that a credit card dispute is not a slam-dunk. Here is how to protect yourself:

• Don’t Google the airline’s number. The source of this misery was a fake help line. Always look for the contact number on the airline’s official app or your physical ticket confirmation. Our executive contacts are also reliable.

• Don’t panic-buy. Scammers rely on urgency. If someone tells you your flight is canceled, hang up and check the airline’s website directly.

• Appeal the AI decision. If a bank rejects your dispute with a form letter, don’t accept it. Request a manual review and send a physical letter to the billing inquiries address listed on your statement.

Calla says she learned a valuable lesson.

“I don’t care how seasoned you are, anyone can fall prey,” she says.

That’s especially true when the computers are in charge.

Is the rush to the Arctic Circle really the smartest way to beat the summer heat, or is it just the fastest way to burn through your savings? 

The travel industry is obsessed with “coolcations”—flocking to Scandinavia, Alaska and Iceland as global temperatures rise. But many of the cool destinations have become overcrowded tourist traps. 

Maybe the smart move this summer is a “hotcation”: Head straight for the heat, where luxury is cheap and the air conditioning is cold.

The cold hard truth about coolcations

The marketing pitch for a coolcation is simple: Escape the sweltering summer by heading north. But the reality can be a sweaty, expensive mess. 

Terence Leung, a marketing manager from Calgary, followed the herd to Scandinavia last July. He expected a quiet getaway but found rooms had doubled in price and ferry routes were fully booked. Worse, he ran into a heat wave in Oslo. 

“I was in hotels without air conditioning,” he recalls. “People started pacing the hallways at midnight, unable to sleep.” 

Adam Tank, a tech executive from Kansas City, had an even worse experience in Iceland. Trying to beat the late summer heat, he rented a car to drive the island’s famous ring road. After a mudslide delayed his arrival in a northern village, he got lost and asked a police officer for directions.

“They said yes to my request and asked me to follow them,” says Tank. But instead of leading him to his vacation rental, the police drove him 30 minutes out of town into the middle of nowhere. 

“The cops clearly weren’t thrilled with the amount of tourism and didn’t want us in their town,” he says. 

Is the “coolcation” just a marketing gimmick?

According to industry insiders, the coolcation trend isn’t an organic response to climate change, but a calculated move to sell inventory. 

“It is a classic inventory problem solved with premium branding,” says Delbert Lee, a former vice president of sales for a tour company. He explains that companies identified destinations with low summer demand and repackaged them as exclusive escapes, charging 30 to 40 percent more for infrastructure that was never built to handle peak crowds during the summer. 

Samuel Huang, CEO of an ad agency in Singapore, agrees. His firm has been tracking worldwide advertising content for years, and it’s seen a 30 to 40 percent increase in ad spend targeting warmer regions with arctic imagery. 

“This marketing push creates an artificial scarcity that inflates prices for subpar infrastructure,” Huang says. He notes that negative online reviews for these destinations are climbing by 30 percent quarter-over-quarter. 

Lorena Basualdo, a luxury travel adviser who specializes in Italian vacations, points out that northern gateways have brief summers and limited transport slots. 

“You’ll still find limited AC, small elevators, scarce shade structures, undersized water stations, and transit timetables that can’t stretch during surges,” she warns. 

The case for the “hotcation”

While everyone else is fighting for a view of a glacier, the “hotcation”—embracing the heat in places like Phoenix, Dubai, or Madrid—is emerging as a value play. 

“A luxury hotel in Dubai or Phoenix operates at a loss during its summer off-season,” explains Lee. He says these properties offer 50 to 70 percent discounts not as a special deal, but as a baseline necessity. 

Amanda Persi, CEO of The Getaway Co., agrees that hot destinations can offer better value, but warns that travelers must be honest with themselves about the heat. 

“Sightseeing all day in the sun isn’t always realistic,” Persi says. She notes that if you treat the trip less like a checklist and more like a lifestyle—slowing down and resting by the pool during the day—the experience can be magical. 

Leung, who felt burned by his Scandinavian adventure, eventually tried this approach. 

“During peak heat, Phoenix and Madrid were empty and cheap,” he says. The resorts had shaded areas, ice-cold air, and open pools. “Heat can be managed,” he adds. “Scarcity and crowds can’t.” 

I’ve spent a few summers in hot-weather destinations like Phoenix and the Florida Keys, and I’m with Leung on this one. The tourists leave, and the rates drop faster than the temperature in your air-conditioned hotel room.

But is it a fair comparison?

Of course, not everyone agrees that swapping a glacier for a desert pool is a valid comparison. Jared Sternberg, founder of Gondwana Ecotours, argues that comparing Alaska to Phoenix is meaningless. 

“One is about immersion in wild landscapes, long daylight, wildlife, and remoteness; the other is about urban comfort,” Sternberg says. 

Experts also defend the high prices of remote destinations. Sternberg notes that Alaska faces significantly higher infrastructure costs and shorter operating seasons. 

Andrew Harrison, a travel advisor with OvationNetwork, points out that the high price tags in Scandinavia reflect the reality of the local economy. 

“Scandinavia has the highest fuel and labor costs in the world, and the prices for the trip reflect that,” Harrison says. 

Travelers are voting with their wallets

Despite the warnings, it looks like travelers are trending toward hotcation this summer. Lauren McCormick, a spokeswoman for the travel insurance company Squaremouth, says interest in hot-weather destinations for this summer has outpaced demand for cool-weather getaways. 

Squaremouth’s data shows interest in Costa Rica has jumped nearly 41 percent and Italy is up 24 percent, while searches for Norway have dropped by nearly 18 percent. 

Still, she warns that a hotcation comes with risks.

“Hot destinations, especially during summer months, bring added health and safety considerations, such as heat-related illnesses,” she says. McCormick recommends either travel insurance or medical insurance with at least $50,000 in medical coverage and $100,000 for medical evacuation. 

How to travel smarter this summer

If you want to avoid the “coolcation” trap but aren’t ready to bake in the desert, there are middle-ground solutions. 

• Wait for the shoulder. Mitch Krayton, a Denver travel agent, warns against the Arctic or Alaska in high summer. “Go in the shoulder season or off season to avoid the crowds and get the best rates,” he says. For Alaska, that means September and October.
  
• Look for alternative cool spots. Sam Bruce, co-founder of Much Better Adventures, suggests looking at cooler places outside the obvious circuit, like Estonia, where you can enjoy milder summers without the overcrowding.
  
• Check the AC. Don’t assume a northern hotel is equipped for a heatwave. Basualdo says you must ensure your room has an air conditioner. “Filter out the ones that don’t,” she says.

So this summer, you might not want to hang out with the cool kids heading north with the herd. They’re putting a strain on the infrastructure, and ironically, they may suffer through a heatwave without air conditioning.

Ultimately, the hottest summer destination might literally be the hottest summer destination. 

It started with Stewie, a 3 1/2 -foot humanoid robot.

Stewie’s owner bought a ticket for him to Dallas on Southwest Airlines recently. When the robot walked through the terminal, passengers took pictures. 

Within days, Southwest rewrote its policy to keep human-like and animal-like robots off its aircraft “regardless of size or purpose.” 

Other airlines have followed recently. Delta’s ban happened June 18. United’s took effect July 23. American Airlines still has no published position, but I expect one any day now.

So we have three bans and one open question: Should airlines be doing this at all?

What are the rules on robots? 

Each ban covers the cabin and checked bags, and some carve out toys. 

• Southwest allows other robots, toys included, if they fit inside a carry-on bag and meet battery limits. 

• Delta’s restricted items page calls its ban temporary, and says it covers any robot built to imitate a human or animal in appearance, size, movement or behavior. 

• United says its policy applies to humanoid and animal-like robots and wasn’t prompted by a specific incident.

From United Airlines’ banned items page. Robots are “dangerous and excluded” items.

Will they confiscate your kid’s robot dog?

Here’s where some of the breathless media coverage has gone a little sideways. Southwest and Delta both publish toy exemptions. Southwest allows toys inside a carry-on bag that comply with the battery rules. Delta’s policy allows for human-like and animal-like toy robots, provided they meet standard carry-on limits, stow in an FAA-approved location and comply with battery restrictions. United’s guidance reportedly does the same for smaller robotic toys.

The problem here is that nobody has formally defined a toy. That leaves it up to gate agents to decide in real time while the boarding line waits behind them. A robot dog from a big-box store and a therapy seal costing thousands both have fur, and both make animal noises.

The case for the ban

True, there’s a fire risk to consider. Under current FAA guidance, batteries up to 100 watt-hours can fly without permission, 101 to 160 watt-hours need the carrier’s approval (except certain mobility aids), and anything above 160 watt-hours is forbidden on a passenger plane. A full-size humanoid carries far more power than a laptop. 

There’s another reason. A gate agent has to decide whether a machine with limbs is baggage, cargo or a ticketed passenger. One of the two Southwest incidents that led to the ban held an Oakland departure for close to an hour while a crew worked that out. Ultimately, the airline decided it was self-loading cargo, just like the other passengers. (I’m kidding, we are definitely not self-loading cargo.)

What about the robot uprising?

In 1920 the Czech playwright Karel Capek wrote the play “R.U.R,” gave us the word “robot,” and built the plot around a machine rebellion that wipes out humanity. HAL 9000 and the Terminator kept the story going for a century. 

Are these bans nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction, fueled by Hollywood blockbusters?

None of the three carriers has pointed to fears of a robot mutiny as the reason behind their ban. The stated concern is batteries and handling. Not one reported incident on Southwest or any other airline involves a robot doing anything a suitcase couldn’t do. Stewie sat in a seat without a fuss. A robot named Bebop had a battery that exceeded the cabin limit, and the crew removed the battery without drama.

The definitions have crept past batteries, though. United’s internal guidance, as reported, reaches machines that mimic how a person thinks and speaks. Cognition has nothing to do with watt-hours. When a safety rule starts describing what a device is rather than what it might do, the rule has stopped being about safety.

How much of this is AI hysteria?

Pew Research Center surveyed 5,119 U.S. adults recently and found that 63 percent think AI is advancing too quickly. (Only 2 percent say too slowly.) Roughly 40 percent expect AI to harm society over the next 20 years, against 16 percent who expect benefit. 

Airlines read those polls, and it’s safe to say nobody at Delta got fired for banning a robot.

Public unease isn’t a safety finding, though. It’s more of a market condition. Neither the FAA nor the DOT has restricted robots. Three private carriers moved on their own, ahead of any regulator and ahead of any in-flight failure.

What about the robots that help?

Delta’s policy says these machines are “not considered assistive devices” and don’t meet the trained service animal definition. 

But hang on—do airlines get to make that call by writing it down? Under federal law, an assistive device is “any piece of equipment that assists a passenger with a disability” to hear, see, communicate, maneuver or manage other functions of daily life. 

Paro, the seal-shaped robot used in dementia and palliative care, is sold as a medical device. Under Delta’s language, it’s an animal-like robot. And a machine that guides a blind traveler or helps a nonverbal passenger communicate will satisfy the federal definition whether or not it has a face.

Aviation has done this before, and taken it back

The record on emergency device bans is uneven, and the reversals are instructive.

Homeland Security banned laptops and large electronics from the cabins of flights to the U.S. from 10 Middle Eastern and North African airports in March 2017. All of it was lifted by that July, four months later, once those airports installed better screening. 

Congress banned lighters after the shoe bomber incident in 2005. TSA suspended enforcement on Aug. 4, 2007, telling Congress that common lighters “no longer pose a significant threat” and that confiscating 22,000 a day pulled screeners off looking for explosives. The reversal is in the Federal Register.

Passengers spent decades switching off electronics below 10,000 feet. The FAA convened its own rulemaking committee, found the interference risk didn’t justify the rule, and cleared gate-to-gate use in October 2013.

Shoes came off at checkpoints for almost 20 years. Homeland Security ended that on July 8, 2025, citing better scanners.

Not every ban gets reversed, of course. The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 remains forbidden under a 2016 DOT emergency order. Hoverboards are still on Delta’s prohibited list. Loose lithium cells can’t ride as cargo on a passenger jet. 

Question is, should this ban remain?

If you voted yes:

• Should the ban still apply to a robot that meets every FAA battery limit?
• Who decides at the gate whether a device is a toy or a prohibited robot?
• Should the FAA write one national rule instead of individual carriers writing their own?

If you voted no:

• Should a robot travel as cargo, as a carry-on or in its own purchased seat?
• Who pays when a crew removes a robot at the gate?
• Would you sit next to a robot for six hours?

My take

Look, air safety comes first, and nobody wants a rogue lithium fire in row 12. Almost no one is going to argue with the battery case for banning robots. Watt-hour limits already exist, they’re federal, and any airline is free to enforce them hard. If a humanoid packs 400 watt-hours, it doesn’t fly. 

But what the carriers added on top was a test based on what a machine looks like, plus a preemptive declaration that nothing in the category could ever be an assistive device. Aviation has a habit of banning first and asking questions later. Laptops, lighters, e-readers and shoes all came back once cooler heads prevailed. Delta calls its ban temporary. Maybe airlines should use the time to test the hazard, then write a rule about the battery instead of what it’s powering.

Your turn

Would you fly with a robot, or would you rather the seat beside you stayed human? Our comments are open.

Travel websites are asking you to do something strange this summer. They want you to write to Congress and beg lawmakers not to lower your credit card fees.

That’s right, sites that claim to work for consumers are running petition drives against a bill that could make prices more affordable. 

The bill is the Credit Card Competition Act (CCCA), and it would require the biggest banks to let more than one network process your credit card. The proposed law has bipartisan support, including an unexpected endorsement from the president.

The CCCA would lower the swipe fee merchants pay every time you buy something. Fees run about 2 to 3 percent of the purchase, and sometimes more. Merchants build the cost into their prices, and you pay them whether you know it or not.

Last week, the advocacy group Demand Progress reported that the credit card industry had already spent $200 million since 2023 to defeat the legislation. That’s because the CCCA has a real shot at becoming law. Sponsors tried attaching it onto a cryptocurrency bill in January, and they’ve said they’ll keep looking for a bigger package to tie it to.

Which brings me back to those strange petitions.

Credit card swipe-fee misdirection

The pitch this summer is always some version of “protect your rewards,” warning that the bill will eviscerate your points balance unless you tell Congress to stop it. There’s even a handy form: You fill in your name and ZIP code, and it fires off a pre-written letter to your representatives.

These drives run in partnership with the credit card industry’s lobbyists. The banks have their own campaign called “Hands Off My Rewards,” run by their trade group, the Electronic Payments Coalition, whose members include JPMorgan Chase, Capital One and Visa. The airlines have one called “Protect Our Points,” funded by Airlines for America. The travel websites just mobilize the readers.

It’s a classic misdirection. A bank lobbying campaign gets dressed up as consumer activism, and the audience provides the outrage for free. The industry couldn’t buy that kind of authenticity. 

It didn’t have to. The sites handed it over to the travel “experts.” One site openly admits that it’s teamed up with the Electronic Payments Coalition to amplify the message. Its readers have mailed thousands of letters to Congress, all defending the banks.

Your travel ‘expert’ works for the bank

You might wonder why a travel site would carry water for the banks.

Maybe it’s because these sites aren’t news organizations at all, but affiliate marketers wearing a press badge. They earn hundreds of dollars in commissions every time a reader signs up for a credit card through their links. The content—the reviews, the rankings, the breathless “best cards of 2026” lists—is nothing more than a storefront to sell more credit cards. 

The same banks that pay these sites to push cards also fund the lobby fighting this bill. Lower swipe fees mean reduced bank margins, which means less cash flowing back to the sites that sell the cards. 

They aren’t protecting your points, they’re protecting their own paycheck—and your points are the bait.

Even the scary numbers they cite are manufactured. The campaigns warn the bill would wipe out $80 billion in rewards a year, but that figure traces to a study the banks’ own coalition paid for. 

Then a newsletter passes it along as if a trusted travel expert came up with it. And that’s how a lobby’s talking point gets laundered into fact.

The dirty secret about your credit card

The American credit card is a clunky, expensive way to move money. Every swipe crawls through a chain of middlemen, the issuing bank, the acquiring bank, the network, the processor, each one taking a cut. That’s why America’s fees are among the highest on earth.

It doesn’t have to work this way. Brazil built an instant payment system called Pix, run by its central bank. It charges merchants about 0.33 percent per transaction, according to International Monetary Fund figures, compared with 2.34 percent for a credit card. A street vendor selling coconuts on a beach in Recife pays less to accept a digital payment than a Walmart in Ohio pays Visa. 

Pix now handles more transactions in Brazil than Visa and Mastercard combined. 

In the United States, we’re stuck with the expensive version because the companies profiting from it spend $200 million to keep it that way. Then they kick back a small percentage to you as a reward to keep you compliant. 

The CCCA won’t build us a Pix. But it’s a first and necessary crack in the Visa-Mastercard duopoly. 

Nobody’s promising you a refund

The merchants pushing this bill have their own numbers, and they’re worth a look. They claim swipe fees have jumped 80 percent since the pandemic and have driven prices up by more than $1,200 a year for the average family.

In fairness, it’s not entirely clear if lowering swipe fees would bring down costs. The Congressional Research Service studied a 2010 law that capped debit swipe fees and found it “indeterminate” whether prices dropped for shoppers. 

But one thing is certain: This summer’s rewards panic collapses under its own numbers. Americans earned $47 billion worth of credit card rewards in 2024, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That same year, merchants paid $187 billion in swipe fees on credit cards. Your “free” flight is a partial rebate on a tax the banks set, collect and keep raising. They take three dollars and hand you back one. Then a website tells you to guard that dollar with your life and ignore the other two.

Read this before you sign the petition

So before you fill out one of those forms, understand what you’re doing. You’re protecting a fee you can’t see, sold to you by a marketer you mistook for a journalist, on behalf of the banks that will never stop charging you. Your “free” flight to Cancun was never at risk.

The banks spent $200 million on this fight, and now they’re asking you to work for free to promote a cause that could hurt you. Don’t be fooled.

To understand how Te Pae Christchurch became a carbon zero certified convention center, you need to meet Oscar.

Oscar is about the size of a commercial dryer, but instead of laundry, he dries hundreds of pounds of food waste in a 30-hour cycle. He heats, mixes, and shreds food scraps to remove moisture, and then converts them into a dry, odor-free, nutrient-rich fertilizer.

“The food goes in and it comes out as something that looks like coffee grounds,” explains Gillian Officer, the center’s director of business development.

The two make an unlikely pair in the convention center’s back-of-house area. Oscar is a rugged, industrial-looking machine, a large gray box with a heavy lid and caution stickers that hint at the heavy lifting it does behind the scenes. Beside him, Officer—looking sharp in a light-colored linen blazer—leans against him with a familiar pride.

A green pivot from the bottom up

Oscar might not be quietly grinding away behind the scenes in a dark room, nor would Te Pae Christchurch be a certified Toitū carbon zero operation – believed to be the first convention center in the world to achieve such a rating—if it weren’t for a shift that started from the bottom up after the devastating earthquakes of 2010 and 2011.

Te Pae is a Māori phrase that means “gathering place,” and its opening in 2022 was the cornerstone of the city’s rebuilding efforts. Nearly half the staff is under the age of 24, and this younger workforce accelerates the building’s sustainability mission, according to Officer. It’s a phenomenon happening across the city, and it’s turning Christchurch into one of the most sustainable destinations in the southern hemisphere.

“Sustainability is important to us,” explains Kath Low, head of destination at ChristchurchNZ, the city’s economic development agency. This ethos is visible everywhere. It matches the progress at Christchurch Airport, which made headlines for slashing its operational emissions by 92 percent and becoming the first in the world to reach the highest level of international carbon accreditation.

While the airport tackles the technical hurdles of green aviation and solar parks, Te Pae handles the footprint of the people those planes bring in.

Gillian Officer and Oscar, a machine that processes Te Pae Christchurch’s food waste.  (Photo by Aren Elliott)

How Te Pae became a net carbon zero operation

Officer remembers the moment when the convention center pivoted to a sustainability mission. A young staffer nicknamed the “Bin Chicken” spent her shifts meticulously auditing the facility’s waste, ensuring every scrap ended up in the correct recycler. Her obsessive attention to detail pushed the business to look deeper at its own systems.

“It starts with something as small as that,” Officer says, “and next thing you know, we’re going down the whole track of being a carbon net zero operation.”

Today, that commitment is baked into the facility’s daily logistics. International trade shows are notorious for using miles of single-use plastic carpeting that is tossed into a landfill after 48 hours. Te Pae ended that cycle by installing permanent, high-quality carpeting throughout its 35,000 square feet of exhibition space. The choice has a lingering sensory reward, too. Officer notes the building still retains a distinct “new car” fragrance, a fresh-fiber scent that anchors the center’s modern, clean identity.

Even the coffee you drink at a conference here is part of the system. The center switched to a local milk keg system that keeps around 2,500 plastic milk bottles out of the trash every year.

“People want to come to a place where they know the environment is being looked after,” Officer says. “They don’t want to feel like they’re contributing to a problem.”

One New Zealand Stadium at Te Kaha, which opened in April, is New Zealand’s most sustainable stadium. (Photo by Aren Elliott)

Sustainability is built into a new city

The intentionality at the convention center is a reflection of a city that was forced to reinvent itself after the 2011 earthquake. One-third of Christchurch’s buildings were lost in the earthquake, which gave the city an opportunity to rebuild itself according to 21st century standards. Sustainability is key.

The result is a compact city center focused on walking and biking first. 

“We’ve got a modern city,” Low says. “Sustainability is a big part of it, and it’s part of our future.”

Visitors find that enjoyment in the wide sidewalks, the energy-smart design of the Tūranga Library, and the “Red Zone”—once a residential area hit hard by the quakes, now being converted into a massive green space of wetlands and native forest. 

Travel expert Jiayi Wang notes that this design ensures guests interact with the local ecosystem in a way that is “more knowledgeable and more respectful.” In Christchurch, there’s no need to be a sustainable traveler; the city’s infrastructure handles it for you.

You can see the transformation happening in Christchurch even today. Walk past Hagley Park, one of the most impressive urban green spaces in the southern hemisphere, and into the city. Nearby, the One New Zealand Stadium at Te Kaha is rising from the dust. When it opened in April, it became the country’s greenest sporting arena, capped with a fully enclosed roof and 215,000 square feet of vegetation designed to slash carbon emissions by 17 percent. 

What Oscar means to Christchurch

The sensory experience of Te Pae is one of intentional contrasts. While the interior retains that pristine new carpet smell, the exterior tells a story of the Canterbury Plains. 

The facade is a tactile, river-contoured skin made of 43,000 tiles. Their curves and shades of gray are inspired by the region’s braided rivers, and they make the massive structure feel less like a block of concrete and more like a shimmering extension of the Avon River.

As skies darken over the city, the lights at Te Pae begin to glow against the tiles. The delegates are gone, but the work continues. In a dark room, Oscar is still there, humming through his 30-hour cycle.

He is quiet, a little grumpy-looking in his industrial gray metal coat, and entirely indifferent to the accolades the building receives. But as he churns through the day’s leftovers, he represents the unglamorous, essential future of travel. In a city that has seen the worst of nature’s power, Oscar proves that the best way to rebuild a world is one carefully sorted, carbon-neutral scrap at a time.

When Debbie McNulty discovers a surprise $179 charge on her credit card from Furnished Finder, she immediately asks for a refund. Why is the company trying to keep her money? 

Question

I’ve listed my vacation home on Furnished Finder, an online platform for monthly furnished rentals, for the past three years. I never received a booking from Furnished Finder during that time, but I was fine paying the annual fee. Now that I’m renting short-term again, I no longer need to list on Furnished Finder.

My membership was set to auto-renew. Furnished Finder sent one reminder email last month, but I totally missed it. We all get so much email these days, and I was just back from a two-week trip, so I overlooked it. My bad.

When I woke up to a $179 charge from Furnished Finder last week, I immediately contacted Furnished Finder to cancel and requested a refund. A representative sent me a standard response that their policy is not to give refunds.

It’s in the contract, I get it. I should have notified them before the renewal date. Still, the fact that I contacted them on the very same day that they processed the renewal makes it seem petty to keep my money. I asked to escalate the request on the basis that granting me a refund was the right thing to do. Do you think it is worth asking again? — Debbie McNulty, Los Gatos, Calif.

Answer

Yes, it’s definitely worth asking. Furnished Finder should have refunded your $179.

While the company is technically correct — you agreed to the terms and conditions, which state that all fees are nonrefundable — hiding behind the fine print in this situation is bad customer service. 

You canceled on the same day the charge went through. You had a valid reason for leaving the platform, as your property is no longer suited for the long-term tenants Furnished Finder serves. Keeping your money for a full year of service you clearly stated you wouldn’t use seems unreasonable.

Companies love automatic renewals because they’re convenient. A business doesn’t have to pursue every customer, asking them to renew every year. Instead, they simply send a courtesy reminder, and you can cancel before the auto-renewal date. 

But in your case, that single email got buried in your inbox. By the time you saw the charge, the company claimed it was too late.

I have a little personal experience with running a business that handles automatic subscription renewals. What you might not know is that about 80 percent of credit card disputes for an unwanted auto-renewal goes the customer’s way. So if you’d filed a credit card dispute, you’d probably have your money by now.

The takeaway here is to treat every subscription like a ticking clock. Don’t rely on the company to remind you that your bill is due. Set your own calendar alerts for a few days before a cancellation deadline. And if you aren’t 100 percent sure you’ll want to renew, it’s often safer to turn off the auto-renew option the moment you sign up.

You did exactly what I always recommend: You kept a thorough paper trail. You saved your chat transcripts with the virtual assistant and the live agents, as well as your email correspondence. This evidence showed that you acted in good faith and tried to resolve the issue immediately.

I contacted the company’s CEO, Jeff Hurst, on your behalf. He reviewed your case and replied, “We’ll get this refunded.”

You’ve received the full $179 back.

Turo charges Georgina Montalvan $2,338 for damages she didn’t cause. Then Turo makes a U-turn, dropping the charges. Then it changes its mind again. Does she really have to pay? 

Question

I recently rented a car through Turo in Los Angeles. I delivered the car a day early because I had to catch an earlier flight home. The next day, I received a text from Turo saying the owner claimed I had damaged the car.

Turo sent photos, one of which showed a scratch on the fender and a small hole in the bumper. Fortunately, I had taken photos when I took possession of the car. I sent Turo my photos, which clearly showed the scratch was already there. 

Turo reviewed the evidence and told me the claim had been dropped because it was “normal wear and tear.”

A week later, Turo reopened the claim and charged my credit card $660. I was never shown an itemized bill. Then, earlier this month, it sent me another invoice for $1,678. Turo claims there’s now “hidden” damage to the car. It sent a photo of a larger hole that I have never seen before.

This feels like a scam. I have disputed the charge with my credit card company, but I am not hopeful. Can you help me get my money back? — Georgina Montalvan, Birmingham, Ala.

Answer

Turo should have stuck to its original decision. You had the evidence to prove that the damage was pre-existing, and the company correctly identified it as “wear and tear.” 

Reopening the claim and charging you $660 — and then piling on another $1,678 for “hidden” damage — was wrong.

Peer-to-peer car rental platforms like Turo can be tricky. Unlike traditional car rental companies, you’re dealing with individual owners who may be very protective of their vehicles or, in rare cases, looking to have existing damage fixed at a renter’s expense.

The supplemental claim is a common pain point. This happens when a repair shop takes the car apart and finds more damage than was visible in the initial photos. While this is a legitimate industry practice, it can feel incredibly unfair to a renter who has already left the state and has no way to verify the new damage.

You did the right thing by taking photos of the car when you picked it up. That paper trail is your best defense against frivolous damage claims. It is unclear why Turo ignored your photographic evidence after initially accepting it. (The photos get uploaded to the Turo app, so it has access to them.)

You could have also appealed your case to someone higher up at Turo. I publish the names, numbers and email addresses of the Turo executives on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org.

Your case is a reminder to always take photos of the car at pickup and return. That evidence is the only thing standing between you and a massive repair bill.

I contacted Turo on your behalf. The company reviewed your case again and dropped the claim. You have received a full refund of the $660, and the additional $1,678 invoice has been canceled.

Alison Palkhivala was ready for pretzels, polka, and a pint. She’d booked a stay in a vacation apartment in Munich through Booking.com during the legendary Oktoberfest. 

But three days before her arrival, she noticed a peculiar detail in the fine print that would turn her Bavarian dream into a bureaucratic nightmare.

The property’s check-in window was strictly between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m.

Read that again. Not 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Not “after 3 p.m.” The host expected Palkhivala to arrive during a narrow two-hour window when most sensible travelers are either sleeping or looking for kaffee and brötchen.

For her, it was a logistical impossibility. Her flight to Munich didn’t even touch down until 10 a.m.

Palkhivala immediately messaged the property. She assumed a reasonable host would accommodate a traveler arriving just an hour late, or perhaps leave a key in a lockbox. She could come by later. She even offered to pick up the key the following day between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m., sacrificing the first night of her stay just to secure the room.

The answer was a curt nein.

The host refused to budge. Because Palkhivala could not teleport herself to the property during the designated window, the host canceled her reservation entirely. And because the cancellation fell within the penalty period, the property kept her money—approximately $1,000.

“I suspect this property owner is a deliberate scammer,” Palkhivala told me. “We booked for two nights, and there was no option even to get the key the next day at their desired time.”

She was left without a room, out a grand, and stranded in a foreign city during one of the busiest tourist weeks of the year. When she contacted Booking.com for help, it refused to intervene, citing the validity of the host’s policy.

This case raises several important questions for anyone booking vacation rentals in the algorithmic age:

• Are impossible check-in windows actually legal, and why do hosts use them?
• How can you spot rigged reviews before you book a nonrefundable stay?
• If you dispute the charge with your credit card, does it help or hurt your chances of a refund?
  
  

Into a Bavarian black box

Palkhivala’s situation is the stuff of travel nightmares, but it’s not unique. It represents a growing friction between legacy hospitality—where a front desk clerk is always there to hand you a key—and the gig economy of lodging, where amateur hosts set arbitrary rules that computer systems enforce without compunction.

After the property locked her out and pocketed her cash, Palkhivala tried to reason with Booking.com. She pointed out that she had given three days’ notice. She mentioned the absurdity of the timeframe.

Booking.com also said no.

The platform viewed this as a simple contract violation. The host set terms (7 a.m. to 9 a.m. check-in). The guest agreed to the terms (by clicking “book”). The guest failed to meet terms. Therefore, the guest forfeits the money. It’s an algorithmic logic devoid of humanity, a phenomenon I like to call the check-in trap.

Desperate, Palkhivala did what many savvy consumers do: She looked more closely at the property she had booked. She noticed a pattern in the reviews. They were pretty one-sided.

“Reviews indicate this is a repeated offense,” she told me. “All positive reviews are short and sound like they were written by the same person.”

She estimated the property had “scammed about 15,000 euros from people like me just over the month of Oktoberfest.”

She had stumbled onto a potential review farm, but she had no way to prove it. And without proof, Booking.com wasn’t budging. That’s when she contacted our advocacy team.

Are impossible check-in windows legal?

The short answer is yes. The long answer is that they are a weaponized form of compliance used to generate revenue without providing service.

When you book a stay on a platform like Booking.com, Airbnb, or Vrbo, you’re agreeing to a contract. If that contract states you must perform a headstand in the lobby at 4 a.m. to receive your key, and you fail to do so, you are technically in breach of contract.

Most travelers gloss over check-in times because they have been trained by decades of hotel stays to assume a standard “after 3 p.m.” policy. 

Bad actors know this.

By setting a check-in window that is highly restrictive—like 7 a.m. to 9 a.m.—a host creates a check-in trap. They know a statistically significant percentage of international travelers cannot meet this requirement due to flight schedules, customs delays, or simple jet lag.

When the traveler misses the window, the host marks them as a “no-show.” Sometimes, as in Palkhivala’s case, they even do it before they arrive.

This is where the economics get dark. In a standard hotel model, a no-show fee might be one night’s room and tax. But in the vacation rental market, depending on the cancellation policy selected, it can be the entire prepaid amount.

For the host, this is pure profit. They do not have to pay for housekeeping. They do not have to pay for utilities. They simply collect the money and, in some cases, re-list the room on another platform for a last-minute booking, effectively double-dipping.

In Palkhivala’s case, the host’s refusal to allow check-in the following day is the smoking gun. A legitimate business wants you to occupy the room you paid for. A business running a check-in trap wants you to stay away so they can keep the money with zero overhead.

It is technically legal because you agreed to it. But it’s ethically bankrupt.

How can you spot a review farm?

Palkhivala noted that the reviews for her property were rated either “1” or “10.” 

It’s what data analysts call a U-Curve Distribution, and in the world of online reviews, it is a flashing red light.

Legitimate businesses—even great ones—have a bell curve. Most people give 4 or 5 stars. Some give 3. A few grumpy guests give a 1.

But when you see a property with a cluster of 1-star reviews screaming “Scam!” and a counterbalance of generic 10-star reviews, you are likely looking at a manipulated listing.

Palkhivala observed that the 10-star reviews had “the exact same heading and very similar length and wording.” This suggests automation or a paid service where click-farms pump up the rating to offset the victims of the check-in trap.

There’s something else going on here, which I call review laundering. The hosts know they’ll burn a certain number of guests who miss the impossible window. Those guests will leave blisteringly negative 1-star reviews. To keep the overall rating high enough to attract new victims (usually above a 7.0 or 8.0), the host must flood the zone with perfect scores.

If you see a U-Curve, read the 1-star reviews first. If they all complain about the same specific procedural failure—like a check-in time or a surprise fee—believe them. The 10-star reviews praising the “nice atmosphere” are just noise designed to drown out the warnings.

How do you get out of a check-in trap?

Frustrated by the lack of movement from the travel company, Palkhivala played her ace card: she filed a chargeback with her credit card company.

It felt like the right move. The merchant didn’t provide the service, so why should it keep the money? But in the world of consumer advocacy, a credit card dispute is the nuclear option. And once you launch the nuke, diplomacy ends.

When a consumer files a dispute, the bank freezes the funds and sends a formal inquiry to the merchant. The merchant’s internal systems then lock the consumer’s file. Customer service agents are often stripped of the ability to issue a refund because the money is now in a legal limbo between the bank and the merchant.

If the merchant were to refund you voluntarily while the dispute is active, they risk losing the money twice: once from the refund, and again if the bank sides with you and forcibly takes back the money.

This creates a chargeback freeze.

In Palkhivala’s case, Booking.com later admitted it wanted to help but couldn’t.

The advice here is counterintuitive: Wait. Exhaust every avenue of customer service, escalate to executives, and contact a consumer advocate before you call your bank. The moment you file a dispute, you shut the door on a negotiated settlement.(But remember, there’s a time limit on chargebacks.)

What can you do?

When Palkhivala contacted me, the situation was deadlocked. She was out $1,000, the host was silent, and Booking.com was standing behind its “policy is policy” defense.

Our advocate Dwayne Coward contacted Booking.com on her behalf. He asked about the refund, but also about the fairness of the window itself.

He pushed harder on the fact that the property refused to let them check in at all. 

“The property didn’t allow these customers to check in at all, so they were unable to stay,” he pointed out.

A Booking.com representative agreed to peer into the black box of the company’s algorithm to find out what happened. To its credit, Booking.com recognized that while the host’s policy was printed on the page, it failed the test of reasonableness.

“While the policy was valid, we recognize the timeframe may have been restrictive,” a representative admitted.

Booking.com initially offered a refund for the first night only. Palkhivala, quite rightly, felt this was insufficient. Why should she pay for the second night if the host refused to give her a key?

Finally, Booking.com agreed to give her a full refund. But there was a snag.

“The customer initiated a dispute with their credit card provider so since this dispute is active, Booking.com can not process the refund,” the representative explained.

This is a classic Catch-22. The consumer disputes the charge because the merchant won’t refund. The merchant won’t refund because the consumer disputed the charge.

Dwayne asked Booking.com to guarantee that it would refund the money once the dispute ended, and it did. Palkhivala got her $1,000 back.

If you are booking a trip, remember: check-in times aren’t just suggestions. In the new world of algorithmic hospitality, they’re the fine print that can cost you a fortune. And if you see a review section that looks like a smile—high on the ends, empty in the middle—run. It’s probably a trap.

Damien Zouaoui used to be a true believer in living like a local. He scoured online listings for authentic-looking apartments in up-and-coming neighborhoods, shopped at local markets, and tried his best to blend in.

Then came the trip to Lisbon that changed everything.

His street, located in a quiet residential neighborhood, had lost its bakery. The local barbershop was gone too—replaced with boutique rentals and overpriced brunch spots “catering to people like me,” recalls Zouaoui, the co-founder of a wellness company in Denver. 

Then he witnessed the argument.

“I watched my host get into a shouting match with his neighbor over yet another guest’s rolling suitcase clattering down the cobblestones,” he recalls. “That moment hit hard.” 

Zouaoui realized he was no visitor, but part of an invading force.

For the last decade, the travel industry’s Golden Rule has been to live like a local. Shun the tourist traps, skip the hotels, and embed yourself in residential enclaves to find true authenticity. 

I’ve had a front-row seat to this gentrification with a passport. I’m on the road 350 days a year, often staying in rental apartments. In fact, I’m writing this from an Airbnb in Newmarket, a neighborhood in Auckland, and it’s located between a car repair shop and a Chinese grocery store. So much for authenticity.

Let’s stop this disruptive force before it ruins the summer of 2026. Experts say it displaces residents, inflates housing costs, and ruins the neighborhoods you claim to love. Maybe the most ethical — and enjoyable — way to travel now is to stop pretending you live there and embrace your status as a tourist.

The high cost of fake living

The problem with living like a local is simple math: When everyone does it, no locals are left. Tourists push out the very communities they claim to love.

Daniel Guttentag, a professor at the College of Charleston, says this desire is “silly.” Tourists do not want the reality of local life—the rush hour commute, the cooking, the school run. They want the backdrop without the burden.

The cost of this fantasy is real housing. Short-term rentals strip homes from the market. A McGill University study found that in Canada’s largest cities, landlords removed nearly 14,000 homes from the long-term market to serve tourists. In New York City, 13,500 apartments vanished into the short-term rental void, driving up rents for actual residents by hundreds of dollars a year.

Jennifer Kaplan, a sustainability strategist, argues you can’t find an authentic experience in a hollowed-out neighborhood. 

“When authenticity becomes commercialized at scale,” she says, “it loses its authenticity by definition.”

Why do we persist? Ego. Thomas Plante, a psychology professor at Santa Clara University, suggests we are driven by “virtue signaling and narcissism.” We want to feel superior to the masses on the tour bus. We want to be travelers, not tourists. But by refusing to visit the places built for us, we destroy the places built for others.

In defense of the tourist trap

The alternative is the one thing we are trained to avoid: the tourist trap.

Urban planners and sustainable tourism experts argue that designated tourist areas—often derided as “traps”—act as necessary protective barriers for a destination. They concentrate the noise, the trash, and the crowds in areas designed to handle them, leaving residential neighborhoods for, you know, the residents.

“Tourist places are tourist places for a reason,” says Alex Veka, the founder of Vibe Adventures. “They have the infrastructure, the permits, the tax laws, and workers trained to handle mobs.”

In fragile ecosystems, these zones are vital. Shishir Dubey, who runs Jungle Revives in India, learned this the hard way. Early in his travels, he chased “authentic” off-grid jungle stays, hiring local jeeps and camping in buffer zones.

“I got lost for hours and nearly died of thirst,” Dubey recalls. “A near-miss elephant charge was my wake-up: Pretending to be local endangered everyone.” 

Now, he sticks to official zones and licensed guides. 

“Tourism infrastructure isn’t a trap,” he adds. “It’s a lifeline.” 

How to be a good tourist

If you want to avoid gentrification with a passport this summer, you don’t have to give up on culture. You just need to change your approach.

“Why not act like a tourist and a local?” asks Thomas Swick, author of the memoir Falling into Place. “Stay in a hotel but eat where the locals eat. Visit the sights one day and explore neighborhoods the next. Embracing both identities will result in a broader and richer experience.” 

Here is how to do it:

Stay in a hotel. They’re created for visitors. They employ locals, pay commercial taxes, and have security. “Hotels exist for travelers,” says Zouaoui. “They don’t displace families or schools.” 

Hire licensed guides. “A good concierge or tour guide will steer you to places that want visitors and away from fragile blocks,” says Justin Brown, a frequent traveler based in Singapore.

Visit the landmarks. There’s no shame in seeing the Eiffel Tower or the Colosseum. These icons are in tourist areas, and your ticket price often supports their conservation.

Dropping the “local” facade is liberating. You no longer have to worry if you are annoying the neighbors—or inadvertently raising the rent.

“I’ve started to enjoy the classics,” Zouaoui told me. “When I was in Rome last, I walked to the Trevi Fountain at sunrise with a cappuccino in hand—and it was magical. No guilt, no awkward play-acting. Just the joy of being exactly what I was: a visitor.”

He’s right. The most respectful way to travel is to stop faking it. Stop the gentrification with a passport. Some places weren’t meant for you. They’re meant to be seen, appreciated, and then left to the people who actually call them home.

Remember what booking an airline ticket used to be like?

You’d find a $99 fare online—a real bargain!—and then select it. 

But wait, that fare didn’t include a “carrier-imposed surcharge.” And what’s this mandatory fuel surcharge? You also had to wait until the end of the booking process to see the taxes. 

By the time you clicked through to the checkout screen, your $99 flight cost $180. It was infuriating.

In 2011, the Department of Transportation adopted the full-fare rule, which says the price an airline shows you must be the price you pay—taxes and fees included. The airlines sued to kill it and lost. Travelers have shopped for flights with confidence ever since.

Now the government wants to jettison that standard. The DOT just proposed changing the full-fare requirement. Two options are on the table. One is bad, the other is worse. And the traveling public has already figured that out, judging by the comments piling up in the government’s inbox.

The bad proposal: weaken the full-fare advertising rule

Under current regulations, the total price must be the most prominent number in any airfare ad. Airlines can break out the taxes and fees, but they can’t display those components as prominently as the total, or in bigger type.

The DOT calls that “unnecessarily prescriptive.” Its proposal would let airlines display each component as prominently as the total. So under that scenario, you’d see a fare display for $99 and $180 online, which could be confusing. It would also erase nine guidance documents that explain how the rule works in practice, including one that stops carriers from labeling their own surcharges as taxes.

That may sound like a typography debate, but it’s not. Once every number can have the same prominence as the true price, airlines will have a license to make the low base fare the star of the ad. The total still technically appears, but they’ll find a way of burying the real cost.

The worse proposal: eliminate the rule entirely

Buried deeper in the proposal, the DOT says it’s also considering repealing the full-fare rule “in whole.” That would mean airlines could once again advertise a fare that excludes taxes and fees altogether.

Want to know what that world looks like? Jason Rabinowitz, an aviation data journalist, showed the DOT in his comment. 

He priced a JetBlue flight from New York to London and found a $314 fare. The base fare was just $31. The rest was $33 in government taxes and a $250 “carrier-imposed fee” — the airline’s own invention. Without the full-fare rule, JetBlue could dangle something close to $31 in front of you. Rabinowitz warned that airlines could set base fares as low as a penny and shift the real cost into fees. 

A one-cent flight to London? Now that’s a deal—until you try to buy it.

You can’t fool the public

The comment period runs through July 31, and the early returns are about what you’d expect. Virtually every person opposes the change.

“Showing a price that you cannot purchase is deceptive,” wrote Eric Berman of Woodinville, Wash., who called the proposal “profoundly anti-consumer.”

Cheryl Voigt of Des Moines, asked one of the most important questions in the discussion: Who benefits? 

“It certainly would not be airline customers,” she wrote.

Kelly Harris of Trinity, Fla., called the proposal “a disgusting and incompetent use of government power.” Andrew Lambert of Phoenix needed just four words: “What a dumb change.”

And Andrea Gadomski-Riker of Ohio explained the real stakes: “For those of us who do not travel regularly, and have limited funds, knowing a flight’s total cost up front is vital.”

She’s right. Frequent fliers can avoid the checkout trickery. But a family that flies once a year will get ambushed by fees. 

The rest of the world is watching

The DOT proposal comes at an interesting time. On July 13, the European Union gave final approval to stronger air passenger rights, including a requirement that airlines display fares with a carry-on allowance included before booking even starts. 

Europe is forcing airlines to show more of the true cost upfront. The United States wants to let them show less.

The DOT argues the prominence rule may clash with the First Amendment, and that a 1970 tax law already covers how taxes get displayed. Maybe there’s a lawyer’s argument in there somewhere, but a regulation that lets you know what a flight costs before you buy it isn’t government overreach. It’s a thoughtful, consumer-friendly rule that prevents airlines from misrepresenting their ticket prices.

“The proposed rule presents a false choice,” says Bonnie Patten, executive director for Truth In Advertising, a nonprofit organization that advocates for clear pricing. “This is not about whether airlines may market and discuss every cost of an airline ticket. They plainly may. It’s about whether airlines may emphasize portions of the purchase price in ways that increase the likelihood consumers will be deceived regarding the total cost of transportation.”

Add your voice by July 31

There’s some good news. This isn’t a done deal yet. The DOT must consider your feedback, and there’s still time to put an end to this foolish idea. Anyone can file a comment at the Regulations.gov site (the docket number is DOT-OST-2025-0831). 

The airlines are counting on you to stay quiet, to click “book” the next time you have to buy a ticket and obediently accept its fees. Prove them wrong. The comment box is open for one more week.

Just when you thought you’ve seen it all, along comes the latest viral video incident: A woman on a Carnival cruise scraping dry skin off the bottom of her bare foot at a dining table.

It’s all on Instagram if you care to see it (details in a moment). But it raises a bigger question: Should cruise lines ban passengers for doing something gross, and potentially unsanitary?

What happened?

The incident, which took place on a Carnival cruise earlier this month and documented by another passenger on Instagram, shows a passenger sitting in the ship’s dining area barefoot. She’s feverishly scratching her foot, which appears to be ravaged by tinea pedis, a contagious fungal infection that causes itching, peeling, and cracked skin. Then she uses the same hand to resume eating.

Yuck.

In a follow-up video, the same passenger is shown using a fork to relieve the itching. The video created an instant firestorm of comments from readers, many of whom wondered if the fork would be properly cleaned—and what would happen to the passenger.

Carnival partially answered those questions earlier this week:

I asked Carnival if Fork Lady would be welcome on a future cruise. It has not responded. 

But that got me thinking about who actually ends up on the banned-guest list, and whether the criteria make sense.

A brief history of cruise ship bannings

So why do people normally get banned? 

The routine reasons are the ones written into every conduct code: physical violence or threats, illegal drugs, ignoring crew and safety instructions, vandalism, harassment and sexual misconduct, smoking where you shouldn’t, and fraud like chargeback scams and theft. 

Those are the bright-line offenses, and the lines enforce them without much hesitation. We’ve also had numerous Do Not Sail list cases. A few that stuck with me:

• CBD mints. As Stephen and Susan Shub boarded the Carnival Conquest in Miami to spread a family member’s ashes, a drug-sniffing dog flagged Stephen’s backpack. Inside was a half-finished tin of mints, a few of them CBD. Carnival pulled his boarding pass, kept his roughly $500 fare and banned them both for life. Five months later, after I asked about the case, the cruise line reversed itself and mailed a $500 check to the Shubs.
• A broken picture frame. Norwegian Cruise Line put Christopher Yanchak on its Do Not Sail list over an incident on a New York to Bermuda sailing, saying video showed him breaking a picture frame in a hallway. Yanchak had no memory of it and asked to see the footage. Norwegian refused, citing the privacy of other passengers in the recording. He was banned on the strength of evidence he wasn’t allowed to view. After my team looked into the case, NCL took his name off the Do Not Cruise list.
• Vague “security concerns.” Broadway superfan Susan Kemen paid $4,996 for a themed cruise on the Norwegian Gem, then got a call the next day canceling her booking. The organizer, Sixthman, cited “security concerns” and wouldn’t say more. Kemen had a clean record, a parking ticket a decade back her only brush with the law. She got her refund but never got an explanation.

What lands you on the Do Not Sail list

The current lists cover unacceptable conduct toward others, and usually it’s enforced in an even-handed way.

For example, when a brawl broke out at the PortMiami terminal, 16 Carnival guests were banned. After a fight near the pizzeria on Carnival Sunrise, security confined at least one passenger to his cabin with a guard posted outside around the clock until the ship reached port, and Carnival confirmed those involved would never sail with it again.

Notice what every category has in common (other than that it happened on Carnival)? Malice, criminality, intent to harm. 

But the fork passenger fits none of it. Fork Lady threatened no one, damaged nothing, broke no law. She created a public-health problem in a shared dining room, and that’s a category the lists barely address.

Section 2(f) of Carnival’s ticket contract—the legal agreement between you and the cruise line—requires guests to “comply with all pre-embarkation, onboard and shore excursion rules and policies including, but not limited to, all environmental and public health policies and procedures.” A lawyer could build a sanitation argument on that clause, but probably not enough to get someone put on the Do Not Sail List.

Still, cruise vessels are closed environments where norovirus and other illnesses move fast. A passenger who exposes hundreds of people in a buffet line to a fungal infection, or who ignores an isolation order during an outbreak, arguably endangers more people than a single guest throwing a punch in a lounge. Yet the puncher gets a lifetime ban and Fork Lady gets a laughing emoji.

What the cruise lines say

The cruise lines will tell you they don’t need a longer list, because they already have the authority to act. When you buy a ticket, you’ve already given the cruise line sole discretion to refuse service, which means conduct that isn’t specifically listed can still get you banned. 

Carnival’s code says any guest whose conduct affects the comfort, enjoyment, safety or well-being of other guests or crew can be disembarked at their own expense and barred from future sailings. “Comfort” and “enjoyment” are probably broad enough to cover foot scratching. From the industry’s point of view, the system works as designed: Broad discretion lets a captain handle whatever a rulebook didn’t anticipate, without turning every voyage into a legal proceeding.

That’s the case for leaving things as they are. But is that the right call?

Is more power the answer?

The same broad authority that could bar a genuine health risk also bars people for reasons that never get explained. There’s no federal referee for this. The Federal Maritime Commission has narrow jurisdiction focused on safety, not customer-service disputes like arbitrary bans.

Once you’re flagged, you’re pretty much done. There isn’t much of an appeal process, and most cases go straight to the legal department. And the bans are usually brand-wide, across the parent company’s entire fleet.

So the debate isn’t only about which behaviors deserve a spot on the list. It’s about whether we trust cruise lines to expand a system that already runs with almost no transparency and almost no recourse. Adding “unsanitary” or “disgusting” to the criteria sounds reasonable until you ask who decides. A messy eater? A crying baby? A passenger with a visible skin condition?

If you answered yes: Should a health-based ban carry the same permanence as a ban for violence? Who should review the decision before it becomes final? What would you want the cruise line to prove before adding a passenger for a hygiene violation? 

If you answered no: Where’s the line between a gross-but-harmless passenger and a genuine health risk? If the current conduct codes stay as they are, what should the crew do about a passenger exposing others to infection? Would you feel differently during a norovirus outbreak?

My take

I think this requires a common-sense approach. If you ban someone for doing something gross, first determine if there’s a genuine health risk. Follow up with a written explanation and offer a meaningful way to appeal in case the cruise line has it wrong. 

Fork Lady is an easy target because the video is disgusting. But easy targets are exactly how bad policy gets written. Maybe a cruise line that can ban you for “comfort and enjoyment,” with no referee and no appeal, doesn’t need a broader mandate. Maybe it needs a check on the one it’s got.

Your turn

Should Fork Lady have been banned? And if the lines start banning passengers for bad hygiene, who do you trust to draw the line? Our comments are open.

It starts with a plate of shrimp at the resort buffet. It’s pink and chilled—or at least, it’s sitting on a bed of ice. You eat it and you feel fine.

But six hours later, you’re on your knees in the bathroom of your hotel, and your vacation is over.

Late summer is the peak season for culinary hazards, and if you’re not careful, you could be heading for a gastrointestinal disaster. This heightened risk is amplified by combining record-breaking heat with the operational meltdowns plaguing the travel industry, such as delayed flights, understaffed hotels, and power outages.

While travelers focus on visible issues like cancellations and lost bags, a more dangerous threat is invisibly brewing in galley carts and buffet lines. The breakdown of temperature controls is the mechanism turning otherwise ordinary vacation meals into medical emergencies.

Why you need to worry about the cold chain this summer

The travel industry wants you to believe its food safety is always safe, but it isn’t. It relies on a temperature-controlled supply chain that ensures your food stays safe from farm to fork.

But when the temperature spikes, the cold chain can fail.

“Cold chain breakdown during summer months increases the risk of foodborne illness mainly through inadequate refrigeration at restaurants and food service establishments,” says Robert Glatter, an emergency physician in private practice in New York City and an editor at large for Medscape Emergency Medicine.

Glatter warns that even high-quality restaurants and resorts sometimes lack proper refrigeration and food safety training. 

Here’s the science that should keep you up at night: When refrigerated foods are exposed to room temperature for even short periods, the clock starts ticking twice as fast.

“The time for pathogens such as Listeria monocytogenes and Yersinia enterocolitica to reach infectious levels may be up to 50 percent less compared to continuous refrigeration,” Glatter says.

That’s not a margin of error you want to mess with when you are 3,000 miles from your primary care physician.

The danger zone is real in hot weather

But it is not just about the food getting warm—it’s how long it stays warm.

Trisha Pasricha, a gastroenterologist and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, defines the “danger zone” for bacterial growth as between 40 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Think about this—boiling water is 212 degrees, but a comfortable bath temperature is around 100,” she says. “If you could take a bath in it, bacteria can rapidly multiply.”

Pasricha warns that summer travel creates lots of opportunities for this to happen, from hot outdoor markets to food trucks without adequate refrigeration.

And if you think you can taste the danger, think again.

Mario Hupfeld, the CTO of NEMIS Technologies, holds a Ph.D. in microbiology. He notes that this growth happens quietly and invisibly.

“You won’t smell or taste it, but the risk is right there,” Hupfeld says.

The late summer buffet strategy: Just say no

Let’s talk about that buffet, the staple of the vacation experience. It’s a minefield.

Dean Harper, a private chef in London, has a front-row seat to the problem. He identifies a specific behavior that turns a mediocre meal into a medical emergency: grazing.

“People graze for hours at a buffet, effectively turning a short exposure into a long one as food sits in the danger zone,” Harper says.

Harper points out that guests often judge food by looks rather than temperature, trusting shallow ice baths, barely warm chafers, or heat lamps that don’t actually hold food at the required 135 degrees Fahrenheit.

But the real crime happens in the kitchen. It is called topping up.

Saifur Rahman, the head chef at Tower Tandoori in London, explains that in an effort to keep the buffet looking full, staff often make a critical error.

“Staff may top up fresh food onto older batches instead of swapping the whole pan, which keeps the core in the danger zone,” Rahman says.

This practice seeds fresh products with high bacterial loads, Harper adds.

So that scoop of “fresh” potato salad you just took might be sitting on top of a three-hour-old batch that is teeming with Staphylococcus aureus.

Don’t play the rice roulette

Is sticking to simple starches safe? Probably not.

Rahman warns that foods sitting in the danger zone let Bacillus cereus and Clostridium perfringens multiply in cooked rice, curries, stews, and gravies.

Sharon Nachman, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, calls out rice and mayonnaise as high-risk items.

“Both are at high risk for food poisoning,” Nachman says. These bacteria produce toxins that lead to vomiting and diarrhea, often striking just a few hours after ingestion.

So, the fried rice at the airport lounge that has been under a heat lamp since 10 a.m.? Bad choice.

It’s worse when you’re traveling

This summer, the risk is compounded by the chaos of travel itself. When the airline system melts down, the food safety system melts down with it.

Rahman notes that airline catering caught in prolonged tarmac delays chips away at safe temperatures without obvious warning signs.

Allan Hou, a sales director who oversees temperature-sensitive goods through Asia and Australia, has data to back this up.

“A single hour at an airport or hub can put perishable foods into the danger zone,” Hou says.

He recounted an incident with a shipment of chilled seafood delayed by extreme heat at a coastal airport. “Although the shipping container remained sealed, the internal data loggers recorded temperatures exceeding 50°F within 2 hours,” he recalls.

“As soon as temperatures are above this level, bacterial growth increases exponentially,” Hou adds.

Now apply that logic to the turkey wrap on your flight that has been sitting on the tarmac for three hours while the mechanics fix the air conditioning. The cold chain has snapped.

The backpacker’s fallacy

It is easy to blame the hotels and the airlines for the breakdown in food safety—and often, it is their fault. But travelers play a role in this biological warfare, too. 

Hupfeld calls it the backpacker logic.

“You’ll see a lot of backpackers walking to and fro from convenience stores, thinking that the food was only out for 20 minutes and that it’s safe,” Hupfeld says.

“But even those 15 minutes out in the summer heat is more than enough for bacteria to get a head start,” he warns.

The mini-fridge mistake

Another area of concern is the mini-fridge.

Meridan Zerner, a dietitian at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas, warns that some hotel mini-fridges simply aren’t cold enough.

Hupfeld agrees. 

“The mini-fridges back at the hotels are just as much of a problem because they’re not going to sufficiently cool your food like the ones you have in your kitchen,” he says. “Especially if the fridge is packed full.”

Zerner advises avoiding storing perishables on the doors or top shelves of these units. If you are relying on a lukewarm hotel fridge to save your leftover sushi, you are gambling with your gut.

How to protect yourself against a broken cold chain

So, how do you avoid turning your stomach into a war zone? Here is what the experts suggest.

Audit the buffet. If you must eat at the buffet, take Harper’s advice: “I take small portions from a pan that’s just been swapped in, avoid anything sitting low in the well, and skip items without visible heat or solid ice underneath.” Avoid the last, tired pan right before closing.

Watch the clock, not the cooler. Don’t trust your hand to tell you if something is cold enough. Trust the clock. “Avoid consuming any food item that has been left outside for more than 2 hours in warm temperatures,” advises Hou. If the ambient temperature is over 90 degrees, that window drops to one hour.

Go sealed or go home. If you’re facing a delay, stop looking for a hot meal. “Seek sealed items like yogurt, milk or whole fruit rather than mixed, mayonnaise-based or creamy dishes,” says Harper. Fruits with a peel you can remove yourself, like bananas or mangoes, are better.

Medicate yourself. Pasricha suggests a proactive approach: “Studies have found that taking bismuth subsalicylate [Pepto-Bismol] before and during travel can reduce the risk of traveler’s diarrhea by 65 percent.”

Finally, check your insurance coverage. If you do get sick, it might cost you more than just time. Lauren McCormick of Squaremouth notes that travel medical insurance can cover the costs of urgent care for food-borne illnesses. If you are too sick to fly, trip interruption coverage can pay for your extended stay.

Is it safe to eat?

We want to believe that the travel industry has our back. We want to believe that the restaurant is following code, that the airline is checking the catering carts, that the hotel fridge works.

But during this summer of chaos, blind faith is a shortcut to the emergency room.

The heat is on. The systems are breaking down. And the only person who is going to make sure your food is safe is you.

David Melton faces a frustrating problem when two fraudulent charges for sports tickets totaling $1,855 hit his PayPal account. His initial disputes with PayPal and American Express fail. Is there any way to reverse the charges? 

Question

I had two fraudulent charges show up on my PayPal account for sports tickets to a Knicks-Bulls game.

One charge, for $1,098 (My Ticket Tracker), went to a linked Amex card, and the other, for $757 (Vivid Seats), resulted in a negative balance on my PayPal account.

I opened claims with both PayPal and Amex, but they both denied my dispute. Both companies said I made the purchases, but I did not. I have spent hours trying to determine how this happened.

How can I get these charges reversed?

— David Melton, Monroe, Ga.

Answer

PayPal and Amex should have recognized that you didn’t buy these basketball tickets and should have reversed the charges.

Instead, you got caught in a trap common to fraud victims. When someone gains access to your account to buy tickets, the transaction often looks legitimate to the automated security algorithms used by financial institutions. The computer sees a login with your credentials and assumes you made the purchase.

That explains why your initial disputes with PayPal and American Express were denied. They were likely reviewed by a computer algorithm, not a human being.

You did the right thing by refusing to accept the initial rejection. You kept a meticulous paper trail of your correspondence, which is essential when escalating a complaint.

You didn’t just rely on the standard customer service chatbots to resolve your problem. When your credit card and PayPal turned you down, you escalated your grievance to a real person with the authority to fix it.

I shared the executive contacts for Amex and PayPal on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org.

When you hit a brick wall with the frontline agents—or when they tell you “no” for the third time—it’s time to climb the corporate ladder. A brief, polite email to an executive can work miracles.

It certainly did for you. The results were immediate. Within 30 minutes of sending an email to PayPal, a team member called you. Later that evening, you received a message confirming that the transactions were indeed fraudulent.

PayPal began the process of refunding both transactions to the original forms of payment. The company removed the negative balance on your account, and you received a credit to your Amex card for the other charge.

Your success shows the true power of self-advocacy. By keeping a meticulous paper trail and refusing to accept a nonsensical automated rejection, you cut through the corporate bureaucracy. You proved that while I can point you in the right direction, the most effective advocate for your problem is often you.

Aeromexico expects a mother and her newborn to sleep in the airport after it changes her flight schedule. But when the airline refuses to refund her ticket, she turns to the Travel Troubleshooter for a solution.

Question

I booked a round-trip flight with Aeromexico from Washington, D.C. to Oaxaca, Mexico. Recently, the airline informed me it had changed my connecting flight to the next day.

The new itinerary left me with a layover of more than eight hours in Mexico City. My flight would arrive at 9:30 p.m., but the connecting flight wouldn’t leave until 6:15 a.m. the following morning.

I will be traveling with a newborn. This schedule will not work for me because I can’t stay overnight in the airport with a baby.

I requested a cancellation and refund for the flight, but the airline is refusing. I’ve called nearly a dozen times to speak to different people. They finally responded to the case, telling me that because their contract says flights are subject to change, my request was denied.

Can you help me get my $1,360 back? — Allison Turpen, Linden, Va. 

Answer

Aeromexico should have refunded your ticket the moment you pointed out the schedule change. In fact, it should have offered you a full refund automatically when it revised your schedule.

Airlines love to tell passengers that schedules are subject to change. It’s written into their contracts of carriage—the legal agreements between you and the airline—to protect them from liability when weather or mechanical issues cause delays.

But they shouldn’t be able to use those clauses to hold your money hostage when they completely rewrite your itinerary.

You were holding a ticket for a flight departing from the United States. That means you are protected by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). According to the government, you are entitled to a refund if the airline makes a “significant schedule change and/or significantly delays a flight and the consumer chooses not to travel.” The DOT defines it as 3 hours for domestic itineraries and 6 hours for international itineraries.

Aeromexico’s response to you was disappointing.

“Our transportation contract stipulates that all our flights are subject to changes or cancellations,” a representative wrote to you. “For this reason, although we would like to help you, the request is denied.”

That’s nonsense. The airline’s internal policies do not supersede federal regulations.

When you run into a stone wall like this, you have a few options. You can file a complaint directly with the Department of Transportation. That usually gets an airline’s attention because it affects their performance statistics.

You could have also appealed to a manager. I publish the names, numbers, and email addresses of the Aeromexico executives on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org.

You decided to ask me for help. My advocacy team contacted the airline on your behalf, pointing out that because your itinerary included a flight from the U.S., DOT regulations require the airline to provide a refund.

Aeromexico reviewed your case again and processed a full refund of $1,360.

“This is a huge relief!” you told me.

I’ll bet. If this ever happens to you again, remind the agent of federal regulations. And if they don’t listen, you know where to find me.

NEW: Listen to the companion podcast about this story with exclusive details you won’t find in this article.

Elizabeth Webley thought she’d found a deal when she bid $500 for an upgrade on a recent Swiss International Air Lines flight from Zürich to San Francisco, and the carrier accepted.

But then Webley’s plans changed. She voluntarily rebooked her flight, assuming her upgrade credits would either transfer to the new itinerary or be refunded to her card.

They weren’t.

“The upgrade was not carried over to my new flight,” says Webley. “I was forced to pay again for a new upgrade”.

Webley asked for a refund of her original $500. Swiss said nein.

Her case offers a fascinating look into the murky world of airline terms and conditions, where policies often contradict themselves and “nonrefundable” doesn’t always mean what you think it does. It also introduces a phenomenon I call the ghost upgrade—a product you pay for, but which vanishes the moment you touch your airline reservation.

Webley’s problem also raises several critical questions for anyone trying to fly in comfort without paying full fare:

• How do airline bid upgrades actually work, and what are your rights?
• Does a “voluntary” flight change always mean you forfeit your ancillary fees?
• How can you win a dispute when the airline cites its own FAQ against you?

Will Webley lose her $500? Let’s find out.

Running into a Wall of Nos

Webley contacted Swiss immediately. She pointed out that according to the terms she saw when she purchased the upgrade, she was entitled to a refund.

The airline’s customer service agents disagreed.

“Please note that a bid upgrade is nonrefundable,” an agent told her. “Additionally, the provided document does not specify the condition of the upgrade.”

Another representative doubled down on the denial. 

“We regret to inform you that we are unable to honor your request for a refund of the bid upgrade, as it is nonrefundable in the event of voluntary cancellation of your reservation,” she said.

That’s a standard airline defense maneuver: The Wall of No. 

Agents are trained to recite the strictest interpretation of the rules to make you go away. And usually, it works. Most passengers shrug, curse the airline gods, and eat the loss.

But Webley had something the agents didn’t know about: digital evidence.

“I have provided a screenshot of these terms,” she wrote to the airline, attaching the file. “My fare allowed rebooking—I am therefore entitled to a refund of my bid upgrade.”

The terms were explicit. They said that if a passenger changes a flight, “you are entitled to a full refund of the Bid Upgrade amount” provided the original fare allows a rebooking.

Yet, the agents kept pointing to a different rule—the one about “voluntary” cancellations. 

Frustrated and $500 poorer, Webley contacted my advocacy team.

Is she right? Or did she just make a $500 donation to the airline’s corporate treasury?

How do airline bid upgrades actually work, and what are your rights?

If you’ve ever received an email a few days before your flight asking if you want to “bid” for a better seat, then you’ve encountered the strange economy of the upgrade auction.

It feels like a game, but it is a binding contract. And like all contracts in the travel industry, the text is heavily weighted in favor of the airline.

When you submit a bid, you’re essentially agreeing to a separate set of terms and conditions that sit on top of your original ticket rules. This creates a Russian nesting doll of rules. Your original economy ticket has one set of cancellation rules. Your upgrade has another.

Here is the friction point: Generally, upgrade bids are nonrefundable and unchangeable. The logic is that the airline has given you a discount on a premium seat (compared to the full fare), and in exchange, you give up flexibility. If you cancel your trip, you lose the bid. That’s the industry standard.

However, “standard” does not mean “universal.”

Airlines often have specific clauses for rebooking. Some carriers allow you to transfer the upgrade to a new flight if the aircraft type and route are the same. Others, like the version of the terms Webley saw, offer a refund if the underlying fare allows for changes.

The problem is that these terms are often buried in a pop-up window during the bidding process. Once you click “submit,” that window disappears. When a dispute arises weeks later, the airline agent is looking at a cheat sheet or a general FAQ, not the specific contract you agreed to at the moment of purchase.

This creates a ghost upgrade scenario. You believe you bought a product with a refund clause. The agent sees a product that is nonrefundable. 

So who’s right?

Legally, the specific terms presented to you at the time of purchase prevail over a general FAQ on a website. But proving what you saw is difficult. Airlines change their websites constantly. A rule that existed on Tuesday might be rewritten by Friday. 

Unless you have a photographic memory—or an actual photograph—you are at the mercy of the airline’s record-keeping. And as we will see, Swiss’s record-keeping was not very Swiss.

Does a “voluntary” flight change always mean you forfeit your ancillary fees?

In the lexicon of airline customer service, “voluntary” is the most expensive word you’ll ever hear.

There are two types of changes in the travel world: involuntary and voluntary. An involuntary change is when the airline cancels your flight, swaps the aircraft, or changes the schedule so significantly that you miss a connection. In these cases, you have rights. The Department of Transportation (in the U.S.) and EU 261 (in Europe) provide significant protections. 

If the airline messes up, it generally has to refund your ticket and your fees, including seat assignments and upgrades.

A voluntary change is when you mess up, or simply change your mind. You get sick, your meeting changes locations, or you just decide to fly on a different day.

Historically, a voluntary change meant you forfeited everything. But the landscape is shifting. During the pandemic, airlines eliminated change fees for many main cabin tickets to coax people back onto planes. 

That created a new expectation among travelers: flexibility.

However, that flexibility rarely extends to ancillary fees—the extras like baggage, seat selection, and upgrades. You might be able to move your economy seat to a new flight for free, but the $500 you paid to sit in business class usually stays with the airline.

You hit the “change flight” button on the app, thinking everything will move over. The app might even say “No Change Fees!” 

That’s what Webley thought, too. But the app didn’t warn her that her upgrade was about to be vaporized.

“I voluntarily rebooked my flight, assuming my upgrade credits would either transfer or be refunded,” she says.

But here is where the story pivots. Webley wasn’t just assuming, The terms she agreed to explicitly stated: “If you wish to change your flight you are entitled to a full refund of the Bid Upgrade amount.”

And she had a screenshot to prove it.

Swiss had created a policy that broke the “voluntary means you lose” rule. It just forgot to tell its customer service agents about it. The agents were operating on the default setting—voluntary equals forfeiture—while Webley was operating on the specific contract governing her upgrade.

This highlights a massive breakdown in internal communication. When marketing teams write generous policies to sell upgrades, but support teams are trained on restrictive policies to deny refunds, the passenger gets crushed in the gears.

How can you win a dispute when the airline cites its own FAQ against you?

When Webley contacted my team, she had hit a dead end. She had the truth on her side, but the airline had the money. Swiss agents were quoting their internal policy manual like scripture.

“The provided document does not specify the condition of the upgrade,” one agent claimed, dismissing her evidence.

That feels like corporate gaslighting.

So, how do you fight back when the company tells you that black is white? You have to be more organized than the airline is. Webley’s case is a textbook example of how to document a purchase.

1. Screenshot everything. I can’t emphasize this enough. If you’re buying something online—especially a travel product with complex restrictions—take a screenshot of the final checkout screen and the terms and conditions. Don’t rely on a link. A timestamped screenshot is a smoking gun. You can do that by pushing Windows key + Shift + S on your PC or Command + Shift + 3 on a Mac.

2. Isolate the contradiction. Webley didn’t just say “I want my money.” She said, “Your FAQ says X, but my contract says Y.” She forced the airline to look at the discrepancy.

3. Use the Elliott Method. When the front door is slammed in your face, go through the window. Front-line agents often don’t have the authority to override a system that says “nonrefundable.” They are reading a script. You need to reach someone who can read the actual situation. Here are the Swiss executives.

By the way, I publish the names and email addresses of the executives for nearly every major airline on my advocacy site, Elliott.org. A polite, concise email to a VP of Customer Service, attaching the proof that their own agents are ignoring, often yields a quick fix.

But in Webley’s case, even her persistence wasn’t enough. She needed a bigger megaphone.

The turbulence clears

My advocacy team contacted Swiss on Webley’s behalf. At first, the airline gave us the same stiff-arm it gave her.

“In case of a voluntary change of booking by the passenger, a standalone refund of a bid upgrade is not permitted,” a representative told our advocate, Dwayne Coward.

He directed us to the airline’s FAQ, which seemed to support the denial. It stated clearly: “Standalone Refund of Bid Upgrade is not permitted.”

It looked like Webley was out of luck. The FAQ was public, it was clear, and it was draconian.

But we didn’t give up. We pressed the issue, furnishing the airline with the text from the screenshot Webley had taken—the terms she explicitly agreed to.

“If you wish to change your flight after your offer has been accepted you are entitled to a full refund of the Bid Upgrade amount,” the terms said.

We asked Swiss a simple question: Which terms prevail? The ones on the website today, or the ones the customer signed when she bought the upgrade?

Swiss consulted with a “specialized department” within customer service.

That is when the turbulence cleared.

“It turns out that the customer would indeed have been eligible for a refund,” the Swiss representative responded.

The culprit? Bad writing. And a bad website.

“It appears that conflicting information in our FAQ led to this misunderstanding, and we will update the wording to prevent similar cases in the future,” the representative said. 

It wasn’t that Webley was wrong; it was that Swiss didn’t know its own rules. The airline processed a full refund of the $500.

“I really appreciate the effort you put into resolving this,” Webley told us. “It’s so reassuring to know that there is a person that will take the time to help consumers.”

We are happy to help. But this victory shouldn’t have required a consumer advocate. It should have been resolved the moment Webley sent that screenshot.

The lesson here is simple: In the digital age, you are your own best record keeper. Don’t trust the airline to remember what it promised you. Capture the promise and save it. Then if the airline tries to renege, show it the receipts.

And if it still says nein? You know where to find us.

On a recent flight from San Francisco to Paris, Dan Skilken was a no-show.

It wasn’t his fault. The first leg of his flight to Denver was delayed by weather. His airline rebooked him on another flight to Paris, but someone pushed the wrong button, and the airline believed he had missed his connecting flight.

“We figured it out when I went online to check our return reservation while in France and discovered we had no tickets,” he recalls.

Airlines automatically cancel your reservation when you miss a leg of your flight.

Fortunately, Skilken is no newbie. He runs a travel insurance website and understands the ins and outs of the travel industry. He talked to an airline representative in Paris, who quickly restored his tickets. The European Union last week agreed to bar airlines from canceling your return ticket or charging extra when you miss an outbound leg, though the change isn’t expected to take effect until next year.

It would be easy to dismiss his problem as a one-off, but I can’t. I’ve been seeing more “no-show” cases lately — and many cost travelers dearly because they have to pay for new tickets or hotel rooms. It’s made some skeptical travelers wonder if travel companies aren’t using “no shows” as a way to generate a little extra cash.

“No-shows are a bigger issue than people think,” says Brian Raffio, a senior travel coordinator for a tour operator that specializes in Africa. “Not only is it a logistical nightmare, but it holds significant revenue implications.”

Raffio says travelers don’t understand that companies such as airlines, cruise lines and tour operators are not selling a physical product, but a specific date and time to use that product. They can’t resell it once the time passes.

But are no-shows also an opportunity for the travel industry to make more money?

Are some no-shows nonsense?

Sometimes, travel companies get no-shows wrong, and it’s an error that I’ve seen a lot lately.

Consider what happened to Teresa McGee recently when she flew from Detroit to Charlotte on American Airlines. McGee, a caregiver from Matthews, N.C., flew her outbound trip without incident. But when she tried to fly home, an agent told her she didn’t have a ticket.

“They couldn’t give me a reason,” McGee recalls. 

Eventually, she found out that American had incorrectly labeled her a “no-show” — even though she had a boarding pass that proved she’d flown the first leg of her flight. 

“I tried to explain this to American Airlines numerous times,” she says. 

The airline told her she had to buy a new ticket for $572, which she did. But then it refused to refund her original ticket, and her credit card company sided with the airline when she tried to dispute the charges.

I asked American Airlines about the mix-up, and it offered her a full refund of the new ticket without explanation. But this kind of thing has repeated itself so many times that I’ve begun to wonder if no-shows haven’t become a new revenue stream for travel companies.

“It’s not about maximizing profits”

Are no-shows a way to earn more money? Travel companies vehemently deny it.

“It’s not about maximizing profit,” says Alex Foti, president of Bretton Woods Vacations, a vacation rental company in New Hampshire. “It’s about fairness.”

He says no-shows are rare in his business, but when they happen, his company refunds any fees that are directly tied to services not rendered, such as the cleaning fee or optional charges like pet fees. But the rental amount itself is nonrefundable.

But it can get complicated. For example, some rental companies will offer a partial refund if they can re-rent the property. Others won’t, so if they rent the property twice, they keep all the money. 

Airlines take a more sophisticated approach. They overbook flights, betting that some of the passengers won’t show up. When they don’t, the airlines keep their airfares. 

But falsely claiming that their customers didn’t show up for an outbound leg is definitely a red line. 

How do you avoid losing your money in a no-show mixup?

You don’t have to be the next no-show statistic. Here are a few pro tips for keeping your money.

Stay connected. Flight schedules can change quickly. “Avoiding no-shows today requires agility and preparedness,” says Louise Truman, founder of the sustainable travel company Plotpackers. She recommends downloading your airline’s app for seamless travel updates. “It’s a lifesaver when things change unexpectedly,” she says.

Keep your boarding pass. A boarding pass is a confirmation that you took a flight. And I have to be honest, these flight no-shows are troubling. At the very least, take a photo of your boarding pass to prove that you were on an outbound flight — you may need it later as proof you were on the flight.

Get insurance. Travel insurance can cover you in some circumstances. “If you miss your flight, cruise, or hotel stay because of a travel delay or missed connection, travel insurance can usually provide coverage,” says Terry Boynton, co-founder and president of Yonder Travel Insurance.

Ask about extenuating circumstances. That’s the advice of Shehryar Khan, who owns a vacation rental in Seattle. He says that when someone has to cancel at the last minute because of bad weather or health issues, he can offer a refund. “We do this because the relationship with the guest is more important than the specific booking,” he says.

Are no-shows a travel industry conspiracy?

So are the travel industry’s evil bean counters trying to make money by incorrectly labeling you as a no-show? As I review the cases, I’m inclined to chalk them up to innocent errors made by travel companies. 

In other words, there’s probably not a no-show conspiracy.

That being said, you should take every step you can to protect yourself from being a no-show. Keep your boarding passes, call ahead if you think you might be late checking in — and never, ever, assume everything will be fine. Otherwise, you could end up losing your room, your place on your tour — or having to buy a new airline ticket.