On a cloudless September afternoon, the view from the summit of Feldberg stretches across the Alps, from the peaks of eastern Switzerland to the Austrian ranges beyond Lake Constance. The trail to the top of Baden-Württemberg’s highest mountain is crowded with autumn hikers, and the open, grassy slopes look as if they could hold snow for months.

How many more winters they’ll hold the snow is a question Achim Laber is trying to answer. Laber has been a ranger in Feldberg Nature Reserve for 36 years. He’s seen — and documented — every dry winter, early spring and protracted autumn.

Asked how long the ski lifts on the mountain have left, he doesn’t hedge. 

“I have no idea,” he says.

That kind of talk is unusual at a European ski resort. But then, these are unusual times. Feldberg has had far fewer days with snow on the ground over the past eight decades, with records from 1945 through 2025 showing a clear decline. Across Europe, the outlook is bleak: a study in Nature Climate Change of 2,234 ski resorts in 28 countries found that 53% would face a very high risk of poor snow if global temperatures rise 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, and 98% would at 4 degrees.

Resorts sell confidence through snow guarantees, new snowmaking systems and expansion plans that assume winter will keep happening on schedule. Laber’s answer may be a better starting point for sustainable tourism than any weather forecast. A resort that admits it doesn’t know what’s coming can stop spending money to pretend it does.

A nature reserve with a hole in it

When Feldberg Nature Reserve was created in 1937, planners left a gap along the main road for tourism. Ski lifts started going up in the 1950s. One became two, and by 1968 there were 12. In 1990, the year Laber arrived, authorities expanded the lifts outside its boundaries to accommodate Germany’s growing appetite for skiable terrain.

Ownership complicates everything. Roughly a third of the protected land is private (much of it cattle pasture), a third belongs to the state and a third to local communities. Every conservation decision needs a deal. On Feldberg, the mountain that interests conservationists is the same one that interests tourists.

Winters that won’t settle into a pattern

Snow traditionally covers Feldberg from November through April. A photo series Laber keeps from 2013 shows snow falling as late as May 26, with the last patches melting around July 1.

Recent winters haven’t followed that script. For the last four years, the mountain has had no snow over the two-week Christmas break, the most important holiday of the season for Black Forest tourism. That hurts more than visitors might expect. Laber says local businesses earn more in winter than in summer. Skiers buy lift tickets, and when it’s cold, they eat in restaurants instead of picnicking on a meadow. The last four years were “really horrible” for the towns around the mountain, he said.

“In winter, we only have tourists when we have snow,” Laber says. 

Without it, visitors just drive about an hour and a half to Switzerland or Austria. The lower Alpine resorts there are closing lifts too.

The warming doesn’t arrive in a straight line, which makes planning much harder. About four years ago, a strong winter persuaded some people that climate change had been exaggerated, Laber says. Businesses made money again. Then the Christmas snow stopped coming altogether.

Snow needs water, too

The region’s primary strategy has relied on snowmaking, a process that requires collecting water from local mountain springs starting with the warmer months and storing it to generate artificial snow for the ski slopes. Operators hope it will buy winter tourism some time. Communities used to collect water for snowmaking starting in autumn. Now they want to begin in spring.

That runs into a problem nobody on Feldberg saw coming. The mountain is full of springs, and for most of Laber’s career, water was never a concern. “We never thought it would become difficult to get water,” he said. Over the last four or five years, the springs have produced less and less. In some towns on the mountain’s southern slopes, the fire brigade now brings water to farmers in tanker trucks.

On a boardwalk through one of the reserve’s bogs, Laber points to a patch of moss that grows only in bogs like this one. It’s dry and dead. 

“There is simply too little water,” he said.

Storing water through a hot summer raises other questions, including what grows in it while it waits, and Laber says nobody has good answers yet. The cost of making snow keeps climbing, and lift ticket prices are climbing with it. He worries skiing is drifting out of reach for ordinary families. Prices at the summit restaurants have risen too, pushed up by energy costs.

The forest came back once

Feldberg has been through an environmental crisis before. The resolution surprised even the experts.

In the early 19th century, the land south of the mountain was stripped nearly bare. Laber says it looked like Ireland. Wood was the only fuel, and people had cut down almost everything. Only about 10% of the area was forested. 

When the Haus der Natur, a museum attached to the reserve, made a documentary about that recovery, the explanation caught the filmmakers off guard. Nobody expected the forest to return. It came back because the region switched from wood to coal around the 1830s. Some land was replanted, but a lot of it grew back on its own after struggling farmers gave up their meadows. One pasture abandoned in the 1950s turned into forest within 40 years. In Laber’s hometown, forest covers about 80% of the land.

The Black Forest now needs a second energy transition, away from fossil fuels. Nobody is leaving it to chance. Developers want wind turbines across much of the region. On this question, tourism and conservation groups are on the same side, pushing to keep turbines off the most scenic and sensitive summits. Feldberg will probably be spared, in part because it’s home to the capercaillie, a rare grouse. Laber expects more turbines on the lower ridges within a decade.

“We should work against climate change,” he says. “But we are really not sure if it will work.” 

If it doesn’t, he said, the people who live here will have to reshape tourism to fit the climate they get.

No backup plan for winter

Summer isn’t the problem. The Black Forest is busy from spring through fall. Laber says it doesn’t need more summer attractions. He’s also seeing visitors he never saw 30 years ago, from Spain, Italy and Israel, who now spend their summers in the mountains to escape the heat at home. But Feldberg’s alpine plants and birds can’t make that trip. They’re already on the highest ground in the region, with nowhere left to climb.

Winter is a different story. 

“In winter, the only attraction is snow,” Laber says. Hiking and mountain biking can’t replace it. In a thin-snow winter, he adds, people try to go mountain-biking, but there’s often too much snow to make that practical. 

Asked what the region could offer visitors when the snow fails, Laber laughed and called it the hardest question he could imagine. He hasn’t heard an idea that would work for both conservation and tourism. He compares the region to a factory that used to build cars and doesn’t anymore, and says the Black Forest could end up in the same position.

The companies that run the lifts talk about the future differently. Feldbergbahnen, which operates the ski area for the three towns that own it, answers the question of whether winter sports have a future with a resounding yes. It concedes that climate change is a serious challenge and that swings in the weather make planning harder. But it says snowmaking gives vacationers a snow guarantee they can book around. 

The lift association has pushed to expand that system. In 2023, machines could cover only about a third of the mountain’s runs, using about 100 snow guns and two reservoirs holding 8,600 cubic meters of water (about 2.3 million gallons). The association called that far too little. It said the cold days needed for snowmaking are getting scarcer, and there isn’t enough water to run every gun when they come. 

A master plan called Feldberg 2030 aims to turn the mountain into a year-round destination while modernizing its snowmaking.

Last winter was so-so for skiing. Feldberg opened November 28 after an early storm dropped about 70 centimeters (28 inches) of snow. Then a December thaw cut deep into the Christmas holiday business. Strong crowds in January and February made up most of the losses, but the lifts closed March 22 instead of at Easter as planned. Snowfall had stopped and warm weather was wearing down the south-facing slopes. 

Across the border in France’s Jura Mountains, a resort at similar elevations, has made a different choice. After several bad winters, Métabief commissioned climate projections in 2016, and they showed conditions weren’t likely to improve. 

The resort now expects to end alpine skiing sometime between 2030 and 2040. It’s maintaining its old lifts instead of replacing them and building up mountain biking, trail running and other activities that don’t require snow. So far, no other resort in this area has followed Métabief’s lead. 

Feldberg is betting that better snowmaking can buy more winters, and Métabief is betting it can’t. But the truth is, nobody knows.

Henry Dickson is trapped in a digital hall of mirrors after his iPad crashes and requires a backup restoration. Amazon’s security system demands he approve a notification on an app he can’t access. Can a loyal customer find a human at Amazon with the power to override a buggy algorithm?

Question

I’ve been an Amazon customer for more than 20 years. I’ve spent thousands of dollars on Amazon products, and even contributed to the Amazon Vine program. 

Recently, my iPad was bricked—meaning it was rendered inoperable—during an update. After I rolled it back and reinstalled the Amazon shopping app, I tried to log in. The system asked me to approve a notification sent to the app on that very iPad. Since I was not logged in yet, I could not see or approve the notification. 

Now I’m stuck in an endless loop. Amazon has a recovery link where you can upload a driver’s license to prove your identity, but the link is useless. It requires you to log in before you can upload the documents. If I could log in, I would not need the recovery link. 

I’ve spoken to a dozen representatives over several days. Some were nice, but most just read scripts and promised to escalate the case. Each escalation resulted in a form email containing the same link that does not work. 

I even tried the account change team at a special phone number. A representative had me email my ID and confirmed he received it. Then I immediately got an automated bounce-back saying the address does not accept incoming emails. 

I’ve lost access to my Prime benefits and my entire Kindle library. It feels like the company’s tech support is nonexistent and designed to fob customers off. I just want to regain access to the account I have maintained for decades. Can you help? — Henry Dickson, Roswell, N.M.

Answer

Amazon should have a recovery process that works when you lose access to your primary device, like your iPad. A security system that requires you to be logged in to prove you can’t log in is a cruel digital tautology. 

Amazon should also ensure its account change team can actually receive the documents they request instead of pointing you toward a “no-reply” black hole. 

You kept great records of your interaction with Amazon, which was really helpful. But it looks like you also made several increasingly frantic calls to Amazon. When you find yourself in a loop like this, stop calling the main support line. The front-line agents rarely have the authority to bypass two-factor authentication protocols. 

Instead, reach out to an executive. I list Amazon executive contacts on my advocacy site who can actually make things happen. 

I contacted Amazon on your behalf. At the same time, you took a chance and emailed an executive. While Amazon claimed your account was “compromised,” it finally disabled the 2FA and the old password. The path back wasn’t easy. You hit another wall when the system told you that your cell phone number was already in use. Eventually, Amazon allowed you to re-register your number and regain control. 

“I know your wait has been frustrating and for that, I truly apologize,” a representative wrote to you in a follow-up email.

I’m glad you got your account back. You mentioned you’re having second thoughts about returning to Amazon after this. That’s understandable. If a company makes it this hard to be a happy customer, maybe it’s time to take your business elsewhere—somewhere that doesn’t treat your identity like a math problem it can’t solve.

George Meyer thought he had a deal for unlimited mileage on his month-long car rental in France. But when he returned the car just three hours late, Europcar slapped him with a bill for $650 in excess distance. Can a small delay really void an “unlimited” contract?

Question

I rented a car through Europcar for a trip to France last summer. I had a voucher through my travel agency that specifically stated that “unlimited mileage is included with this vehicle.” 

I paid $670 for a 27-day rental. Everything seemed fine until I returned the car at Charles de Gaulle Airport. I was about three hours late because of some local traffic. When I received my final bill from Europcar, I was shocked to see an additional charge of $650 for “additional kilometers.” 

I contacted my travel agent to point out that my contract promised unlimited miles. After a month of silence and weekly follow-ups, I finally got a response. My agent told me that because the rental was extended by one day due to my late return, the mileage conditions changed in accordance with the terms and conditions. It claimed that neither the agency nor I decide the amount charged—the rental supplier determines it based on its own pricing policy. 

I would be happy to pay for one extra day of rental, but $650 for a three-hour delay feels like highway robbery. Europcar has since told me it conducted a “thorough investigation” and considers the matter resolved. Can you help me get a refund for these overcharges? — George Meyer, Fair Oaks, Calif. 

Answer

If you reserve a car with unlimited mileage, that feature shouldn’t vanish into thin air just because you hit a traffic jam on the way to the airport. 

I think you might have avoided this by leaving a little earlier for the airport. In France, returning a car more than 29 minutes late often triggers a charge for an entire extra day. Usually, that just means paying a daily rate, but your case hit a regulatory tripwire (I’ll get to the explanation in a minute). 

You did the right thing by starting a paper trail with your travel advisor and rental agency. Your travel agent should have stepped up to help you, and it didn’t. The agency also failed to respond to my advocacy team’s request for help.

Next stop: Europcar. When the front-line agents gave you the brush-off, you could have sent a polite appeal to the executives at Europcar. I publish their names and email addresses on my advocacy site at Elliott.org. 

So what went wrong here? Vincent Vevaud, a spokesman for Europcar Mobility Group, explained the problem. Your 27-day rental had unlimited mileage, but your three-hour delay pushed the rental to 28 days. 

“In line with EU regulation, rentals exceeding 27 days fall into a different category than short-term rental, with different rules applying,” Vevaud says. “Notably, the 28-day rate does not include unlimited mileage, but rather 3,750 km, with additional kilometers charged.” 

The fine print feels like a trap. Because no one clearly warned you that a few extra hours would change the entire structure of your mileage plan, Europcar has agreed to refund the $650. Next time you’re driving in France, remember that the 28th day is the most expensive one you’ll ever buy.

(A footnote to this case: Meyer is still waiting for his refund. It appears Europcar sent the money to the wrong account. I’ll update this story when the case is closed.)

On the morning Marianne Piepenburg was supposed to pick up her car from National at the Avignon TGV station, arsonists attacked the French rail lines. Her car rental company canceled her reservation after she missed her pickup time, and then charged her an extra $403 for a new vehicle.

Piepenburg doesn’t think that’s fair.

“I feel that National took advantage of my situation, which was beyond my control,” she says. 

Wait. Can car rental companies just cancel your reservation if you’re late and then raise your price? 

Yes—and no.

This case raises several important questions:

• What are your rights when an “act of God” or civil unrest prevents you from picking up a rental?
• Why do major car rental brands hide behind local affiliates when things go wrong?
• How can you effectively document a paper trail with a nonresponsive company?

First, let’s take a closer look at what went wrong.

“It was impossible for me to take delivery of my auto”

Piepenburg, an Emerald Club member, deliberately chose the company for her rental in France because she thought her loyalty would count if something went wrong. Her rate for a five-day rental: $434.

But on the morning of October 27 there were arson attacks on the French rail lines, including those between Paris and Avignon.

“It was impossible for me to take delivery of my auto,” she explains. “I tried calling the National Rental office in Avignon and there was no answer. I tried modifying my reservation on the app and could not do so.”

She arrived in Avignon the next day, but by then, National had canceled her reservation.

“I was told that Enterprise—National’s parent company—would have an auto available later that day,” she recalls. “I returned to the train station and took delivery of a comparable vehicle on October 28 for four days.”

Enterprise charged her $837.

“That’s nearly twice the original reservation cost for less days,” she says.

After she returned, she called Enterprise’s customer service. The representatives told her she had to send a request to the local Enterprise affiliate asking that they compensate her for the difference in the charges “They assured me that I would hear from Enterprise,” she says.

“I have heard nothing more from anyone,” she adds.

Piepenburg says she’s disappointed. She gave Enterprise and National her business and expected them to quickly take care of this rather than deferring to a local operator.

“When I walked into the office at the Avignon station, the sign said ‘Enterprise,’ ‘National’ and ‘Budget,’ and I had every reason to believe I was doing business with them, not with a local, independent affiliate that would treat their customers unfairly,” she adds.

She spent the next several months caught in a game of corporate hot potato. National’s customer service blamed Enterprise. Enterprise blamed the local affiliate in France. And she didn’t hear as much as a peep from the local affiliate in Avignon, which apparently didn’t own a working telephone or an outgoing email server.

Could this have gone any differently? Maybe.

What are your rights when an “act of God” or civil unrest prevents you from picking up a rental?

In the travel world, we often talk about “force majeure”—events so severe and unpredictable that they void standard contracts. Usually, companies use this to protect themselves from you. If a storm blows the roof off a rental office, they don’t owe you a car. But when an event like a rail arson attack keeps you from the counter, the “protection” doesn’t always work in reverse.

Most car rental companies have a “no-show” policy. If you aren’t there within a certain window—often two to 24 hours—they cancel the reservation and release the car to the next person in line. 

They don’t care that the trains were on fire. They just see an empty slot and a chance to re-rent the vehicle at walk-up rates, which are significantly higher than what you booked months earlier.

Piepenburg’s experience is a classic example. Because she couldn’t reach the office to tell them she was delayed, she was treated like a new customer when she showed up a day late to claim her rental car.

To protect yourself, you have to be relentless. If the local office doesn’t answer, call the international customer service line immediately. Get a representative to add a note to your file. Even if they say they can’t modify the reservation, that note serves as your get-out-of-jail-free card later when you’re fighting a bill.

In Piepenburg’s case, she tried the app and the local phone line, but the system wasn’t built to listen. 

When you’re stuck in a situation like this, don’t just wait until you arrive to fix it. If the app fails, send a DM to the company on X or Facebook. These social media teams often have more power to override local no-show cancellations than a local affiliate.

Why do major car rental brands hide behind local affiliates when things go wrong?

This is one of the most frustrating shell games in the travel industry. You see a big, familiar logo like National or Enterprise at an airport in France and you think you’re dealing with a global giant. But you aren’t. You’re often dealing with a local franchise that has paid for the right to use that logo.

When Piepenburg complained to the U.S. corporate offices, she was met with a shrug. They told her the Avignon location was an “independent affiliate” and that any refund had to come from its pockets. This is a convenient way for corporations to collect franchise fees while washing their hands of customer service failures. The company wants you to see the brand when you’re booking, but they want you to see a local stranger when you’re complaining.

You have to remind the corporate office that their name is on the building. Piepenburg was an Emerald Club member. That’s a corporate loyalty program. If the brand is strong enough to take her loyalty and her data, it’s strong enough to fix a billing error caused by a national rail crisis.

When you hit the affiliate wall, stop talking to the local office. They have no incentive to give your money back. Instead, escalate to the corporate executives who oversee global operations. They care about the brand’s reputation in a way the local guy in Avignon might not.

How can you effectively document a one-way paper trail with a nonresponsive company?

Piepenburg’s biggest hurdle was that the company simply stopped talking. She sent emails. She made calls. She even used a chatbot, which gave her a seven-day window that came and went with total silence. 

I’ve seen this before. It’s as if companies hope that if they ignore you long enough, you’ll just go away.

To break the silence, you need a paper trail that is impossible to ignore. Piepenburg did the right thing by moving from phone calls to written communication. However, she initially skipped a step by going straight to the top executives. I usually recommend the rule of three:

1. The customer service form: Use the website’s “Contact Us” form first. It creates a case number in their system.
2. The social media chat: If the form is ignored, use the chat feature or social media. Take screenshots. Piepenburg’s photo of the chat was vital evidence.
3. The executive escalation: Only after the first two fail should you reach out to the VPs.

Piepenburg felt her trail was one-way, but that one-way street was exactly what I needed to help her. Because she had documented the dates, the names of the people she spoke with, and the lack of response, I could present a case file to Enterprise that showed a breakdown in its service recovery process.

When a company says it will get back to you in a week, set a calendar alert for day eight. Don’t let a month pass. Continuous, polite follow-ups show the company that you aren’t going to be part of its “unresolved” statistics.

A resolution to the French rental fiasco? 

So, how did this French fiasco finish? After Piepenburg shared her meticulously documented paper trail with me, I reached out to my contacts at Enterprise.

Within days, the company decided to honor the original rate.

Piepenburg received a message from a representative apologizing for the “delay and for the poor experience.” She didn’t have to wait 10 days, either. A refund of $399 was credited to her account almost immediately. 

“We take customer concerns seriously and work to resolve any experience that falls short,” an Enterprise representative told me. 

Enterprise says there’s no record of you contacting the branch, which is not surprising since most of your interactions were by phone. 

“Our team reviewed the matter, decided to honor the original rate, and refunded the difference,” the Enterprise representative added. 

Piepenburg is pleased with the outcome.

“Despite all my efforts to reach out to Enterprise and its representatives, it is clear to me that I would have been ignored without your intervention,” she says. “While your involvement should not have been necessary, I am deeply grateful for your advocacy.”

November is such a confusing month to travel, isn’t it? It’s freezing when your Uber picks you up at 5 a.m., but by the time you’re checking into your hotel at noon, you’re sweating through your collar. How do you pack for something like that?

It’s tempting to bring everything: the waterproof shell, a backup blazer, the “just-in-case” dress shoes. By the time you zip up your roller bag, you’ve essentially packed the contents of a small apartment and you’re begging the gate agent not to charge you an overweight luggage fee. Knowing what not to pack saves more room than any packing cube.

Overpacking got more expensive this year. In April, the major U.S. airlines raised the fee for a first checked bag to $45 on most domestic routes. American now charges basic economy passengers $55.

Overpacking starts in your head, with a voice that keeps asking “what if?” November, with its 40-degree mornings and 70-degree afternoons, is a good month to break the habit. Who knows? It could save you a few bucks in bag fees, too.

Why do travelers overpack in November?

No new suitcase or clever gadget will fix this. You have to decide what stays home.

For example, luxury travel advisor Phil Lockwood uses a lightweight jacket and a vest that compress smaller than a paperback. He layers a warm vest over a button-down. That keeps him comfortable through three seasons. But his biggest downsizing involved his shoes.

“Shoes take up an incredible amount of space because they’re bulky and oddly shaped,” he explains. “I went from packing a variety — workout shoes, walking shoes, dress shoes, leather flip-flops, rubber flip-flops — to packing none at all and instead just wearing a pair of versatile running shoes.”

Andy Abramson ditched his specialty travel clothes for the same reason. These extra items were bulking up his luggage and were only marginally useful at his destination. 

“I realized I did not need to carry contingency plans through the airport,” says Abramson, who runs a communications company in Las Vegas. “I only needed what was essential for the flight itself and for where I was landing.”

They’re both right. As someone who lives on the road, I can tell you that less is more and that the travel clothes and luggage you see advertised are meant for tourists, not pros. The experts carry less, not more.

Does a travel uniform work?

Another November mistake is packing variety. Different outfits for every day, because what if you feel like wearing teal on Thursday?

Frequent travelers know that their wardrobe is a uniform: a blue blazer, black T-shirts, khaki pants. Unless you’re trying to make a fashion statement, you’ll want to be plain and boring. 

One benefit of packing a uniform is that it’s completely interchangeable, and, if necessary, rewearable. (I’m not going to go into details.) 

But by “boring” I also mean be a minimalist.

What not to pack in your suitcase

Here are five things to strike from your November packing list:

A second pair of shoes. “Once you find a pair that can do double duty — stylish enough for dinner but comfortable enough for long walks — the rest of your packing tends to fall into place,” says Susie Piegza, co-founder of Classic Journeys. (I wear versatile but very comfortable Kuru Atom Trail sneakers, which are almost discreet enough to pass for dress shoes.) 

A backup jacket. You only need a light jacket at this time of year unless you’re headed to the Arctic. Don’t pack an in-between jacket or a specialty travel jacket. They’ll just bulk up your bag.

A heavy sweater. Merino wool keeps you warm without much bulk. It also resists odor, so you can wear it several times before anyone notices. Dog trainer Teddy Wall swapped his bulky warm layer for a Smartwool long-sleeve shirt and still packs it. “It handles 40-degree mornings without the puffy-coat bulk,” he said, “and doesn’t feel gross by afternoon when it’s 70 degrees.” Also, a merino base layer takes up the same space as a magazine.

Formal wear. Unless you’re meeting the pope, a blazer and dark jeans will get you into most restaurants, hotels and business meetings. Rusty Meador, founder of the clothing brand Beach & Barn, even ditched his wool blazer entirely. “Airports and businesses have become so casual that a lightweight canvas blazer seems like a tuxedo by comparison,” he said. Pack one unstructured blazer and leave the rest. 

The “just in case” kit. Almost every hotel I stay in supplies soap and shampoo. Stop hauling a zip-top bag full of contingency grooming products through the security line. Jay Ellenby, president of Safe Harbors Business Travel, nominates the full-size travel umbrella as his most useless item. “It’s bulky, it breaks, and every hotel, drugstore, and airport terminal sells one for $5 if you genuinely need it,” he says. The same logic applies to the backup moisturizer, the duplicate deodorant, and whatever else you’re cramming into that quart bag “just in case.”

Can you travel with just a personal item?

If everything fits in a personal item, you won’t pay a bag fee on any U.S. airline. With first checked bags now running $45 on most major carriers, that adds up.

Ellenby says his corporate clients saw a difference when they packed lighter. 

“The real improvement wasn’t just speed through the airport,” he said. “It was lower stress overall, which directly improved how they showed up in meetings. Lighter bag, sharper focus.”

What if you run out of things to wear? Bill McIntyre, a director at Global Rescue, says there’s a workaround for that, too.

“Pack half of what you think you need,” he advises. “Then find the neighborhood laundromat, and you’ll move through your destination fresh, nimble, and more immersed than any overpacked traveler ever could.”

By the way, visiting a laundromat can be a cultural experience in some cities. It’s a neighborhood bar without the beer — locals, conversation, 30 minutes of unscheduled life.

November will try to trick you. The forecast will say “variable.” Your brain will say “what if?” Your closet will call to you with its fleeces and rain shells and that jacket with all the pockets.

Ignore all of it. Pack the blazer and the merino shirt, and bring just one pair of shoes. Leave the rest behind.

If you’re booking a holiday trip, you’ve probably already seen the warnings. “Only 3 seats left at this fare.” “Booked 17 times in the last 24 hours.” “12 people are looking at this hotel.” 

Sometimes a clock ticks down next to the price.

Do any of those numbers mean anything? Joshua Clouette found the answer by accident.

Clouette, who lives in Marlborough, Mass., tried to change his business class ticket on an Asian carrier recently. During the call, he asked a supervisor how many business class seats were left on his flight. The supervisor said that information couldn’t be shared.

Then Clouette asked about the airline’s website, which declared “only 3 seats left.” Was that true?

“Not necessarily,” the supervisor told him, adding that the site might “not reflect actual availability.”

“To me, this suggests they’re deliberately creating false urgency on their website,” he told me.

Clouette’s case raises a question few travelers think to ask during the holiday booking rush. When a website says a deal is about to vanish, how do we know it’s true? In the United States, almost nobody checks. Maybe that should change. If a hotel claims there are only three rooms left at this price, it should be ready to prove it. If it can’t, it shouldn’t say it.

An old trick with a new urgency

None of this is new. A few years ago, Princeton researchers crawled about 11,000 shopping sites and found low-stock messages on 581 of them. On some online stores, the same warning appeared on every product, regardless of inventory. Countdown timers showed up on 361 sites. On some, the “expiring” offer was still available after the clock ran out.

Travel shoppers face extra pressure this holiday season. Fares and room rates are high and holiday dates are filling up. Nobody wants to pay more by waiting. A scarcity message plays on all of that. 

Readers who contact my advocacy team describe the panic. David Stuebner, a railroad manager from Sturgeon Bay, Wis., says his airfare jumped from $1,791 to $2,325 while he typed in his wife’s passenger information. He changed no flights, no dates and no fare class. His airline told him it couldn’t adjust the price.

After an experience like that, the next “only 2 seats left” message looks like a threat you can’t afford to ignore. The travel industry is counting on it.

Other countries already cracked down

Regulators abroad saw  this and did something about it years ago.

In 2019, Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority got Expedia, Booking.com, Agoda, Hotels.com, ebookers and Trivago to agree to stop giving a false impression of a hotel’s availability or popularity. The sites also promised to stop rushing customers. When they say other people are viewing a hotel, they now have to disclose that those people may be searching for different dates.

Did it work? Not immediately. Months later, the British consumer group Which? checked 10 “only 1 room left” messages on Booking.com and found that five didn’t match what was available. One Liverpool bed-and-breakfast showed “1 room left” for a budget double. Which? clicked through and found four identical rooms at 49 pounds (about $65) each. Booking.com said it had worked to meet its commitments.

Hungary went further. In 2020, its competition authority fined Booking.com 2.5 billion forints (about $7.7 million) over pressure-selling tactics. Among the messages it cited: “32 more people are also watching” and “Highly sought after! Booked 17 times in the last 24 hours.” Sound familiar?

Booking.com and Expedia also made commitments to European Union consumer authorities in 2019 and 2020 to change how they present offers and prices.

And in the U.S.?

In 2022, Federal Trade Commission staff published a report called Bringing Dark Patterns to Light. It named fake countdown timers and false scarcity claims as tactics designed to plant false beliefs. A report isn’t a rule, though. I couldn’t find a single U.S. enforcement action against a travel company over a scarcity claim.

Airlines are a special case. The Department of Transportation, not the FTC, polices unfair and deceptive practices by airlines and ticket agents. A seat count that doesn’t match the seats for sale should fall within its authority. Lately, though, DOT has been forgiving airline penalties, not imposing them.

What to do about false scarcity claims

A scarcity or demand claim must be true at the moment it’s shown, and the company has to keep records that prove it. Three seats left means three seats in that cabin on that flight and date. A “people are viewing” counter has to say what it’s counting. A countdown timer means the price changes when it hits zero.

DOT can enforce that for airlines today. The FTC and state attorneys general can enforce it for hotels and booking sites under existing deceptive-practices laws. They don’t need a new statute, just the will to ask for the data and to take action.

Until regulators do their job, travelers must approach every urgency claim with deep skepticism. Don’t let high-pressure tactics or arbitrary countdowns force a hasty decision. Instead, demand transparency and hold booking platforms accountable when their claims don’t add up.

Don’t look now, but the extras travelers pay are on the rise.

Just this month, the Department of Homeland Security’s annual inflation adjustment raised the ESTA fee that visitors from visa-waiver countries pay to enter the U.S. from $40.27 to $40.62, an increase of about 1%. 

It’s happening everywhere. Edinburgh started charging a new visitor levy in July. Japan tripled its departure tax over the summer. Barcelona raised its tourist tax in April, with more increases already scheduled across Catalonia next spring.

Elected officials pass tourist taxes, write them into law and usually earmark them for a purpose, such as raising money for infrastructure or deterring excess visitors (and sometimes both). But does that make them fair? 

What you’ll pay

Here’s a rundown of the most significant visitor taxes and entry fees on the books now or coming soon.

Europe

• Edinburgh: A 5% levy on the cost of your room for stays starting July 24.
• Barcelona: Under Catalonia’s Law 2/2026, which took effect April 1, the regional tax in Barcelona ranges from 1 euro (about $1.10) per person per night in a youth hostel to 7 euros in a five-star hotel. The city can add up to 8 euros on top of that. Cruise passengers pay 4 euros if their ship stays more than 12 hours and 6 euros if it stays 12 hours or less. The rest of Catalonia gets a second increase on April 1, 2027. Outside Barcelona, the five-star rate goes from 4.50 euros to 6 euros per person per night, and the four-star rate from 1.80 euros to 2.40 euros.
• Venice: Day-trippers paid an access fee of 5 euros if they booked at least four days ahead and 10 euros if they didn’t. The fee applied on peak days during this year’s trial, which ended July 27. The city hasn’t decided whether the fee will return next year.
• United Kingdom: The Electronic Travel Authorisation now costs 20 British pounds (about $26). That’s up 25% from 16 British pounds before the Home Office raised it April 8.
• European Union: The new ETIAS travel authorization will cost 20 euros, almost triple the 7 euros originally planned. The European Commission had targeted a launch in the last quarter of 2026. Recent reports suggest the launch will happen in 2027.

Asia-Pacific

• Japan: The international tourist tax rose from 1,000 yen (about $6) to 3,000 yen (about $19) this summer, more than a three-fold increase.
• Kyoto: The accommodation tax is now tiered by room price, according to the city. It’s 200 yen (about $1.25) per person per night for rooms under 6,000 yen (about $38) and climbs to 10,000 yen (about $63) per person per night for rooms that cost 100,000 yen (about $630) or more.
• New Zealand: The International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy is NZ$100 (about $56) per person, once every two years. Australian citizens and permanent residents are exempt, along with people from most Pacific islands.

We’ve returned the favor, so to speak …

United States

• Hawaii: The transient accommodations tax rose from 10.25% to 11% on January 1 and stays at that rate through 2030, according to the state Department of Taxation. The law also tried to apply the tax to cruise fares. A federal appeals court blocked that part.
• National parks: Non-U.S. residents age 16 and older now pay a $100 nonresident fee at 11 of the busiest parks. That list includes Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon and Zion.

Why destinations say it’s fair

The strongest argument for a tourist tax is that visitors use the streets, trains and trails, so they should help pay for them. The places that make that case disclose where the money goes.

For example, Edinburgh’s council expects its levy to bring in up to 50 million British pounds a year once the program is established. After administrative costs, 5 million British pounds a year goes to housing and to offset the burden of tourism on the city. The rest goes mostly to city operations and infrastructure (55%) and to culture, heritage and events (35%). Hotels keep 2% for collecting it. Council Leader Jane Meagher called the levy a “once in a lifetime opportunity to invest tens of millions of pounds” in the city.

Kyoto is also specific. Its tax pays for platform screen doors in subway stations, preservation of cultural properties and efforts to cut crowding and litter. New Zealand says its levy funds conservation and visitor infrastructure. Japan says its departure tax pays for measures against overtourism, including spreading visitors out to less-crowded regions.

If you’ve ever been stuck in a crowd on a Kyoto bus, the idea of paying a few hundred yen toward fixing that problem doesn’t sound unreasonable. Or does it?

So where’s the line?

Some of these taxes are harder to defend.

The national park fee charges foreign visitors $100 more than Americans to stand at the same overlook. New Zealand also gives some nationalities a pass, but its exemption covers neighbors with deep travel ties to the country. Pricing by passport is harder to defend.

Entry authorizations raise a different question. The U.K. and the EU both charge for the Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) and European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS), and the U.S. charges for Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA). None of these fees is tied to anything a visitor uses on the ground. They’re the price of being allowed to board the plane. The EU nearly tripled its fee before the system even launched.

Stacking is another problem. A family of four flying to London pays 80 British pounds in ETA fees before anyone leaves home. That same family pays 12,000 yen (about $76) just to leave Japan, plus Kyoto’s nightly tax on top of whatever their hotel adds. None of these charges is large on its own. Together, they can really add up.

There’s also the question of who pays. Visitors can’t vote in Edinburgh, Barcelona or Honolulu, which makes them an easy target for any city council that needs revenue. 

If you said yes …

• Do you feel better paying for the infrastructure that you use?
• Do you favor places that show you the receipts?

If you said no …

• Do you look for destinations that have lower taxes? 
• Would you refuse to visit a place that has high taxes or that doesn’t tell you what the money is used for? 

My take

Since I travel more than 330 days a year, I pay these taxes about as often as anyone. I get hit with New Zealand’s fees almost every time I go back to Auckland.

I don’t object to paying for the places I visit. But I have a problem with paying without knowing where the money goes. The taxes that bother me most are the fees that keep climbing without any visible improvement on the ground. The growing habit of charging visitors more simply because they’re visitors bothers me, too.

Before you book next summer’s trip, look up the visitor taxes at your destination. The tax rarely appears in the advertised room rate, but you’ll find it on your final bill.

Your turn

Have you paid a tourist tax that felt like a fair deal, or one that felt like a shakedown? Tell us where you were and what you paid. Our comments are open.you paid. Our comments are open.

The Southern Brush-tailed Rock-Wallaby is a study in muted texture and nervous grace. It stands barely two feet tall, its fur a dense, grizzled coat of charcoal and russet that blends seamlessly into the dappled shadows of Australia’s wattle trees. 

It’s also cute. Very cute.

“Whatever you do,” says Steph Swann, the chief executive officer of the Odonata Foundation, which runs this sanctuary at Mt. Rothwell. “Don’t call them that.”

It’s not easy. Behind her, framed by granite outcrops of the You Yang mountains, dozens of these fuzzy creatures are emerging from the early afternoon shadows. They’re curious, peeking over boulders as if they’re posing for a high-fashion shoot.

Swann’s request seems a little strange. After all, these animals are objectively adorable. But she has a good reason for the ban: The problem with labeling these creatures as simply “cute” is that it creates a dangerous mental shortcut.

“We see people look at the animals and say, ‘That’s cute,’ without understanding the importance of their function,” Swann explains. 

In other words, when you reduce a species to its aesthetic value, you fail to see them for what they truly are: the linchpins of a functioning ecosystem. When you call them cute, you stop looking at what they mean, and they become a pattern for a stuffed toy.

Melbourne’s real sustainability project

To truly understand sustainability in a place like Melbourne, you have to look past the boardroom carbon pledges and the tourism industry’s talking points. The survival of these wallabies is linked to the health of the soil, the resilience of the climate, and ultimately, the nutritional value of the food on your dinner plate.

There’s a disconnect in how the world views a place like Melbourne and what’s actually happening on the ground. Visitors think of it as a place with a vibrant coffee shop culture, European architecture and culture that happens to have scored respectably on the latest Global Destination Sustainability Index (ranked 11th). But too often, they overlook the systemic conservation work happening in the bushland right outside the city limits.

Matthew Boyd, founder of Natureboss, a Melbourne-based corporate business events company, says bringing groups to a sanctuary like Mt. Rothwell creates instant perspective and a lasting connection—not just to the wallabies, but to the concept that being sustainable means much more than eliminating single-use plastics and installing a few solar panels.

When corporate groups come to the sanctuary, the smartphones disappear. They engage in Survivor-style scavenger hunts and meditation. By getting people into the dirt, the sanctuary proves that restoring ecosystems is highly actionable, achievable, and immediate.

“Once they see what’s happening here,” he says, “they understand.”

The business of saving species

The Odonata Foundation is strictly in the business of saving species, and business is booming. The organization is working around the clock to recover nine core species through a national network of sanctuaries. 

Mt. Rothwell is a prime example of their high-impact, safe haven model. The 1,100-acre site is entirely enclosed by a specialized predator-proof fence that keeps out the foxes and feral cats that have decimated Australia’s native wildlife. This secure environment allows the foundation to manage 80 percent of the remaining Southern Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby population.

Visitors can transition from observers to active participants through public and private tours, corporate experiences, or the volunteer program. The scale of this engagement is immense. In 2024 alone, volunteers contributed over 10,000 hours to the muddy, essential work of habitat restoration and species care.

“Visitors can play a direct role by moving beyond passive observation,” says Matt Singleton, Odonata’s chief operating officer.

Walking with the soil engineers

A walk through the bush with Nigel Sharp, Odonata’s founder, shows the value of this sustainability project. He recounts the staggering history of Odonata’s work.

“We’re rescuing species that the rest of the world had essentially written off,” he says.

Take the Eastern Barred Bandicoot, a small, nocturnal marsupial. At one point, the entire mainland population consisted of fewer than 50 animals. Today, through Odonata’s breeding programs and sanctuary network, there are over 4,000 bandicoots. 

And as for the Southern Brush-tailed Rock-Wallabies you’re not allowed to call cute? Their population once bottomed out at just 39. Now they’re everywhere.

But Sharp’s most fascinating revelation is the “why” behind the recovery. These animals are soil engineers, he explains. After reintroducing these small mammals, the team watched the soil’s functionality transform. Sharp shares an example of a massive summer rainstorm where the engineered soil—softened and turned over by thousands of tiny paws—held water so effectively that it actually brought a dormant natural spring back to life.

Sharp connects the dots directly to human survival. 

“There’s a direct correlation between highly nutritious food produced and the level of soil carbon,” he explains.

Without these animals churning the earth, the soil degrades. When the soil degrades, the vegetables you eat lose their vitamins. In a very literal sense, the wallaby is responsible for the nutrient density of your dinner.

A cuteness compromise

The setting sun casts a long shadow across the granite, and the wallabies are out in force now. One joey peeks out from a pouch, and the impulse to say the forbidden word out loud is almost irresistible. 

Steph Swann circles back to the topic of cuteness. She admits the frustration of people seeing a stuffed animal where they should see a critical ecosystem engineer. But she also acknowledges the reality of the world we live in. Protecting these species requires money, corporate volunteering, and global awareness.

She looks at the wallabies with a sense of pride—and slight resignation. If these animals can get visitors through the door—and a philanthropic donation or or two—then so be it, she sighs. 

“You can call them cute,” she says. “As long as it helps save them.”

Paul Clarke’s GE Profile ice maker is broken, and despite eight attempts to fix it with an approved vendor, the company keeps re-sending the same damaged part. Now he’s stuck with a $3,000 appliance that doesn’t work. Is it time for a new machine?

Question

My GE Profile ice maker is currently out of the manufacturer’s warranty, but I’ve been working with a GE-approved appliance vendor to get it repaired. 

The situation has become ridiculous. GE Parts has sent the same replacement part eight times now, and every single time, the part has arrived broken. 

The part in question is an impeller motor, shaft, and a three-blade propeller. It comes in a box, and the part itself is inside a sealed clear plastic bag. Each of the eight times, the propeller was broken. 

What’s even stranger is that there are no propeller blades inside the sealed bag. This means the part is being packaged and shipped when already damaged. 

GE has now prevented this appliance from being repaired for four months. I have an Assurant warranty that will cover the appliance once it has been repaired by the approved vendor, but we can’t get to that point because of these broken parts. 

Since GE can’t seem to provide a working part, I would like them to replace the appliance, which is valued at $3,000. Can you help me? — Paul Clarke, Savannah, Ga.

Answer

GE Appliances should have sent you a working part the first time. If it failed a second time, a red flag should have gone up in the warehouse. By the third or fourth time, someone should have physically inspected the box to ensure they weren’t just shipping plastic shards to your home. 

When a company proves it can’t supply the basic components to fix its own product, it has a responsibility to make the customer whole. In the world of high-end appliances, that usually means a replacement or a significant credit toward a new unit. 

You did the right thing by sticking with a GE-approved vendor. Using unauthorized repair shops is the fastest way to get a manufacturer to wash its hands of you. You also did a great job documenting the phantom blades—the fact that the broken pieces weren’t even in the sealed bag proves this wasn’t a rough delivery driver, but a quality control meltdown at the source. 

For anyone else facing an appliance doom loop, remember to keep a meticulous paper trail.  If the front-line customer service agents keep sending you broken propellers, it’s time to stop talking to them. You can always appeal to the executives at GE Appliances. I list their names and email addresses on my site, Elliott.org. 

This case is a reminder that sometimes the system just breaks, and you need a human to step in and stop the machinery. I contacted GE on your behalf to see why its parts department was stuck on repeat. Shortly after that, GE reached out with a solution. 

“We wanted to let you know that we have offered Mr. Clarke a prorated check given the age of this unit since it is out of warranty,” a GE representative told me. You accepted the check, which should be enough to help you move on from this frozen disaster.

Tatsuyuki Morishita booked a “quiet” Airbnb in Toronto, only to be jolted awake by noise every night. An Airbnb agent promised a refund if he moved out early, but once he handed back the keys, the company tried to close the case with no refund. Can Morishita get Airbnb to honor its word?

Question

I booked an Airbnb rental in Toronto for a stay of more than two months. The listing description used the words “quiet” and “peaceful” five times, which was exactly what I needed for my stay. 

Unfortunately, the reality was anything but calm. Almost every night, recurring heavy impact noise from the unit above would wake us up at 4 a.m. I didn’t just complain; I documented the disturbance with video and audio recordings. I shared these with the host multiple times, and while they acknowledged the ongoing noise, they couldn’t stop it. 

I also reported the issue to Airbnb within the required 72-hour window. An agent reviewed my evidence and confirmed I was covered by Airbnb’s AirCover guarantee. He gave me a written commitment for a full refund of 12 unused nights and a 30 percent refund for the 20 nights we endured the noise. He even told me he was “currently processing” the request. 

Since we moved out, Airbnb reassigned the file to multiple agents who all contradicted each other. One agent denied our eligibility entirely. Another senior manager claimed the host wasn’t willing to alter the dates, despite the thread showing the host had already approved the early checkout. The agent then tried to close the case without giving us a cent.

I just want Airbnb to honor the written commitment its agent made. Can you help me get them to pay what they promised? — Tatsuyuki Morishita, North York, Ontario 

Answer

Airbnb should have stuck to its word. When an agent confirms AirCover eligibility and provides a specific refund amount in writing, that’s a contract. You relied on that commitment when you packed your bags and left. For the company to play “hot potato” with your case afterward is unacceptable.

AirCover is supposed to protect guests when a listing isn’t what was advertised. Since “quiet” was a central feature of the description, the early-morning noise brigade was a clear violation. 

You documented the noise, notified the host, and got a promise from support before you left the premises. Good job! Many travelers make the mistake of leaving first and asking for money later, but you had the “green light” in writing.

When a company goes silent or starts walking back a promise, you should appeal to an executive. I list the names and email addresses of Airbnb’s leadership on my advocacy site, Elliott.org.

I contacted Airbnb on your behalf. Shortly after that, a member of the senior support team called you. While you rightly insisted on keeping the conversation in writing, they followed up on the platform to apologize. Airbnb honored the original refund of $1,268 and even threw in a $250 coupon for the trouble.

As an active duty member of the military, Zachary Scott may not know where he’ll get deployed next. But he is sure of this: The modem and router he uses to connect to the internet belong to him.

So when the orders came to move from Virginia to Hawaii, he canceled his internet service with Cox Communications and packed his belongings, including the hardware he owned.

Everything seemed fine until he got his final statement. That’s when Cox decided to hit him with a one-time charge of $252 for the modem. When he didn’t pay the bill, Cox referred the bill to a collections agency.

“I would like this removed from my credit report and the erroneous charges removed,” he says.

His case raises several important questions:

• How do you prove you don’t have something that you never had in the first place?
• What are your rights under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act when a utility company needlessly complicates your move?
• How can you force a company to un-report a debt to collections once it realizes it has made a mistake?

“I used my own equipment”

When Scott canceled his account, the “we are sorry to lose you” note from Cox felt more like a threat than a farewell. It warned that to avoid collection costs, he needed to return all their equipment. 

But Scott didn’t have their equipment. He moved to Honolulu, started his new assignment, and assumed the mistake would resolve itself once the company realized its inventory was actually correct.

It didn’t. A few months later, a debt collector was knocking on his digital door. Scott was now facing a $240 “delinquency” on his credit report for equipment he never had.

“I used my own equipment,” he says. “I had none of theirs.”

How do you prove it’s your equipment?

Proving you didn’t steal a modem is like proving you didn’t see a UFO. If the company claims its database says you have the hardware and you can’t show a receipt from 2021, the company wins.

Or does it?

Scott’s situation is a classic can’t-win scenario. He told me the equipment is over five years old. Most of us don’t keep receipts for electronics that long. Heck, most of us can’t find the receipt for the toaster we bought a few weeks ago.

The best weapon in this scenario is your past billing statements. Scott was smart enough to keep those. For years, Cox billed him for internet service but never once charged him an equipment rental fee. If a company doesn’t charge you for a modem for 60 months, it’s a fairly safe bet you aren’t using one of theirs.

When you find yourself in inventory purgatory, don’t just tell the customer service rep “I don’t have it.” Send the last 12 months of bills and highlight the missing rental fee. It’s the closest thing to proof of non-existence you’ll get. 

Tip: If they still insist, ask for the MAC address of the modem they think you have. You can then compare that to the MAC address on the bottom of your actual router. If they don’t match, and you have photos to prove it — you’ve got ’em.

Are there any protections for servicemembers for erroneous billing?

The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act provides a lot of protections for people like Scott, specifically regarding terminating leases and cell phone contracts when they get permanent change of station orders. 

While it doesn’t cover every single utility fee dispute, the spirit of the law is meant to prevent exactly what happened here: a soldier getting distracted by a move across the Pacific only to find his credit trashed by a clerical error.

Companies often have military desks or specialized departments to handle these transitions. But as Scott found out, the left hand rarely knows what the right hand is doing. He was executing military orders to Hawaii when Cox decided to turn his credit report into a battlefield.

When you’re in the military and a company ignores your proof, it’s time to escalate. Every base has a legal assistance office. Sometimes a letter on JAG letterhead is the quickest way to wake up a sleepy corporate billing department. 

Scott tried to handle it himself, but the company just handed the debt to a collector. And once you’re in collections, it mushrooms from a billing error into a financial parasite that’s hard to kill.

How do you un-report a debt you never had?

You can undo an erroneous collection report, but it’s not always easy.

If you find yourself staring at a collection notice for a debt you don’t owe, the first rule is: Don’t ignore it. Ignoring a collection agency is like ignoring a leak in your roof—it’s only going to get more expensive and more destructive over time.

Under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, you have the right to request validation of the debt. You have to do this in writing within 30 days of receiving that first collection notice. In Scott’s case, he needed to tell the agency, “I don’t owe Cox $240, and here’s why.”

When you send that letter—and you should send it via certified mail, return receipt requested—the collection agency is legally required to stop collection activities until they provide you with proof that the debt is legitimate. In a case like this, where the equipment was never rented, the agency will likely come up empty-handed. But you have to start that paper trail to protect your credit score.

If the collection agency refuses to budge, your next move is a formal dispute with the three major credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. You can do this online, but I always recommend the old-fashioned way—on paper, sent through the mail. Provide copies of your final bill showing no equipment charges and your military orders if applicable.

The bureaus have 30 days to investigate. If the company (in this case, Cox) can’t prove you had the equipment, the bureau must remove the negative mark from your report. It’s a tedious process, but it’s the only way to perform a credit exorcism and get that phantom debt off your record for good.

An appeal to an executive at Cox might have helped, too. We list the names, numbers and email address on our company contacts pages.

Scott’s move to Hawaii has made this even more complicated, but the law remains on his side—even from the other side of the world. Just remember: in the world of consumer advocacy, silence is often interpreted as an admission of guilt.

Problem solved?

I reached out to Cox several times to see if it could fix this. A representative got back to me and declared that the case was resolved.

Good news, right? Kinda. Scott checked his credit report and the delinquency was still there. I asked if he’d heard anything from Cox, but he hadn’t.

I’m still optimistic that this will get fixed. The wheels turn slowly in the world of debt collection. Cox has to notify the company and then the company has to update its records, and that can be a process. But I have a written promise from Cox that it’s been taken care of.

Scott needs a letter of deletion or a debt validation response that shows a zero balance and a request to the bureaus to remove the debt. Without that paper, you’re just taking their word for it. And as we’ve seen, their word isn’t worth the $240 they’re trying to collect.

(I’ll update this story when Scott has the letter.)

The travel industry is redefining what it means to get your money back. You’re not going to like it. 

Just ask William Farrer, a retired attorney from San Rafael, Calif., who thought he was booking a refundable room at a full-service hotel in New Orleans.

He typed the hotel’s name into Google, clicked the first result, double-checked the terms — which promised the room was “refundable for a limited period” — and hit confirm. Seconds later, an email arrived from a booking site, informing him that the “limited” time had already expired and that his $3,228 was spent. Wow, that was fast!

It’s the travel industry’s latest shell game. The word “refundable” used to mean you’d get your money back. Now it means something closer to you might get some of your money back, under specific conditions, minus fees you weren’t clearly told about, after a fight that could consume months of your life. 

“In most consumers’ minds, a refundable ticket should provide a full refund to the original form of payment if you cancel before departure,” says Chip Lupo, an analyst with WalletHub. “That’s what you’re generally entitled to. But some travel providers may try to get you to accept a credit or voucher instead.”

Why a refundable booking may not return all your money

When you book a refundable trip through an online travel agency, you’re buying two promises. The airline’s fare rules say refundable, but the agency’s service contract may say something else.

That “something else” often includes a $30 nonrefundable distribution charge—a fee airlines and agencies pass along for using the Global Distribution System, the software backbone that connects travel agents to airline inventory. 

“Some airlines apply a distribution charge,” says Maria Atanasova of Stars Desk, a luxury travel agency. “This fee is typically around $30 and, in many cases, is nonrefundable even when the ticket itself is fully refundable.”

A $30 fee doesn’t sound like much. But you paid for a refundable fare and didn’t get one.

Agencies hide their own fees in the fine print, too. Many online agencies compete on price by discounting fares below what airlines publish, then relying on change and cancellation fees to survive. 

“They rely on service fees for changes or cancellations to offset the loss on sale,'” Atanasova explains. In other words, the bargain fare you found on a comparison site may have a hidden string attached—and that string tightens the moment you try to cancel.

“‘Refundable’ in travel now often means conditional,” says Alen Baibekov, CEO of Economy Bookings, “not complete.”

Some hotels charge fees when they send you a refund

It’s not just the big guys playing this game. Stephen Fofanoff manages the Domaine Madeleine Hotel near Olympic National Park in Port Angeles, Wash.—a small family property that learned a painful lesson during the pandemic.

“We never want to charge any guest unnecessarily,” Fofanoff says, noting that all fees are clearly disclosed when guests book a room. Card processors typically keep the fee from the original sale. Some charge another fee to send the money back.

“We were forced to adjust our policy to cover the costs just to remain open,” he says. That adjustment added about 5% to every cancellation.

His hotel now offers what he calls a “choose your own cancellation” policy. Guests can reschedule for free, but a cash refund, when due, costs something. 

“As a small family-owned hotel, we simply can’t afford the burden that giant corporations impose on us,” Fofanoff says.

Credit card processing fees are an unglamorous and underreported tax on small businesses, and consumers ultimately foot the bill. What’s frustrating isn’t that these costs exist, but it’s that the word “refundable” doesn’t acknowledge them. 

Guests book a refundable rate expecting a full return, but they don’t always get it.

“Refundable,” says Rahul Telang, a professor of information systems at Carnegie Mellon University, “does not mean the payment is risk-free.”

How to get a full refund from a booking site

You don’t have to put up with these partial refunds. Here’s what to do.

Take a screen shot. Screenshot the checkout page that says “fully refundable.” Then compare it to the confirmation email that adds fees or credit-only language. That’s the advice of Rene Fornaris, a vice president at a two-way radio retailer, who has watched this pattern play out in his business. “If they didn’t clearly disclose the deduction before you paid, that’s where people actually win,” he says.

Book direct. Online travel agencies are notorious for adding surprise fees or changing the definition of “refundable” to offering a credit or something less than all your money back. “You have more leverage when something goes wrong,” says Joe Cronin, president of International Citizens Insurance. 

Consider travel insurance. “Travel insurance can cover you for prepaid, nonrefundable travel costs,” explains Paul-Adrien Maizener, U.S. CEO of Redion (formerly Generali). That means you’ll get a full refund—but only under certain conditions. (You can also get a “cancel for any reason” policy, but you’ll typically only get between 50 to 75%of your money back.)

“Always read the fine print,” warns Susan Sherren, founder of the luxury travel agency Couture Trips. “Never rely on verbal assurances over the phone—ensure everything is in writing.”

You can also ask for help. That’s what Farrer, the attorney from California, did. He asked me about his nonrefundable “refundable” room, and I asked his online travel agency. After seven months of chasing his booking site and the hotel through a maze of noreply email addresses and dead-end phone trees, he finally got his money back.

He had a four-word verdict: “This is complete BS.”

How to spot a booking site posing as the hotel

Impostor sites can show up at the top of your internet search results. They look like a hotel and maybe even use the hotel’s logos. But check the actual address: If it’s not the company’s, you’re dealing with a third party, which may not give you a full refund when you ask.

The worst of them are amateur jobs, without proper security credentials. If your browser has the right settings, it will stop you before you can even make a booking.

Always, always, check the confirmation email immediately and compare it to what you saw at checkout. Any change in refundability terms is your signal to act fast. Agencies sometimes have a short grace period to cancel even a nominally nonrefundable booking, but don’t count on it. 

The word “refundable” used to mean only one thing. You could get all your money back. Now it’s a contract term buried inside a contract term, wrapped around a processing fee, owned by a subsidiary of a booking platform.

Efforts are underway to stop the shady operators who impersonate hotels. Illinois lawmakers introduced bills in 2026 requiring those sites to disclose that they aren’t affiliated with the hotel. A Georgia proposal would make that kind of misrepresentation an unfair and deceptive trade practice.

Until regulations catch up, treat “refundable” the way you’d treat a “lifetime guarantee” from a company that’s only been in business for six months — which is to say, be skeptical. And get everything in writing.

If you’ve checked airfares for the holidays, you probably already know this: It’s expensive. Really expensive.

Domestic round-trip fares for Thanksgiving average $402, up 31% from last year. Christmas fares average $452, a 23% jump. Both are the highest in a decade. 

Fly home on the Sunday after Thanksgiving and you could pay more than $600 roundtrip. Yikes.

This isn’t the usual holiday markup. Fares were climbing long before anyone started shopping for a seat home. The government’s Consumer Price Index shows airline fares up 23% in August compared with a year earlier. In May, the average ticket sold through travel agencies cost 18% more than a year before, even though the number of trips didn’t budge, according to Airlines Reporting Corp. 

So are you being fleeced? Or have airline costs really gone up that much?

What’s driving fares higher?

Many factors are to blame, according to experts.

Fuel costs are up. The war in the Middle East shut down nearly all Gulf airspace when it began, and oil prices soared. The International Air Transport Association expects jet fuel to average $152 a barrel this year, almost 70% more than in 2025. Fuel accounts for nearly a third of an airline’s operating costs. U.S. carriers have largely stopped hedging fuel, so IATA expects them to pass those costs on to passengers quickly.

Then there’s demand. Consumers are gloomy. The University of Michigan’s sentiment index fell to 48.1 in September, near a record lows. They’re flying anyway. “We haven’t seen elasticity,” Delta CFO Erik Snell told analysts in July. Allow me to translate: Delta raised prices and people kept buying. The airline says more than 60% of its fourth quarter is already booked.

There are also fewer seats to go around. Delta’s third-quarter revenue rose 16% while its capacity stayed essentially flat. Spirit Airlines shut down in May, and no low-cost carrier has filled the gap. Delta CEO Ed Bastian says the industry may need to grow even less in 2027. “In a high-cost environment you cannot grow your way out of it,” he said earlier this month. In other words, expect fewer flights and fuller planes.

Is an algorithm setting your fare?

Delta uses an AI pricing tool built by an Israeli company called Fetcherr. In July 2025, the airline said the tool covered about 3% of its domestic fares, with a goal of 20% by the end of that year.

Congress wants to know more. On Aug. 11, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), sent letters to eight airlines asking whether they use personal data to set prices. He cited a study estimating that one airline raised its revenue by up to 6% through AI pricing based on consumer data. Delta President Peter Carter replied that “the fares we file do not take any customer’s personal data into account.” He called the tool a “decision-support tool” and said human analysts still set fares.

Regulators aren’t taking anyone’s word for it. The Federal Trade Commission voted 2-0 on Aug. 19 to propose a policy statement that would require companies to clearly disclose when a price is personalized and what data are behind it. New York and New Jersey have already passed laws aimed at regulating personalized pricing.

Wait, aren’t airlines just covering their costs?

That’s the industry’s argument. Delta expects to spend about $6 billion more on fuel this year, and it cut its earnings forecast. IATA projects that North American airlines’ profit margins will slip to 2.5% this year from 3.5% in 2025.

Now listen to how Bastian described the year. On the Oct. 9 earnings call, he praised “the ability of the industry to get much greater value for the product that we offer” and said “it took a fuel spike in a short order to move people in that direction.” 

Delta raised fares about 20% this year, and Bastian pointed to “the limited amount of resistance that we see.” The airline still expects about $4.5 billion in pretax profit, roughly level with last year. 

Thanks for paying, everyone.

If you voted yes:

• Avoid the Sunday after Thanksgiving if you can. Return fares that day top $600, according to Hopper.
• Set a fare alert now and track your route. Prices change daily, and waiting for a holiday sale is a gamble this year.

If you voted no:

• Tell us why the fares look fair to you. Are you using points, flying off-peak or simply willing to pay?
• You’re the passenger Bastian is counting on. (He’ll thank you on the next earnings call.)

My take

I’m constantly on the road, and I’ve been monitoring one-way fares between Spokane, Wash., and Auckland, New Zealand, for the last few weeks. The prices have been volatile, fluctuating between $500 and $700. It feels like the revenue managers at American, Delta and Air New Zealand keep trying to raise ticket prices, only to pull back when people stop buying. 

I’ve seen this before. In May 2008, with oil at $130 a barrel, American Airlines announced a $15 fee for the first checked bag. CEO Gerard Arpey blamed “the current reality of slow economic growth and high oil prices.” Oil prices collapsed later that year, but the bag fee never went away.

In 2015, jet fuel fell from more than $3 a gallon to under $1.70. Airlines kept the fuel surcharges anyway, including $458 per passenger on flights between New York and London. That summer, the Justice Department sent letters to the four largest U.S. airlines as part of an investigation into whether they had coordinated to limit seats.

Economists who study this say fares do follow fuel prices down over time. The average domestic fare fell 8% in the fourth quarter of 2015. But one study found fares dropped only about 12% after crude oil fell 57%, and oil prices couldn’t explain the gap. “Over time” is cold comfort when you’re buying four tickets home for Christmas.

Airfares are too high, but the real test is what happens when fuel costs come down. Bastian has already said passengers aren’t pushing back, and analysts say holding fares at their current levels is the key to higher airline margins in 2027. (Of course they’d say that.)

If fuel falls and fares don’t, we’ll know the industry used a war to reset what it charges, and every carrier that follows Delta’s lead will be counting on you not to notice.

Your turn

What do you think about the high holiday fares? Our comments are open.

You don’t have to be a frequent traveler to know that the rules of flying now favor the airline. 

You can feel it at the gate when your flight is delayed for the third time and nobody offers you anything, not even an explanation. You see it when an airline advertises a fare that bears little resemblance to what you actually pay for your ticket. 

Your suspicions are correct. In the United States, passenger rights are shrinking.

Elsewhere, they’re growing. Europe, Britain, Australia, Canada and India have all moved to protect air travelers this year. But here in the U.S., the Department of Transportation (DOT) has spent the better part of the last two years dismantling the few rules that existed.

What the U.S. is doing for airline passengers

The government dropped a plan to require cash compensation for long delays within an airline’s control. It also abandoned a proposal that would have required airlines to cover meals and hotels during major disruptions. 

This summer, the DOT formally removed a 2024 fee-disclosure rules. It also proposed an elimination of the full-fare advertising rule, reopening the door to the old “$49 fare (plus taxes and fees)” ad.

The government also extended its pause on refund enforcement for “renumbered” flights through next summer. That creates a loophole allowing airlines to simply renumber a delayed or canceled flight and avoid paying any kind of compensation or refunds to passengers. 

No more airline fines?

Enforcement has collapsed along with the rules. I reported in August that the government hadn’t assessed a single civil penalty against an airline for violating consumer protection rules this year. 

Instead, it has forgiven nearly $28 million in fines since December. Southwest got the last $11 million of its penalty waived for the December 2022 holiday meltdown. American had nearly $17 million of its wheelchair-handling penalty released. Under a policy DOT adopted in January, an airline that breaks the rules now generally gets a warning letter first. Fines are reserved for conduct the department considers “widespread, systemic, egregious or intentional.”

The department’s position is that it will enforce every protection Congress requires, including refunds for canceled flights. It argues that some Biden-era rules went further than the law demands. 

To be fair, DOT did finalize a rule in April requiring every airline to post a one-page summary of passenger rights. The trouble is that the list of rights it summarizes keeps getting shorter.

What everyone else is doing

Let’s start with Europe. On July 7, the European Parliament approved a long-delayed overhaul of its air passenger rules by a vote of 646 to 12. Airlines had lobbied for years to push back the point at which delay compensation begins. They lost. 

Passengers receive compensation ranging from 250 to 600 euros (about $280 to $672) for delays of three hours or more. Fixing a misspelled name will be free of charge. Fares on booking sites must include a carry-on bag from the first search screen, although airlines may still offer a discount to passengers who travel without one. The rules take effect in 2027.

Britain is next. On October 1, the U.K. Department for Transport announced plans to ban charges for seating children under 14 next to an accompanying adult. It would also end fees for correcting spelling errors on a ticket, as the EU’s new rules will.

The department’s own numbers show what’s at stake: up to 104 British pounds (about $138) per round trip for family seating, and up to 40 pounds (about $53) to fix a typo. The changes depend on the Civil Aviation (Consumer Protection and Regulatory Reform) Bill, which is still working its way through Parliament.

Australia introduced its Aviation Consumer Protection Bill on April 1. It would replace the industry-funded Airline Customer Advocate, which the minister described as widely considered ineffectual, with an independent ombudsperson. A charter would set minimum standards for airlines and airports. Carriers would have to report the reasons for delays and cancellations. A new authority inside the Department of Infrastructure would enforce it all. The bill doesn’t include European-style cash compensation for delays. 

Canada has plenty of rules on the books. Its problem is enforcement. In May, the government said more than 97,000 passenger complaints were stuck at the Canadian Transportation Agency. It promised to bring in an outside dispute-resolution group to clear them and to stop requiring passengers to keep the process confidential. It also noted that fines for systemic violations can reach 1 million Canadian dollars (about $700,000).

India also moved to protect air travelers this year. As of March 26, passengers who book directly with an airline can cancel or change a ticket within 48 hours at no charge, provided the flight date is far enough out. Name corrections reported within 24 hours are free. Refunds are due within 14 working days. 

None of these systems is perfect. Each one, though, is moving toward the passenger.

What happened to the watchdogs?

How could this unfold in the last two years without anyone noticing? Well, it didn’t all happen at once, so unless you’re a beat reporter for a major news organization, you probably wouldn’t have noticed this gradual erosion of consumer rights.

But even if you were, you might have your reasons for overlooking it. After all, you wouldn’t want to incur the wrath of this highly litigious administration. But a certain newspaper of record finally caught up with this story earlier this month. It called two consumer advocates at the top of its Google search results for a comment and then called it a day. Nice work.

This story has been unfolding for months, and readers of this column have watched the rollbacks pile up one at a time. But you don’t need to ask a consumer advocate if things are bad. Just pay attention to the Federal Register. Or just book an airline ticket.

What you can do about it

American travelers can’t vote in the European Parliament. You can take advantage of its rules, though. EU protections cover any flight departing from an EU airport and any EU airline flying into or out of an EU airport. If you have a choice of carrier, that coverage has value. 

Ask for compensation for long delays and flight cancellations. Pay with a credit card so you can dispute a charge for a flight you didn’t take. File complaints with DOT even if enforcement is slow, because those numbers show up in the monthly Air Travel Consumer Report and go on an airline’s permanent record. 

When DOT opens a rule for public comment, file one. Airlines always do.

Most importantly, vote. Find candidates who believe in stronger consumer protections and support them in this midterm election.

I’ve never heard a pet ask to go on vacation, and unless you’ve been taking hallucinogenic drugs, neither have you.

To be sure, some animals must travel, such as guide dogs or pets that are moving with their owners. 

But taking Fifi on vacation with you? That’s a terrible idea.

In this week’s Elliott Confidential podcast, we revisit our most spectacular failures — we call them the F-Files — and talk about our pet cases with wild endings. (Warning: This episode contains gratuitous references to cats, small dogs eating deadly Mexican street food, and pets overdosing on drugs. Listen discretion is strongly advised.)

One of our readers wanted $11,000 after something terrible happened to his cat. Another demanded all her money back for an all-inclusive vacation in Cancun after feeding her doggie Mexican street food. You can probably guess what happened next.

My perspective won’t make me popular at the dog park. But here goes, anyway: Pets don’t travel well. The travel industry isn’t built for animals, no matter what its marketing says. If you think your pet can’t survive a week without you, maybe the problem is you.

It keeps happening

The latest case to make headlines happened last month. Last month, a large dog named Bubble flew in the cargo hold of Korean Air Flight 868 from Guangzhou, China, to Incheon, South Korea. 

She arrived dead in her crate. 

Her owner, identified only as Jennifer, says a panel inside the crate had flipped up onto her. Korean Air says its environmental control systems worked normally throughout the flight and that the other pets on board arrived safely. Jennifer says the airline has refused to give her its footage or records. 

“Korean Air, I handed you my little girl alive,” she says. “You returned her body to me.” 

In February 2024, Michael Contillo paid an extra $100 per dog to keep his two French bulldogs with him in first class on an Alaska Airlines flight from New York to San Francisco. Right before takeoff, the crew moved him and his father to the main cabin “for safety purposes,” according to the lawsuit he later filed. Ash, who was almost 4, started breathing fast and hard. By the time the plane landed, the dog was in rigor mortis. 

Contillo sued Alaska in October 2024. He dropped the case in January 2025.

The case most people remember happened in March 2018. A flight attendant on a United Airlines flight from Houston to New York insisted that a family put a pet carrier in the overhead bin. Inside was Kokito, a French bulldog puppy. He didn’t make it.

A necropsy later found that he suffocated. United says the attendant didn’t know a dog was in the bag. It settled with the family on undisclosed terms. That May, it banned more than 20 short-nosed and strong-jawed breeds from its cargo hold.

The federal numbers look small. U.S. airlines reported eight animal incidents to the Department of Transportation in 2025, including three deaths, four injuries and one lost animal. Alaska accounted for two of the deaths. One was Meli, a 3-year-old golden retriever flying from Honolulu to Charleston, S.C., with an overnight stop in Seattle. On Dec. 5, ramp workers found her unresponsive in her kennel before loading. The cause of death was never determined. Alaska reported no corrective action. Those figures only cover what carriers are required to report. A dog that lands alive but dehydrated and panicked doesn’t count.

Other passengers pay a price too. On Memorial Day 2025, Delta Air Lines Flight 694 from Detroit to Los Angeles diverted to Minneapolis because a dog got sick in the cabin. Its 181 passengers landed 2½ hours late. The captain told them the dog would be fine.

Your dog is luggage

If something goes wrong on an international flight, the law won’t do much for you. In 2019, a passenger’s dog escaped while workers carried it to an Iberia plane in Buenos Aires bound for Barcelona. Nobody ever found it. The passenger asked for 5,000 euros. 

Iberia accepted liability but offered only the limit for checked baggage. In October 2025, the Court of Justice of the European Union sided with the airline. It ruled that pets count as “baggage” under the Montreal Convention, which caps what an airline owes you for a lost bag. The only way around the cap is a special declaration of interest at check-in. Most travelers have never heard of it.

What’s in our files

Our advocacy team hears from pet owners regularly. Take the two cases from the podcast. A reader we’ll call Walt took his cat, Rajah, on a string of RV trips to see the national parks. At Zion National Park, Rajah ate something off the ground and needed a vet. A year later, he hurt his leg in a fall on a hike. A few months after that, he got sick on the drive to the Grand Canyon and needed emergency surgery. In the podcast, I’ll reveal the tragic reason Walt wanted $11,000.

A reader we’ll call Daisy flew Frontier Airlines to Cancun with her Chihuahua, which she says was her emotional support animal. The dog showed signs of a respiratory infection on the flight to Mexico but appeared fine once they landed. She kept it by her side at her all-inclusive resort and on the streets of Cancun, where she shared her street food with it. On the trip home, the dog began convulsing and vomiting. I’ll explain why Daisy wanted a full refund for her vacation in this week’s podcast.

Hotels don’t come off much better. In August, we published Terry Reilly’s story about the Westin Hilton Head Island Resort & Spa. Reilly’s wife is allergic to dogs. The resort’s website says it welcomes pets up to 40 pounds, with a limit of two per room. 

Reilly found German shepherds and collies well over that limit. He saw a 100-pound Doberman in the hallway at 3 a.m. One pet soiled the carpet. The mess stayed there for 24 hours. The general manager never answered his letter. After we got involved, Westin admitted it had failed to enforce its own pet policy and refunded his $525.

Our unpublished files tell the same story.

• A family that booked a month long Airbnb in Guthrie, Okla., in July says the rental was infested with fleas. Family members came away with welts. Their pet needed $149 in veterinary care, plus $484 for a hotel quarantine during treatment. The host admitted in writing that a previous guest brought the fleas.
• A traveler from Taiwan with severe allergies and asthma booked two business-class seats on Korean Air for herself and her daughter. After an aircraft swap, the airline split them up and seated her next to a designated pet area. Korean Air’s solution was to seat them together “in the pet section.” It refused to issue a full refund.
• Cunard denied boarding to one couple because UPS lost their dog’s veterinary certificate. They put their losses at $14,000.

None of these animals should have taken a vacation. Not a one. 

The industry tolerates pets and collects your money

Look at how travel companies treat animals. An airline charges you to bring a pet into the cabin. Those fees are climbing. In April 2025, Delta raised its in-cabin pet fee on U.S. flights from $95 to $150 each way, a 58% increase. American also charges $150 per kennel each way. After that, your animal is cargo to the airline and baggage to the courts. 

A hotel calls itself “pet friendly,” but in practice, it often just collects a nightly fee. The Westin Hilton Head, where Reilly stayed, charges $50 a night per pet, and that fee is nonrefundable. An analysis of 1,000 pet-friendly hotels by Roch Dog, a company that certifies dog-friendly hotels, found that more than 80% charge extra for dogs. Fees ran from $50 a night to $250 a stay. Nearly a third of the hotels that charge offered two or fewer basic amenities, such as a bed or a water bowl. 

Airbnb lets hosts add a pet fee as high as the nightly rate. 

Allowing pets also pays. KeyData, which tracks vacation rental performance, found that pet-friendly rentals earned 24% more revenue per available night than other rentals in 2022. Then the next guest inherits the fleas.

A dog doesn’t know it’s on vacation. The animal gets a cramped carrier and hours without a bathroom. You get a photo for Instagram.

When it makes sense to bring your pet

I see two legitimate exceptions. If you’re moving, the animal has to come with you, so plan carefully. Book nonstop flights when you can and ask about that special declaration. If you rely on a trained service dog, federal law protects your right to fly with it. In 2021, the Department of Transportation stopped treating emotional support animals as service animals. That rule ended a lot of abuse.

Everyone else should leave the pet at home. 

If your pet can’t live without you

Most dogs and cats do fine for a week with a good caregiver. If you can’t leave yours behind, ask who the trip is for. Usually, it’s for you. The animal pays for your vacation in stress and risk. So does the passenger in the next seat whose allergy medication wears off over the Atlantic.

The travel industry won’t take care of your pet. It’ll charge you a fee, then classify your dog as luggage. Rajah saw some of the most spectacular scenery in America. I suspect he would have traded all of it for the couch. 

Sadly, that’s not possible. We’ll explain why in the podcast.

(Note: For those of you offended by this story, don’t worry — I’m working on an article about why and when you should bring your pet on vacation. I have to give the pet owners their say, after all.)

Nala Fox assumed she was safe at her five-star resort in Negril, Jamaica. The postcard-perfect beach, the friendly staff, and the high price tag all implied that security was included.

One afternoon, before she took a nap, she left her sliding balcony door cracked open.

It was a simple lapse. When she woke, her carry-on bag was gone, passport inside.

“The security desk shrugged, saying this sometimes happens,” says Fox, who runs an online educational platform.

The thieves weren’t master criminals rappelling from the roof. They were opportunists walking through an open door.

Fox was suffering from resort security amnesia. This condition affects otherwise street-smart travelers the moment they smell the signature scent of a luxury hotel lobby. They assume that because they paid a premium, they’ve entered a fortress. 

They haven’t. They’re in a high-traffic public space where the wealthy and the opportunistic brush shoulders.

As the busy travel season kicks off, a wave of resort security amnesia is sweeping through hotels, turning savvy travelers into easy marks. From cloned key cards to the false security of a second-floor room, your favorite vacation spot comes with hidden vulnerabilities. Knowing about them can help you avoid becoming a statistic.

Why we drop our guard

Why do we get so careless? Experts say it’s baked into the vacation experience. We pay to relax, and that includes letting our guard down.

“The biggest danger isn’t what’s happening outside the resort. It’s typically what guests assume about safety inside,” says Joe Orsak, president of 24 & 7 Security & Investigations. “Most travelers let their guard down once they check in. They’ll leave balcony doors unlocked or toss key cards on pool chairs, thinking they’re in a secure bubble.”

Orsak calls resorts “soft targets.” They have predictable routines and porous perimeters. Many rely too heavily on visible security cameras—”security theater”—that comforts guests without stopping crime.

“Resorts may feel like safe havens, but that sense of comfort can sometimes lead travelers to let their guard down,” says Raymond Yorke, a spokesman for Redpoint Resolutions. He says more people than ever are suffering from resort security amnesia—forgetting the basics once they’re in vacation mode.

“Common slip-ups include leaving valuables unattended by the pool, failing to use in-room safes, propping open balcony doors, or oversharing location details on social media,” Yorke says.

The key card trap

That plastic rectangle in your pocket is often the weak link. Complacent guests treat key cards like disposable coasters.

“The person holding the key card is the biggest vulnerability,” says Dave Meister, a cybersecurity expert at Check Point Software. “People treat them like they’re disposable, but they’re access tokens. If someone else gets hold of it, they have direct access to your room.”

Meister warns that magnetic stripe systems—still widely used at older properties—are also vulnerable to cloning. A thief can brush up against you or swipe a card left on a table and create a duplicate in seconds.

But the real risk isn’t just high-tech cloning—it’s human behavior. Most hotel room compromises stem from low-tech carelessness or simple social engineering, like someone convincing staff to reissue a key, tailgating into secure areas, or taking advantage of a guest who misplaces their card and doesn’t report it.

“I’ve watched travelers hand their key sleeve to someone helping with luggage without realizing the room number is printed right on it,” says Daniel Loo, a principal security-risk consultant at North Star Group. “A stranger doesn’t need to steal a wallet—they just need the room number and 30 seconds when you’re at the pool.”

This is why Anna Greenberg, a personal injury attorney who has represented victims of sexual assault in hotels, advises extreme caution. She says the number one cause of hotel sexual assaults she sees involves employees playing fast and loose with keys.

“All that stands between you and a predator on the other side of the hotel door is a keycard—something that can be obtained easily from poorly trained hotel staff,” Greenberg says.

Steven Lambert, a seasoned hotel general manager, advises guests to take control of the check-in process.

“Do not ask or share a specific room number when booking,” Lambert says. If a clerk announces your room number to the lobby, Lambert suggests asking for a different room immediately.

The open flank

If the front door is the first line of defense, the balcony is the open flank, as Nala Fox found out in Jamaica.

“I’ve handled cases where intruders bypassed hallways entirely by moving across connected balconies at night,” says Loo. “Most guests don’t even consider that angle.”

Even when you think you’ve locked up, the hardware might fail you. Matt Goodwin, now the president of Viper Security, became an expert only after being victimized at a resort.

Security cameras captured a ghostly figure walking into his room and leaving with his cooler, which the thief used to transport Goodwin’s stolen belongings.

“A simple piece of steel over the door latch that I’ve seen a million times at other commercial buildings was never installed at the resort we stayed at,” Goodwin says. “After testing it, I found I could actually get in faster with a butter knife than I could with the key.”

The predator at the bar

Resorts are social places. You make friends. You trust the staff. But predators rely on this trust.

Lindsay Dollinger, a network marketer attending a conference in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, took a staff golf cart shuttle back to her room. 

“A man took me and of course asked my room number and if it was just me,” Dollinger recalls. “I told him yes.”

On her second night, someone used a key to try to enter her room. Dollinger had engaged the security latch—a move that likely spared her from a physical confrontation.

“The man wouldn’t go away and kept trying to push into the room forcefully, speaking Spanish to let him in,” she says.

The hotel later claimed it was a security guard doing a welfare check, but Dollinger hadn’t called for one. The incident changed how she travels.

“From that point on, we did not tell any of the golf cart drivers our room number and in fact had them drop us off near our room,” she says.

Liability and the fine print

When things go wrong, guests often assume the resort—or their travel insurance—will make them whole. That is a faulty assumption.

Chrissy Valdez, senior director of operations at Squaremouth, warns that insurance coverage often hinges on whether the traveler took “reasonable care.”

“Leaving an expensive piece of technology, like a camera, unattended at the pool could be deemed negligence, making it hard to claim reimbursement, even if you bought an insurance policy,” Valdez says.

Resorts themselves are often protected by liability waivers and local laws that limit their responsibility for theft. If you leave your sliding door open, the loss is usually on you.

Where does the blame lie?

Is it the guest’s responsibility to be paranoid, or the resort’s responsibility to be impenetrable?

Ideally, it’s both. But experts say resorts are failing to communicate the risks because they don’t want to spoil the paradise illusion.

“Resorts generally fall short in communicating security risks effectively, often prioritizing a welcoming atmosphere over candid warnings,” says Michael O’Rourke, CEO of Advanced Operational Concepts, a security consulting firm. He calls for resorts to provide “transparent, reassuring info packets” at check-in.

Lucinda Faucheux, co-founder of Travel Support Circle, agrees. 

“A simple briefing at check-in would help out a lot,” she says. “A reminder to keep passports locked away and to keep an eye on anything left on sunbeds already changes how people move around the property.”

Terence Leung, a manager at LodgeLink, suggests “small nudges” like key card reminders by the pool or door sensors that chime when a balcony is unlocked.

“Informed guests create their own safety without costly monitored access systems,” Leung says.

Who is responsible?

Guests can’t force resorts to upgrade their locks. But they can cure their own complacency. It starts with attitude.

“I love a slightly paranoid traveler,” says John Rose, the chief risk advisor to Altour. “Not afraid to travel but also not an easy target for bad things to happen.” 

Here is how to lock down your next trip:

• Audit your room. “Simply making sure the door fully latches every time is one of the strongest, simplest forms of security,” says Darien Long, a senior vice president at dormakaba, a security access firm. Don’t just let it click; give it a tug.

• Use your hardware. Jesse Singh, founder of a supply chain company and a frequent hotel guest, advises using the deadbolt or chain every time you are inside. “The physical deadbolt is the last line of defense that can be guaranteed to work,” he says.

• Zip your lips. As etiquette expert Lisa Mirza Grotts advises, treat your room number “like your Social Security number: private and never shared.”

• Be boring. Don’t flash cash. Don’t wear the Rolex to the pool. Alyse Race, author and founder of The Invisible Tourist, suggests blending in. “Visitors commit security breaches by keeping jewelry in open luggage,” she notes.

The goal isn’t to spend your vacation looking over your shoulder. It’s to secure your perimeter so you can actually relax. A few seconds of paranoia at the door allows for hours of peace by the pool.

The intruder doesn’t always need a key

You can take every precaution, but security is never guaranteed. Alessandro Foti, owner of Bretton Woods Vacations in New Hampshire, warns that in remote areas, nature is watching.

Once, a bear saw a propped-open door and ran in to steal a bag of trash.

“We had a mother bear who made it all the way to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and helped herself to leftovers,” Foti says.

The lesson is universal: Lock your door. When you treat your room like a fortress, you can keep those uninvited guests out—even the wildlife.

Hugh Fuller buys the wrong warranty for his HP Pavilion laptop. The company promises a refund, but then sends the money to the wrong bank account. Now HP says the case is closed. Is it?

Question

I have a problem with a warranty I purchased from HP. It started when my HP Pavilion wouldn’t connect to the internet, though my other devices worked fine. I called HP Smart Friend, a service I was paying for, but its technicians were out of their depth. They kept trying to reinstall my operating system, which didn’t fix the connection and actually messed up my files.

Eventually, I figured out the problem was my internet provider, not the laptop. But before I realized that, a Smart Friend representative convinced me my laptop was failing and sold me a Care Pack hardware warranty for $40. I bought it on the last day of my eligibility because I was worried. 

When I later contacted the actual HP warranty department, they told me that Smart Friend had sold me the wrong type of warranty for my machine. They even said my laptop didn’t need replacing. Since then, I’ve been caught in a loop of useless phone calls. I’ve contacted the HP support community, but no one seems able to make a decision. 

HP finally agreed to a refund, but then the situation grew even more absurd. An executive in the escalations department, claimed they sent the $40 to a Bank of America account. I don’t bank there.

HP now claims the matter is resolved, but I don’t have my money. They need to cancel whatever they think they sent to the wrong bank and just mail me a check.  Can you help me get my $40 back? — Hugh Fuller, Portland, Ore. 

Answer

HP should have diagnosed your problem correctly, which would have avoided this entire absurd mess. Sending money into the void of a nonexistent account and then declaring the case “resolved” is not the kind of customer service you should expect.

Your experience highlights a common problem in corporate America. Companies often silo their support services, meaning the people selling you a “Smart Friend” subscription might not have a clue as to what the warranty department is doing.

You did the right thing by trying to resolve this through the HP support community and case managers. But you should have stopped the useless phone calls much sooner. When you’re dealing with a giant like HP, phone conversations are like mist—they vanish as soon as you hang up. You need a paper trail. Always move your dispute to email so you have a written record of who promised what and when. 

When a company gives you the runaround, you can also escalate your complaint to an executive. I publish the names, emails, and phone numbers of the HP executives on my advocacy site, Elliott.org.

I contacted HP on your behalf. I pointed out that while its records might show a payment was initiated, you never received it. 

HP finally took a second look at its accounting. After our intervention, the company confirmed it had finally resolved the matter and has refunded the $40—this time to the correct account. Next time, skip the Smart Friends and stick to your own tech instincts.

Charles Marcus books two rooms at a Hampton Inn through Priceline, but the site cancels them without his permission. When he rebooks the same rooms, the price jumps by $360. Can he get his money back?

Question

I booked two rooms at the Hampton Inn in Islandia, N.Y. through Priceline.com for a stay over the holidays. The total cost was $502. A few days later, Priceline canceled the rooms without my knowledge or consent and issued a refund.

I immediately called Priceline to ask for a rebooking at my original rate. An agent told me no and said Priceline would not offer anything. I then rebooked the same rooms on the same website for the same dates, but this time I was charged $862.

I’ve spent weeks calling and emailing Priceline. During these conversations, a Priceline agent actually confirmed that my original reservation was canceled by an agent without my consent. Despite admitting to the error, the company refused to refund the $360 price difference.

I have been very diligent and honest. I provided a full log of my calls and the original receipts. I even filed complaints with the California and New York attorneys general to try to get some movement. I even had an attorney send a demand letter for the refund. Priceline kept telling me that the matter had been escalated to a management team and asked for my patience, but nothing has happened for months.

I did not cancel this trip, and I should not have to pay for a mistake the company admitted it made. Can you help me get my money back? — Charles Marcus, San Francisco

Answer

Priceline should have honored your original rate. If its own agent canceled your reservation by mistake, the company is responsible for making it right—either by restoring the original booking or covering the cost of the new one.

You did the right thing by trying to resolve this through the official channels, but when a company admits it made an error and still holds on to your cash, it’s time to escalate. You can avoid a lot of this frustration by keeping a meticulous paper trail, which you did. If the front-line agents are stuck in a loop of “we’re looking into it,” you should send a brief, polite email to an executive. I publish the names and email addresses of the Priceline executives on my advocacy site, Elliott.org.

In hindsight, though, I think it might have been better to wait for a resolution instead of booking a replacement room. Generally speaking, online agencies are reluctant to refund customers who book on their own and then bill the company. But getting something in writing—not a confession by phone—that promises to fix the problem, that’s usually a sure thing.

I contacted Priceline on your behalf. Priceline asked you for more evidence, including phone logs and previous email where Priceline admitted its error.

Priceline finally did the right thing. You received an email authorizing a full refund of the $360 difference. It’s a reminder that persistence pays off, especially when you have the receipts to prove the company is wrong. 

John Curtin had everything on his Microsoft email account: his banking information, his mortgage paperwork, and a folder with his family’s addresses and numbers. He was a paying customer, too, shelling out $84 every year for an Office 365 subscription.

But apparently his money meant nothing to Microsoft, which locked him out of his account for what it called “unusual activity” and wouldn’t let him back in, no matter what he did.

“I need to get back into my account,” he told me. “I’m lost without it.”

Let’s pull back the curtain on this case:

• Can a company legally lock you out of a service you’re paying for without a human review?
• How do you get your account reinstated?
• What’s the best way to avoid a lockout?

“I’ve had this address for 20 years”

Curtin is no ordinary Microsoft customer. As an IT technician, he’s spent his career navigating the back alleys of technology. 

But one day, for reasons he can’t explain, he found himself on the wrong side of Microsoft’s automated security gates. That’s when he discovered that his status as a paying customer and his expertise in IT didn’t mean anything.

“I’ve had this email address for 20 years, and I have a lot of personal information that I need to get back,” Curtin told me. 

Before we go any further, let’s pause to note that storing all of your personal information in the cloud, without any kind of redundancy, is problematic. Your email provider could easily decide to lock you out, which would render it impossible for you to retrieve your data.

Curtin’s Microsoft account was the cornerstone of his digital life. It held everything, including a visa application that needed his immediate attention. 

His nightmare started about a month ago when Microsoft notified him that it had detected “unusual activity” on his account. Suddenly, he went from a valued customer to a digital trespasser. Despite providing the exact payment details and dates for his subscription, the automated “recovery” bots remained unimpressed.

Can a company lock you out of your account?

We get questions almost every day from people who are trying to get into their disabled accounts. These companies have completely outsourced customer service to algorithms that lack common sense, creating a kind of doom loop for their customers.

That’s what happened to Curtin. He submitted multiple “account recovery” forms, only to be told the information—including his payment history—was not sufficient. 

When he tried the account reinstatement route, he was initially met with silence or redirected back to the same recovery forms that had already failed him.

“Microsoft is being unreasonable,” he says. “They were asking me for account details that I couldn’t remember.”

Is this legal? Yes it is. Buried in the terms of service for your account is the language that gives a company like Microsoft the license to do this.

I’ve been stuck in Microsoft’s account recovery process before, and it’s no fun. The system asked me to recall old passwords that I couldn’t have possibly remembered and ultimately prodded me into setting up a new account recovery process with an authenticator app. And to be honest, I’m worried that I might get locked out of my own Microsoft account because I had to save the authenticator backup information to my laptop, and I’m not sure where I stored it.

So, bottom line, I feel Curtin’s frustration. I think maybe we all do.

What can you do if you’re locked out of your Microsoft account?

While these cases are notoriously difficult, there are a few known remedies:

The account recovery form. This is the first line of defense. It uses knowledge-based authentication to verify you. Tips from Microsoft include using a familiar device and location and being as specific as possible with email subject lines.

The account reinstatement/appeal form. This is a separate process for accounts suspended for activity or security reasons. Unlike the recovery form, this sometimes reaches a human safety or online safety team.

Social media callouts. Sometimes, tagging a company’s official support handle on X can trigger a manual review.

We also maintain a database of executive contacts for major tech firms on this site. While they won’t always override a security lockout, they are a vital part of creating the paper trail I need in order to get involved.

NOTE: As a general rule, our advocacy team doesn’t get involved in account recovery cases. But we try to offer the resources to help you get the help you need.

My best advice for avoiding a lockout

Almost anything can set off a fraud-detection algorithm. A few days ago, my Facebook account locked me out because I flew from New Zealand to Australia. I didn’t care; I’m trying to get off Facebook anyway. Eventually, the problem fixed itself. 

And that’s your best-case scenario: The system realizes it got the wrong guy and restores your account on its own. AI is making the systems smart enough so that they can spot a mistake and fix it without any human intervention.

So here’s my straightforward advice: Don’t do anything that makes you look like a criminal. That includes sending out mass mailings, visiting sites on the dark web, or changing your location frequently using a VPN. (If you don’t know what any of those things are, chances are you’re not doing them, so you’re fine.) But don’t look like a bad guy on the internet and you’re less likely to have your account frozen.

The strategy is a little different for social media accounts and e-commerce sites. There, your account can get frozen for violating your terms of service, which could really be anything. I deal with lots of readers who lose access to their Walmart accounts because they returned too many items they bought online, for example.

Will Microsoft do the right thing?

I contacted Microsoft on Curtin’s behalf. I pointed out the obvious: Here was a 20-year customer with a paid subscription who was being held hostage by a bot. 

A day after my team got involved, Microsoft finally reached out to Curtin and reinstated his account.

“I am now backing everything up to non-Microsoft related options,” he told me. “Lesson learned!”

It shouldn’t take a syndicated columnist to remind a trillion-dollar company that its customers are people, not just data points. But as long as the bots are in charge, I’ll be here to help you fight them.

I almost always get stuck in a middle seat, so I consider myself something of an expert when it comes to surviving aviation’s worst conflict zone.

But I’m also lucky, because I usually fly with my adult sons. The boys let me use both armrests, and I can spread out and get up to stretch my legs whenever I want to, so there’s practically no conflict. 

That’s not the usual reality of the middle seat experience.

For most travelers, the middle seat is a contact sport. As jacket weather makes already tight quarters feel even tighter, millions of passengers are about to spend hours wedged between strangers. They’ll fight over plastic armrests and slowly lose their minds at 35,000 feet. 

Alex Gervash, an experienced commercial airline pilot, explains that the middle seat triggers a psychological mechanism called perceived loss of control. 

“When you can see the aisle or the window, your nervous system stays calmer,” he says. “In the middle, both are blocked by strangers’ bodies. Your brain interprets this as confinement, and your fight-or-flight system activates at a low level for the entire flight.”

That doesn’t have to be you. The new rules of middle-seat survival require mastering armrest diplomacy with humor, building an impenetrable personal gear bubble, applying jacket weather hacks for extra space, and using ergonomic micro-movements to avoid physical injury. 

Armrest diplomacy: Establishing the truce

Let’s start with the oldest argument in commercial aviation: who owns the armrests? The answer, according to etiquette professionals, is clear.

“Both middle armrests belong to the middle-seat passenger,” says Adeodata Czink, an etiquette expert with Business of Manners. The window seat gets the wall. The aisle seat gets freedom of movement. The middle seat gets both armrests — that’s the deal.

Jodi RR Smith of Mannersmith Etiquette Consulting agrees, adding the nuance that consideration should temper ownership. If you’re a smaller person and the person next to you is “folding themselves into an origami-yoga pose” to fit in the seat, share. Humans aren’t just territorial creatures — they can also empathize. Use it.

But knowing the rule and enforcing it are two different things. Stephanie Ward, a veteran of basic economy middle seats, has a system. She introduces herself immediately, then deploys a single joke.

“The middle seat gets both armrests — that’s the rule — but I promise not to get up to go to the bathroom every 30 minutes,” she says.

People laugh. Then she plants her elbows, staking out her territory.

What kind of gear do you need to survive a middle seat?

If armrest diplomacy is the offense, gear is the defense. And nobody has assembled a more complete defensive package than Katharine Nohr, a Hawaii-based attorney who travels frequently and has spent years optimizing her middle-seat survival kit.

Her setup: two inflatable lumbar pillows (one for her back, one as a footrest), a tested inflatable neck pillow, an eye mask, a hood to cover her face, special slippers in a small case, an infinity scarf that doubles as a blanket, a water bottle clipped to the seat back with a carabiner, noise-canceling headphones, a small pouch with essentials, and a jacket engineered with pockets. The whole kit compresses into a thin backpack that fits inside a larger carry-on.

“I’m the most comfortable coach passenger on the plane,” she brags.

Jacket weather hacks: The coat as a tool

Fall and winter bring a complication: bulky outerwear. Coats don’t fit cleanly in overhead bins once the flight is full, and dragging a heavy jacket onto your lap in an already-compressed seat can feel like wearing a straitjacket. 

Christopher Jimenez, a board-certified hip and knee surgeon, has a better idea. He doesn’t wear a coat in the seat at all. Instead, he rolls it tight and uses it as a lumbar bolster at beltline height. This prevents in-flight back pain.

One underused option: Stow the coat in the overhead before your neighbors board. Flight attendants frown on this, but as former attendant Celeste Bell points out, “holding on to a big coat in a middle seat can feel claustrophobic.” She doesn’t wait until the flight is fully loaded and finds a slot for her winter coat.

Don’t wreck your body

Lou Ezrick, a physical therapist who sees the aftermath of holiday travel every January, has a warning: Avoid the isometric shrug.

“The single biggest physical mistake middle seat passengers make in cold weather is that they tense their shoulders upward against their neighbors reflexively,” Ezrick says. “They essentially do an isometric shrug for three hours straight.” The result: a guaranteed pain in the upper back. He recommends consciously dropping your shoulders down and back every 20 minutes. Set a phone timer if necessary.

Thomas Jeneby, a board-certified plastic surgeon who manages long operating room days, treats the middle seat like a surgical procedure: circulation and micro-movements matter more than willpower. His timed routine: every 30 to 40 minutes, do 10 ankle pumps, 5 glute squeezes, and 3 slow chin tucks. It takes about 90 seconds and dramatically reduces swelling and neck tension.

His middle-seat rule is “neutral spine, elbows in, pelvis anchored.” Keep your forearms vertical rather than splayed outward. Feet flat. Don’t torque your hips trying to create space that isn’t there.

Can an app get you out of the middle seat?

The best way to survive the middle seat is to never sit in it. American Airlines just made that a little easier. Last month, it added a feature to its app that watches the seat map for you. After you book, you tell the app whether you want a window, aisle or middle seat. If a matching seat opens up, the app moves you and sends a notification.

There’s fine print. You have to be an AAdvantage member traveling alone with an assigned seat, and the monitoring stops 24 hours before departure.

United has offered a similar tool in its app since 2024.

Whose fault is this?

Let’s assign blame where it belongs: with the airlines. 

“The middle seat is about physics, not etiquette,” says Joe Cronin, president of International Citizens Group, an insurance company that works with frequent travelers.

Until they give you more room, it’s up to you to figure out a solution. The travelers who handle it best treat the middle seat as a psychological challenge rather than a physical one. They come prepared. They establish their space early, through humor or gear or a well-placed coat, without starting a turf war. They protect their bodies from the slow structural damage of static posture. And they manage their expectations enough to arrive functional.

Or you could just travel with your kids, where the concept of personal space is more negotiable.