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

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

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

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

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

Why we can’t help you recover your money

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The bizarre case that refused to go away 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neither one had a first class or a lounge.

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

What happened

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

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

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

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

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

Why is this happening?

It’s the money.

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

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

But there are still some unanswered questions …

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

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

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

What do you think of these developments?

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

If you said yes:

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

If you said no:

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

My take

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

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

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

Your turn

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why are travel insurance premiums rising now?

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

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

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

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

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

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

But how?

A tailored approach to saving on travel insurance

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

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

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

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

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

The Three-Trip Rule for annual insurance

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

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

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

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

Save money by eliminating overlap

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also, be careful about what you insure.

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

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

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

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

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

Question

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

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

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

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

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

Answer

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

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

But a prepaid debit card that expires? Nope. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question

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

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

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

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

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

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

Answer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This case raises several important questions:

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

“I had no clue what he was talking about”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How can I get unbanned from an airline?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The response? Nothing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Turns out, it’s a fine line.

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

She had a high travel IQ, says Brown.

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

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

You’re not flexible

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

You fail to read the fine print

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

You’re oblivious to cultural differences 

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

You make assumptions you shouldn’t

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

You dress like a tourist

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

You panic easily

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

You think volume is a translation app

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

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

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

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

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

How to be a smarter traveler

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

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

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

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

Americans have spent this summer cutting down license plate cameras. They’ve packed city council meetings with printouts of search logs, and a few towns have canceled their surveillance contracts. 

The target is Flock Safety, whose automated license plate readers are installed on poles in thousands of American communities, and the anger got loud enough that the company backed down last week.

Then a lot of those same people drove to the airport, walked up to a checkpoint, and let a machine photograph their face without a complaint. 

What Flock changed, and why

Flock announced a set of privacy changes after losing contracts and absorbing months of criticism. (You may recall Darth Vader in San Diego and the Ohio man who felled a Flock pole but then wasn’t indicted despite photographic evidence of the crime.) 

Among the changes: Cities can now limit what other agencies may search their cameras for, blocking immigration enforcement searches while still allowing violent crime lookups.By the end of 2026 every search will require a case code, and default retention will drop from 30 days to seven.

The pressure came from what the logs showed. A Utah investigation found that 10 cameras in a single county had been searched 5.1 million times by agencies in 45 states, which prompted Gov. Spencer Cox to send the state Privacy Commission after the rules. Officials in Mountain View, Calif., have alleged that federal and state agencies accessed their camera data without consent. 

The ACLU called Flock’s changes “a thinly veiled PR attempt.”

But there’s more to this story.

What’s happening at the checkpoint?

Airport facial recognition is moving in the opposite direction, but hardly anyone is paying attention. TSA PreCheck Touchless ID ran in 15 airports at the start of the year, with the agency promising 65 by the end of the first quarter. Facial comparison cameras at standard checkpoints have been rolling out for years and are headed toward hundreds of airports.

The legal protections haven’t kept pace. S. 1691, the Traveler Privacy Protection Act, would let you opt out, bar the TSA from making face scans mandatory, and prohibit any penalty for declining. 

It’s about as bipartisan as a bill gets: three Republicans and three Democrats, from Kennedy of Louisiana to Markey of Massachusetts. When Sen. John Kennedy introduced it in May 2025, he said the TSA “subjects countless law-abiding Americans to excessive facial recognition screenings as they travel, invading passengers’ privacy without even making it clear that they can opt out.”

The bill got pulled from its Senate markup after airline industry pushback and hasn’t moved since. A second bill, S. 3779, the ICE Out of Our Faces Act, would ban ICE and CBP from using facial recognition at all. It’s also frozen.

The agency has its own plans. In a Federal Register notice reported in January, the TSA floated centralizing traveler account management and letting biometric data move between programs, connecting PreCheck records with CBP’s Global Entry database. Almost nobody outside the privacy groups bothered to comment.

There’s been some pushback. Last week, Rep. Shontel Brown and Sen. Ron Wyden asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate the DOT’s failure to protect airline passenger data.The lawmakers cited four decades of inaction from the DOT, noting it hasn’t executed any privacy enforcement measures, leaving millions of travelers vulnerable to corporate data mining and warrantless government surveillance.

Why facial screening works

The TSA’s argument is that the technology verifies you’re the person on the ID, catching fraudulent documents better than a tired officer at 5 a.m. In short, it speeds up the screening process. Touchless ID promises verification in under 10 seconds. 

The agency says the photos aren’t retained in normal operations, and that declining a scan carries no penalty. Airlines like it because it moves people. Airports like it because it moves people. Congress has shown no appetite to slow it down.

But should it? Is the travel industry about to have its own Flock moment?

If you answered yes:

• Have you ever actually said “I opt out” at a checkpoint? What happened?
• Did the officer honor it without comment, or did you get pushback?
• Would you still opt out if it added 10 minutes to your wait?

If you answered no:

• Is it the convenience, or do you not object to the scan itself?
• Would you change your mind if the photo were kept and shared across agencies?
• Do you know the opt-out exists?

My take

The Flock backlash was so effective because people could see the cameras. They’re bolted to poles at eye level on streets where people live. When the search logs came out, it was hard to argue with them. 

A camera on your street reads as an intrusion. A camera at the airport doesn’t, though the airport version collects more than a license plate. It records your face, connects it to your name, your itinerary, and now possibly your Global Entry file.The public is conditioned to believe that airport scans are necessary for security, which may be why we don’t question them.

The opt-out exists as agency policy, which means the agency can revise it whenever it likes. The bill that would make it law has gone nowhere for over a year, and the officers running the scanners aren’t always told that declining is your right. Every traveler who says “I opt out” makes the policy harder to retire.

In other countries, facial recognition is firmly embedded in the screening process, and there’s no way out. Try saying you opt out when you’re flying into Singapore, and you’ll see what I mean.

Your turn

Have you tried to opt out of a face scan at a U.S. airport? Tell me which checkpoint, what you said, and how the officer responded. If you were turned down or pressured, I want the details.

What if a grocery store charges you more for milk because it knows how many kids you have in your house? Or a ride app quotes you a higher fare because you haven’t installed a competitor’s app on your phone?

Those aren’t random “what ifs.” They’re scenarios the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published as examples of pricing that would raise legal concerns under the law. It’s an uncharacteristically pro-consumer position from an agency that seems to go out of its way to protect the interests of businesses.

A few months ago, I argued that banning surveillance pricing like this, as some states have done, was the wrong move. Requiring disclosure of surveillance pricing was the answer. Make them show their work.

Several readers wrote to say this consumer advocate had gone soft. So it was a little surreal when the FTC agreed with me last week.

What the agency wants

The government has proposed a rule that businesses would have to clearly disclose when a price is personalized. Merchants would also have to show the basis for it and the types of data behind it.

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said shoppers expect everyone to see the same price.

Last year, a rule on unfair or deceptive fees took effect that bars hiding the total price for live-event tickets and short-term lodging. It was a partial victory for consumers. The original proposal would have covered restaurants, food delivery services and car rental companies, until the FTC narrowed it.

So a hotel has to show you the all-in number for your room, including those annoying mandatory resort fees. The car rental counter in that hotel’s garage doesn’t. 

Sure, there have been other small advances. StubHub agreed to refund $10 million over deceptive ticket pricing in an FTC action announced earlier this year. But it’s not nearly enough.

Every day, readers complain to me that they feel duped by dishonest prices that didn’t include an undisclosed fee or surcharge. This business-friendly administration has been dragging its feet on protecting consumers, but now it appears to have finally drawn a line in the sand.

Why disclosure could work

The FTC says Congress hasn’t given it the authority to prohibit personalized pricing. Disclosure is the next best thing.

So let’s talk about disclosure.

The Supreme Court said in 1965 that falsely claiming an item usually sells for an inflated price is deceptive, and the FTC cited that case in a footnote of its personalized pricing statement.

When a company has to put in writing that it charged you more because your personal data suggested you’d pay it, that sentence becomes evidence not just in the court of public opinion, but potentially in an actual court. A state attorney general can subpoena it and a plaintiff’s lawyer can quote it to a jury.

Companies don’t change their ways because shoppers squint at fine print. They reform because someone made them write down the sentence, and then it went viral on social media. Oops.

The FTC filed both problems in the same drawer. Its statement opens by saying the agency wants the price you see to be the price you pay, with no surprises or hidden charges. Then it lists the cases that got it here. They’re hidden fee cases, like that StubHub settlement. Surveillance pricing isn’t among them.

The agency even quotes a 1950 appeals court decision on why a partial disclosure doesn’t count. Telling less than the whole truth, the court said, is a well-known method of deception. The FTC wrote that down, then proposed a rule that covers one kind of omission.

What an honest price looks like

When you go grocery shopping in Paris or Berlin, the number on the shelf is the total amount you pay.

European law defines the selling price as the final price for the product, including VAT and all other taxes. Europe even requires that if you announce a price cut, you have to state the prior price, and the prior price means the lowest price the seller charged in the 30 days before the reduction. No invented “was” number.

Australia does the same thing. Its competition regulator requires retailers to display the total price as a single figure, meaning the lowest amount a customer could pay, including taxes, duties and any unavoidable or preselected fee.

That’s the standard we deserve in the United States. One price. No base fares, no pre-tax subtotals, and definitely no drip pricing that hides the real number until checkout.

We’re not getting it this year. The FTC says Congress hasn’t given it that power. What we have instead is a weakened commission arguing that companies should at least have to explain themselves.

An agency constrained like this—yet still demanding price transparency—is still better than the complete lack of oversight we had a month ago.

Say something

Comments go to the FTC website and the deadline is September 18. Mine will say the same thing this column says: Disclosing a personalized price is a good start, but we shouldn’t stop there.

Until then, when a price appears on your screen, consider it a work of fiction. Ask yourself: Is this everything? If the answer is no, walk away. That’s the fastest way to improve the rules of these ridiculous pricing games.

From his corner office in Queenstown, New Zealand, Dave Beeche enjoys a cinematic view of Lake Whakatipu and the surrounding alpine peaks that make the South Island one of the world’s most recognizable tourism destinations. But as the CEO of RealNZ, a tour operator founded in 1954, he’s leading a shift in how the region defines that legacy.

For decades, Queenstown has been the adrenaline capital of the world, a hub for bungee jumping and jet boating. Beeche is steering his company toward a different direction: environmental stewardship.

“It’s a core part of our DNA,” Beeche says. “It’s more than a tagline or a purpose statement on a wall.”

It’s about time. Queenstown is a victim of its own postcard-perfect success, with the local infrastructure buckling under the weight of 3 million annual visitors. The surge in short-term rentals has squeezed the local housing market, and the environmental footprint of all those jet boats and bungee jumps isn’t exactly light. 

Even Beeche admits the company still burns a lot of diesel to keep its ski resorts and tours running. For a town of roughly 35,000 permanent residents, playing host to so many guests creates what he calls a “say-do gap” that’s wider than a Fiordland canyon.

The TSS Earnslaw, a restored steamship launched in 1912 that shuttles visitors across Lake Whakatipu on New Zealand’s South Island.  (Photo by Aren Elliott)

Bridging the “say-do” gap

RealNZ’s values can be traced to its founders, Les and Olive Hutchins, who helped spearhead the campaign to save Lake Manapouri in the 1960s. That effort, which gathered signatures from nearly 10 percent of New Zealand’s population, effectively birthed the country’s modern conservation movement.

Today, Beeche is using that history to address the “say-do” gap.

“There’s a theory—and there’s been some research to back this up—that when people go on holiday, they leave their sustainability ambitions at home,” he explains.

That’s the “say-do gap”: Travelers who claim to prioritize the environment end up making purchasing decisions based on price, schedule and the appeal of the experience.

“It’s not yet a full differentiator in terms of people’s choice, but we fully believe that in the long run, people will want to choose more sustainable options in their tourism experiences, and so we’re leaning into that really heavily.”

Last year, RealNZ committed 1 percent of its direct online revenue to protect the Southern New Zealand Dotterel, a critically endangered alpine bird. The company also raised $270,000 for New Zealand’s Department of Conservation to fund predator trapping and monitoring.

It operates an internal network of roughly 2,000 traps, which are cleared by volunteers.

The company is also modernizing its tactics. By upgrading to AI-enabled traps that automatically reset, RealNZ saw a spike in effectiveness, catching 77 possums in a single month compared to its previous average of eight.

Walter Peak High Country Farm, an historic ranch originally settled in the 1860s.  (Photo by Aren Elliott)

Here’s the operational reality of being green

Despite the focus on sustainability, Beeche is candid about the hurdles of decarbonizing a massive fleet. The company still burns a significant amount of diesel and operates a historic coal-fired steamship.

“We have very strong commitment and ambitions to reduce emissions but we need to move in lockstep with technology,” Beeche says. The company recently piloted a 10-seater electric hydrofoil and is exploring electric options for its bus fleet as battery technology and infrastructure improve.

Turning tourists into advocates

RealNZ’s most potent tool may be the emotional impact it has on visitors. Beeche views the company as an incubator for environmental evangelists, citing its Doubtful Sound overnight cruise as a prime example. During the trip, crew members turn off all engines and generators, asking guests to put away phones and cameras to experience absolute silence.

“To me, that’s a much more powerful thing than giving someone a slide presentation on nature,” Beeche says.

To see this philosophy in action, you have to head to the Queenstown docks and board the TSS Earnslaw, a carefully-restored steamship launched in 1912. Known as “The Lady of the Lake,” she is the only coal-fired steamship still operating in the Southern Hemisphere. After a 45-minute cruise across the crystalline waters of Lake Whakatipu, you’ll arrive at Walter Peak High Country Farm, a historic ranch originally settled in the 1860s. 

Here, the intersection of tourism and conservation is literally rooted in the earth. The property sits on land that was once smothered by invasive, monoculture pine trees—stubborn, non-native plants that choke out local biodiversity. RealNZ took the costly and labor-intensive step of chopping them down. In their place, it has planted roughly 30,000 native trees to restore the region’s natural ecosystem.

A guide leads visitors through a lush kitchen garden, where they learn about seasonal local produce while foraging directly from the vegetable beds and orchards. Everything about the operation emphasizes sustainability—the idea of staying in balance with New Zealand’s fragile ecosystem. At the end, there’s a high-country lunch featuring fruits, vegetables and cheese, served on a rustic table made out of fallen trees. 

But the highlight of the tour—the real sales pitch for sustainability—comes at the end. Every guest is invited to play a role in Walter Peak’s Land Restoration Project by planting their own native tree or shrub on the reforested peninsula. RealNZ even lets visitors name their saplings. 

Not only does it directly aid the farm’s conservation goals, but it creates a powerful emotional tether to the land. It’s easy to imagine guests returning years later, grandchildren in tow, to check on the native tree they planted on a sunny afternoon at Walter Peak. 

For Dave Beeche and RealNZ, that lasting connection is the point. 

“If we’re a good custodian of the land and are doing our bit to reinvest in the environment that we’re operating in, then that’s going to pay dividends in the long run,” Beeche says. “We 100 percent believe it’s ultimately going to be value-creating. It’s a really good virtuous circle.”

In an industry where the bottom line often dictates the path of least resistance, RealNZ is trying to show visitors that there’s another way. If it can convince 3 million people a year to fall in love with conservation, they just might turn Queenstown into one of the world’s most sustainable destinations.

Brian O’Leary wants to see Bruno Mars in Chicago, but Ticketmaster claims there’s no accessible seating left—even though resellers have plenty of inventory. Can a consumer advocate help this 68-year-old fan get to the show?

Question

I’m 68 years old and live in Chicago. Like many people my age, I have specific medical accommodations that require ADA seating when I go to a concert. My wife and I were excited to see Bruno Mars when he comes to Soldier Field, but the ticket-buying process has been a nightmare.

Ticketmaster and Live Nation allow you to filter your search specifically for ADA seating. When I first checked the seating chart for the shows, it showed plenty of accessible seats available. However, every time I selected a seat, the system told me the inventory was not available. I tried repeatedly, but it was the same story every time.

The next day, I checked again. Suddenly, ADA seating was available—but only through a qualified reseller. 

It seems fundamentally wrong that someone can procure a seat specifically designated for someone with a disability and then turn around and flip it for a profit. To buy these seats, Ticketmaster makes you click a disclaimer stating that you actually require the accommodations due to physical limitations. This is a nice gesture, but it clearly doesn’t stop resellers who never intended to use the seats.

This practice keeps people with disabilities from enjoying live music. It feels like the platforms are more concerned with the appearance of “compliance” than they are with actual customer service. Can you help me get some clarity from Ticketmaster on why these seats are ending up in the hands of scalpers instead of the fans who need them? — Brian O’Leary, Chicago

Answer

Ticketmaster should have ensured that its inventory management system accurately reflected available seating. More importantly, it should have robust safeguards to prevent the predatory resale of ADA-accessible tickets.

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, venues and ticketing aggregators must provide individuals with disabilities the same opportunity to purchase tickets as others. While the law allows for the resale of ADA seats, it also permits venues to investigate when they suspect fraud. If Ticketmaster knows a seat is being resold, it has the power to verify the necessity or restrict the transaction to ensure the seat serves its intended purpose.

Always take a screenshot when a site shows available inventory. If it suddenly vanishes, that’s your smoking gun when filing a complaint. You did the right thing by looking for a point of contact to escalate your concerns.

I always recommend following the paper trail method. Start with a polite email to customer service. If that fails, appeal to the executives. I publish the names and email addresses of the Ticketmaster leadership team on my advocacy site, Elliott.org.

When you reached out to me, I encouraged you to use those contacts. You went to work. You contacted Ticketmaster’s senior leadership, and your case eventually landed on the desk of a consumer support supervisor.

I’ve written about the frustrations of the Ticketmaster queue and the high cost of verified resales before. This case is a particularly ugly cousin to those issues because it adds a layer of accessibility barriers to the mix.

Ticketmaster told you it could not force its client, Live Nation, to procure new ADA seats once the primary inventory was gone. However, it did offer a rare concession. After you  engaged with the executive team, it agreed to reimburse you for the extra costs you incurred by buying from a reseller.

It’s a bittersweet victory. Ticketmaster stepped up to make you whole, but it’s unclear if the company addressed the underlying flaw in its system. If you find yourself in a similar spot again, don’t just settle for the “sold out” message. Fight for your right to be in the room. And if the company won’t listen, you know where to find me.

Christine Grosart’s car rental through Booking.com turned into a financial headache when Avis charged her extra by mistake. The company admitted its mistake, but sent her only a partial refund. Is the money gone forever?

Question

I booked a car in Spain through Booking.com for a rental with Avis. Everything seemed fine until I had a family emergency and had to return the vehicle early. At no stage during the booking process or at the rental desk was I informed that returning the car early would result in an increased cost.

Imagine my shock when I saw an unauthorized charge of $673 on my credit card. Returning the car early effectively doubled my rental cost. I never received any communication about this fee. It’s unjustified—Avis could have re-rented the car the second I dropped it off.

I’m a medic and I often work in the North Sea where mobile signals are difficult, so I’ve had to try and manage this via email and WhatsApp. It’s incredibly frustrating because Avis eventually admitted it was at fault and issued a refund, yet it’s still holding onto about $130.

I want the full amount owed, not a partial amount. Can you help me get my remaining money back? — Christine Grosart, Evercreech, England

Answer

Avis should have refunded you the moment it overcharged you. Actually, scratch that—it should have never charged you in the first place. 

If a company admits it made a mistake, it shouldn’t be a struggle to get a full refund. It certainly shouldn’t require a medic to take time away from her duties in the North Sea to chase down a missing $130.

Rental car companies often have automated systems that trigger early return fees or rate changes if you drop the car off sooner than planned. While their policies often state that rates are subject to change if the rental period is altered, those changes shouldn’t be applied in error, as Avis later admitted happened in your case.

You could have avoided part of this by carefully reviewing the final receipt before leaving the rental lot. I know, you’re tired and want to get home, but that’s the moment you have the most leverage. You also did the right thing by starting a paper trail. As I always say, if it isn’t in writing, it didn’t happen.

When you run into a wall like this, you can always escalate your complaint to the executives at Avis or Booking.com. You can find those contacts on my site at Elliott.org. 

I’ve dealt with similar fuzzy math from rental companies before. In a previous case involving Budget (which is owned by the same parent company, Avis Budget Group), a customer was hit with a cleaning fee that felt more like a penalty than a service charge. It seems these errors have a habit of leaning in the company’s favor.

 I reached out to Avis on your behalf and asked it to review your case.

“We can confirm that the additional charge related to a quoted rate change due to early return was applied in error and should not have been charged,” a representative told me.

It turns out part of the missing money was an additional driver fee that you signed for at the time of rental. Avis sent over a copy of your signed agreement to prove it. “Charges that are clearly included and accepted on the signed rental agreement are considered contractually agreed upon and are not eligible for refund,” the company noted.

Your total refund comes to $552. While you didn’t get the driver fee back, you received the rest of your money back.

The dream of a luxury resort getaway usually doesn’t include the resonant baritone of a 100-pound Doberman Pinscher echoing through the hallway at 3 a.m. But it did for Terry Reilly and his wife when they checked into the Westin Hilton Head Island Resort & Spa. 

A longtime marketing executive, Reilly knows a thing or two about brand promises. He spent his career analyzing customer satisfaction for Fortune 500 companies. Ironically, Marriott—the parent company of Westin—was once one of his clients.

So when Reilly and his wife checked in, they expected the “Six Pillars of Well-Being” that Westin splashes across its marketing. 

Instead, they found themselves in pet heaven: a hotel that markets itself as pet-friendly but interprets that as “anything with four legs and a pulse gets a free pass.”

The Westin Hilton Head’s website is specific: pets up to 40 pounds are welcome, with a limit of two per room. But the reality on the ground was more like a casting call for a Best in Show sequel. Reilly spotted German shepherds, collies, and pointers that clearly blew past the weight limit. Dogs were in the elevators, dog hair was under the furniture, and one unfortunate pup even left a souvenir on the carpet that sat there for 24 hours.

For Reilly’s wife, who suffers from dog allergies, her stay became a health hazard.

This case raises several important questions:

• How can travelers hold hotels accountable when they ignore their own published pet policies?

• What are the legal and health implications of pets in “human” spaces like hotel restaurants and lobbies?

• How does a high-status loyalty member navigate a corporate “ghosting” when a local manager refuses to respond?

Reilly tried the direct approach. He wrote to the hotel’s general manager, citing the specific violations of the hotel’s published policy. He pointed out that while he doesn’t mind having dogs in the hotel, he doesn’t like them in all the common areas, particularly in dining areas.

He waited. And waited. 

The manager didn’t respond. That’s when he reached out to me.

How can travelers hold hotels accountable when they ignore their own published pet policies?

Let’s get one thing out of the way: The Reillys are not anti-dog.

“My wife and I like dogs,” he explains. “We are previous owners, and our two children have dogs that we enjoy.”

But when a hotel publishes a policy on its website, it’s a part of the contract you sign when you book the room. If a hotel says “no dogs over 40 pounds” and then allows a Great Dane in the suite next to you, it has breached that agreement.

To hold a hotel accountable, you have to act like a detective. That’s what Reilly did. He documented the list of breeds present and noted the weight violations. He documented the failure of the staff to enforce the rules in the elevators and common areas. 

When your vacation goes to the dogs, your best weapon is the hotel’s own fine print. 

Take a screenshot of the pet policy at the time of booking. If the reality on the ground contradicts the screen, you have evidence of a material misrepresentation. In the travel industry, that’s a big deal. If you’re allergic, it’s an even bigger deal because the hotel is now failing to provide a safe environment.

You should also look for the hotel’s brand promise (here’s Westin’s). Reilly, with his background in market research, cited Westin’s “Six Pillars of Well-Being”—specifically “Sleep Well” and “Feel Well.” He argued that a barking dog at night is a direct violation of the “Sleep Well” pillar. 

When you  use a company’s own marketing language, you have increased the difficulty for it to argue. It’s much harder for a corporate liaison to say, “Well, we don’t actually care about your sleep,” when the word “Sleep” is plastered all over the lobby.

If the local manager ignores you, don’t just give up. Be polite and persistent (check out the  Elliott Method for details). Then escalate your case. 

When you take it up the corporate ladder, stay focused on the policy violation, not just your feelings. Reilly’s letter was clinical, factual, and hard to ignore. He asked for a refund because the hotel failed to provide the service it promised in writing.

But Reilly’s case also brings up a broader question about pets in hotels.

What are the legal and health implications of pets in “human” spaces like hotel restaurants and lobbies?

We’re living in an era of “pet creep.” It started with service animals—which are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act and should be welcomed—and has developed into a free-for-all where people have been trying to board airplanes with their emotional support peacocks.

Hotels are caught in the middle, afraid of a lawsuit if they ask too many questions.

But there are limits. In many states, including South Carolina, health codes are clear about where animals can and can’t be. Reilly noted that he saw pets in the indoor restaurants at the Westin Hilton Head, which he claimed was a violation of state sanitary laws. He even witnessed a fight between two dogs in a dining area.

When a hotel allows non-service animals into areas where food is served, it’s potentially breaking the law. If you find yourself dining next to a golden retriever that is sniffing the buffet, you have every right to complain to the hotel, if not the local health department.

The health implications for other guests are significant. Allergies are a real concern. A hotel that allows dogs to roam freely through every hallway and elevator is essentially telling guests with allergies that their health isn’t protected.

Reilly suggested a simple fix: Limit dogs to the first floor and assign specific elevators for pet use. It’s a common-sense solution that respects both pet owners and those who prefer a dander-free stay.

The problem is that many hotels have become pet-permissive rather than pet-friendly. A pet-friendly hotel has rules, designated areas, and cleaning protocols. A pet-permissive hotel just stops saying “no.” That creates a chaotic environment where the “People First” mission of a company like Marriott gets buried under a pile of dog hair.

And what’s worse than that? When the hotel ignores your well-reasoned complaint.

How does a high-status loyalty member navigate a corporate “ghosting” when a local manager refuses to respond?

Reilly is a Lifetime Titanium elite member. In the world of Marriott, that’s like being royalty. You’ve spent a small fortune and decades of your life staying in its hotels. Is it too much to expect a return email?

But even the highest status doesn’t always guarantee a response from a busy general manager. When the Westin Hilton Head didn’t reply, Reilly asked me for our list of Marriott executive contacts, which I was only too happy to provide.

If you are being ghosted, the key is having a paper trail. Send a polite follow-up. If that fails to get a response, move up the chain. Reilly found his way to a corporate liaison, who finally got the ball rolling. No need to get my team involved, although we were ready to help.

The irony here is that the hotel’s silence actually made the situation worse for the brand. By the time a senior operations manager finally responded, the list of grievances had grown. Reilly’s friends, who stayed at the same time, reported unlivable conditions, including a lack of heat in the rooms and the lobby.

When a company ghosts a loyal customer, it sends a message that the relationship is one-sided. For a “People First” company, that’s a brand-killer. Reilly knew that. He reminded Marriott that violating a brand promise in the age of social media is a mistake you can’t wiggle out of.

The tension in these cases usually comes down to whether the company will admit it messed up or try to offer a “points” bribe to make the guest go away. For a $525 stay, Marriott had a choice: stand by its failing pet program or stand by its loyal customer.

So, how did this sequel to Best in Show end?

After the corporate office stepped in, Westin’s tone changed completely. The hotel acknowledged that it failed to uphold its own pet policy, including the size limits and the distribution of pet rooms throughout the property. It admitted the nighttime disturbances and the cleanliness issues were unacceptable.

Westin offered a full refund of $525.

“Of course knowing who to contact from you allowed this to happen,” he says.

In the end, Reilly got his money back, but the Westin Hilton Head has some soul-searching to do. If it wants to be a dog park, it should market itself as one. But if it wants to be a luxury resort for humans, maybe it needs to keep the dogs on a leash.

Have you ever taken your seat on a plane and had the strange realization that you haven’t spoken to a single person since you got to the airport?

Not at the check-in kiosk, where you silently printed your bag tag. Not at security, where you scanned your boarding pass and faced a camera instead of an agent. Not at the gate, where you flashed your boarding pass on a machine.

Then you sit in your seat and plug in your noise-canceling headphones, effectively hanging a “do not disturb” sign around your neck.

Welcome to modern travel. It’s efficient, frictionless — and incredibly lonely.

Walk through any airport, hotel lobby, or train station today and you’ll see it. People moving efficiently through space, eyes down, earbuds in, interacting with screens instead of humans. The gate agent? There’s an app for that. The concierge? Ask AI. The stranger at the bar? Look closely; they’re wearing noise-canceling earbuds.

“Places that once buzzed with humanity feel more like transit corridors than destinations,” says Lawrence Quill, co-director of San Jose State University’s Loneliness Project. “We travel with earbuds in, eyes on screens, impervious to our surroundings.” 

Call it the Great Disconnect. We’ve engineered humanity right out of travel. But why is travel so solitary, and what can we do about it? As AI continues to strip the human touch from travel, there’s no better time to ask these questions.

Why does travel feel so lonely?

The shift didn’t happen overnight. It crept in gradually, accelerated by a pandemic that taught us to fear proximity and trust screens. What started as convenience morphed into something else entirely: isolation on the move.

“We built technology to make travel effortless,” says Francis Hellyer, CEO of tickadoo, an AI-powered travel platform. “But in the process, we stripped away the human warmth that made it meaningful. The silence you feel in airports and hotels is the sound of efficiency.”

The numbers tell part of the story. Travel data shows the average group size for trips has decreased 9 percent since COVID-19 began. In 2020, the average trip included 2.14 travelers, according to travel insurance site Squaremouth.com. By 2025, that dropped to 1.95. More striking: The percentage of trips with more than two travelers plummeted from nearly 20 percent to just over 15 percent.

Thomas Plante, a psychology professor at Santa Clara University, sees this shift mirrored in his clinical practice. 

“Our culture has evolved with technological advances and conveniences to the point where you don’t have to interact with real people at all,” he says. “A major downside is that as we avoid human interactions, we lose our skills to do so and our social lives and skills atrophy.”

Reality check: For some people, being able to travel without talking to anyone and enjoying the silence is a bonus. (If you’re a new dad, you know what I mean.) For others, it’s kind of maddening.

Which travel technology cut out the human contact?

The culprits aren’t hard to spot. They’re in your pocket, on your wrist, around your neck.

Christian Petzold, a travel expert at BCN Travel, says he can now breeze through airports and hotel lobbies with minimal human contact.

“I can go from the curb to my room without a word to any staff member,” he says. “As much as it’s convenient, I feel a bit empty because I’m missing out on the human element that once made the traveling experience so much richer.”

The technology itself isn’t the villain. It’s how we’re misusing it:

• Smartphones. We can’t seem to get off them, says frequent traveler Molly Streuli, a marketing manager from Rice Lake, Wis. “Walking down the street, at dinner, at the beach — it’s happening everywhere,” she says. “No asking locals for restaurant recommendations, no wandering around without a destination, no making small talk with strangers at the bar.”

• Apps and kiosks. Self-check-ins. AI concierges. QR code menus. Digital tip systems. Each innovation removes another moment where humans might connect. It’s particularly noticeable in Asia, where efficiency is highly valued and technology is seen as a solution to every problem. Anna Shaverni, a 25-year-old nomadic traveler who’s visited 38 countries in three years, experienced it in Japan. “Ticket machines everywhere,” she recalls. “iPads instead of waiters. QR codes instead of front desk staff. I spent a week in Osaka. I had less real conversation than one day in an Italian village.”

• Noise-canceling headphones. They’re brilliant on long flights. But they’ve become an all-the-time accessory, sign that says: “Leave me alone.” These habits started during the pandemic and never went away, according to experts. “Post-pandemic, I have noticed more people reading or putting headphones in so they don’t have to interact,” says Beth Ribarsky, a professor of interpersonal communication at the University of Illinois Springfield.

In other words, we wanted control, reliable service and freedom from long lines. Technology delivered it. But we accidentally ordered a side of loneliness, too.

There’s nothing wrong with a little solitude when you’re traveling. Sometimes, it can give you time to relax or focus on work. But research shows that prolonged loneliness can raise the risk of serious physical conditions like dementia, heart disease, or a stroke. It can also lead to depression and anxiety.

How to have a real conversation while traveling

How can travelers avoid the Great Disconnect?

Ask for a person (even if you don’t have to). That’s what Andy Abramson, one of the most experienced travelers I know, does when he checks into a hotel. He always emails the general manager before he arrives. “I tell them a bit about who I am and what I like,” says Abramson, a communications consultant from Las Vegas. “In return, they share local tips with me.”

Leave the headphones off. It’s a simple signal that you’re available for conversation. Ralph Velasco, a professional travel photographer who spends months on the road, forces himself to be more outgoing, and it goes beyond leaving his headset in the carry-on bag. “I’ll sometimes ask directions from someone when I already know where I’m going, just to practice some social skills, perhaps start a conversation and get that human touch,” he says,

Choose the counter over the app. Robert Herbst, an attorney from Larchmont, N.Y., makes this his policy. On a recent trip, he ignored several emails from his car rental company to check in online. “I always want to get the local lore and recommendations of routes, restaurants, etc. from rental agents, desk clerks, and the like,” he says. (Note: If you want to check in for a flight at the counter, some airlines charge extra to talk to a person, so ask before you do this.)

Sit at the bar. Streuli, the marketing manager, swears by this. “I am very intentional about not using my phone at a bar or restaurant. And I always sit at the bar when it’s an option, because you just never know who you’re going to meet.”

Funny story: In 2019, she sat at an oyster bar in Ho Chi Minh City and watched the stranger next to her order spring rolls and a beer. “Good choice,” she said. She’d ordered the same thing. 

Seven years later, that stranger is her husband.

“Research shows that even small, genuine interactions with strangers can increase happiness and well-being,” says Michal Strahilevitz, a marketing and consumer psychology professor at Saint Mary’s College of California.

Where travel still leaves room for people

The goal isn’t to return to some imaginary golden age of travel. (Smoking sections on flights? Hard pass.) It’s to design experiences where efficiency and empathy coexist.

“Technology should be an enabler of connection,” says Hellyer, the tickadoo CEO. “Not a replacement for it.”

There are plenty of opportunities for human contact. From the Southwest Airlines flight attendant cracking a joke during the in-flight announcements to Wingle, an app that lets you chat with other passengers on your flight, there are more opportunities than ever to make a human connection. Travel is many things, but it should never feel as lonely as this.

This just in: AI is deciding if you can’t make a flight connection and proactively rebooking you. It happened to an almost-famous American Airlines passenger recently.

Then again, maybe it’s not just in. 

American says it launched its automated rebooking technology in 2023. The tool has been moving passengers off connections for three summers. What changed in August is who noticed.

Why you’re hearing about it now

This is the month when people who fly twice a year board a plane. They hit a delay, they discover how the system works and then they breathlessly report it.

That was the story when American Airlines changed Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen’s flight schedule.

“Since when do you change my itinerary without asking?” he wrote in an indignant post on X to American Airlines. 

Oh yeah, X—the place we all go for our news.

A day later, media consultant Beverly Hallberg replied that the same thing had happened to her on the same day, and that she had spent part of a long wait on the tarmac calling the airline to put her original booking back together.

Disclosure: I spent 16 years as a Post travel columnist, and don’t know Thiessen or Hallberg, nor do I know how often they fly. But if you continue reading down the thread, you’ll see experienced air travelers telling him to stop complaining. The system saves time by accommodating passengers who wouldn’t make their connection and freeing up seats for other passengers.

How the system really works

American’s tool is called AURA, short for Automated ReAccommodation. It predicts which passengers are going to miss a connection and rebooks them before they do. The airline added a second piece of software, Connect Assist, at Dallas-Fort Worth and Charlotte about a year ago, and expanded it this year to Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia and Phoenix.

It isn’t perfect. After all, a late inbound doesn’t guarantee a missed connection, and planes make up time in the air. Connecting flights get delayed too, which is what happened to Thiessen and Hallberg. When the software guesses wrong, passengers can spend an afternoon on hold. 

But the discussion raises an interesting question: Is this too much AI?

Does anyone owe you anything for being rescheduled?

Not really. Federal rules on bumping, 14 CFR Part 250, cover passengers with confirmed reservations who are denied boarding from an oversold flight. When they apply, the money is real. An airline owes at least 200 percent of your fare, capped at $1,075, “if you get to your destination one or two hours late, and 400 percent, capped at $2,150, beyond that. It owes nothing if it reroutes you to arrive within an hour of your original time.

Neither of the August cases comes close to violating federal law. Thiessen kept flying. Hallberg got her seat back with a phone call. Nobody was turned away at a gate. (If you reach the gate on time and the airline gave your seat to another passenger, ask the agent directly whether you’ve been denied boarding involuntarily and get the answer in writing if possible.)

Wait, is this a customer service improvement?

American says the technology has cut the average delay to a customer’s final destination by 25 percent since 2023, and that it keeps refining the system. So the airline effectively knows where you’re going to end up before you do. 

Nice to see the airline using technology to improve the customer experience instead of using it to optimize revenue, isn’t it?

Still, shouldn’t the airline ask us before rescheduling?

If you said yes:

• Would you still say yes if the software were less reliable?
• Should the airline have to notify you the moment it makes a change?

If you said no:

• Should you be able to decline automatic rebooking when you buy the ticket?
• Would you pay more to fly an airline that keeps a person in the loop?

My take

I’ve been writing about this technology for decades. I don’t think the objection here is the use of AI. Plenty of passengers want to be moved without having to ask, and they said so in public this month. 

No, the objection is that the passenger is the only party to the transaction who doesn’t take part in the decision. You’re not allowed to argue with the AI. You bought a seat, but something else now holds the final say over whether you sit in it.

One reply to Thiessen claimed Delta rewrote a family’s itinerary in the air back in June, and that the family made the connection but lost the seats it had booked together. If predictive rebooking is dissolving family seating assignments across more than one airline, then this is much bigger than a newspaper columnist discovering three-year-old software.

Airlines have spent 20 years teaching us that the seat we bought is a suggestion. Everything from the overhead bin space to legroom moved from something you owned to something you paid extra for. Now the itinerary itself is becoming a suggestion, too. 

Oh well. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

Your turn

Has an algorithm ever rewritten your trip? Did you get it back, and how long did it take? Our comments are open.

When hackers cleaned out Amy Pollick’s PayPal account last month, she turned to the company for help. An automated assistant, which cheerfully introduced itself as generative AI and admitted it’s “still in beta testing,” told her it couldn’t process her request, but it offered to connect her to a human. 

Did she want to talk to a person? She typed “Yes.”

Then the bot repeated the offer, word for word.

She typed “Yes” again. And again. 

Four times, the machine offered a human being and then reneged. Pollick was stuck in a bot loop, a familiar place for consumers these days.

If that same algorithm had denied Pollick’s knee surgery instead of her $125, the law in a growing number of states would have required a licensed human being to sign off on the denial. Because it was about money and not medicine, she got the loop. That shouldn’t be allowed.

Some Americans already have this right

We’ve decided, in bits and pieces, that certain decisions are too important to be left to AI. 

Last year, California’s Physicians Make Decisions Act took effect, barring health plans from using an algorithm as the sole basis for denying care. A licensed human provider must make the call.

Other states have followed. Georgia and Utah both passed versions this year. Georgia’s law lets insurers use AI to speed up prior authorization, but when it takes effect in 2027, no adverse determination goes out without a human reviewing and approving it.

Colorado went bigger. Its rewritten automated decision law, SB 26-189, will give consumers the right to request meaningful human review after an algorithm makes a consequential decision that goes against them. “Meaningful” means a trained person who can actually overturn the decision. It takes effect in January.

Europeans have had a version of this since 2018. Article 22 of the General Data Protection Regulation gives them the right to human intervention when a machine decides something about them, though it too applies only when the stakes are high enough.

But what about Pollick?

Everything turns on one word

Every one of these laws is keyed to decisions we’ve labeled “significant” or “consequential,” like  credit, housing, employment, insurance or health care.

Getting hacked doesn’t make the list.

California’s new privacy rules take this somewhere strange. Starting in 2027, businesses using automated systems for significant decisions have to let consumers opt out, and one way to skip that requirement is to offer an appeal to a human who can overturn the decision. Human review shows up in the rulebook as a loophole for companies, not a right for customers.

It should be a right, though. People like Pollick should have the right to ask for a human review, especially when it involves their money.

Washington almost fixed this two years ago

In August 2024, the White House rolled out an initiative called Time Is Money. Its fact sheet promised the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would start writing a rule to let customers reach a human by pressing a single button.

The rule never got written. There was no proposal, no comment period, nothing. And the current administration—well, let’s just say it’s unlikely to pass consumer protection like this anytime soon. In the meantime, corporate America is aggressively swapping out its front line for a logic tree.

Look, this doesn’t have to be complicated. If you want to talk to a person, you should get a person. A chatbot promising you an eventual human representative or a callback just doesn’t cut it.

You should be able to get through to a real person with the authority to make a decision. Let’s put it in federal law and let it cover every consumer transaction, not just the ones we’ve blessed or that seem significant.

Companies will say their bots handle most problems fine, and that’s true. Where’s my refund, reset my password, change my address—a machine can do it faster than a person ever could. Fair enough. What I’m advocating applies when the machine gets it wrong.

Companies will say it’s expensive. Yep. That’s the point. Right now the cost of the bot loops falls entirely on people like Pollick, who spent two weeks and an unknowable amount of dignity and frustration chasing a refund to which she was entitled.

While we’re at it, let’s make it illegal to charge for the privilege. Frontier Airlines bills up to $25 per passenger, each way, for what it calls Airport Agent Assistance, and another $35 if you book your ticket by talking to one of its agents. Those are fees for speaking to a human being. Come on.

Humans 1, Bots 0

I contacted PayPal on Pollick’s behalf and, lucky me, I got through to a real person. The company called her, apologized for how she’d been treated and returned her money.

Her appeal worked because a consumer advocate got involved. She’d already written to PayPal’s executive office herself and heard nothing back. The system didn’t fix her problem, despite its promises of connecting her with a real person.

Pollick typed “Yes” four times and got nowhere. The rest of us should only have to say it once: “I want to talk to a person.” It should be our right.

You don’t have to be in the direct path of a hurricane for it to ruin your next vacation. And this year, which is quieter than most, is no time to let your guard down.

“We often see ripple effect claims where a traveler is stranded because their incoming aircraft is stuck in a hurricane zone,” says Terry Boynton, co-founder and president of Yonder Travel Insurance.

The sun may be shining when you leave and the weather forecast at your destination may be perfect, but your plane could be stuck on the tarmac in Miami, waiting out a tropical storm.

If you’re brave enough to travel inside the hurricane belt this time of year, you could reach your resort and find a debris field, with the lobby serving as a staging area for relief efforts.

“A common misconception is that hurricanes will either miss them or won’t seriously disrupt their trip,” says Bill McIntyre, a director at Global Rescue.

U.S. travelers are spending a record-breaking $226 billion on summer vacations, according to Allianz Partners. Data from travel insurance marketplace Squaremouth shows a 39 percent surge in searches for hurricane-related coverage last year.

They have good reason to be nervous. The storm on the radar isn’t the only one that can hurt you. 

That’s worth reiterating even during a quiet year for hurricanes. NOAA’s latest update predicts 7 to 13 named storms, 2 to 6 hurricanes and 0 to 2 major hurricanes, with a 75 percent chance of below-normal activity; to date the season has produced two named tropical storms and one hurricane.

For travelers, that threat is the invisible storm: the cascading effects of a hurricane that can ground your flight a thousand miles away, turn a “technically open” resort into a disaster zone, leave vacation rentals with hidden mold and structural damage, or expose you to legal and insurance loopholes that leave you stranded and uncovered. But there are ways to avoid that kind of trouble.

Technically open, but practically ruined

One invisible hazard is the “technically open” situation. This happens when a storm hits a destination weeks before you arrive. The sun is out, the hurricane warning is gone, and the hotel manager insists they are “open for business.”

But “open” is a relative term.

“There are times when a storm does not rise above a tropical storm but hits in just the right way that the tourism areas are affected,” says Christopher Falvey, co-founder of Unique NOLA Tours in New Orleans. You might arrive to find power outages, contaminated water, or closed amenities.

Thomas Carey, a partner at a law firm in Clearwater, Fla., who has handled hurricane-related injury cases for nearly 40 years, warns that the most dangerous invisible hazards in these scenarios are mold and hidden structural damage.

“We saw a spike in premises liability cases where tourists rented properties that looked fine in photos but had compromised floor joists, hidden mold from roof leaks, or balconies with water-damaged supports,” says Carey.

He cites a heartbreaking case where a client fell through rotted decking at a Florida Airbnb. The owner knew about the roof damage from a storm the previous year but hadn’t fixed the structure underneath. Because of Florida’s statute of limitations, the client waited too long and couldn’t file a claim.

Carey’s advice? “Text the host asking specifically: ‘Was this property inspected after [named storm]’ and ‘Do you have documentation of repairs?’ That written communication becomes evidence.”

Why traveling too soon after a storm is dangerous

Even walking around a post-storm city can be fraught with hazards.

Joe Caputo, personal injury lawyer in Austin, Texas, has represented dozens of clients injured during the aftermath of storms. “The invisible hazard nobody talks about is the 2 to 3 week period after landfall,” he says.

He recalls cases where people stepped on nails hidden in debris or tripped over concealed damage on commercial properties that hadn’t been inspected yet. And if you think the property owner will just pay your medical bills, think again.

“The insurance coverage gap that destroys injury claims is the ‘Act of God’ defense,” Caputo says. Property owners will claim the hurricane absolves them of liability.

It gets worse when you’re driving. Ron Harper, a licensed paralegal from Ontario, Canada, says travelers often wrongly assume their insurance covers them if they get into an accident on storm-damaged roads.

“I have witnessed cases where drivers received a fine due to passing through a flooded intersection which was technically open despite the danger,” Harper says. “Normal travel policies do not cover legal defense expenses associated with traffic offenses.”

The “named storm” rule

So, how do you protect yourself? If you wait until you see the swirl on the weather map, it’s already too late.

“Once it’s a named a storm, it becomes a foreseen event,” says Boynton.

This is the insurance industry’s “named storm” rule, and it trips up travelers every year. 

“If you buy your ticket or your insurance policy after the storm has formed, your policy isn’t going to cover those losses because you knew about the risk,” explains Michael Giusti, an analyst at insuranceQuotes.com.

So how to get around the rule? 

“The ‘named storm’ rule simply means you need insurance in place before the storm has a name,” says Wendy Stahl, a travel insurance product director at AXA Partners US.

One more thing: You can’t get a refund if you cancel your vacation because you’re worried about a storm. 

“Standard travel insurance doesn’t cover weather anxiety or discomfort with a forecast,” says Kayla LeClerc, owner of Whimsical Wishes Travel Concierge.

The “Cancel For Any Reason” solution

If you’re the type of traveler who would be miserable if the hotel pool was closed or if you had to look at a pile of debris on the beach, consider Cancel For Any Reason (CFAR) coverage. It’s more expensive than standard coverage, but it allows you to cancel your vacation for any reason, including storm concerns, and receive a partial refund.

“If your trip hasn’t officially been canceled, but you know you would be miserable if you went, then a ‘cancel for any reason’ policy would be worth it,” says Giusti.

But there’s a catch. You can’t buy this policy the day before you fly. 

“CFAR must typically be purchased within 1-21 days of your very first trip payment,” warns Boynton. “You can’t wait until hurricane season starts to add it to your policy.”

Should you cancel your vacation if there’s a hurricane coming?

The invisible hazards of hurricane season—the diverted flights, the moldy rentals, the hidden nails, and the “Act of God” loopholes—are reason enough to pause.

Daniel Durazo, a spokesman for Allianz Partners USA, notes that in 2025 alone, his company received almost 3,000 claims for hurricane-related disruptions. More than half were related to Hurricane Melissa, a catastrophic Category 5 storm.

“Melissa was an extreme example of how hurricanes can impact travel plans and how severe weather events can occur quickly and unpredictably,” he says.

If you’re  booking travel during hurricane season, watch the weather—and the calendar. Buy your insurance early, consider the CFAR upgrade, and if a storm hits near your destination, ask for proof of repairs before you check in.

Jay Catelli’s Alfa Romeo dashboard is defective. He has a warranty that covers interior damage, but the company says his specific part is on a secret exclusion list. Can he get the $14,000 repair covered? 

Question

I own a 2019 Alfa Romeo Stelvio SUV covered by a Mopar MVP MultiCare Plus Service Contract. This policy expressly provides protection for interior and exterior damage.

The dashboard in my vehicle is currently separating from the air vents, resulting in a significant gap. The interior section of my policy covers reconditioning, repair, or replacement of surfaces damaged due to normal wear and tear, including loose seam stitches, rips, and tears.

Despite these terms, Mopar has denied my claim. It says the specific part number is on an “exclusion list.” However, my policy documents make no reference to an exclusion list by part number, nor do they list the dashboard as an excluded item.

I have escalated this to Alfa Romeo, a division of Stellantis, which also owns Mopar. Alfa Romeo issued my policy. It agrees that the dashboard should be replaced under the policy terms. However, the representative has been unable to secure an agreement from Mopar to authorize the repair.

The cost to replace the dashboard exceeds $14,000. Given the explicit terms of the policy and the absence of any referenced exclusion list in my contract, I’m trying to get this covered. I have written a letter to Stellantis North America Customer Experience but have received no response. Can you help me? —Jay Catelli, Swampscott, Mass.

Answer

Mopar should have fixed your dashboard. If your MVP MultiCare Plus Service Contract explicitly covers “interior surfaces” and “wear and tear,” and your dashboard is doing a slow-motion separation, then it’s an open-and-shut case.

Service contracts—often called extended warranties—are usually one of two types: inclusionary or exclusionary. An inclusionary policy lists exactly what is covered. If the part isn’t on the list, you are out of luck. An exclusionary policy covers everything except what is specifically listed as not covered.

If you have an exclusionary policy, you read the fine print and checked the list. The dashboard wasn’t on it in your case.

Then Mopar claimed that even though the dashboard isn’t listed as an exclusion in your contract, the part number is on an internal exclusion list.

Come on. You can’t be bound by a secret list of part numbers that you never saw and didn’t sign. 

You did an excellent job trying to resolve this yourself. You kept a thorough paper trail. You contacted the dealership, which agreed with you. You contacted Alfa Romeo, which also agreed with you.

In fact, an Alfa Romeo representative told you she tried to reason with Mopar, but Mopar insisted the part was excluded. It is rare to see two divisions of the same parent company—Stellantis—bickering like this over a customer’s repair. 

When you hit a wall with the normal customer service channels, you can usually appeal to a higher authority. I list the names, numbers and emails for the Stellantis executives on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org.

You sent a certified letter to the senior vice president of North America Customer Experience at Stellantis. That was a smart move. But when you didn’t hear back, you contacted my team.

You were looking at a bill of more than $10,000 for a problem you paid good money to insure against. That is enough to make anyone’s blood boil—and apparently, your dashboard melt.

My advocacy team contacted Stellantis on your behalf.  A few days later, you received a call from Stellantis. A representative said the company reviewed your case and reversed its decision.

“Stellantis informed me that they reversed their initial denial and acknowledged that the leather dashboard should have been covered under the plan,” you told me.

The company approved the full cost of the dashboard replacement. It’s nice to see Stellantis standing behind its product, even if Mopar had to be dragged to the finish line. Next time, let’s hope the dashboard—and the warranty—hold together a little better.

John Fisher and his wife are stranded in Atlanta after a weather delay makes them miss their flight connection. A representative suggests they rent a room to rest, but the airline later denies their claim—and downgrades their seats. Can he get his money back?

Question

My bride of 53 years and I recently flew Delta Air Lines from Hartford, Conn., to Boise, Idaho. We had a 6 a.m. flight to Atlanta, so we woke up at 2 a.m. to ensure we had enough time for check-in.

There had been a storm in Hartford. We pushed back from the gate at 6:10 a.m., but didn’t lift off until 7:15 a.m. Even with this delay, our connection in Atlanta looked doable.

However, once we arrived in Atlanta, we waited 35 minutes for an open gate. Because of the wait, we eventually missed our 10 a.m. connection to Boise.

Delta’s customer service was helpful, but there was no choice but to rebook us on the 8 p.m. flight to Boise. We received food vouchers, but the agent denied us any Sky Club participation because we did not qualify.

Both of us are over 75 years old. The run through the Atlanta airport, coupled with the 2 a.m. wake-up call, left us exhausted. The representative suggested utilizing Minute Suites in the terminal in order to rest. She told us Delta “might” reimburse us.

We took her advice and crashed for two hours, which was enough to recharge our batteries.

On the 8 p.m. flight, Delta downgraded us from the Comfort+ seats we bought to coach, as all Comfort+ seats were booked.

I submitted a reimbursement request for the Minute Suites and a refund request for the Comfort+ seats through Delta.com. The site does not allow for any explanations, and the airline denied both requests.

I am frustrated. The site offers no way to appeal or explain the circumstances of our age and the long delay. Can you help me get my money back? — John Fisher, Wethersfield, Conn.

Answer

Delta should have refunded your seat downgrade automatically. It also should have been specific about whether it would cover your stay at the Minute Suites.

Let’s look at the downgrade first. You paid for Comfort+ and you flew in coach. That is a no-brainer.

Under U.S. Department of Transportation regulations, if an airline downgrades you to a lower class of service, it must refund the difference in price. You don’t need to negotiate or fill out a complex form. It should be automatic. Delta’s rejection of your refund request for the seat difference suggests a glitch in its system or a reviewer who wasn’t paying attention.

The Minute Suites expense is trickier.

Airlines generally don’t cover hotel or sleep accommodations for weather-related delays. Your delay in Hartford was caused by a storm, and the late arrival of your aircraft meant a gate wasn’t available. Technically, that’s an “act of God,” and Delta’s contract of carriage—the legal agreement between you and the company—says it isn’t liable.

The agent’s use of the word “might” was unfortunate. In the travel industry, “might” usually means “no.”

If a representative suggests you incur an expense, get it in writing. Ask for a voucher right there at the counter. If they can’t give you a voucher, ask them to note the promise in your passenger record (PNR). Without that paper trail, you are at the mercy of an anonymous adjuster (usually an AI) who sees a weather delay code and hits “deny.”

You did the right thing by keeping your receipts and writing to the airline. When the automated system failed you, you could have escalated your complaint. I list the names, numbers, and emails of the Delta Air Lines executives on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org. A brief, polite email to one of them often fixes these glitches.

I love the ending of this case. You contacted Delta’s executives on your own after finding the emails on my site. You politely pointed out the downgrade and the agent’s advice regarding the Minute Suites. 

The airline reviewed your case quickly. A representative followed up with instructions for securing the reimbursement for the Minute Suites and the refund for the seat downgrade. Delta also added 10,000 SkyMiles to both your accounts as a gesture of goodwill.

If there’s a perfect car rental customer, it is probably Tasha Huebner. She’s responsible, careful, and she returns her vehicles in what she describes as “pristine” condition.

So why is Avis hitting her up for an extra $450 for trashing her car?

The charge is for a “special” deep cleaning—for smoking.

Just one problem: Huebner doesn’t smoke. Neither does her travel companion, Cori. In fact, the accusation was physically repulsive to them.

“Only my friend Cori and I were in the car and neither of us smokes,” Huebner told me. “We’re both cancer survivors and initially met some 10-plus years ago through an organization for young women with breast cancer.”

Accusing two breast cancer survivors of chain-smoking inside a Chevy Malibu seems wrong. And charging them an extra $450 is way out of line.

But Avis wasn’t done. It also slapped her with a fuel service charge of over $30 for four gallons of gas. This was strange, considering Huebner had filled the tank at a Shell station less than a mile from the airport.

Huebner was caught in a bureaucratic pincer movement: accused of a vice she doesn’t practice and billed for gas she didn’t use.

This case raises several critical questions for anyone renting a car:

• Is the “smoking scam” becoming the new preferred revenue stream for the travel industry?
• What constitutes valid proof of smoking when a company wants to charge you $450?
• How do you fight a cleaning fee when the company holds all the cards—and your credit card deposit?

“I honestly asked them if they were insane”

Huebner rented a car from Avis to attend a memorial service and visit her brother in Illinois. It was a somber trip, not a joyride. She returned the car without incident. There were no warning lights, no damage, and certainly no clouds of smoke billowing out the windows.

But a few days later, the receipt landed in her inbox.

The $450 cleaning fee is the nuclear option of car rental charges. It is the maximum amount most agencies will charge for a deep cleaning. To justify this, you’d expect the car to look like the inside of a frat house after Homecoming weekend.

Huebner was stunned. 

“I honestly asked them if they were insane,” she says.

She immediately contested the charge. Avis responded not with a retraction, but with a PDF containing grainy images of the car interior.

“It looked like water spots or something,” she recalls.

There were no pictures of cigarette butts or burn marks on the upholstery. Just grainy ambiguity and a demand for payment.

After some back-and-forth, Avis made a benevolent offer to reduce the fee to $250.

This is a classic negotiation tactic used by claims departments. They know the $450 charge is bogus, so they offer to cut it in half. The weary traveler, terrified of a collection agency or a permanent ban, often pays the $250 just to make the problem go away. It is the cost of doing business.

But Huebner was fuming—and she refused. 

“I still said that was insane, because I had returned the car in pristine condition,” she says.

She was at a stalemate. Avis had her credit card, which it could charge. She had the truth. (In the world of travel disputes, the money usually wins.)

And that’s when she contacted our team.

Is the smoking scam the new junk fee?

Let’s answer the first question: Is this happening more often?

Yes, unfortunately it is.

In recent years, I have seen a dramatic uptick in complaints about erroneous cleaning fees. It is not just smoking. I recently advocated for a consumer who was charged $450 by Budget for dog hair, despite not owning a dog. I’ve seen charges for sand in cars that never went near a beach and “excessive dirt” on floor mats that looked brand new. (Of course, if you do trash a rental car, you should pay to have it cleaned. That goes without saying.)

But the smoking charge is the most insidious because it is the hardest to disprove. You can photograph a clean seat. You can video a lack of dents. But how do you photograph a smell?

You can’t. And the rental companies know it.

The rise of these smoking fees correlates with the tightening of margins in the travel industry. When rental rates drop or fleet costs go up, ancillary fees become the lifeblood of the profit and loss statement. A $450 cleaning fee is pure profit. It requires no parts, no skilled labor, and often, no actual cleaning.

For Huebner, the accusation was particularly stinging. As a cancer survivor, she’s hyper-aware of health risks. The idea that she would light up in a rental car is ludicrous. But to an algorithm or a remote claims adjuster viewing a grainy PDF, she represented just another revenue source.

The gas charge she received adds weight to the theory that this was a systemic failure—or a systemic strategy—rather than an isolated mistake. 

Charging for gas when the tank is full is the “did you check the minibar?” of car rentals. It’s a lazy attempt to pad the bill, hoping the customer won’t notice or won’t have the energy to fight.

What constitutes valid proof of smoke damage?

This brings us to our second question: What proof does a company need to confiscate $450 from your bank account?

Legally? Not much. Practically? Even less.

When you sign a rental agreement, you are essentially handing the company a blank check for damages. The terms and conditions are written by lawyers who anticipate these disputes. They use vague language like “excessive soilage” or “odors,” giving the company broad discretion.

In Huebner’s case, the “proof” was laughable. Grainy photos of water spots do not prove smoking. They prove it rained, or perhaps someone spilled a bottle of Dasani on a seat.

To sustain a smoking charge, a company should provide:

• Physical evidence: Cigarette butts, ash in the console, or burn marks.

• Time-stamped inspection logs: A report showing the smell was detected immediately upon return, not days later after the car has been moved by porters who might be enjoying a smoke break.

• Cleaning receipts: An invoice from a third-party detailer proving the work was actually done.

Avis provided none of this. It sent a PDF that proved nothing other than the fact that their camera has a low resolution.

The timing is also suspect. In many cases I handle, the smoking charge appears days or even weeks after the return. I’ve seen cases where Budget waited almost a month to charge for dirty floor mats.

If a car smells like heavy smoking, as Avis claimed, the return agent should smell it the moment the door opens. It should be flagged instantly.

When the charge comes later, it suggests the smell might have come from an employee moving the car, a subsequent renter, or—more likely—it doesn’t exist at all.

How to fight back against a smoking fee and win

So, how do you fight a smoking fee? Huebner’s approach is a textbook example of what I call the Elliott Method.

• Don’t get angry on the phone. The frontline employees at the 800-number have no power. They’re reading from a script. They are the human equivalent of a “Do Not Enter” sign. Arguing with them is like trying to explain physics to your cat.

• Create a paper trail. Huebner emailed Avis’ customer service department. She kept records. She forced them to put their “evidence” (the grainy photos) in writing. This is crucial. When you force a company to document its lie, the lie often falls apart.

• Appeal to a higher power. Most consumers stop when the department says “no” or offers a token refund. Huebner didn’t. She refused the $250 compromise and escalated to a manager.

“I honestly wondered if they had the wrong car,” she said.

Huebner found the executive contacts for Avis on my consumer advocacy site. These are real people—vice presidents and CEOs—not chatbots.

She wrote a concise, calm email. She explained the absurdity of the charge. She mentioned her history as a cancer survivor (establishing credibility and emotional weight). She pointed out the factual error regarding the gas charge (establishing the company’s incompetence). She had the receipts to prove it.

And she did one more thing, which I always recommend: She cited a precedent. She included a link to an article she found about a similar $450 fee from another Avis-owned brand. This showed she was informed and that she knew this was a pattern.

She sent the email to the two executives listed on my site. And, “just for the hell of it,” she copied the CEO.

Avoiding a PR nightmare

The laws of corporate customer service say you can’t be a heavy smoker and a cancer survivor falsely accused of smoking without creating a massive PR headache.

“No lie, not 10 MINUTES later, I heard from the department I had been going back and forth with,” Huebner says.

Their attitude had changed. Avis removed the $450 charge and the gas fee. Then came another email apology. Then came a phone call.

“It was kind of nuts,” Huebner told me. “Talk about results!”

Why did this happen? Because she bypassed the algorithm and reached a human who could recognize the absurdity of the situation. A low-level claims adjuster looks at a screen and sees a revenue opportunity. An executive looks at an email from a cancer survivor with a flawless rental history and sees a brand liability.

It’s likely the gas charge—$30 for four gallons when the tank was full—was the smoking gun. It proved the return agents hadn’t done their job. If they were wrong about the gas, they were probably also wrong about the smoke.

“Victory was mine!” Huebner wrote to me. “And yours, because I know I would have gotten nowhere without your assistance.”

The takeaway

This victory belongs to Huebner, actually. She refused to accept a compromise for something she didn’t do.

If you rent a car, protect yourself. Take photos of the interior and exterior when you return it. Keep your gas receipts and take a photo of the gas gauge. And if you get hit with a bogus smoking fee, don’t pay it—fight it.

These fees are a tax on the passive. They rely on you being too busy or too intimidated to fight.

Avis tried to charge two cancer survivors for smoking. It picked the wrong customers. And thanks to Huebner’s persistence, the air is finally clear.