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

Question

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

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

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

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

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

Answer

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

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

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

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

Aeromexico’s response to you was disappointing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“This is a huge relief!” you told me.

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

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

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

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

They weren’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Running into a Wall of Nos

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

The airline’s customer service agents disagreed.

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

Another representative doubled down on the denial. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So who’s right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That created a new expectation among travelers: flexibility.

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

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

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

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

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

And she had a screenshot to prove it.

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

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

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

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

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

That feels like corporate gaslighting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The turbulence clears

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is when the turbulence cleared.

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

The culprit? Bad writing. And a bad website.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are some no-shows nonsense?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s not about maximizing profits”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are no-shows a travel industry conspiracy?

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

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

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

The FBI has a message for you: As summer vacation season kicks off, cruise passengers who are assaulted, kidnapped or sexually assaulted at sea should report the crime right away.

That’s the gist of a public service announcement the agency posted to its social media account recently. It’s good advice—of course you should report a crime.

But the FBI left out one teensy detail. Once you say something, chances are nobody outside a windowless federal office will ever know it happened.

Here’s what the government won’t put on a beach-chair graphic on social media: The law that’s supposed to track crime at sea is engineered to make cruising look safer than it is. It lets the accused company act as a gatekeeper for complaints, counts just a sliver of what happens, and whitewashes the details in a generic, anonymized report.

How the cruise industry’s numbers distort the truth about safety

The Cruise Lines International Association, the cruise industry’s trade group, claims cruising is one of the safest vacations in the world. And the federal data seems to agree.

The Department of Transportation posts a quarterly report under the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act, the 2010 law that governs this. It logged just one homicide, one suspicious death and zero kidnappings for all of 2025. The first quarter of this year is also squeaky clean. 

Feel safer already? Maybe you shouldn’t.

The data exclude any crime in which the victim isn’t a U.S. citizen, which wipes out nearly every crew member and plenty of passengers. It reports only a short list of the most serious categories. For example, thefts must exceed $10,000 in value to be reportable. 

There are other loopholes. Cruise lines must report a physical assault only if it causes “serious bodily injury,” and the law never defines the term. So a beating becomes a judgment call, made by the company with the most to lose.

Is the fox taking inventory of the henhouse?

The FBI is urging passengers to report incidents directly to the cruise line while they’re at sea. But that’s problematic, because the cruise lines then report the crimes to the government.

Let’s think about that arrangement for a moment. A company sells you a “safe” vacation. Then that same company decides whether the thing that happened to you counts as a crime worth reporting. It’s like letting a restaurant grade its own health inspection, and then acting surprised when it gets an A.

The numbers hint at how well that works out. For the last quarter of 2025, for example, Carnival reported only three crimes across its entire fleet of 29 ships. The company’s tally was its lowest since the pandemic shut the industry down. But attorneys who track these cases found at least five reportable crimes on Carnival ships in that same window, including assaults that sent passengers to the hospital. 

Do you really believe there were only three serious crimes on a fleet of cruise ships in a three-month period? Neither do I.

The real reason no one is reporting these crimes at sea

The problem isn’t entirely selective reporting or a complicit federal government. It’s the cruise experience itself. 

Imagine you’re far from home, in an unfamiliar place, often after a few drinks the ship was delighted to sell you. You can’t call 911 after an incident. The security officer taking your statement works for the company you might one day sue. Witnesses scatter to different hometowns the moment the ship docks. And thanks to the fine print you accepted when you clicked “book,” most disputes get funneled into private arbitration, where the outcome stays sealed.

So where’s the incentive to report a theft or sexual assault? If you say something, there’s a pretty good chance it never becomes public, never gets prosecuted and nothing changes. 

The cruise industry created this system when it voluntarily agreed to a weak set of regulations under the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act in 2010. It is enjoying the dividends of your silence every time the system makes reporting feel pointless. There are fewer reports—or none at all—cleaner statistics, and happier cruise line shareholders. 

That’s the real scandal behind the FBI’s cheerful summer reminder. They’re begging people to report crimes into a machine designed to process them into a meaningless spreadsheet. 

How to fix it

The Cruise Passenger Protection Act, introduced last year in both the House and Senate, would hand oversight to an independent Department of Transportation office instead of the cruise lines, expanding the list of reportable crimes to match what a U.S. city tracks. It would also end the arbitration clauses that keep the records sealed.

Congress should add one more requirement. If a cruise line wants to brag that it’s safer than your hometown, make it release every incident to U.S. law enforcement and to the public. The cruise industry should prove its claims.

The bad news is that the bill has been sitting in committee, dead in the water, just like the four or five versions that came before it over the past decade. Congress reintroduces it, the cruise industry lobbies against it, and it sinks.

So enjoy your next cruise. Just remember that if something happens to you at sea, you’ll report it to the same company that decides whether it happened at all. 

How much of an airline ticket’s price do you deserve to see when you shop for a flight? The United States and Europe answered that question recently, and they’ve come to opposite conclusions.

In the United States, partial disclosure (for now)

On July 2, the Department of Transportation (DOT) finalized a rule that returns airline fee disclosure standards to where they stood in 2011. 

Under that standard, airlines and ticket agents don’t have to show you the price of a checked bag or a ticket change when fares first appear in your search results. They only have to note that baggage fees may apply and point you toward the fine print. A ticket agent can send you to the airline’s website to find the numbers yourself.

It isn’t quite a rollback, as some consumer advocates have suggested. In 2024, the DOT issued a rule requiring airlines and booking sites to display baggage and change fees the first time a fare appeared in your search. 

But passengers never saw those protections. A federal appeals court stayed the rule in July 2024, before any airline had to comply. Then in February, the full Fifth Circuit vacated the rule, finding the DOT violated federal procedure by not letting the public comment on a study it used to justify the regulation. The court didn’t say fee transparency is illegal, just that the government had skipped a step.

The July 2 rule is the paperwork that makes the defeat official. Rather than redo the rule correctly, the current administration abandoned it. The upfront fee disclosures Americans were promised two years ago never arrived, and it won’t arrive under the current administration.

Meanwhile, in Europe …

Europe has taken a different path. On July 13, the European Parliament approved the first overhaul of EU air passenger rights in 22 years. 

The centerpiece for anyone comparing this to the American approach: airlines, ticket agents and comparison sites must display fares that include the cost of standard carry-on bags from the outset, so travelers can see the true cost of competing tickets. It’s the principle the DOT, and the current administration, just scrapped.

The EU reform goes further. Airlines are now required by law to respond to claims within 30 days. Carriers can no longer charge parents to sit next to their own children, cancel your return flight because you skipped the outbound leg, or bill you for correcting a typo in your name. 

The rules take effect roughly a year from now, and they’ll cover flights departing EU airports, which means American travelers will enjoy them too. Americans flying home from Paris will have more pricing disclosure and passenger rights than they have flying from Denver to Dallas.

Are governments overstepping their authority?

Airlines for America, joined by American, Delta, United, JetBlue and Alaska, brought a lawsuit that killed the proposed 2024 rule, arguing the government overstepped its authority and imposed heavy redesign costs on booking systems. Carriers note that you still see every mandatory fee before you complete a purchase, and they argue unbundled pricing lets travelers who skip the extras pay less. 

Some in the industry go further and frame mandated price displays as a violation of their right to free speech. Spirit Airlines made a version of that First Amendment argument against the government’s full-fare advertising rule in 2011. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected it in 2012, ruling the requirement to show the total price prominently didn’t stop airlines from saying anything—only from burying the full fare.

What passengers say about airfare displays

Passengers didn’t lobby for piecemeal fare displays that strip a ticket down to an amount almost no one pays. That was the airline’s idea, and it works because a fare that hides the bag fee, the seat charge and the taxes looks cheaper than an all-inclusive fare.

When you ask travelers what they want, the answer is pretty consistent: They want to see the real price, all of it, the first time it appears. The more inclusive fare isn’t a burden on the customer. It’s what passengers wanted all along.

If you answered Europe:

• Should U.S. regulators restart the fee disclosure rule and fix the procedural defect the court identified?
• Would you book differently if every fare included a carry-on from the first screen?

If you answered United States:

• Does unbundled pricing actually save you money on the routes you fly?
• Where should fees appear: first search result, checkout or somewhere in between?

My take

Failing to disclose the full cost of a ticket up front—and yes, that includes taxes—only serves the airline by making the ticket appear to be cheaper than it is. Some airlines unbundled their tickets ad absurdum, removing even the ability to bring a carry-on onboard. And that’s fine, but you shouldn’t need a calculator to find and compare airline ticket prices. The price games must end, and in Europe, they are about to.

Your turn

There’s more coming from Washington. The DOT has proposed loosening its air fare price advertising rules even more and is weighing a repeal of the full fare advertising requirement entirely. I’ll have coverage of that rulemaking soon. 

In the meantime, tell me: Which direction is more consumer-friendly? Is this a free speech issue? Should an airline be allowed to reveal only a partial fare to you? Our comments are open.

Inside a frenetic kitchen on Dixon Street, Harri Fletcher is turning trash into three-course meals. Fletcher, the head chef at Everybody Eats in Wellington, New Zealand, is part of a culinary experiment in extreme food waste reduction. 

On a typical night, she serves up to 180 guests who dine on food that was destined for a landfill.

“We’re trying to prove that you can take what others consider waste and create something beautiful and nourishing,” Fletcher says. “It’s about changing how people see food—and each other.”

While the machinery of Wellington’s circular economy often hums quietly behind the scenes, Fletcher’s kitchen is where things get real. To visit New Zealand’s capital now is to enter a living laboratory for the future of sustainable travel. It’s a place where being green means reducing waste, saving energy and cutting emissions—often without anyone knowing. 

Fletcher makes ricotta from milk reaching its best-before date, then uses the leftover whey for lemon and white sorbet. She chars vegetable peelings for salads, turns them into stock, or fries them into crisps. Her banana sugar—made by dehydrating peels into a powder mixed with icing sugar—displays a high level of technical resourcefulness.

Everybody Eats operates on a pay-as-you-can model. It’s a social dining concept that allows a homeless person to sit next to the prime minister, both sharing a gourmet meal. About half of the customers pay for their food, helping to sustain the operation alongside catering events like climate conferences. Supported by food rescue organizations like Kaibosh and Kiwi Community Assistance, the initiative has saved 418,000 pounds of food from going to waste, according to Fletcher.

Chris Sperring, WellingtonNZ’s destination development project manager, gives a presentation on sustainability in Wellington.

The circular economics of the capital

Wellington’s success results from a calculated economic framework. The city operates under an ambitious program called Te Atakura – First to Zero, which sets targets for waste reduction. As regional landfill fees increase, local businesses find that saving waste is also a way to save money.

“Often a zero-waste business model is more economical than the alternative,” says Lizzie Horvitz, a sustainability expert and the founder of Finch, a product review site that focuses on sustainability. Places like Wellington are shifting from single sale to a repeat refill mode, from hotels to restaurants. And visitors to New Zealand are noticing.

There’s plenty to notice. 

• The Lo-Carb Programme. (That’s carb as in “carbon.”) It’s a collaborative initiative led by WellingtonNZ and Hospitality NZ that provides resources to help local restaurants like Graze Wine Bar, Karaka Café, and Food Envy reduce costs. In these restaurants, converting food scraps and coffee grounds into compost can reduce waste fees by 40 percent and add up to 5 percent to monthly profits.
• Refill-and-deposit infrastructure: The city has normalized a repeat refill mindset through systems like Again Again and Cupcycling, which treat packaging as a reusable asset. This extends to the hospitality sector, where hotels in the Te Aro neighborhood have replaced single-use plastics with large refillable amenities.
• The Te Aro zero waste hub. This community center serves as a physical headquarters for the reuse economy, offering residents and businesses services for the repair and recycling of items ranging from electronics to textiles.

“We are responding to a clear need from our tourism and hospitality businesses who want to actively reduce emissions through things such as waste reduction and to monitor their carbon footprint,” says Chris Sperring, WellingtonNZ’s destination development project manager. 

He says Wellington has doubled down on helping businesses decarbonize and contribute to the city’s climate goal to become net zero by 2050. 

“We can achieve this whilst also helping businesses to identify ways to cut business costs and ultimately save money,” he says.

A zero waste national museum

At Te Papa, New Zealand’s national museum, zero-waste principles are folded into daily operations and public education. The institution maintains a rigorous sustainability policy. Last year, the museum donated approximately 1,700 food items from its café and venue operations to local communities through a partnership with Kaibosh Food Rescue, effectively diverting potential waste from landfills.

For visitors, this institutional mission is most apparent in the Te Taiao nature exhibition, a space that highlights research into climate change and materials science. The exhibit acts as a bridge between high-level science and public action, showing how new materials can reshape our world. 

“Empowering New Zealanders to care for, protect, and restore Aotearoa’s environment and biodiversity is at the heart of what we do here, and exhibitions like this highlight ways to support a more sustainable future”, says Courtney Johnston, Te Papa’s chief executive.

The museum manages its physical impact with the same precision it applies to its collections. By integrating waste reduction into its functional framework, Te Papa has moved toward active resource recovery. These efforts suggest that even the largest cultural landmarks can function as lean, waste-conscious entities. The museum has become a quiet cornerstone for the city’s broader zero-waste identity.

Will visitors notice any of this?

For most travelers, the most successful zero-waste initiatives are the ones they never actually see. Wellington’s hospitality sector operates on the principle that sustainability should enhance a guest’s stay. At accommodations like those managed by the Village Accommodation Group, for example, the green initiatives happen behind the scenes. Guests enjoy the high-end amenities they expect while the hotel manages complex logistics in the shadows.

It’s more an issue of what’s absent. Hotels in the Te Aro neighborhood have moved away from single-use plastics, replacing them with large refill bottles and glass water containers. Some properties provide inconspicuous compost bins in guest rooms. These changes allow travelers to reduce their carbon footprint within the hotel.

“Wellington has done an impressive job of embedding zero-waste principles into its tourism infrastructure, making it much easier for visitors to travel responsibly,” says Lorena Basualdo, a luxury travel advisor. 

Basualdo notes that because these circular practices are integrated into everyday life, the experience is seamless rather than burdensome.

Perfection is “nearly impossible”

A short walk from the central city, Max Gordy runs Graze Wine Bar with a perspective he describes as realist. While many luxury brands claim to be zero-waste, Gordy points out that perfection is “nearly impossible” in a commercial kitchen. Instead, he focuses on cutting waste by working with suppliers to reduce their packaging or transition to recyclable packaging.

Gordy, who moved to Wellington from Chicago at 14, finds the local hospitality scene cooperative. In Chicago’s Michelin-starred kitchens, he saw a constant, competitive hustle. In Wellington, chefs share information about local suppliers freely.

At Graze, the menu follows the seasons and Gordy’s direct relationships with suppliers. He avoids meat, opting for fish caught by spear fishermen who supply exactly what’s needed. This ensures they never take more than the demand requires. Gordy also notes that New Zealanders typically avoid the takeaway culture common in the United States. Customers generally order only what they can finish, which naturally reduces the need for disposable containers.

Gordy views this collaborative, waste-conscious culture as a natural evolution for the city. 

“In other places, it’s all about the individual ego and the secret supplier,” Gordy says. “But here, we realize that if we all share our knowledge and cut our waste, the whole city becomes a better destination. We’re not competing to be the greenest. We’re working together to make sure there’s still a beautiful place left to cook in.”

A blueprint for global cities?

Wellington is trying to prove that a city transitions to a circular economy when policy, business, and community interests align. Tourists play an important part. Experts say they can choose hotels that refill, use public transport, and patronize businesses that make their waste metrics public. 

Responsible travel expert Alyse Race says a visit to Wellington is an endorsement in and of itself—and an example to other cities.

“Within minutes you can be everywhere you need to be, with cafés, shops and your hotel packed close together,” she says. “Walk the same streets, and you’ll see places where people can refill pantry staples and household products directly into their own jars. In a place where everything is experienced as everyday and functional, waste is cut as a matter of course.”

Wellington is well on its way to becoming an essential destination for any traveler who cares about the environment. While much of the zero-waste machinery hums quietly behind the scenes, you’ll feel its presence in the streets you walk and the meals you share. You might not always see zero-waste in action, but you’ll leave with a clear conscience, knowing your visit supported a city that has embraced a circular economy.

After an airline delay leaves him stranded in Phoenix, Michael Damarino rents a car to finish his trip. But American Airlines voids his refundable ticket because he’s technically a “no-show.” Can he get his money back? 

Question

My wife and I were recently scheduled to fly from Boston to Tucson, Ariz., via Phoenix on American Airlines. We booked refundable tickets through Expedia.

The first flight was delayed 90 minutes because the first officer fell ill, and it also had a problem with weight calculations on checked baggage. Because of the delay, we missed our connecting flight to Tucson.

There were no later flights with space available, so we had to rent a car and drive the 100 miles to Tucson.

American Airlines is offering me a flight credit. It has erroneously stated my ticket was nonrefundable. I have gotten nowhere, and I need help getting my refund. — Michael Damarino, Brockton, Mass.

Answer

I admire your initiative. When American Airlines handed you lemons in Phoenix, you made lemonade by renting a car and hitting the highway so you wouldn’t miss your vacation.

Here’s the thing about airline logic: It rarely aligns with the logic of a rational human being.

You purchased a refundable ticket. In the real world, that means if you don’t use it, you get your money back. In the airline world, however, “refundable” often comes with strings attached.

The most important string is the “no-show” clause. If you aren’t at the gate when the flight closes, and you haven’t canceled the reservation before your departure, the airline assumes you aren’t coming. It marks you as a no-show, cancels the rest of your itinerary, and you often forfeit the value of the ticket.

When you decided to rent a car and drive to Tucson, you effectively became a no-show for that second leg. You solved your own problem, which is commendable, but you didn’t tell American Airlines you were doing it so that their computers wouldn’t categorize you as a no-show.

Since you booked through Expedia, there was an extra layer of complexity. The online travel agency saw that the airline had marked you as a no-show, which tied its hands regarding a refund. 

Expedia told you to talk to American. American told you to talk to Expedia. It was the classic travel industry game of Pong, and you as the ball.

To be clear, you should have received a full refund for the unused portion of your ticket. The delay was caused by the airline’s operational issues—a sick pilot and baggage weight problems—not an act of God. Under the Department of Transportation’s rules, you’re entitled to a refund if the airline cancels your flight. When it comes to a delay, it must be “significant” (more than three hours for a domestic flight) to be considered for a refund. Your delay wouldn’t have qualified if you had a nonrefundable ticket, but your ticket was refundable, so you should have received it, as long as you notified American before the flight departed.

However, because you took matters into your own hands without formally canceling that second leg first, you gave the airline a technical loophole.

For future reference, if you decide to bail on a connection and drive, make sure you cancel the remaining flight segments immediately. Get an agent to document that the cancellation is due to a significant delay. That preserves the value of your refundable ticket.

If you ever find yourself stuck in a customer service loop between an agency and an airline, you can often cut through the red tape by escalating your complaint to an executive. I publish the names, numbers and emails of the top executives at American Airlines and Expedia in the company contacts section of my consumer advocacy website, Elliott.org.

I contacted Expedia on your behalf. The company reached out to American Airlines regarding your situation. The airline initially stuck to its no-show policy, adding two $50 trip credits to your existing credits for the inconvenience, but then did an about-face and refunded the entire ticket. You say it would have been impossible to notify American that you weren’t going to use the next leg of your flight because of the initial flight delay, and the airline eventually agreed.

Steve Miller thought he had a valid airline ticket to fly home. But when he tried to board his connecting flight in Dublin, the airline stopped him cold, and he had to pay $8,206 for new tickets to get home. Now he wants to know: Why won’t anyone reimburse him?

Question

I recently booked a roundtrip flight from Minneapolis to Dublin for my wife and myself through Orbitz. I paid $1,626 for the trip on American Airlines and Aer Lingus.

Months before the flight, I received an email from Orbitz that Aer Lingus had canceled the Philadelphia-Dublin segment of the flight. I contacted Orbitz and a representative told me I could take a flight from Minneapolis to Dublin via London on British Airways and then return on a direct flight from Dublin to Minneapolis on Aer Lingus. I agreed.

The change was confirmed on the My Trips section on Orbitz. I downloaded the Aer Lingus app for my phone, which showed me booked on the new flights. I assumed all was fine.

It wasn’t. During our stopover in London, British Airways had some initial trouble checking me in for the next leg of the flight but put me on the plane to Dublin. An agent told me to check in with Aer Lingus when I reached Dublin.

But on my return flight, Aer Lingus refused to let me board the plane. A representative claimed that Orbitz had failed to confirm the itinerary change properly.

It was essential that my wife and I get back to Minneapolis that day. An airline agent told me no economy seats were available. The only seats available were in business class. The cost was approximately $8,000 for two tickets. Combined with the original payment for tickets which were not honored, the cost to us was close to $10,000.

Out of necessity, I agreed and we got to Minneapolis that day.

I emailed Orbitz and received no response. Aer Lingus opened a case file but responded that it would not refund my money because it does not process refunds for transactions made through third parties.

I would like a refund of the $8,000 that I paid Aer Lingus for business class tickets. This is a significant cost to me after I received assurances from Orbitz that my flight back home was confirmed. Can you help? — Steve Miller, Shoreview, Minn.

Answer

You should have had a valid ticket to fly from Dublin to Minneapolis. Orbitz confirmed your new itinerary, and the airline’s app showed you were booked. You had every reason to believe you were good to go.

So what happened?

It appears you fell into a black hole between your online travel agency and the airlines operating your flights. When Orbitz rebooked you, it seems they created a reservation code—also known as a Passenger Name Record (PNR)—but the ticket was never actually issued.

This is a critical distinction that trips up many travelers. A reservation confirms that a seat is held for you. A ticket is the payment for that seat. You can have a reservation code without having a ticket number. In the airline’s computer, you existed as a passenger, but you hadn’t technically paid for the flight in their system.

When you checked in at Heathrow, the British Airways agent likely saw the reservation but couldn’t generate a boarding pass for the second leg because the ticket number was missing or invalid. They sent you to Dublin hoping Aer Lingus could sort it out. 

They couldn’t—or wouldn’t.

You did the right thing by trying to resolve this on the spot. But when you’re stranded in a foreign airport with no other way home, you sometimes have to pay the ransom. In this case, that was the price of two business class tickets.

Orbitz should have fixed this immediately. You emailed your online travel agency, but it didn’t respond. Aer Lingus also washed its hands of the problem, telling you that because the booking originated with a third party, it couldn’t issue a refund.

This is why I always advise travelers to check for a ticket number, not just a confirmation code. That number usually starts with a three-digit code representing the airline (053 for Aer Lingus) followed by 10 digits. If you don’t see that number, you don’t have a ticket.

I think a brief, polite email to one of the executives at Orbitz (Expedia) might have helped. I publish the names, numbers and email addresses of Expedia’s customer service managers on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org.

I contacted Expedia, which owns Orbitz, on your behalf. A representative reviewed your case and admitted the mistake.

“After reviewing the situation, it appears the tickets were not issued correctly, which resulted in the airline not having his reservation,” the representative told me.

Expedia refunded you $8,206, covering the cost of the emergency business class tickets.

Saurabh Kumar had a passport, a plane ticket, and a plan to visit Delhi. He was good to go—or so he thought. 

Kumar had booked his flight months in advance through Expedia, securing a complex itinerary that would take him from Toronto to Montreal, then on to Doha, and finally to India.

But Kumar had a problem he didn’t quite understand until he was standing at the check-in counter at Toronto Pearson Airport: Technically, he has one name.

His passport lists his given name as “Saurabh Kumar.” It leaves the last name field blank. This is not uncommon in some parts of the world, but it is a digital headache for the rigid, binary brains of Western airline reservation systems. 

When he tried to book the flight on Expedia, the website demanded a last name. It wouldn’t let him proceed without one.

So Kumar improvised. He did what any reasonable person trying to navigate a stubborn web form would do: He split his name in two.

“I entered ‘Saurabh’ as my first name and ‘Kumar’ as my last name while booking, since Expedia’s system requires a last name,” he explains.

It seemed like a harmless administrative workaround, a logical fix to a digital problem. He had even done it before with American Airlines and flown without a hitch. He clicked “buy” and received his confirmation.

Not so fast

He didn’t know it yet, but that simple improvisation had just doomed his trip. When he arrived at the airport ready to board his Porter Airlines flight to Montreal for the first leg of his journey, the computer stopped him.

This case raises a few difficult questions about the intersection of rigid security protocols, archaic airline technology, and common sense in modern travel. We’ll answer these questions:

• Why are airline reservation systems so unforgiving when it comes to name formats, even when the person standing at the counter is clearly the person on the passport?

• What is the correct way to book a ticket if you have a mononym or a passport with no surname, and why is “guessing” the most dangerous thing you can do?

• Who is responsible when an online travel agency’s interface forces a user to enter data that technically renders their ticket invalid?

A check-in nightmare

Kumar arrived at the airport with his bags packed, expecting a routine check-in. He had paid $1,497 for his roundtrip ticket. The itinerary was a bit of a patchwork quilt, involving Porter Airlines for the domestic leg and Qatar Airways for the long haul.

But the trouble had started even before he got to the airport. When he attempted to check in online, the system blocked him. Porter gave him an error message that online check-in was only available for U.S. and Canadian passport holders. It was a red flag, but one that could usually be resolved by a human agent at the desk verifying his visa and documents.

When he handed his passport to the Porter Airlines staff, the mood shifted from routine to rigid. The agent looked at the passport. He looked at the ticket.

The ticket read: Kumar, Saurabh. 

The passport read: 

Given Name: Saurabh Kumar

Surname: Blank

To a human being using common sense, this is obviously the same person. To a security protocol designed to screen millions of passengers against international watchlists, it was a mismatch.

Porter’s staff refused to issue a boarding pass. They told him the “correction could be made only with Qatar Airways’ approval,” according to Kumar.

Ah, the Catch-22 of modern aviation. When you book a ticket that spans multiple airlines—known in the industry as an “interline” booking—the first carrier (Porter) is often hamstrung by the rules of the ticketing carrier (Qatar). Porter’s agents couldn’t just change the name in the system because the ticket wasn’t theirs to change.

“I was refused check-in due to a minor name mismatch caused by the booking system requiring a last name,” Kumar says. “My passport does not have one.”

He was stuck. He frantically tried to contact Expedia and Qatar Airways from the airport terminal, but the clock was ticking. The flight was closing. 

He was denied boarding.

To get to India, he had to make a desperate choice. He pulled out his credit card and bought a replacement ticket on the spot. An agent filled in the correct fields. The price for the last-minute, one-way fare was $1,863— significantly more than the cost of his original roundtrip.

Is there a ‘close enough’ rule when you’re flying?

Here’s the cold, hard truth about air travel: “Close enough” counts in bocce, but not in aviation security.

In a post-9/11 world, passenger data is shared with immigration and border agencies worldwide. This is the Secure Flight program in the U.S., and similar APIS (Advance Passenger Information System) protocols exist globally. The name on your ticket must match the name on your government-issued ID character for character.

This creates a massive headache for the millions of people globally who do not follow the Western “First Name, Last Name” naming convention. Passports from India, Indonesia, and many other nations often list a single name or place the entire name in the “Given Name” field.

But airline websites are built on databases that demand two fields. They are binary systems in a nonbinary world.

If you don’t have a last name, there are specific, rigid protocols for how to book a ticket. 

No guessing, no improvising.

So what is it? The standard convention for most airlines is to use “LNU” (Last Name Unknown) in the surname field. Alternatively, some airlines require you to repeat your first name in the last name field (e.g., Saurabh Kumar Saurabh Kumar) or use “FNU” (First Name Unknown) if the name is in the surname field.

“If a traveler is unsure of how to enter their name or finds a mistake after booking, they should contact our customer support team immediately,” an Expedia spokesperson later explained regarding the incident.

But Kumar didn’t know the secret code. He just wanted to fill in the boxes on the screen so he could visit his family in India.

The investigation

Kumar contacted my advocacy team months after the incident, still stinging from the financial hit. He felt that he had been led into a trap. He argued that Porter Airlines bore the responsibility for denying him boarding over what was, effectively, a technicality.

“The refusal was due to an administrative mismatch and interline approval process—not my fault,” he insisted. He pointed out that his passport and identity were valid and he was ready to travel.

He felt the system had failed him, and he wanted a refund. 

“I entered ‘Saurabh’ as my first name and ‘Kumar’ as my last name while booking, since Expedia’s system requires a last name,” he reiterated to my team. “I followed the same process last time when I booked through Expedia with American Airlines, and everything went smoothly without any issues.”

That’s the most dangerous part of this story: It worked once. Because American Airlines had apparently let it slide (or their system auto-corrected it), Kumar assumed he had found the correct way to navigate the Expedia form. He hadn’t. He had just gotten lucky. And when he tried to fly to Delhi, his luck ran out.

I contacted Expedia to see if they could secure a goodwill exception. It was a long shot. The ticket was nonrefundable, the flight had long since departed, and the error—technically—was the passenger’s.

Expedia’s response was sympathetic but firm on the rules. 

“When booking flights on Expedia, travelers are reminded that their name must match their government ID,” a representative told us.

Still, Expedia agreed to reach out to Qatar Airways, the airline that actually owned the reservation, to see if it would retroactively fix the mess or offer a refund.

The complexity of interline tickets

This case highlights a specific peril of booking flights that involve multiple carriers. Kumar’s itinerary was a nightmare for resolving disputes. He bought the ticket on Expedia. It was ticketed by Qatar Airways, but the first flight was operated by Porter Airlines.

When you have a problem with a ticket like this, the finger-pointing begins immediately. Porter says, “Not our ticket, talk to Qatar.” Qatar says, “You’re at the Porter counter, talk to them.” Expedia says, “We just sell the tickets, talk to the airline.”

The reality is that name corrections on interline tickets are notoriously difficult. If it were just a Qatar Airways flight, the airline might have been able to fix the ticket and let him fly. But because the reservation data had to pass from Qatar’s system to Porter’s system, the names had to match exactly to validate the flight coupons.

When they didn’t match, the electronic handshake between the airlines failed. Porter couldn’t change his ticket to let him board. And because the flight was imminent, there was no time to reissue the ticket.

The verdict

This is where the story takes an unfortunate turn. You might expect the airline to look at the passport, see that it was clearly the same person—Saurabh Kumar standing in front of them—and issue a refund for the unused ticket.

But you’d be wrong.

Expedia came back to us with the final word from the airline.

“Unfortunately, Qatar Airways’ policy does not allow name corrections for itineraries with flights operated by multiple airlines,” the Expedia spokesperson told me.

Because the itinerary involved Porter Airlines, a simple name fix wasn’t possible. The policy is rigid. If you fly on a plane operated by a partner, the name on the PNR (Passenger Name Record) must be perfect.

“Since Saurabh’s itinerary included Qatar Airways and Porter Airlines flights, a name correction was not possible,” Expedia explained.

And what about a refund now?

“We reached out to Qatar Airways on Saurabh’s behalf to see if a refund or compensation could be offered,” Expedia said. “However, they are not able to, and we adhere to all our partners’ policies.”

There is a small silver lining, though it’s faint. Expedia agreed to process an $840 refund for taxes and fees.

As for the rest of his money, it’s gone.

The takeaway is brutal but simple: If your name doesn’t fit the little boxes on the screen, don’t guess, and don’t improvise. Call a professional. If you force a square peg into a round hole on an airline website, you might end up paying for the privilege of staying home.

If you have a mononym or a complicated passport name, use a travel advisor who knows how to enter the specific codes (LNU/FNU) required by the airlines. Or contact the airline and have an agent book the flight. A computer booking engine doesn’t have the capacity for nuance, and an airport check-in counter is the wrong place to try and debug a reservation error.

Have you ever heard of the car rental upsell scam? Neither had Steve Sphar when he rented a compact car in Granada, Spain, recently.

His car rental company, Europcar, ran out of vehicles, so it offered him an SUV, which he could later exchange for the model he’d reserved. But when he swapped it out the next day, Europcar charged him a $423 “customer choice” fee.

“I have contacted Europcar, and it won’t reverse the charge,” says Sphar, a business consultant from Sacramento, Calif.

Can a car rental company charge you a “choice” fee? Yes, and experts say it’s becoming more of a problem. Car rental companies sometimes run out of vehicles, and when they do, they have a choice. They can either upgrade their customers into a larger car at no extra charge. Or they can give them a choice of waiting for another customer to return their vehicle or paying more for an upgrade. 

The “customer choice” fee Sphar experienced appears to be a clever variation of an established upsell ploy.

I asked Europcar about Sphar’s rental. It reviewed his bill and reversed the $423 charge.

“Please rest assured, this is not the typical level of service we expect to provide,” a Europcar representative said. It also promised to share Sphar’s experience with its management team “with the aim to prevent situations such as this from happening again in the future.”

Is the car rental upsell scam becoming more common?

The upsell scam has been around ever since people have rented cars. But lately, it’s become more of a problem.

“This practice appears to be increasing, likely due to higher demand, fleet shortages, and inflation-driven cost pressures,” says Shawn Miller, Founder of Modified Rides, an automotive news site. “Companies may intentionally limit availability in lower classes to push customers toward more expensive options.”

Running out of cars and then charging extra for a bigger one is legal. But it’s not ethical. 

“A last-minute upsell is shady, even if it is legal,” says Alex Villalobos, director of operations at Vamos Rent-A-Car, a Costa Rican car rental operator. “It’s not the type of practice that should be expected from a professional business.”

He says the temptation is too great during high season. That’s when demand is high and some of their most popular vehicles — usually compact cars — sell out. Legit rental agencies will carefully manage their inventory so that they don’t run out of cars. But on busy holidays like New Year’s Eve or the first day of spring break, there’s no way around it. The car rental lot will be empty by early afternoon.

The industry standard practice is to upgrade the customer at no charge. And the major car rental agencies normally do that. For example, when Enterprise Rent-A-Car runs out of vehicles in your class, its policy is to accommodate you with a car of a similar or higher class.

But some car rental companies see an opportunity when they’re oversold. They never force you to pay more for a car. Instead, they offer two bad choices: Either wait for a car in your class to be returned (which could be hours) or pay extra for a bigger vehicle. Most travelers are unwilling to delay the start of their vacation, so they fork over the ransom.

How do you avoid falling for the upsell scam?

Fortunately, only about 1 percent of car rental customers end up without a vehicle, according to industry insiders — although that number can rise during the busy holiday travel season. But you don’t have to become a statistic.

• Book a car at a less busy time. Avoid arriving at the car rental counter at the busiest time (like 3 p.m. on July 3, when the inventory will be picked clean). The earlier, the better. And if you can avoid the busy days before a holiday, there will be plenty of cars.
  
• Pay in full before you arrive at the counter. That’s the advice of Mark Cipollina, a frequent car renter who runs a travel gear site. “If you pay in full, they have to give you what you already paid for or upgrade your reservation for free,” he says. At least that’s the general policy of the major car rental companies. You may also get a discount on your car by paying for the entire rental upfront.
  
• Call their bluff. If you refuse to accept the upsell, your car rental company will have to either give you an available car or pay for your rental with a competing car rental company. Yep, that’s the industry practice.

It helps to rent from a name-brand rental company like Avis, Enterprise, or Hertz, says car expert Lauren Fix. “Many brands have sister companies that can fill the rental,” she says. Fix, who has experienced the upsell scam herself, recommends bringing a printout (yes, a paper printout) of your confirmation. That can help speed up the process of finding you a car. 

One more thing: Read your new contract carefully, especially if the car rental company gives you an upgrade. I’ve seen too many cases where customers accept the keys to a bigger vehicle and sign an agreement without reviewing it. Unfortunately, the contract may have a new, higher rate — something the car rental associate failed to mention.

Does the Transportation Security Administration want to measure your luggage? You might be forgiven for thinking so after an aviation blog breathlessly reported that the agency’s new 3D scanners have smaller entry tunnels than the old X-ray machines. 

An oversized carry-on might not fit through, the report warned. Screeners could send you back to the airline counter to check it.

That’s all it took for travelers to connect the dots. The TSA would become the airlines’ enforcer, catching every overpacked carry-on and converting it into a $45 checked-bag fee. The government is working the squeeze for corporate America.

But it’s a textbook case of decoy outrage—that’s when a fake scandal soaks up all the anger a real one deserves. The real scandal here isn’t about a scanner. It’s that the government already helps airlines pick your pocket, legally, every single day.

A few facts about the scanners

The technology isn’t new. TSA began testing computed tomography scanners at Phoenix Sky Harbor and Boston Logan in 2017. The rollout has been slow and steady ever since. In March 2022, TSA awarded Analogic a $781 million contract for as many as 938 CT systems, and in 2023 it ordered another $1.3 billion worth of scanners. Roughly 634 units were installed by that spring, and TSA adds more every year. 

Yes, the tunnels are smaller. TSA says so itself, and advises travelers to ask a screener for help rather than force a bag through. But there’s no algorithm flagging a suitcase that’s an inch too wide. If your bag fits through the machine and passes screening, it flies.

Here’s what you won’t find: any documented wave of passengers being turned away at checkpoints and marched back to the ticket counter to pay up. It isn’t happening.

So the scanner panic is a non-story. The question it accidentally raises is not.

Here’s the real fee machine

Should the government help airlines collect more fees from passengers? Of course not. A security checkpoint exists to stop dangerous items from boarding a plane, not to help an airline hit its quarterly ancillary revenue targets. Turning a federal employee into the baggage police would be a misallocation of public resources.

But in a meaningful sense, the government is already in the fee business. It just works the back office instead of the checkpoint.

Airlines are allowed to advertise a fare that bears little resemblance to what you’ll pay. A bag costs extra. A seat assignment costs extra. Even sitting next to your own child can cost extra. Washington blesses this shell game by letting carriers keep those fees out of the advertised price.

The numbers are staggering. U.S. airlines collected a record $7.4 billion in baggage fees in 2025, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Southwest ended its 50-year “bags fly free” policy last year, closing the last escape hatch. By early 2026, a first checked bag runs about $45 at the major carriers.

And when regulators tried something modest—requiring airlines to disclose fees upfront—the industry’s trade group sued, arguing the Transportation Department had exceeded its authority.

That’s the scandal. Not a scanner with a snug tunnel. A pricing system engineered to hide the true cost of flying, operating with the government’s tacit approval.

What Washington should do

If we’re going to be angry at the government about luggage, let’s be angry at the right thing.

Congress should require that every airfare include at least one carry-on and one checked bag. A suitcase is not an ancillary product—it’s part of the travel experience. Almost nobody flies without at least a carry-on item. Bundle the bag back into the ticket, and the incentive to overstuff a carry-on disappears. And I’m willing to bet the TSA screening line will move faster as a result.

Regulators should also mandate all-in price advertising. The fare you see should be the fare you pay. It should also include the ability to reserve a seat rather than wait until you check in to get a leftover middle seat.

None of this requires new scanners. All you need is a spine.

Decoy outrage is comfortable. It gives you a convenient villain: a machine that can’t argue back. But the real thing takes more work.

A scanner can find a water bottle buried under two weeks of laundry. Finding the $45 buried in your airfare is up to you, because Washington certainly isn’t looking.

The next time you hand over your passport at a border crossing, it might hand back a political statement. 

The State Department this week began issuing a limited-edition commemorative passport to mark America’s 250th anniversary, and it looks like no U.S. passport before it. The inside cover features President Donald Trump’s portrait set against the text of the Declaration of Independence, alongside his signature.

What it is and how to get one

The commemorative passport is a fully valid travel document. It has the same page count as a standard book, and the same security features. It’s issued only at the Washington Passport Agency in Washington, D.C., while supplies last. You won’t get one if you apply online, by mail, at an embassy abroad or at any other passport agency.

There are two ways to get the special passport book. If you have international travel within 14 days, you can book an in-person appointment, which requires a $60 expedite fee on top of regular fees. Otherwise, you can apply at special Saturday acceptance events on August 22 and September 26, where regular fees and processing times apply. There’s no surcharge for the commemorative design itself. Applications use the standard forms and the established fee schedule. Officials say between 25,000 and 30,000 will be available. 

One more thing to know: The commemorative book is the default for people applying in person at the Washington office. If you’d rather have the standard design, apply online or anywhere else in the country, where nothing changes.

Has this ever happened before?

The government has issued commemorative passports twice. A Bicentennial edition ran during the calendar year 1976, and a green Benjamin Franklin passport marked 200 years of the Foreign Service from 1993 to 1994. Neither featured a president’s picture. Passport historian Patrick Bixby calls the new design “entirely novel,” saying he’s found no precedent for a sitting head of state’s image in a passport, not even in authoritarian regimes.

Other countries have made their travel documents political in different ways:

• China’s passports feature a map with its disputed South China Sea claims, drawing protests from the Philippines and Vietnam.
• Taiwan redesigned its passport in 2020 to shrink “Republic of China” to fine print and highlight “Taiwan”—a statement about national identity.
• Britain restored its blue passport after Brexit, with the government framing it as restoring national identity.
• Iran’s passport reportedly states the holder may not travel to “occupied Palestine.”

Why does the government say you’ll want one?

The State Department calls the passport “a fitting tribute to America’s birthday, offering Americans a tangible connection to our founding and a symbol of the freedom to explore the world.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the passport is a tremendous source of pride for Americans traveling abroad, and the commemorative edition is part of a broader effort to modernize the passport system.

Why travelers are skeptical of the new passport

The new passport is a striking break from tradition, travelers are concerned that carrying it could advertise their political affiliations as they travel around the world. That’s something no other passport asks of its holder. Critics have also questioned the design’s rumored “Welcome, but be good!” message, pointing out that passports go to citizens, not visitors.

The politics are contentious too. Several Democratic lawmakers have criticized the plan, and senators have moved to block the president’s face from appearing on passports altogether. For the average traveler, the practical concern is simpler: Your passport gets inspected by foreign border officers who may have their own views, and a standard book invites none of those questions.

What do you think of the commemorative passport?

Follow-up questions:

• If yes: Is it patriotism, a collector’s instinct or something else? Would you make a special trip to Washington to get one?
• If no: Is it the design, the politics or the hassle? Would you feel differently if it featured only the founders or a different president?

My take

A passport is the one document every international traveler carries, and it works best when it speaks for all of us. Past designs featured landscapes, landmarks and history, images attached to the nation rather than to any single administration. Putting a sitting president inside the book breaks with that tradition, and travelers didn’t ask for it. If you love the design, the path to getting one is easy. If you don’t, the standard passport works the same at every border. That’s the good news here: Nobody outside one office in Washington has to make this choice at all.

Your turn

Should travel documents ever carry political imagery? Would you go out of your way to get this passport, or to avoid it? Our comments are open. A quick note before you weigh in: This isn’t a political site, and our strict rules of decorum apply. In other words—welcome, but be good.

Matt Murray wants to know if he should still take pictures of his rental car before he drives it off the lot. The answer is complicated.

The question came up when he rented an Audi A4 in Tampa recently.

“The car rental company had at least four cameras recording as the car left the gate,” remembers Murray, a real estate agent from Westport, Conn. 

He told the attendant he preferred to take his own photos to document any possible damage, but an attendant assured him he didn’t need to. (He took pictures anyway.)

“But that got me thinking,” he says. “Do I still need to take pictures?”

Short answer: Yes, you do. And there’s a reason for it.

Why people take pictures of their rental car

Travelers take snapshots of their rental car for all kinds of reasons — to document their vacation, or to show off a hot set of wheels to their friends. But the biggest one is to show the condition of the vehicle before and after they rent it. They do it because they don’t want to get charged for damage to the vehicle that didn’t happen during their rental.

Before smartphones, taking images of a rental wasn’t always possible because you needed to travel with a camera. Now, many travelers automatically take images just in case there’s a damage claim. The time-stamped and geotagged photos show the car’s condition at pickup and return, which allows the renter to respond to any damage claim by the car rental company.

For years, car rental companies have invited their customers to document the condition of their vehicle, either through an inspection or by taking images. (One company, Turo, even integrated a photo-inspection feature into its app so drivers could take a picture of their vehicle.)

“We actively encourage renters to be engaged in our vehicle inspection process, and we welcome customers taking pictures of their vehicle at time of pickup,” says Mike Wilmering, a spokesman for Enterprise Mobility.

Car rental companies assume that the last person who rents the car before they discover damage is responsible for it. Having photos of the car at drop-off can protect a car rental customer from thousands of dollars in wrong damage claims. 

How car rental inspections work

Here’s how car rental inspections have typically worked, according to Wilmering.  

At a non-airport location, a team member walks around the car with the renter to review the condition of the vehicle and ensure everything is appropriately captured on the rental agreement. 

At Enterprise’s airport locations, where renters are typically in a hurry, the company conducts an inspection in advance, and the customer then receives a report on the condition of the vehicle on their rental agreement. 

Wilmering says Enterprise is looking into imaging technology but hasn’t implemented it yet.

“We’re exploring all options to ensure the most consistent and best customer experience,” he adds.

But what would that mean?

New vehicle imaging technology could eliminate the need for manual car rental photos 

Vehicle imaging technology that photographs rental cars has been around for decades. But new products from companies such as Damage iD, InspektLabs, and DeGould use artificial intelligence to identify damage to a rental vehicle. 

The process is simple. A rental agent takes pictures of the vehicle’s exterior from different angles using a smartphone app. When you return the car, the agent repeats the process. These apps also zoom in to take close-ups of potential damage. An AI bot compares both sets of before-and-after photos side-by-side to identify any new damage. Then it stores the pictures in the cloud. The technology is most likely to be used by independent or franchise car rental locations.

Many large rental companies also use automated imaging systems that employ drive-through cameras to snap pictures of the entire car, front and back, before and after the rental. Major car rental companies are testing or implementing the technology, according to industry experts.

“The technology can save rental companies money and a headache in terms of conflicts with renters,” says Fran Majidi, an insurance expert at SmartFinancial, an insurance-comparison website.

Vehicle imaging technology is becoming more popular. Automated imaging systems will be rolled out to about 100 large airport locations in the U.S. by the end of this month, according to Mark Mannell, CEO of CarRentalSavers.com.

“But it’s too early to tell if this will be beneficial to renters — or just a source of revenue for rental agencies,” he adds.

What are the benefits of vehicle imaging technology?

The latest imaging technology promises to address one of the most contentious issues in the car rental industry. When a car rental company finds damage to one of its cars, it bills the last renter for the damage. The charge can also include a service fee for the damage recovery and a fee for loss of use. Car rental companies don’t always get it right.

“Sadly, there are still car rental companies that may operate unscrupulously and charge unwitting customers for damage that was pre-existing,” says Alex Villalobos, director of operations at the Costa Rican car rental company Vamos Rent-A-Car.

The technology could end that by providing photographic documentation of the damage, showing the correct renter who returned the damaged vehicle. Car rental companies benefit because they can bill the right renter for the ding or dent. But it can also prove a renter’s innocence when that person is falsely accused of damaging a vehicle.

What are the problems with vehicle imaging technology?

The imaging technology has a few challenges, according to experts.

Image quality. The images generated by the technology are sometimes insufficient to prove a renter is responsible for damage. “There are system limitations like the quality of the images and angle coverage that can mean that not all damage can be properly captured,” says Deege Carse, a director of Trackershop, a vehicle security company.

Human error. “The technology isn’t foolproof,” says Rob DeLisa, founder of CarLeaseTips.com, He says issues like low lighting, missed angles, or disputed timestamps can still happen, resulting in renters incorrectly being billed for damage.

Overreliance on AI. While imaging technology can often effectively identify anomalies between the start and the end of a rental, it becomes too easy for a car rental company to simply give the entire damage case to AI. That means there are almost no humans reviewing a damage claim to ensure that it makes sense. As a consumer advocate, I’ve run into a few of these “too much AI” damage cases.

As imaging technology becomes more common, many car rental companies have adopted more rigid attitudes toward damage noted on these systems. The attitude is, “The system can’t be wrong.” And that means customers need to keep their own records.

You should still take manual photos of your car rental

“The photos that the associates of the rental places take are for their protection, not yours,” says Don Orkoskey, a commercial photographer and former car rental agent. “They will and do miss damage when checking cars and trucks out, but may not miss them when checking them in.”

Fact is, although the new imaging technology can help, most of the car rental employees have little time to check the cars when they’ve been returned. They can — and often do — miss an angle or a side of the car.

Make sure you get the following pictures on your phone:

• The hood and front bumper, especially the windshield and VIN placard.

• The roof.

• Both side, including each door, rims and tires.

• The back, the bumper and the rear windshield. 

• The license plate.

Don’t forget the interior of the vehicle — seats, dashboard, floors. If you see damage, ask for a different car.

“And make sure your photos are time-stamped,” says Maya Afilalo, an industry analyst at AutoInsurance.com. (Most photos taken with a smartphone will be.) “Keep the photos saved after you return the car.”

Car renters like Murray, the real estate agent from Connecticut, can feel a little more confident that car rental companies are documenting the condition of his vehicle. But the agent who suggested he didn’t need to take any photos of his car was wrong. 

New imaging technology may protect renters. Or it may give rental companies a license to pursue more of their customers for damage to their vehicles. Now, more than ever, you need to protect yourself.

UPS declares Lina Mahmoud’s $687 package lost, but Michael Kors refuses to refund her, playing a frustrating game of corporate hot potato. How does she get her money back? 

Question

I am at my wits’ end trying to get a refund from Michael Kors for a lost package worth $687. UPS finished its investigation and declared the package lost, confirming in writing that the refund should come from the shipper, Michael Kors. 

But Michael Kors keeps refusing, claiming “proof of delivery,” even though the photo UPS provided doesn’t clearly show my package. I’ve tried everything, and now its customer service agents are disconnecting my live chat when I contact them. I’ve been told the claim is denied and this is the final answer. I feel like they now see me as a fraud. What can I do to get my money back? — Lina Mahmoud, Jersey City, N.J.

Answer

Now here’s a classic case of corporate miscommunication. Your retailer, Michael Kors, is hiding behind a questionable proof-of-delivery photo and appears to be ignoring UPS’s own investigation results. And UPS is washing its hands of the entire incident.

When UPS declared the package lost and compensated Michael Kors, the clock should have immediately started for your refund. Instead, you were trapped in a frustrating loop of denial.

Come on.

Your experience is a powerful reminder of the importance of self-advocacy when you’re facing a corporate stonewall. When standard customer service channels fail, you have to be prepared to escalate your case to the people with the authority to solve it.

You can find the executive contacts for Michael Kors and UPS on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org. A brief, polite email to the right person—in your case, a manager at Michael Kors—could move things in the right direction.

The key lesson here is to know when it’s time to bypass the customer-service agent and contact someone in charge. And for you, that time is now. To do this effectively, always have a clear, written paper trail of all your attempts to resolve the issue with the company. Then, when regular channels deny your claim, send a polite, concise email to the company’s executives. They have the authority and the incentive to resolve a brand-damaging problem quickly.

You contacted me and I advised you to escalate your case, Within a day of appealing your case to an executive at Michael Kors, your refund was on the way.

Your victory is a reminder of the power of persistence. Never take “no” for an answer when you know you are right. When a company fails you, you have to fight for your rights, because you are always your own best advocate.

Rebekah Singleton reserves a two-queen room in a Brooklyn, N.Y., hotel through Booking.com, only to discover dirty sheets, suspicious stains, and bait-and-switch bedding. Now, she’s battling the hotel and the booking platform with undeniable photo evidence to recover the full $922 charge she believes she is owed.

Question

I booked a room with two queen beds through Booking.com at a hotel in Brooklyn, N.Y. I needed the queen beds, and the room was clearly advertised as such. 

However, when I checked in, the beds were obviously smaller—I later measured them to be approximately 50 inches wide, which is a full-size, not a queen. To make matters worse, the room was disgusting. The sheets had grease stains, hair, and what looked like suspicious red stains. 

I asked for a new room, but the second one was worse, featuring a clear splatter of red stains across the floor. 

I didn’t feel safe or comfortable and left that night, finding another hotel. I immediately contacted the hotel and Booking.com. The hotel denied my request for a full refund. Booking.com gave me the runaround for weeks and offered a mere $106 goodwill credit. I disputed the charge on my credit card. Capital One initially credited the $922 charge but then rebilled it after the merchant responded to the chargeback. I’ve sent all my photo and video proof to all three parties, and yet I’m still out almost a thousand dollars for a service I never used. What can I do to get my full refund? — Rebekah Singleton, Alexandria, Va.

Answer

This is an infuriating bait-and-switch case compounded by a gross disregard for public health and safety. The hotel falsely advertised accommodations with two queen beds and then gave you a room with smaller beds and alarming, unsanitary conditions, including suspicious red splatters. Ugh.

Despite your exhaustive paper trail documenting multiple attempts to resolve the issue with the hotel and Booking.com—including several long phone calls—both companies refused a full refund. The hotel simply denied your photographic evidence, and Booking.com attempted to settle the matter with a meager credit, claiming your valid health and safety concerns were merely a matter of opinion. 

With the hotel refusing to budge and Booking.com failing its duty to ensure accurate listings and customer satisfaction, your most direct path was to resubmit a comprehensive dispute to Capital One, focusing on the clear contract violation of the room and bed size. This documented pattern of deceit and poor customer service should have ultimately won your chargeback. Incredibly, it didn’t. Your credit card company sided with the hotel, claiming you had “used” the services. I think it’s time for you to switch to a different credit card.

Could you have avoided this? Maybe. Reviewing the hotel’s ratings might have kept you away. It currently has 2 ½ stars out of 5, and the first review warns, “You are going to regret booking this hotel.” (I asked you about this, and you said at the time you booked the reviews were “a mixed bag but nothing completely egregious.”)

In a situation like this, you have options. You can escalate your complaint to Booking.com—I publish the names, numbers and email addresses of key Booking.com executives on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org. Or you could ask a consumer advocate for help.

You chose door number two, and I reached out to Booking.com on your behalf to find out if it really planned to force you to pay $922 for these shoddy accommodations. The answer, thankfully, was no.

“After a full review of the case, our customer service team has engaged directly with both the guest and the accommodation to resolve the situation,” a representative told me. “Given the concerns raised around room conditions and the customer’s overall experience, we’ve issued a full refund.”

I asked Booking.com if the hotel would be removed from the platform, and it said it would work directly with the property to make improvements. I guess everyone deserves a second chance, maybe.

Carlos Brown stood at the National Car Rental counter in Cleveland expecting a car. Instead, he got a lifetime ban.

As a state transportation specialist, Brown knew the drill. He had rented 50 cars this year alone; every payment cleared, every car returned scratch-free. But this time the agent’s computer crashed. She called in his details to headquarters—and the trap snapped shut.

“I heard her reading my license details,” Brown says. “Immediately, she told me I was on the Do Not Rent list.” 

His Emerald Executive account was terminated. The reason: a mistake he made in 2015.

Brown’s case exposes the opaque world of rental blacklists. Can a company ban you for life over a youthful error? And can you ever escape?

“I made a mistake”

Brown walked away from the counter confused. The Risk Management number the agent gave him went straight to voicemail, and no one called back.

For three years, Brown had rented from Enterprise and its sister companies without incident. But the computer finally linked his current Ohio license to a flagged account from 2015.

The trigger was a late rental from his college years. But that clinical description doesn’t capture the reality of Brown’s life at the time.

“I was undiagnosed bipolar,” he told me. “I was homeless.” 

He returned one car late. An Enterprise representative put him in the “penalty box” for a year. Brown could’ve waited it out, but he didn’t.

“Unfortunately, during that time, I made the mistake of creating new rental profiles under my name and continuing to rent,” he admits. “At the time I wasn’t thinking clearly and didn’t realize the consequences.”

That escalated a timeout into a lifetime ban. A manager told him the restriction was set for 100 years.

The impossible redemption

By the time Brown contacted me, he had turned his life around. He received treatment, graduated from Bowling Green State University, and landed a solid job with the State of Ohio. He had excellent credit and a spotless rental history since 2022.

But corporate algorithms don’t care about redemption arcs. They care about data matches.

I contacted Enterprise on Brown’s behalf. At first, they sounded helpful. Then came the verdict.

“We contacted the customer about this, and he has acknowledged that he did in fact have his rental privileges revoked in 2015 but had continued to rent by creating additional rental profiles,” a representative told me. “After reviewing the facts, we have decided to stand by our decision to revoke his rental privileges”.

Translation: You’re out.

For most people, that would be the end of the road. You’d just walk across the aisle to Hertz or Avis. But Brown didn’t give up.

The blacklist is real

Yes, rental car companies can ban you forever. They maintain proprietary “Do Not Rent” lists, and if you land on one, you’re banned from every subsidiary.

The reasons vary: unpaid bills, damage claims, or simply being rude to an employee. And unlike your credit report, you have no legal right to see this file or dispute it. The Federal Trade Commission doesn’t regulate these lists. Companies don’t have to give you a hearing. They can just say no. Here’s more on DNR lists and how to get off them.

Brown’s case reveals a lag in the system. It took a decade to link the 2015 data to his new license, suggesting companies cross-reference names, birth dates, and license numbers—but often slowly.

By the way, Enterprise had every right to stop doing business with Brown after his behavior, which is why my advocacy team decided to accept the company’s initial “no.” We just thought the timing of the ban was a little odd. 

The takeaway? If you’ve been banned, creating an alternate profile or using a nickname won’t save you. The algorithms are getting smarter.

How to beat a car rental ban

Brown refused to let the computer have the final word. He persisted where most customers would have given up. Here’s how he did it: 

• Settle your debts. If you owe the company money, pay the bill before asking for favors. Brown, in this case, didn’t owe a dime.

• Own it. Don’t make excuses. Brown acknowledged his mistakes and explained the mental health struggles that led to them.

• Prove you have changed. You need proof of responsible renting. Brown pointed to three years of clean rental history with other companies and over 50 successful rentals in a single year.

• Make it personal. This is often the most important step. Don’t hide behind email. Visit local branches and the regional office to speak directly with a risk manager. Meeting a human can override a cold computer flag.

• Accept the terms. Be prepared to agree to specific, often unusual restrictions. I’ll have more on that in a second.

It took more than a month, but he finally found someone willing to listen: Stephen Kunkle, a risk manager at Enterprise.

“I sent him a formal request for reconsideration,” Brown says. “I explained everything honestly and asked for a conditional reinstatement based on my years of stability”.

And it worked.

“As of today, I have been officially removed from the Do Not Rent list and reinstated as a customer,” Brown told me.

But the reinstatement came with conditions. Specific, unusual conditions that Brown accepted immediately:

• Updating extensions on rentals ASAP.

• No inner-city one-way rentals.

• Using his work code for work purposes only.

• Showing his work badge for work related rentals.

These aren’t standard rental terms. They’re the conditions of someone on probation — a middle ground between permanent banishment and full reinstatement.

Brown’s story is a rare victory. It proves that even in an age of automated blacklists, old-fashioned human persistence can still win the day. But you have to be willing to show up, look them in the eye, and make your case.

Most people won’t do that. They’ll just rent from the competition. And honestly, that might be the easiest thing to do.

Judy Williams’ recent flight from Seattle to Billings, Mont., was a painful lesson in self-service fatigue. She stood in two lines at the airport to drop a single checked bag. Then the machine rejected it — again and again.

The insult wasn’t the glitchy kiosk. It was the three employees nearby who ignored her.

“They were engaged in a personal conversation and hugging,” says Williams, an attorney from Billings. 

That’s the reality of DIY travel: You do the unpaid work. When the system fails, you’re on your own.

Williams finally got the machine to ingest her luggage. She complained. 

“They apologized,” she says. “Big deal.” 

But it is a big deal.

The emotional labor of DIY travel

“Self-service technology was never meant to replace human support,” says Mario Matulich, president of the Customer Management Practice, a consulting firm. “It was meant to enhance it. But in travel, we’re seeing a widening gap between the intention and the reality.”

Matulich says when you are already stressed by delays and weather, every extra task becomes emotional labor.

“Failed, insufficient, or ineffective self-service causes fatigue,” Matulich told me. “At a certain point, that convenience starts to feel like abandonment.”

As travel gets more stressful, “our cognitive load can easily become overwhelmed,” says Thomas Plante, a psychology professor at Santa Clara University. 

When the app freezes, you’re stranded

If the technology works, fine. But when it fails and no human is there to save you, you’re out of luck.

Joachim Rodriguez y Romero recently downloaded his airline’s app to check in early. But when he tried, the screen froze. 

“It gave me a non-specific error message,” says Romero, an artist who lives in Passau, Germany. “I lost the ability to secure a suitable seat, and I was afraid I might not be able to board.”

His fears weren’t entirely unjustified. His airline allowed him to board — after he paid a $35 fee for using a human to check in.

“The staff did not respond to my claim that the mobile app had a glitch,” he says,

Justin Robbins, a customer experience analyst, recently hit a similar wall with Uber. After finding a duplicate tip charge, he tried to resolve it on the app.

“The help center looped endlessly,” he says. “When the self-service broke, the system transferred responsibility without providing a solution.”

Uber eventually told him it couldn’t connect him to a human.

One task encapsulates this new world of unpaid labor: the self-service baggage tag. 

Forget the existential dread of a cancelled flight; nothing prepares you for the cognitive load of a thin, adhesive strip of paper. You stand in the terminal, the clock ticking, staring at a paper-folding puzzle. Which end peels? Which side faces out? Why is the bar code sticking to my thumb? 

It’s a moment of low-stakes panic that raises your blood pressure. A process meant for efficiency has outsourced a five-second human task into two minutes of uncompensated agony.

Why are they doing this to us?

If travelers hate this, why do companies keep pushing the “DIY” button?

“Money. Always follow the money,” says Christine Landis, a former fintech CEO and frequent traveler. “People are the most expensive line item on a P&L. Cut your reliance on people and you typically make more money.”

It is a margin play. But experts warn that companies are trading long-term loyalty for short-term savings.

“The risk isn’t just fatigue,” says Geoff Ryskamp, an executive advisor for hospitality at the customer experience systems company Medallia. “It’s losing customers. Forty percent of customers who encounter an issue on a website or app that they can’t resolve during a purchase will just switch to a competitor.”

It isn’t always greed. When I checked into a Fiji resort, a cheerful associate directed me to download the hotel’s app. I installed it and never used it. Why does a hotel need an app when its keys are attached to large river rocks? 

Later, I checked into a rival resort on the other side of the island. It also had an app, but there, everything was automated— a DIY arms race.

How to beat self-service fatigue

• Hire a pro. Pay a travel advisor. As Amy Siegal notes, “you want to be a passenger, not a planner.” An agent can help you bypass at least some of the DIY nonsense.

• Refuse to play. Do what Patricia Haubner of Vermont does: Refuse to use the apps. Go to the counter. Make a human check you in. (It may cost extra, but it might be worth it.) 

• Vote with your wallet. Walk away from bad self-service. Switch to full-service airlines like Emirates or fly Southwest for human interaction without the price tag.

“I think self-service fatigue from the traveler comes back to one key point,” says Jacqueline Dobson, President of The Vacation Group. “As much as convenience in travel is key, people ultimately want to be served by a real person.”

Fine, make us do it ourselves, but …

Here’s the deal: If you force me to download an app and check my own luggage, you’re asking me to do your job. So pay me. If I save the airline an employee’s salary, give me a cheaper ticket.

Until then, I’ll be the guy standing at the counter, waiting for a human. And if I see them hugging instead of helping, you can bet I’ll have something to say about it.

A single mouse redefined the borders of Zealandia, a 556-acre ecosanctuary in Wellington, New Zealand.

Researchers testing prototype fencing watched a clever rodent wrap its tail around a screw, swing its body and pull itself over the top. Decades ago, that display of gymnastics helped engineers fine-tune the 5.3-mile engineering marvel that now encircles Zealandia.

Today, a fine-mesh fortress topped with a curved steel top protects Zealandia, a design proven to repel even the most athletic intruder.

“The story about how it was built is just mind-blowing,” says Danielle Shanahan, Zealandia’s CEO.

The world’s first fully-fenced sanctuary

This experiment—the world’s first fully fenced urban ecosanctuary—is an attempt to turn back the clock to a time before mammals arrived. 

For more than a century, the valley just above New Zealand’s capital supplied the city’s drinking water. Before that, the land was scarred by unsuccessful gold mines and stripped for farmland, leaving the slopes bare. It was a place managed by civil engineers that accidentally preserved a pocket of land long enough for a bigger vision to take root.

Zealandia opened 26 years ago. For the roughly 140,000 visitors who trek to the sanctuary annually, it offers a surreal dislocation: the chance to spot a dinosaur-era Tuatara reptile or a flightless kiwi just a short cab ride from the city’s best coffee shops. 

But for the scientists involved, the fence represents more than a way to protect one of the region’s biggest tourist attractions. It’s also a line in the sand, evidence that if you build a wall strong enough, the wild will return.

Wero, a German shorthaired pointer tracking dog, with his handler Brad Windust. The pair search for signs of unwanted stoats and weasels in Zealandia. (Scott Langdale)

The purge

Getting here required a complete eradication of 15 different mammalian predators introduced by people. New Zealand’s wildlife evolved in the absence of mammals, with only two species – bats and seals – native to the island nation. This means they are particularly susceptible to predation and the browsing habits of introduced mammals.

The eradication efforts included fish. Shanahan, who ran the eradication project before becoming CEO, helped drain the lower lake by 20 feet, turning the floor into a gray moonscape to remove invasive perch.

They applied Rotenone, a toxin derived from the roots of a South American tree, which stops fish from metabolizing oxygen. 

“It’s like applying a nuclear bomb,” Shanahan explains, recalling the intensity of the process. But nature is efficient; within hours, seabirds moved in to clean up the dead fish, and within a day, the lakebed was clear.

Conservationists carried out a tactical battle on land to clear out thousands of possums and rats, goats, deer, stoats, and eventually one final hedgehog, nicknamed Colonel Custer, who held out alone in the bush avoiding traps until he was finally caught.

“The soundscape has completely changed”

Inside the perimeter, the din of the big city gives way to a prehistoric soundtrack. 

Shanahan grew up in the region and recalls seeing perhaps 20 Tūī, or parson birds, in her entire childhood. Today, the valley is teeming with them. The air is thick with the complex, bell-like melodies of the Tūī and the screech of the Kākā, a large, olive-brown forest parrot with flashes of crimson under its wings that was once completely gone from the region.

“The soundscape has completely changed,” she says. 

It’s a sensory assault that signals the health of the forest. The birds have become so boisterous that they now chase mallard ducks, a behavior the staff watches with amusement.

Volunteers patrol the perimeter with military precision. The 7-foot-tall fence has a skirt that also extends horizontally underground. Rabbits will dig to the fence line, hit the skirt, and stop, lacking the intelligence to back up and try again. When a breach is suspected—perhaps a tunnel rotted out by old pine roots—Shanahan calls in the cavalry. Specialized conservation dogs, trained to ignore native birds and fixate on the scent of rodents or stoats, sweep the valley before it can establish a foothold.

Silver Fern, also known as Mamaku, is a common feature of New Zealand indigenous forests. (Aren Elliott)

Faking ancient history

The sanctuary still requires human intervention. Because the forest is regenerating from cleared farmland, many of the trees are only about 30 years old—too young to have the natural hollows birds need for nesting.

“We’re working to re-indigenize the space,” Shanahan explains. 

In some areas that involves drilling holes or simulating storm breaks to invite rot, fungi, and insects, in the non-native pine trees. It’s a necessary paradox: vandalize nature to accelerate its wildness, forcing the young forest to act like an ancient one. Until the trees catch up, the staff maintains about 60 nest boxes to support the breeding populations.

The miracle chick

The safety of the valley allows for biological anomalies that would be impossible elsewhere. The Takahē, a flightless, prehistoric-looking swamp hen once thought extinct, wanders the tracks near the lake. The birds are large, vividly blue and green, with beaks that look like a pair of red pliers.

Recently, the sanctuary witnessed the birth of what it called a “miracle” chick. A pair of resident Takahē, thought to be too old or infertile to breed, suddenly produced an offspring. 

“No one expected it,” says Shanahan.

Another prehistoric resident is the Tuatara. Often mistaken for a lizard, it is actually the last surviving species of a distinct order of reptiles that walked the earth with dinosaurs. 

“It’s the only one of its kind in the world,” says Shanahan.

These creatures, with their spiny backs and slow metabolisms, bask in the sun, living artifacts of a world that existed before mammals evolved.

Kākā parrot sitting in a tree branch at Zealandia, an ecosanctuary in Wellington, New Zealand. (Aren Elliott)

The urban spillover

The wall works so well that Zealandia has become a pump, pushing rare species out into the capital. The kākā parrots have multiplied so successfully—starting from just 14 birds—that they now fly over the fence into the suburbs.

“You can see them in the tree opposite Parliament,” Shanahan says. But this migration exposes them to a new danger: urban affection. Well-meaning residents often feed the charismatic parrots seeds and nuts, human foods that cause metabolic bone disease. The birds become “junk food junkies,” according to Shanahan, suffering from nutritional deficiencies because they are too loved by their human neighbors.

Her vision is a city where the fence is eventually obsolete. She is currently advocating for a cultural shift in pet ownership, pushing for a future where domestic cats are kept safe at home. It’s a challenge for a nation of pet lovers that is used to roaming cats, but she draws a parallel to dogs. 

“We keep our dogs on leashes, and close within our care” she says. “I think that’s the pathway that we’re on for cats as well.”

In Wellington, a human prescription

The restoration of the valley is not just for the wildlife. Shanahan, who also researches the connection between nature and human health, views the sanctuary as a medical necessity. Her research suggests there’s a minimum dose of nature required to reduce blood pressure, anxiety, and stress.

“You don’t even need to go into the most natural of environments,” she says. “Just a simple urban green space can help.”

For the 550 volunteers who check the fence and traplines, monitor the birds, weed, plant, maintain the tails and bridges, help with after-hours tours, share information with visitors and a host of other invaluable tasks,  the sanctuary is a place of optimism in a world of bad news. It is a place where tangible progress can be measured in the volume of birdsong.

Perspective of the valve tower at the Karori reservoir dam. (Aren Elliott)

A 500-year plan

Despite the visible success, the sanctuary sits on precarious ground. Shanahan surveys the earth dam, looking across the water. 

“We’re standing on one of New Zealand’s major faults right now,” she points out. The Wellington fault line runs directly through the lower lake.

If a massive earthquake were to strike, the fence could be compromised, and the 5.3-mile barrier that keeps the predators out could fall.

Yet, Shanahan operates on a timescale that dwarfs seismic cycles. She works toward a 500-year plan. That is the time required for the original canopy of rimu (red pine) and rātā (a massive flowering tree) to return to its full glory. She knows she will not see the end result. She is merely one of the architects of the beginning.

“We can do really difficult things if we have a bit of vision,” she says.

Above her, a kākā launches itself from a pine tree. It ignores the engineering of the fence, crossing the perimeter without a glance, flying toward the city skyline. The mesh may stop the mice, but these birds are the real owners of Zealandia.

Karen Plaskon’s refrigerator breaks under her Sears Master Protection Agreement, and Sears approves a replacement. But after months of delays, canceled orders, and endless excuses, she’s still without a working fridge. Can a consumer advocate end her six-month wait for a resolution? 

Question

I’ve been without a refrigerator for six months despite paying for a Sears Master Protection Agreement. My fridge failed in February, and Sears approved a replacement in April. I ordered a Frigidaire, but delivery delays led Sears to cancel it and recommend a GE model in June. I’m still waiting.

A few years ago, Sears resolved a similar issue by giving me a cash payout. This time, they claim they no longer offer that option. I’ve spent hours on calls, getting shuffled between departments blaming “manufacturing delays.” Meanwhile, retailers like Costco deliver fridges in days.  

Sears’ runaround has left me exhausted. How can I get them to honor their agreement? — Karen Plaskon, Grants Pass, Ore. 

Αnswer

Sears should have honored your protection agreement promptly. Its own precedent shows cash payouts are possible under the plan. While Sears isn’t legally required to offer refunds, its refusal to resolve delays violates the implied covenant of good faith in service contracts.  

Stringing you along for half a year is unacceptable. Sears has a track record of doing the right thing — eventually. In fairness, all the back-and-forth between you and Sears left me with a little whiplash. 

You did the right thing by documenting calls and escalating to executives, confusing as it may have been. In cases like this, a paper trail is critical. Always follow up phone calls with emails summarizing discussions. If a company stalls, an appeal to executive contacts can help. I publish the names, numbers and email addresses of the Sears executives on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org. I think you were more than patient with Sears. 

I would have spent a little less time on the phone and more time writing. A paper trail is essential when a company like Sears stalls on a delivery. Also, I would have appealed this to the executives much sooner. Six months is way too long to wait.

I contacted Sears on your behalf. A representative reviewed your case and agreed to cancel your order and give you a full refund. Now you can buy the refrigerator you want from Costco, or any other store that will deliver your appliance quicker.

James Phillips books two tickets through the Hawaiian Airlines app for himself and his wife. But when they arrive at the airport, the airline says his wife’s confirmed, paid-for ticket has been voided. To get her on a flight, he has to pay an extra $575. Can he get his money back for an error he didn’t cause?

Question

I booked two first-class, round-trip tickets through the Hawaiian Airlines app for my wife, Linda, and me to travel from Honolulu to Haneda. I received written confirmations for both tickets almost immediately. Both were purchased, one after the other, using the same credit card. 

When we arrived at the Honolulu airport, an agent told me that I had a ticket, but my wife’s had been voided.

No one could tell us why. Her seat had already been sold to someone else. The agent told us that to get my wife on a later flight, I would have to buy her a completely new ticket. The new ticket cost $575 more than the original I had already paid for. I was assured at the airport that I could contact the customer relations department for a refund.

Hawaiian Airlines first insinuated that my credit card was declined. I have spoken at length with my credit card issuer, and it is adamant that it did not decline the charge for my wife’s ticket. (Why would it decline one ticket and not the other, purchased on the same card at the same time?)

Then, Hawaiian tried to deflect blame to a third-party booking channel, even though I booked directly on its app and had the confirmation to prove it. In another email, a representative admitted our tickets were being treated as a Hawaiian Airlines direct booking.

Since neither I nor Chase took any action to void my wife’s ticket, the fault lies with Hawaiian. The airline should not be able to take advantage of its own mistake, hold me hostage in Honolulu, and force me to pay an additional $575. I only want reimbursement for the extra amount I was required to pay. Can you help? — James Phillips, Kailua Kona, Hawaii

Answer

Hawaiian Airlines should have honored your wife’s confirmed ticket. Full stop.

When an airline’s system suffers a ticketing error — which this obviously was — it should have two immediate priorities. First, alert the passenger. Second, fix the problem at no cost to the customer.

What an airline should not do is void a confirmed reservation without notice, sell the seat to someone else, and then charge you a premium to get her on another flight. 

The airline’s response to you was even worse. Blaming a nonexistent “third party” or, even more absurdly, your credit card, was a classic runaround.

You did exactly what I always recommend: You kept a meticulous paper trail. Your documentation was flawless. When a company gives you a nonsensical answer, you must continue to push for a logical one in writing — which you did.

When front-line customer service fails, the next step is to appeal to the executives. I publish the executive contacts for Hawaiian Airlines and many other companies on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org.

Based on the correspondence you shared, it looked as if Hawaiian Airlines was doubling down on its mistake. So we took a two-pronged approach. My advocacy team and I decided to contact the airline on your behalf. We presented your clear documentation and asked for a review. You also filed a complaint with the Department of Transportation.

That worked. I heard back from a senior resolution coordinator at Hawaiian Airlines, who apologized and admitted that the previous agent’s responses “did not provide a fair resolution,” adding that the agent was “coached regarding this case.”

Hawaiian Airlines admitted that its system canceled Linda’s ticket by mistake. It refunded the entire fare difference and issued both you and your wife each a $250 travel voucher. 

This is a textbook case of why you should never accept a company’s first “no,” especially when it defies logic.