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Fiascos and Fixes
Consumer reporter and ombudsman columnist
If you’re a regular reader of this site, you know travelers can make all types of expensive car rental mistakes. But Rose Hidalgo’s $2,000 error was the first of its kind for our advocacy team. She recently dropped a Thrifty rental car off, as scheduled, at the Oakland International Airport location.
The problem? She returned the rental car to the wrong agency.
The pandemic hit the cruise industry hard — that’s for sure. But did that global event change the refund rules for the cruise lines? Can a cruise line really cancel your trip and also refuse your refund request?
Of course, the answer to that question is “no.” But Elizabeth Ramirez says that’s exactly what NCL did to her — canceled her cruise and kept all her money.
Now Ramirez is asking our advocacy team to investigate and retrieve $7,300 from Norwegian Cruise Line.
United Airlines just canceled Pamela Money’s return flight from a remote area of Canada, so where’s her refund?
She says an Expedia agent cheerfully informed her that United Airlines would give her a voucher instead of cash. But that doesn’t sit right with this passenger, and she’s hoping we can get her money back.
What’s really going on here?
Could you get banned from PayPal with your money locked inside? Unfortunately, for many former users wondering how to get their cash released, the answer is “yes.”
Could you fall for a fake job scam?
If you’re like Sam Erin, you probably answered “no!” She’s a college-educated young adult who was sure she knew how to spot a con game. That is until a phony employment crime ring preyed on her naivety and stole nearly $9,000 from her.
Now, after draining her bank account, the scammers have vanished, leaving Erin jobless and cashless. She’s hoping our advocacy team can help. But how?
If a stranger sends you money by mistake, do you have any obligation to give it back? If so, how do you do it without exposing yourself to a scam? And if you transfer money to the wrong person using Zelle, is there any possible way to fix your mistake?
These are not uncommon dilemmas faced by users of cash apps like Zelle and Venmo in 2022. Along with the increasing popularity and convenience of instant money transfer services came a dramatic rise in pricey user errors. Unfortunately, our attempts to investigate and resolve many of these cases have exposed some disturbing flaws in the programs.
Minh Tran is just one of the many desperate Zelle users who’ve recently asked our team for help. In his case, a stranger’s mistake set off a frustrating and confusing chain of events that almost cost him $360.
Could a cash app mistake eventually escalate to violence? Based on some of the emotionally charged pleas for help our team has received lately, it seems possible. And after you hear the details of Brian Yu’s recent money transfer fiasco, I think you’ll agree.
What if you sent $500 to the wrong person by mistake and that person refused to give back your money? That’s the shocking situation in which Rossin Asilo recently found herself.
Using the money transfer app Zelle for the first time, Asilo made a simple typo entering her friend’s phone number. That error dropped the cash intended for a memorial donation into the wrong person’s bank account. Unfortunately, that stranger appears to view the transaction as a $500 windfall and will not return the money.
Now Asilo is hoping that our advocacy team can find a way to get her money back. But that request might just prove to be an impossible task.
Someone just took a lot of money from Isaac Benzadon’s PayPal account without his permission — and he wants it back.
Benzadon assumed that PayPal’s alert warning him of the giant unauthorized transaction meant his $1,200 was safe. Unfortunately, he was wrong.
Now he’s banking on our team to retrieve the money someone took from his PayPal account.
Falling for a vacation rental scam surely is not at the top of your list of things to do this summer. It certainly wasn’t in Don Boyk’s plans. But that’s exactly what happened when a thief disguised as a Vrbo host persuaded him to send a $500 deposit via Zelle.
His cash was soon in the hands of the scammer and Vrbo informed him the listing was fraudulent.
Now Don hopes we can find a way to save him from this vacation rental scam and retrieve his money.
But if a consumer uses Zelle to send cash to a stranger, is there any way to get it back?
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© 2025 Consumer Rescue / Michelle Couch-Friedman
