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Fiascos and Fixes
Consumer reporter and ombudsman columnist
On the last night of her recent Royal Caribbean cruise, Amy G. bought a beautiful diamond ring on the ship. She was quite pleased with her purchase – especially because she snagged it during a flash 50-percent-off sale. But the pleasant feeling only lasted until she got home and had a good look at the Certificate of Authenticity.
What if you were gazing out the window of your Airbnb and found a surveillance camera “gazing” right back at you? That was the startling scene that confronted Susan Scott as she relaxed in bed at her recent Mexican vacation rental.
If you find a pile of trash and other debris at a vacation rental when you arrive, report it immediately. If you don’t, you could easily find yourself stuck with excessive cleaning fees, as Airbnb guest Daniel Altschuler recently did.
Could a rental car company charge you for damage two years after you last laid eyes on the vehicle? A Budget Rent a Car customer discovered the answer to that $2,324 question is, bizarrely, “Yes.”
Now, that broadsided rental car customer is asking Consumer Rescue for help. He hopes we can appeal to Avis (the parent company of Budget) and get this mysterious damage fee erased.
A Carnival cruise ship passenger says a beauty shop in Nassau somehow extracted $30,000 from her and her husband during a port stop. They’re the latest victims of the free facial scam to contact me in recent months. But the story she has to tell is much more sinister than the others. She says these bad guys drugged her and then filmed her thanking them and praising their products.
Picture it: A Facebook friend messages you with some fabulous information about a free government grant she discovered. It’s definitely not a scam, she excitedly assures you. She knows this for sure because Federal Express just delivered a check right to her front door!
Lori Gallant agrees that if a Hertz rental car was damaged while in her possession, she should pay the repair bill. Or at least her insurance company should. But the last time she rented from Hertz was in January. That makes the Vehicle Incident Report detailing her responsibility for repairing that car peculiar since Hertz created it in August.
An extended flight delay stranded JetBlue customer Ellen LaPaglia overnight at New York City’s JFK International Airport. Airline employees instructed all the displaced passengers to wait in a long line to receive a free hotel voucher.
However, by the time LaPaglia got to the front of that queue no hotel vouchers remained.
During a flight across the country, Jetblue forced Samuel Cristol to share his seat. That’s correct. Cristol had a partial seatmate on his flight — a man who did not quite fit in his own space. And, although the guy … Read More
Brak Moczygemba got the shock of her life after a recent one-night stay in a budget hotel. The manager of that Quality Inn accused her of pillow theft… remarkably pricey pillows for such an establishment. To make matters worse, that same manager then informed a stunned Moczygemba that she was permanently banned from the two-star hotel.
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© 2025 Consumer Rescue / Michelle Couch-Friedman
