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Fiascos and Fixes
The Consumer Rescue advocacy team resolves problems between consumers and the businesses that they patronize. We do this via direct mediation with companies — always free of charge.
These articles are the highlighted tales of our efforts to defend, protect, and educate consumers. Michelle Couch-Friedman is a consumer advocate, reporter and ombudsman columnist. She is also the founder of Consumer Rescue.
If you don’t smoke, I’m pretty sure you don’t pack cigarettes, marijuana, or a crack pipe when you go on vacation. Life-long nonsmoker Jason Gladden certainly didn’t bring any of that when he recently took his family to a baseball tournament. However, that didn’t stop his vacation rental host from charging the stunned dad a $250 smoking fee.
But the surprises didn’t stop there.
Today Aurora Expeditions’ Vantage Explorations turns one year old. In honor of this milestone, the cruise line is announcing new routes, a new ship, and a $3,000 booking bonus.
Here’s what’s next for Vantage Explorations and Aurora Expeditions.
Many cruise ship passengers aren’t even aware that getting banned forever from their favorite line is possible. I’m here to tell you that cruise lines are more willing than ever to blacklist troublesome customers — permanently.
A Florida couple came home from their last Royal Caribbean cruise with thousands of dollars in unplanned purchases. They say a dangerous scam is operating out of a beauty shop in Nassau, the Bahamas. The couple is hoping that by telling their story, they can prevent other cruise ship passengers from falling prey.
But is this just an extreme case of buyer’s remorse?
Hertz will never ask customers to pay for their car rental with a gift card… but a scammer will. Unawareness of this basic fact led one couple to lose $800 to a devious international scheme.
Is there any way to get that money back?
The Beijing Tea House Scam is one of the most well-known tourist traps around the Forbidden City. Unfortunately, Lawrence Andrews had never heard of it. That is until after he was already a victim of the con game during a business trip to China.
A perpetually leaking ceiling in an Airbnb rental seems like a problem the host should fix immediately. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the experience of one young mom who paid $5,400 for the privilege of living in a soggy apartment.
Can Consumer Rescue help?
Barbara Goldfuss saved for two years to buy the $1,900 La-Z-Boy recliner she finally ordered last year. After relaxing in the comfy model in the local showroom, she eagerly awaited her custom-made chair. But months later, when the much-anticipated La-Z-Boy recliner arrived, Goldfuss immediately detected a terrible problem.
What if you used an online booking agent to reserve a hotel, but when you arrived at the property, you discovered it was being used as a homeless shelter? It happened to this solo female traveler, and she wants you … Read More
Princess Cruises recently accidentally published a fare for a 21-day Mediterranean sailing that was too good to be true. Literally. The mistakenly displayed price – caused by human error – rang in at just a fraction of the cruise’s actual cost.
That fat-finger rate was only briefly available on the Princess website, but word spread quickly across the Internet. That alert caused an immediate flutter of unusually high booking activity, and the cruise line noticed. For all of the elated would-be cruise passengers who snagged this dream deal, bad news was on the horizon.
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© 2025 Consumer Rescue / Michelle Couch-Friedman
