Welcome to Consumer Rescue
Fiascos and Fixes
Michelle Couch-Friedman is an author and consumer advocate. She is the founder of Consumer Rescue. Michelle has successfully mediated thousands of problems for troubled travelers and other consumers during her career as an advocate.
Airbnb guests Elizabeth Knox and her husband recently discovered bed bugs aren’t the only pests making accommodations uninhabitable in Paris. Soon after arriving at their cute rental in the City of Lights, they found another family already enjoying the apartment.
United Airlines repeatedly changed Joseph Baloun’s flight to Hawaii so significantly that it bore little resemblance to his original schedule. After he returned home, he wasn’t sure what he was owed for the extended flight delay so he made a wild guess. A really wild guess. He calculated the airline owed him $10,000 for the unpleasant 16-hour delay.
But does United Airlines owe him anything at all?
Could you be accused of causing costly damage to your next rental car even if you didn’t do it? Several hours after returning his Budget rental car Derek Melber found out the answer to that question. That’s when an employee emailed him with the surprising news that the driver’s side window of the vehicle was shattered.
Despite Melber’s best efforts to convince Budget that he didn’t damage the rental car, the company charged him for repairing it.Â
Melber says it wasn’t him who shattered that window, but he thinks he knows who did. He’s hoping Consumer Rescue can prove the rental agency has wrongly accused him. And of course, he wants Budget to refund the nearly $500 repair charge it billed to his credit card.Â
But without any proof of what the rental car looked like when Melber returned it, that might be impossible.Â
Or maybe not. Let’s break this case down.
Two mistakes – and one delayed flight – led Tom Watson to arrive at the Miami cruise terminal without his passport. With just minutes to look for the document, time ran out. He and his wife were denied boarding the cruise, and the ship sailed without them.
Watson places the blame on Viking for their missed cruise, and wants a full refund. But who is really responsible here?
This tale highlights the danger of flying on the same day as your cruise is set to begin. Although it may seem convenient to fly into your embarkation city and transfer straight to the ship, even a slight flight delay can have devastating consequences.
During a family trip, Anna Eardley’s son got sick in their hotel room. Really sick – all over the room. After spending the rest of the night cleaning up the mess, she left a hefty tip and drove home at dawn. So why did she later receive an angry call from the manager telling her that she must pay for the extensive damage to the room — including all new carpet?
What happens when your middle name is on your passport and airline ticket, but your last name is missing? Eleanor Rasmussen can tell you because it happened to her.
If your middle name is on your passport, you probably always try to add it to your airline ticket. But many airlines and booking agencies don’t give you that option.
The reason for this omission? Travelers aren’t required to include a middle name on their airline ticket – even if one is displayed on their passport.
In Rasmussen’s case, the online booking agent her friend used to book their airline tickets didn’t have a specific field to add a middle name. That led to a travel fiasco that left her with an unusable ticket to Tokyo with only her first and middle name.
Now, with her middle name on her ticket where her last name should be, Rasmussen is asking for our help. She’s hoping Consumer Rescue can convince Singapore Airlines to correctly rewrite her ticket.
But will the third-party booking agent cooperate
Retailers aren’t shy about blacklisting customers who are deemed problematic. Just ask Jennifer Chropkowski. She got banned from Walmart over two cans of cat food that the company repeatedly sent her by mistake.
When Walmart refused to acknowledge its error and remove her from its “No-online-shopping” list, Jennifer asked our team for help. She wanted Walmart to lift her shopping restrictions – and send the two cases of cat food she originally purchased.Â
But will the mega-retailer be willing to admit its mistake and remove her from the blacklist?
Jeri Lynn Wentz says she feels scammed after her recent shopping fiasco, which began through a Facebook ad. The “fashionable” clothes she bought took a month to arrive and were more suitable for a baby doll than a full-grown woman. When she asked to return the garments, the retailer first resisted and then gave her some strange instructions. In the end, the clothing company kept her money and the tiny, low-quality items Jeri sent back.
So now what?
Yevgeniy and Artyom Yevtushenko flew LOT Airlines from Toronto to Astana, Kazakhstan, via Warsaw, Poland, last June without a hitch. But it was a different story when they tried to check in for their flight back to Canada in August. That’s when a stern LOT Airlines agent reviewed their passports and quickly denied boarding to the father and son.Â
Confused by the employee’s announcement, Yevtushenko assumed there was some mistake that the airline could easily correct. That is until a supervisor appeared who promptly ended that assumption. He confirmed that LOT Airlines was required to deny boarding to the pair because they were missing Canadian visas.Â
But the agents had some good news for the rejected passengers. Since their ultimate destination was Grand Rapids, Michigan, LOT could reroute the pair and avoid Canada altogether. However, there was bad news as well: the new itinerary would cost an additional $2,249.Â
Given no other choice, a frustrated Yevtushenko paid the fee, and he and his son flew home to Michigan.Â
Now, Yevtushenko is asking Consumer Rescue for help getting the money back. He hopes we can convince LOT Airlines that its employees mistakenly denied boarding to him and Artyom. They didn’t need Canadian visas, and he can prove it – if only someone would listen and look at the facts.Â
If you’re familiar with our team, then you know he came to the right place to find someone willing to listen.
Norwegian Cruise Line handled all the details of Caleb and Karyssa Deslich’s honeymoon trip. So when American Airlines canceled their outbound flight, they expected NCL to come to the rescue. That didn’t happen, and the couple almost missed their Caribbean cruise.
Almost.
The Desliches came to their own rescue and spent an additional $700 on a replacement flight. They flew to Miami and arrived just in time to board Norwegian Joy before it set sail.Â
The couple assumed Norwegian Cruise Line would automatically refund either their canceled flight or the replacement one. But that didn’t happen.
Now Deslich is asking the Consumer Rescue team to intervene and get their money back. He says an NCL agent promised to send the $700 refund and then reneged on the deal. Â
So what does the cruise line have to say about the missing refund for the canceled flight? The answer will probably surprise you.