My Princess cruise sailed without us because of a tiny passport mistake
Don’t make the passport mistake these Princess cruise ship passengers made. You’re in the danger zone if your passport has less than six months left before it expires.
MICHELLE COUCH-FRIEDMAN
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.
Help! American Airlines gave me travel credit instead of $5,075 in cash
American Airlines left Brooke Krukenberg and 24 family members stranded in North Carolina after canceling their flight home to Iowa. As the group scrambled to find alternative transportation, airline agents assured the displaced passengers their refunds were on the way.
Krukenberg calculated that American Airlines owed each family member $250 for the canceled flight – around $5,600. That refund factored into the group’s plans as they booked rental cars and hotels for the unexpected 18-hour road trip back home. Here’s what happened next.
A 30 day road trip with 4 teenagers can be fun. Here’s how
I love traditions. One of my favorite family traditions is the annual road trip I take with my two daughters and a couple of their friends every summer. That’s when I load up the minivan with these four teenagers and all their “necessities” to hit the open road looking for adventure (and plenty of Hampton Inn waffles and takeout pizza).
I call it the “Endless Road Trip.”
Enterprise says Mickey Mouse damaged my rental car. Why should I pay?
Like every savvy traveler, Kathy Mason inspected her recent rental car very carefully before driving it off the lot. The vehicle had no visible damage, and she says she returned it in the same condition just two days later. So it was a surprise when Enterprise sent her a $775 repair bill – two months after the rental was over.
But even more surprising than the repair bill was who Enterprise believed was responsible for damaging “things” inside the rental car. In an official incident report, “Mickey Mouse” is named as the alleged suspect.
Help! Fake United Airlines customer service charged me a $1,750 service fee
Christian Forthomme made a critical, but common error while booking a round-trip business-class flight to Paris for his wife. After asking Google for United Airlines customer service, he called the first number that popped up in the search results. Instead of reaching the airline, he dialed right into a scam call center where a fake UA agent was waiting. That fraudster easily booked the ticket and charged the unaware Forthomme a whopping $1,750 service fee for her efforts.
Was this cruise ship passenger tricked into buying a lab grown diamond?
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.
Help! My Airbnb vacation rental has a surveillance camera aimed at my bed
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.
Can our Airbnb host really charge us to clean up his trash? Help!
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.
Budget wants $2,324 for a rental car I drove two years ago. Help!
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.
These cruise ship passengers say they lost $30,000 to scammers in Nassau
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.
