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Fiascos and Fixes
Here’s what happens when things go wrong for travelers on the road, in the air, at hotels and vacation rentals. Each cautionary tale ends with solutions and ways you can avoid a similar fiasco.
Warning: Buyer’s remorse is never a valid reason to report a credit card charge as fraudulent. But that’s exactly what Philip Paul did when he came down with the post-purchase blues after he bought a vacation club membership. Now he wants to know if our advocacy team can help unravel this mess.
Heather Steele just landed on the Do Not Rent list of her favorite car rental company — Hertz. She says she’s been a great customer of Hertz for many years and the banishment has her flabbergasted. But a dispute over a prepaid car rental refund sent her account to collections and earned her a spot on the blacklist.
Now Steele is asking our advocacy team to step in and clear her name. She wants to be removed from the Do Not Rent list and have Hertz return her account to good standing.
Can we do it?
It’s easy to find a shared space Airbnb rental if that’s what you’re looking for. Each one is clearly labeled and it’s difficult to book a shared space property by mistake. So that’s what makes Maxim Belyayev’s recent Airbnb experience so unusual.
He used the listing giant to book a private condo in London for his upcoming vacation. But when the Airbnb host sent the house rules, it sounded more like a youth hostel than a $3,668 luxury apartment. A follow-up message made it clear that Maxim would be sharing the common space in the Airbnb rental with strangers.
Maxim immediately canceled the unwanted shared space rental, and the Airbnb host just as quickly rejected his refund request.
Now Maxim hopes that we can get his money back. He believes this Airbnb host is a scammer. And if you’re a regular reader of my column, I suspect you’ll soon agree with him.
If American Airlines delays or cancels your flight home from vacation, what does it really owe you?
That’s what Mikayla Shade wants to know after finding herself in this unfortunate situation. She says an American Airlines agent told her that when the airline cancels a flight, the passenger will receive a full refund. Mikayla used that guidance to determine her budget for a new flight home. It wasn’t until American Airlines processed her “full refund” that she discovered she’d relied on incorrect guidance from the agent.
Now Mikayla wants our team to ask American Airlines to provide what its representative promised her.