Extend your laptop battery’s life
On a recent stopover at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, I flipped open my laptop PC, hoping to chip away at the 7,000-some e-mail messages that had accumulated since leaving Anchorage, Alaska, four hours earlier.
“Don’t even think about it,” my laptop screen flashed back at me contemptuously (I’m paraphrasing the error message a little here). “I’m out [...]
No budget for fuel
Q: I recently rented a car from Budget Rent A Car in Kingston, Jamaica, for two days. An agent told me that I would be charged an additional $38.71 for a full tank of gas, whether I returned the car with a full tank or not.
I confronted the agent when I dropped off the [...]
Dialing for car rental discounts
While hotels often guarantee the best room rates on their Web sites, rental car firms make no such promises. And a U.S. News test shows you might be better off if you abandon the mouse and tackle the telephone. Checking prices to rent a Hertz economy car for a week at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, we found the best rate via the company’s toll-free number. No haggling necessary. The steepest quote was from Expedia–a site known for inexpensive travel.
Travelers behaving badly
Rob Pait admits he’s not always the friendliest traveler. “Yes, I’m sometimes short with travel employees,” says the director for a Scotts Valley, Calif., computer hardware manufacturer. “But only with employees who are impolite, unwilling to help or just plain rude themselves.” In years past, the travel industry all but denied people like Pait existed. After all, the customer was always right, and if guests were snippy it was because the hotel clerks, gate agents or customer service representatives weren’t doing their jobs.
Caribbean cruise minus the royal
Q: My husband and I sailed on Royal Caribbean’s “Brilliance of the Seas” Panama Canal cruise late last year. It was our first cruise on Royal Caribbean, and we anticipated a fun trip with wonderful food and great service.
We were disappointed in every way.
The food was average - certainly not the quality that [...]
Clear your e-mail clutter on the road
The e-mail messages land in my inbox, one after the other, with the relentlessness of a tropical rainstorm. Most of the e-mails are junk, and with subjects like “A humour game” and “Re: Hi,” they drain straight into my spam filters. It’s an unusually heavy morning. Since I started writing this column about 15 minutes [...]
A worst rate guarantee
Q: I am writing in regards to a recent experience with Hilton’s “Best Rates Guaranteed” program. I am a loyal Hilton Honors member, and I rarely seek a hotel other than one under the Hilton umbrella. When I was booking a recent business trip, I came across a competitive room rate online and decided to [...]
Should I save or splurge?
Before Stephen Paliska became a sales engineer for an aerospace company in Connecticut, a manager pulled him aside and explained that when it came to travel, cheaper wasn’t necessarily better. The manager added that “where I stayed and ate was a reflection on the company,” Paliska remembers.
It’s an attitude that served him well as an [...]
It pays to be persistent
Q: On August 12, 2003, while I was shopping for travel insurance to cover a 14 day cruise that my wife and I were taking on Nov. 9, I noticed the advertisement for Trip Assured, a travel insurance company which provides insurance through my cruise agent, CruiseQuick.com.
When I determined that Trip Assured was at [...]
Cruise ship trade show
Christopher Elliott sends this week’s audio postcard from the Seatrade Convention in Miami, a trade show for owners and operators of cruise ships.