Facts that don’t fly
When it comes to travel, the entertainment industry has never really bothered separating fact from fiction. Turn on your TV if you don’t believe me. Or catch a summer movie. See the film ‘The Terminal,’ for instance, and you might wonder if getting stuck at the airport is such a dreadful thing. (In fact, most experienced travelers would do anything to avoid spending even a few hours in a terminal).
Missing refund on Travelocity
Q: I booked a hotel through Travelocity in February. I entered my credit card number to hold my reservation and my credit card was billed.
I decided to go home two days early from my trip. When I checked out at the hotel, I got charged a rate that was $30 a night less than [...]
Using your miles? Often, it’s now double or nothing
When Timothy Placek tried to cash in his miles to fly his daughter from St. Louis to Houston last year, Continental Airlines told him no seats were available. Disappointed, Mr. Placek, who is a Silver Elite member of Continental’s frequent-flier program, asked whether he could use his points to travel to Omaha, to visit his parents in January, four months later. No award seats were available on any of those flights, either.
Unwiring for your visitors
At first, the 802.11b hotspot I sprung for in 2003 seemed so frivolous that I didn’t bother mentioning it to clients who visited my office. And since my PC remained wired to a high-speed land connection, I nearly forgot I had installed it.
Then one day I caught an editor who was visiting me as he [...]
We’ll always have Warsaw
Q: My husband flew from London to Newark on British Airways last summer. On his way back, the guitar he had checked in was damaged. It was a $4,000 Langejans guitar, and it had a crack running down the neck.
My husband is a musician and his guitar is his work. He had to send [...]
Lost - and found
Getting lost isn’t an option when Joe Eisenberg hits the road. A field engineer in Lincoln, Neb., he relies on accurate directions to find his service calls. A typical workday may involve multiples stops, a task too complex for the average Web-based mapping service to efficiently plot.
“I have to plan my order of service calls [...]
Paying for their mistakes
For most Americans, this summer is the first opportunity for a long-overdue vacation. With worries of war, SARS and terrorism fading into memory and the economy on the rebound, more travelers are expected to be out and about than in any other summer since 2001. But for the American travel industry, this summer represents an opportunity of a different kind: a chance to make us pay for the many mistakes and missteps it’s made during the last three years.
Fraud in the Amazon
Q: My husband and I took my nephew to the Amazon in Brazil last November. We booked all of the hotels and ground transportation through a travel agency in Rio de Janeiro that we had used twice before. We wired a payment covering all charges to the travel agency prior to taking the trip.
We [...]
Finding information on the fly
Locating information on a laptop PC can be a pain. But tracking it down while you’re on the road - between sales meetings, on a plane or at a client’s office - can double the suffering, to hear businesspeople like John Mangiagli talk about it.
Mangiagli, a senior technical service engineer for a machine-parts company in [...]
Just making conversation
Q: Last month my wife went to Hartford, Conn., and tried to rent car from Hertz. The car we had reserved was not available and she had to wait nearly an hour. Further, she was asked some very personal and inappropriate questions.
I complained to Hertz, and I was sent a $30 coupon, assured that [...]
Hotels get pushy about their loyalty programs
Hotels are turning aggressive in recruiting business travelers to their loyalty programs.