A debit memo debacle
Q: Last year I flew on American Airlines from Dallas to Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport. Six months later my travel agent called me to say American had billed her $404 more for the flight. She explained that there were certain fare rules in effect that she wasn’t aware of, and that we had no choice but [...]
Fixated on the bottom line
These aren’t the best of times for the airline business. Fuel prices are soaring, profits are plummeting and bankruptcies have become almost routine. But JetBlue Airways apparently didn’t get that memo. It continues to prosper and expand (earlier this month, it added service from New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Fort Lauderdale, Fla.). Not that it’s always been a smooth ride for the new airline - last year, for example, it admitted to handing over passenger records to a Defense Department contractor. Christopher Elliott recently asked JetBlue’s chief executive, David Neeleman, how the company has managed to navigate the turbulent skies.
Delayed bill is a pane
Q: I rented a minivan from Payless last January. I had declined all waivers of insurance they offered me because I knew my Visa covered the rental. When we dropped it off at the airport, an associate looked around the van and said we were good to go.
I received a letter from Payless in [...]
Do our points have a future?
For the occasional traveler, the latest round of airline bankruptcy filings may feel like the early 1990’s, when some big carriers flew under a dark cloud of bankruptcy protection and others never emerged from it.
Dead men don’t fly
Q: I am trying to get a refund on a ticket from Northwest Airlines. It was for my husband, who passed away earlier this year.
Shortly after his death, I contacted the airline and was told I would receive a full refund if I could show a death certificate. I sent my first of three [...]
‘There Is a Cape Buffalo loose in the hallway’
On a business trip to Amsterdam I met two women who were on their way to Kenya to follow the wildebeest migration into Tanzania. They said there was room for one more person and invited me to join them.
Why not, I thought. It was such a spur-of-the moment decision that I didn’t even tell my [...]
US Airways ends with you
So long, US Airways.
Now that the nation’s seventh-largest carrier has filed for bankruptcy protection a second time in as many years, many industry-watchers give it only a few months before it liquidates. Even David Bronner recently predicted it wouldn’t be saved from Chapter 11, and he ought to know. He’s the airline’s chairman. But while most of the pundits are fixated on the reasons for US Airways’ likely demise, one question has gone largely unasked: Who is going to pay for this failure?
The ’sign here’ scam
Q: On a trip to France earlier this year we rented a mid-sized Laguna Renault from Avis. We pre-paid $1,002 a month earlier, which was to be the final amount.
When we called for the car in Paris, the young lady in the Avis office asked for our credit card number. We explained that the [...]
A cellphone mystery
As a frequent guest at a Salt Lake City Hampton Inn, Murray Trepel often finds himself powering down his cellphone and picking up the house phone. ”My cellphone seldom works anywhere near the hotel,” said Mr. Trepel, the senior manager for a call-center service provider in Logan, Utah. ”Not just in my room, but in the parking lot as well.”
Waiting for Frances
If there is anything worse than being hit by a hurricane, then it must be waiting to get hit by a hurricane. And if you live in Florida, you’ve been doing a lot of waiting lately. It started in late July with Hurricane Alex, which appeared just north of Jacksonville and then barreled up the eastern seaboard of the United States before disintegrating in the cool waters of the North Atlantic.
Playing the name game
Q: I recently booked a ticket to Rome on Expedia. For convenience sake, I used my husband’s account, but I paid with my own American Express card and requested that the ticket be sent to me in my name.
As soon as the itinerary details appeared on the screen, I saw that instead of it [...]