Don’t you find it a bit disingenious to, on one hand state RULES ARE RULES, but on the other that you’ve never found one that you couldn’t break.

I buy travel insurance for most expensive vacations, like cruises or my Maui trip earlier this year. I have made several claims for various reasons against different policies and never had the claims denied.

Those nonrefundable tickets are a case in point. I can understand that they save costs, but let’s force them to be transferable. For the airline all sales would still be still final, but if your plans change, you would have to right to resell your ticket to someone else. The airline would lose nothing, and the passenger would gain the right to a certain flexibility.

Do any of you professional travel agents know of reputable insurance carriers you can recommend? I’m getting ready to book Dubai and Vienna trips and for March and April and would prefer to have real travel insurance.

i’ve been successful in getting rules bent when necessary …but i never expect it.

This is where educating yourself is very helpful. Download the Contract of Carriage(CoC) and read the damn thing and take it with you in your bag.

Don’t be afraid to bring it out and read the portion that pertains to your particular issue. Polite is paramount in these things. But if you’re clever enough you can often get the airline to bend on the spot.

I’ve NEVER met a rule I couldn’t bend, work around or make work in my favor. Be polite but stand your ground.

Most US business operate under a certain economic framework. One of these maxims is “the law abhors a forfeiture”. Another is that charges should be closely linked to the cost of providing a service.

Airines violate both principles with wanton abandon. I can think of no other industry that regularly makes it goods and services non-transferable. There is no economic justification for such action and in most circumstances such a provision would be unenforceable. Yet airlines make this money grab by preventing me from even giving away a ticket that I can’t use.

SImilarly, things such as $150 change fees would be considered unconscionable in other business particularly since many changes can be made online with little if any additional cost to the airline.

Which other industry can impose an arbitrary rule that requires you to use its product in a certain way or you owe us more money. Prohibitions on back to back ticketing and hidden city ticketing comes to mind and are ridiculous.

And which other industry can say, disobedience is punishable under federal law.

Consequently, airlines are allowed to operate under a very special and unusual set of laws and economic principles which means, IMHO, that airlines should be very accomodating to our unforeseen circumstances.

I have no problem with non-refundable fares. However, I believe that nearly all fares (excluding Priceline and consolidators) should be useable towards future travel, space permitting, minus a reasonable change fee.

Regarding fare rules – Elliott’s comment:

“This is no time to be sending form letter denials, and effectively showing customers the door.”

Sorry – that’s not necessarily the correct answer.

When is that time? How can an airline price things differentially to encourage either no changes (in exchange for a lower price) or more profit (in exchange for change allowances) if the expectation is that rules are irrelevant?

I agree with compassion, and have received it in a big way from a carrier on one occasion, but I also feel that personal responsibility is more important than a sense of entitlement. I am as much a “misguided airline apologist” as Elliott is a “misguided proponent of irresponsibility.” Ask for the rules to be bent or broken (and, be persistent if you feel it appropriate), but don’t expect them to be, and don’t get angry when they’re not.

The BBB has no power to get you your money back. All they do is attempt to mediate the dispute, and if a mutually-acceptable solution is not reached, they can make that fact publicly-available for anyone who asks. That is all the BBB is empowered to do.

Tell me, Lynn, did you check your insurer’s BBB rating before you purchased insurance? Don’t worry–neither does anybody else, so your whole episode with the BBB was a waste of your time.

If you truly feel that your insurance carrier owes you under the terms of your contract, your only option is to sue them. The BBB can’t force any company to act.

I insure my foreign trips, especially when joining a group tour. I sometimes skip on cheap foreign jaunts when I’m on my own, more out of absent-mindedness than wanting to save a few bucks.

Did they pay? No – they did not (even after we escalated all the way to the VP!). So we lost not only the money for the tickets but the money for the insurance was a complete waste. The BBB agreed that we met all of the terms and filed properly but the company (which is still in business) didn’t care and told the BBB to go to he**.

So… never again.