When Rela Geffen was hospitalized after suffering from congestive heart failure recently, she assumed her airline would take care of her. She was in Georgia on a business trip, but she’d paid an extra $19 for trip interruption insurance on her US Airways tickets.
AGENT
Now that’s what I call a birthday party.
“As a proud American, I served my country with loyalty and dedication in the aftermath of 9/11 by joining the TSA and the fight on terror,” the letter begins.
Mary is an in-house reservation agent for an upscale, full-service hotel in a major American city. I’m not using her last name for reasons that will become obvious in a moment. Mary has a lot on her mind. People who call her hotel to reserve a room are getting ripped off, and she wants to [...]
Gay Swope owns a “mom-and-pop” travel agency called Travel World International in Lorain, Ohio. It’s the kind of shop a travel advocate like me might refer you to for the kind of personalized service you won’t find online.
When Martha Schmidt tries to cancel her airline tickets, her online agent promises to help her reuse the credit quickly. But after eight hours on the phone and an email promising a response “within four to eight hours” she feels as if she’s being stonewalled. Are her tickets missing in action?
Susan Ervin and Geraldo Flores were supposed to fly to Rome today to set sail on a two-week Mediterranean cruise aboard the Azamara Quest. But then their travel agent went missing, leaving the fate of their floating vacation in doubt.
Here’s another good reason to use a competent travel agent: When Jay Wendt read one of my columns in the Portland Oregonian that recommended using an agent, he decided to give it a try on a business class ticket for a transpacific flight. He was floored by what he discovered.
Elliott is consumer advocate 
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