Adieu, troubleshooter

Q: I heard that the Travel Troubleshooter column has been cancelled. Is that true? If so, what happened?

– Jim Nova

A: Thanks for your concern. The answer to your question is: yes and no. The Travel Troubleshooter, which has been appearing weekly on SmarterLiving.com, is over. But the column will live on – in syndication and on my Web site, elliott.org.

What happened? Well, I could blame Sept. 11, but that’s such a tired excuse. I could fault a soft economy or even a lack of readership, but that wouldn’t be entirely accurate, either.

I think the most accurate – and articulate – explanation is that it was time to move on. This column has evolved during the last four years, from a personal soapbox into a real “troubleshooter” column that helps people solve their travel-related problems.

I didn’t intend for it to happen this way. I really enjoy sharing my opinion about airlines, hotels and car rental agencies that do their customers wrong. During the last four years I’ve become a living thesaurus of sorts – a database of synonyms for words like “incompetent” and “awful.” It’s been fun.

But the game is over. Since the sobering events of last September, the Travel Troubleshooter has settled down to a more serious purpose: to actually solve the dilemmas that readers like you send me every day.

If a hotel overbills you, I don’t just sit on the sidelines berating the property. I contact it on your behalf. When an airline leaves you waiting at a terminal for six hours without so much as a meal voucher, same thing. If a cruise line leaves you high and dry at the pier, I’m all over it.

I can’t always completely solve every problem. In fact, I can’t accept every case that I get (there isn’t enough time for that). But I can promise I’ll try.

There’s something else that you should know about the Travel Troubleshooter. For the majority of its four-year history, I haven’t been paid for it.

Why write something for free? Because there are so few other ombudsmen out there, and frankly, the ones who exist either specialize in softball questions like “How do I get travel insurance?” or they only take questions that are of limited use to a general readership. My favorite example is from a marginal travel newsletter that helped a reader get his money back on a very expensive safari. The Q&A was as self-congratulatory as it was useless.

My column’s mission has never been clearer. It is to serve you, the reader. Many of my competitors answer to other masters – editors, advertisers, trade groups or even a department of attorneys and overzealous fact-checkers. But they frequently lose sign of the reason their columns exist, and they should be ashamed of themselves.

This week I may be cancelled, but I don’t feel guilty. I end this chapter of my career with a clean conscience – and with a sense of optimism. My syndication deal will keep this column in a variety of newspapers in the United States and Canada. I’m also in the final stages of negotiating a magazine version that will appear monthly.

If you want to find out more about the new Travel Troubleshooter, check back with my Web site or sign up for my weekly e-mail newsletter.

See you next week.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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