Christopher Elliott

Christopher Elliott is the founder of Elliott Advocacy, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that empowers consumers to solve their problems and helps those who can't. He's the author of numerous books on consumer advocacy and writes three nationally syndicated columns. He also publishes the Elliott Report, a news site for consumers, and Elliott Confidential, a critically acclaimed newsletter about customer service. If you have a consumer problem you can't solve, contact him directly through his advocacy website. You can also follow him on X, Facebook, and LinkedIn, or sign up for his daily newsletter.
Cartoon of an exasperated woman in an apron standing hands-on-hips in her kitchen beside her wide-eyed cat, both staring at a green refrigerator with a taped-on "OUT OF ORDER" sign.

Sears left me without a refrigerator for six months—how do I fix this?

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Karen Plaskon’s refrigerator died in February. That should not have been a crisis, because she had paid for a Sears Master Protection Agreement, the whole point of which is to make a failure like this someone else’s problem. Sears approved a replacement in April. Then the real ordeal began. The Frigidaire she ordered was canceled over delivery delays. Sears suggested a GE model in June. That one did not show up either. She spent hours on the phone, shuffled between departments that blamed vague “manufacturing delays,” while retailers like Costco were delivering refrigerators in days. Years earlier, Sears had settled a similar problem by simply cutting her a check. This time, it said that option no longer existed. Six months in, she still had no working refrigerator and no clear answer, just the question of what a protection plan is actually worth when the company that sold it decides to stall.

Cartoon of a distressed woman at an airport with a red suitcase, reaching toward her boarding pass as it floats away in a glowing puff, vanishing from her hands.

My wife’s airline ticket vanished, then Hawaiian Airlines charged me an extra $575

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James Phillips did everything by the book. He booked two first-class, round-trip tickets through the Hawaiian Airlines app, one for himself and one for his wife Linda, purchased one after the other on the same credit card. Within minutes, he had written confirmations for both. Then they got to the Honolulu airport. The agent told him his ticket was fine, but Linda’s, confirmed and paid for, had simply been voided. No one could say why. Her seat had already been sold to someone else. To get her on a later flight, Phillips had to buy a brand-new ticket that cost $575 more than the one he had already paid. The airline first hinted his card had been declined, then tried to pin it on a third-party booking channel he had never used, even though he booked directly and had the confirmation to prove it. Who should eat the cost of a mistake the passenger did not make, and what it took to get a straight answer, is where this case turns.

Illustration of a worried woman in a tank top standing at a cruise ship railing, shading her eyes with one hand as she scans the horizon against a clear blue sky.

SAS lost her luggage—then a motel in Stockholm found it

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After Patrice Krecek’s suitcase did not arrive at Stockholm’s airport, she did everything right. She filed a Property Irregularity Report with SAS. She submitted a claim. She called customer service, more than once. Maybe she should have checked the Motel L Alvsjo, a 40-minute drive away, because that is exactly where her luggage turned up five weeks later, how it got there a mystery wrapped in pink duct tape. Inside that bag was most of her clothing for a 14-night cruise, including a new sweater she had bought just for the trip and never got to wear. Her husband had wrapped the case in hot pink tape so it would be easy to spot on the carousel, a detail that would matter more than he could have guessed. The motel could only hold the bag for a month before donating it. SAS had the address, the photos, and clear instructions, and still the suitcase sat 4,000 miles away. What it took to finally get it moving, and whether a claim filed one day late would cost the Kreceks everything, is where this case turns.

Cartoon of a disappointed traveler holding a paper coffee cup in a packed airport lounge marked SKYLOUNGE, beside a picked-over breakfast buffet with a "seating full" sign.

Your airport lounge pass Is worthless—unless you do this

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The overcrowded airport lounge is no longer a perk. It is purgatory. Karin Kemp can tell you why. She had a four-hour stopover in Washington and thought it was the perfect chance to use her lounge pass. She was wrong. The lounge was full, an agent ordered her to wait, and she finally got in half an hour later. “There was barely anything left on the breakfast buffet,” she says. “If you could call it that.” That is the lounge letdown. What was once a quiet corner of the terminal, your reward for loyalty or a hefty annual fee, has become a cafeteria for the masses, with entry lines longer than the Starbucks queue, food gone by midmorning, and seats that take the sharp elbows of a subway commuter to claim. Blaming credit cards is the easy answer, and it is part of the story. But the real reason the lounge curdled, and what it will cost you to buy back anything resembling exclusivity, is where this gets interesting.

Black and white line cartoon of a worried man standing beside his car with a flat tire on a city street, an American flag flying behind him and steam rising in the air.

America gave the world the gift of travel. Now it’s destroying it.

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America gave the world the modern vacation. But as the United States turns 250, it is on the verge of destroying it. The country pioneered the idea that an ordinary person could go somewhere purely for recreation. The long weekend, the affordable plane ticket, the great American road trip, all of them are U.S. exports. It is hard to overstate what this country did for travel: the world’s first national park, the first scheduled passenger airline, the interstate system that birthed a whole roadside culture, and the radical notion that a factory worker with two weeks off deserved a real vacation too. That is the inheritance. Now look at what we are doing with it, the airlines that treat your carry-on as a revenue line, the rental counter that doubles the online price, and a brand-new fee that quietly changed who gets to walk into a forest that is supposed to belong to everyone.

Black and white line cartoon of a puzzled man in a wheelchair on one side of a barrier looking toward a standing woman with a rolling suitcase on the other, suggesting a divide over who boards or pays. Ryanair family seating

Where’s the red line on airline fees?

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If you are flying with kids, here is a little good news: you will not have to pay extra to sit together, even on Ryanair, the notoriously fee-crazy Irish carrier. Europe’s largest discount airline adjusted its family-seating policy this week after a UK regulator forced its hand, having spent years charging parents a fee just to sit beside their own children. But it did so “reluctantly,” and that one word says everything about how the industry sees fees in 2026. A fee is not a problem to be fixed. It is territory to be defended. Which raises a bigger question, one that goes well past family seating to the water on a long flight, the bag already in your hand, and the seat you already bought a ticket to sit in. What kinds of fees should be off limits, and is there a line an airline should never cross?

Cartoon of a frazzled, dirt-smudged hiker waving both arms for help on a wooded shoreline beside her startled terrier, as a fisherman in a small boat approaches across the water.

No more digital detoxes? Why you should keep your phone with you when you travel

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Michelle Girasole thought she knew Rhode Island’s Beavertail State Park well enough to leave her phone in the car. It was a warm summer morning, and she wanted to catch the sunrise with her terrier, Scooter, and enjoy a few minutes without calls, texts, or notifications. Then she followed Scooter off the path and lost her bearings. She spent the next nine hours stranded, with no water, no sunscreen, and no way to call for help, until a fisherman finally spotted her on the shoreline. “If I had my phone,” she says, “none of that would have happened.” Her ordeal is a warning about the travel industry’s latest wellness obsession, the digital detox, which hotels and tour operators are selling as the only way to truly be present. Nearly every traveler says they want to disconnect. But there is a reason a row of security and medical-evacuation experts say that, for anyone without a private fixer, ditching your phone is not relaxation. It is something closer to recklessness.

Cartoon of a distressed man in a Metallica T-shirt staring at his phone, which displays a glowing StubHub invoice for $1,782.

My buyer made a big mistake, so why did StubHub charge me $1,782?

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Mark Christensen had sold tickets on StubHub for more than 20 years, so he knew the drill. He listed a pair of two-day Metallica tickets, found a buyer, and transferred them exactly the way StubHub requires. For this tour, a single transfer covered both nights. The buyer used the tickets the first night without a hitch. Then things went sideways. Instead of trying the same tickets at the gate the second night, or asking anyone, the buyer assumed they needed a separate transfer and bought brand-new tickets. And that is when StubHub dropped the hammer, on Christensen. It sided with the buyer, withheld his payout, charged his card for the buyer’s new tickets, and even clipped an unrelated sale, a total of $1,782 for a mistake he did not make. Here is the standard worth holding any marketplace to when its guarantee is supposed to protect sellers too.

cartoon of a worried older couple standing on a river cruise deck while a mechanic kneels over a smoking engine behind them, with green hills and a castle along the Rhine in the background.

Can this company refuse to cover my costs for a canceled river cruise?

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Michael Cawley and his wife had been looking forward to a relaxing six-day Rhine River cruise with CroisiEurope, a gentle start before they carried on to Dublin. What they got instead was a series of mechanical problems and a lot of anxiety. The ship stopped cruising early the first night. The next morning, scuba divers worked under the hull, the departure ran late, and an excursion was scrapped. Then, around midnight, the ship hit something. The hull shook, and at 1:30 a.m. every passenger was roused and herded into the lounge. By the next morning the verdict was in: the cruise was canceled, a bad motor. With nonrefundable travel waiting at the far end and no help yet in sight, the couple booked their own train and hotel to keep their connection, only to be offered an alternative too late to use. CroisiEurope returned the cruise fare. What it decided to do about the rest of their money, and the European law it leaned on to justify it, is where this case turns.

Cartoon of a frustrated traveler with arms crossed standing between two suitcases in an empty airport gate area, beneath a large red departures sign reading "FLIGHT DOES NOT EXIST."

Booking.com said my flight was confirmed, but the airline says it never existed

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Lindley Kinerk’s last morning in Dresden seemed routine. She and her companions packed up, checked out, and headed to the airport for their 8:25 a.m. flight home to Boston. They had even gotten a friendly check-in reminder from Booking.com the night before. Then they reached the counter and learned something that would cost them nearly $6,000: their flight did not exist. Not that morning, not any morning. It had been off the airline’s schedule for months. Booking.com, it seems, had quietly rebooked them on an earlier flight and never said a word, and the airline insisted the whole thing was not its problem. With a third ticketing agency tangled into the booking and every company pointing at the others, Kinerk had to buy new tickets on the spot just to get home. What she did next, and what Booking.com eventually said about her money, is where this case turns.