I still can’t believe the reason Airbnb banned Jannick Vielleuse.
As far as I can tell, she did absolutely nothing wrong. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time — specifically, she logged into a wireless router at the wrong moment.
And now she’ll never rent from Airbnb again. At least that’s what she thinks.
What if your all all-inclusive hotel is only half-inclusive? If you’re booking through Priceline, as Michael O’Connor was, you can ask for clarification — and if you can’t get it, you can ask our advocacy team for help.
O’Connor booked a room for his family at the Barcelo, an all-inclusive resort in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
What if you cancel your American Airlines tickets and your travel agent hands you a voucher that only covers 20 percent of the cost of a new ticket?
That’s the strange situation in which Michelle Crespo found herself after her ticket credits booked through MilitaryFares.com during the pandemic suddenly got massively devalued. And she wants answers.
Crespo paid her travel agency $2,254 — but now, bizarrely, a representative has told her that her new voucher will only cover 20 percent of the cost of a new fare.
Is that fair?
Avis blindsided Claudia Lockwood with a $4,228 surprise charge after her last car rental experience.
She thought she’d done everything right and expected no problems. She brought the car back to the correct lot and left the keys in the vehicle, as instructed. Lockwood even saved her gas receipt that showed she had filled the tank before returning the Ford Edge SUV.
Not much good it did her. One month later, Avis claimed she still had the rental car in her possession. This, even though she had proof that she’d flown to Germany (without the car, of course) soon after the end of her car rental contract.
So will she just be stuck paying Avis this $4,228 upcharge?
Charysma Adams’ birthday party was ruined by a Vrbo host who wouldn’t let her into the house she’d rented for the night. But now, instead of returning her money, the host is making a bad situation even worse — and Adams wants our help to make it right.
Adams’ strange case is a warning to anyone thinking of using a rental platform like Vrbo or Airbnb for a special event. It’s also a reminder to do your due diligence when you’re planning a party. You don’t want to overlook certain important details, or you could end up standing outside in the cold like this birthday girl.
I can’t tell the story of Wendy Schlessinger’s efforts to get a refund from Rodan and Fields without also exploring the dark history of multilevel marketing (MLM).
On the surface, Schlessinger’s attempt to get her money back looks like an open-and-shut case. Maybe it’s just an innocent error made by a $4 billion skincare company. Then again, maybe it’s part of a business strategy that includes pushing pricey subscriptions on unwitting consumers.
Multilevel marketing schemes have touched more than one of our readers. Chances are, you’ve run across products that were aggressively marketed through these methods. I have, and I’ll tell you my embarrassing story in just a moment.
Schlessinger’s case left me not only sad, but furious. It involved Rodan and Fields sending products she says she didn’t order, a destroyed friendship, a denied request for a refund, and a credit card dispute that the company fought — even though it knew it was wrong.
But is this case even fixable?
All Linda Shapiro wanted was to change her train tickets from Seville to Madrid. That’s all. How hard can that be?
Harder than you might think, it turns out.
Her online travel agency, Trainline, took her on an unexpected journey through ticket-change hell, followed by a surprise stop in refund purgatory. And now that I’ve almost run out of theological metaphors, here’s one more: Shapiro needs a little redemption from our team of consumer advocates.
Can Vivid Seats keep your money for a canceled show? Douglas Himberger would really like to know. Before the pandemic, he paid $689 for two tickets to a Jerry Seinfeld show in Atlantic City. The event kept getting postponed — and now he can’t get his money back.
Vivid Seats, a ticket exchange and resale company, should have refunded the money a long time ago. So why is it holding on to Himberger’s money? And what does that mean for the rest of us who are trying to get our money back for shows that were canceled during the pandemic?
Himberger’s case is about more than a company that tries to keep your money. It’s also about credit card disputes and when to use them.
Benn Karne and his wife, Marilyn, had tickets from Athens to Bologna, Italy, on May 14, 2020. Not that it did them much good. Like almost every other flight operating at the start of the pandemic, Aegean Airlines canceled it and eventually offered them a refund.
But then Aegean Airlines did something very odd: It refunded only one of the tickets.
Now the Karnes are trying to find out what went wrong with their second refund and how they can fix it. But their odyssey tells a much bigger story about the patently irresponsible behavior of airlines during the pandemic. You’re probably familiar with stories like this. The additional context will infuriate you.
It’s been more than a year since Virginia Cepero returned the dining room chairs she bought on the Pottery Barn website. The company insists it refunded her money months ago, but Cepero can’t find it.
What do you do when it’s a company’s word against yours? And how do you defend your position when the company throws up a favorite defense tactic?
The deeper I dug into Cepero’s case, the more convinced I became that corporate America’s favorite new strategy for keeping your money is still largely a secret. I’ll tell you about it in a second. I’ll also reveal how to avoid a chaotic return like this and get your money back from Pottery Barn.
