Christopher Elliott
My flight was canceled and I had to pay extra to travel
When Mark Schlangel’s flight is canceled, his airline refuses to rebook him on the next available flight, and he’s forced to buy a new ticket. Is he entitled to a refund?
Why doesn’t Caremark care about my insulin pump?
First, Caremark agrees to cover Ben Schwartz’s insulin pump. Then it refuses. Is there anything he can do to make Caremark honor its word?
How early should you arrive at the airport for your flight?
Want to start an argument? Tell your travel companion you won’t be arriving two hours before your flight. Go on, try it. I’ll be right here.
Will the long airport lines of spring break 2016 be back again this year?
If you’re already bracing for a long airport security line during the spring break travel season, then you must remember last year.
You do, don’t you? That’s when Transportation Security Administration screening wait times doubled under the weight of tighter security and swelling crowds. On just one day in mid-March, 6,800 American Airlines customers reportedly missed their flights, thanks to the lengthy TSA lines.
How failure can make you a better customer
When people say you learn more from your failures than your successes, William Seavey is the first to agree. He bought a Samsung top-loader washing machine, recommended by Consumer Reports, at Sears. “It turned out to be a lemon,” says Seavey, a consultant based in Cambria, Calif.
The real reason everyone complains about credit reporting agencies
The most complained-about financial institutions aren’t banks or credit card companies. They’re credit reporting agencies — and by a wide margin.
Why airline codesharing must die
Although Shelley Jones’ complaint is common, I’ve never heard it from someone like her. Her problem: She’s done with airline “codesharing” — a marketing arrangement in which an airline places its designator code on a flight operated by another airline, and sells tickets for that flight. She’s seen too many passengers pull up to the wrong terminal because they thought they were flying on one carrier when, in fact, they were booked on another.
I love a good mystery. You will too.
Have you noticed the recent string of stories about cases that ended in a big question mark? Neither the consumer nor the company responded to repeated requests for an update or a resolution, so we were left to guess the outcome.
How I got a refund as a civilian (and how you can, too)
How does a consumer advocate resolve his own dispute with a company? So glad you asked. If you’re a real advocate, you don’t flash your card. Oh no, that would be too easy. To measure your Advocate-Fu, you have to dress like a civilian and then use the strategies you’ve mastered to make things right.