Alicia and Joe Haviland are mad at United Airlines and at me.
They’re furious with United for canceling Alicia’s ticket from Panama City, Panama, to Seattle via Houston and issuing an involuntary refund. As a result, Alicia Haviland missed her best friend’s funeral.
And they’re upset with me because they want me to write about their negative customer service experience and I haven’t — until now.
Anand Iyer recently rented a Hyundai from Avis in Westfield, NJ. He’d found the car online through a site called AutoSlash.com, and booked the rental through Travelocity.
But as you’ll see in a minute, this is a highly unusual problem with an imminent deadline. At stake? The highest-level elite status and several million frequent flier miles.
Oh, and the fate of our republic.
I’m kidding.
At least that’s the standard warning issued repeatedly by travel experts for the last decade. The ratings are rigged by hotel or restaurant operatives, or by unhappy patrons trying to shame a business, they say. Since the sites make no meaningful efforts to stop these bogus posts, all the so-called user-generated sites should be ignored when you’re planning your next trip.
That’s wrong.
She’d bought a gold-plated “cancel for any reason” policy for a trip to South Korea. When her boyfriend proposed and she decided to call off the trip to start planning her wedding, she thought that collecting a check would be just a formality.
Wrong.
Cathy Evans doesn’t fit the profile of a typical scam victim. She’s an account manager for a technology company in Boston, and she likes to think of herself as a discerning customer.
They promised Hans Slatosch the world. Literally.
In a sales presentation he attended a year ago, Dallas-based Royal Palms Travel offered him deep discounts on cruises and other travel products. All he had to do was pony up a $5,593 membership. He did.
But something about the transaction made Slatosch uncomfortable. The sales staff had pressured him to make a decision before he left, and they wouldn’t let him keep the material they’d distributed, he says.
Remember Prime Travel protection, the Colorado travel insurance company that shut down amid allegations it sold unlicensed policies? Turns out it’s not dead yet.
When Dick Rheinhardt booked a cruise vacation through Four Seasons Tours and Cruises, in Largo, Fla., last November, he agreed to pay $824 for what he believed to be a travel insurance policy. But it wasn’t a real policy, he says. A few months later, Florida authorities told three agencies that Prime Travel Protection policies might be bogus. Rheinhardt wanted a refund.
That’s when he discovered Prime Travel Protection was alive and well.
