STRANDED

Hotels.com left me in Paris sans hotel

By Christopher Elliott | January 3, 2014December 29, 2013

When Judi McManigal arrives at her hotel in Paris, she discovers she doesn’t have a reservation. Her online travel agency won’t help her. Is she stuck with the bill?

Question: We made a reservation recently on Hotels.com for a hotel in Paris. When we arrived, the hotel informed us that they had canceled the reservation due to an issue with the credit card transaction. Apparently, not all U.S. credit cards are accepted in Europe, which we also learned when we tried to buy train tickets from a machine with the same credit card.

Our hotel told us that they had notified Hotels.com of the credit card issue and cancellation before our arrival. They even showed me a printout of the email. However, Hotels.com never notified us of the credit card problem, nor the cancellation. The hotel had only one night available, so we had to find another hotel at the last minute for the three remaining nights.

We called the Hotels.com number in France, and the agent stated that they had the cancellation in their system. But after speaking with several representatives, Hotels.com refused to put us in another hotel at the same rate.
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My cruise line left me stranded in Naples — is this voucher the best they can do?

By Christopher Elliott | July 24, 2012July 24, 2012

Judith Abramson’s western Mediterranean cruise on the Oceania Marina last April did not end well. After a sudden illness, the ship’s doctor decided she needed to go to the hospital, and she was unceremoniously disembarked in Naples, Italy, under less than ideal circumstances, she says.
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Help! Code-sharing confusion grounded my vacation

By Christopher Elliott | April 13, 2012April 13, 2012

Question: We booked a ticket from Washington to the Bahamas recently through Expedia. It was a code-share flight Bahamasair operated by US Airways.

At the US Airways check-in counter we, and about 50 other travelers, were told by US Airways ticket agents that Bahamasair had not transferred the ticket information to the US Airways system and so none of us could board.
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Here we go again! Another tarmac stranding incident — beware of outraged talking heads on TV

By Christopher Elliott | October 30, 2011October 30, 2011

It seemed eerily familiar: A JetBlue aircraft, a freak storm, passengers stranded on an aircraft for hours — and all happened near the media capital of the world.

Except that it wasn’t Valentines Day 2007, the infamous ice storm that cost JetBlue its golden reputation, made a small-minded mainstream media obsessed with tarmac delays and led to tough but largely unnecessary new government rules on tarmac delays.

It was happening right now, in real time.
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Is this enough compensation? Stranded in Mexico City, and that’s your offer?

By Christopher Elliott | June 28, 2011August 2, 2011

Something went wrong on Karen Huntoon’s trip from Reno, Nev., to Oaxaca, Mexico. Very wrong.

Her itinerary, which included stops in Phoenix and Mexico City, was confirmed by US Airways, she says. But it shouldn’t have been so confident about getting Huntoon to her final destination.

“When I went to check in for the next leg of my flight from Mexico City to Oaxaca I was told that my seats had been cancelled — both coming and going,” she says. “For five hours, I tried without success to get on the flight. I got absolutely no help. Finally, at 10 p.m. I had to go and find a hotel and then the next day take a cab to the airport and ride a bus for seven hours to Oaxaca.”
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