A nationally syndicated Q&A column that solves travel problems.
Two days before Judy Lambert left for her snorkeling trip to Cuba, she got some bad news: Her husband tested positive for COVID. The trip was a washout — and $15,194 went down the drain.
Or did it?
Lambert had used her Chase Sapphire Reserve Visa to pay for her trip, and her card came with gold-plated travel insurance coverage. After she filed a claim with Chase, a representative assured her she was fully covered for her loss.
Ben Neumann’s hard-earned family vacation ended with him angry and disappointed — so disappointed that he wants his 173,116 Chase Ultimate Rewards points refunded.
Is that allowed? No it isn’t — but when has that ever stopped our advocacy team from trying?
Think you deserve a tour refund? Maybe not.
That’s what Robert Grabe discovered when he booked a Rocky Mountaineer tour before the pandemic.
Rocky Mountaineer offers rail tours of the Canadian Rockies, with stops in places like Jasper, Whistler and Kamloops. There’s also a can’t-miss adventure from Denver to Moab, Utah, through the legendary red rocks.
Grabe placed a deposit of $3,618 for a Canadian rail tour. Then the pandemic hit. Rocky Mountaineer canceled his trip and rescheduled him for 2021. Then it canceled his 2021 trip again and tried to reschedule it.
Russ DeVries’ recent car rental experience in Boston is about as strange as it gets. He picked up a midsize sedan at Logan airport, drove to a meeting, and returned the car the next day. When he handed the keys back to a Budget employee, no one said anything to him about a $450 rental cleaning fee for dog hair.
But a few weeks later, that’s all Budget could talk about.
Before Dan Seaman moved into his rental apartment in Washington D.C. this summer, he didn’t review Airbnb’s refund policy for guests. Nor did he bother to check if the apartment had air conditioning.
What kind of Airbnb in D.C. wouldn’t offer a working AC?
But when he arrived on a blazing hot June day, his bedroom felt like the inside of an Istanbul steam bath. There was an air conditioning unit in the wall, but it didn’t work. He asked the host to fix the AC, but the host dismissed him. When he turned to Airbnb for help, he says the vacation rental platform also blew him off.
Can a cruise line require a COVID vaccination after you book your vacation — and keep your money if you don’t comply? That’s what Abraham Sublaban wants to know as he faces the loss of $763 in cruise credits from Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL).
And even though the answer may seem obvious to you, it has the potential to affect your next cruise — or any other trip — long after the pandemic ends.
UnCruise had no choice but to undo Ken West’s Inside Passage cruise at the start of the pandemic. Now West wants to unravel the company’s future cruise credit offer. But is a cruise credit refund even possible?
West’s tale of a scuttled cruise is all too common.
In 2020, he was about to set sail on a 12-day tour from Seattle to Juneau, Alaska, on the Wilderness Discoverer. Then COVID hit.
Out of the blue, Hertz confiscated Marcus Hall’s loyalty points and banned him for life. His crime? The car rental company discovered an unpaid $6 toll charge — from 2012.
Seriously. Hertz said a partner company that processes toll charges had conducted an audit and found the delinquent invoice. But Hall had never received a bill or any notification.
Before Hall could even ask for documentation of the $6 charge, Hertz simply added him to its Do Not Rent List and stripped him of his points.
Can a ridesharing service charge you for damage to a car even if you’re not responsible? Just ask LeeAnn Hicks, who recently hailed a Lyft in New York. A few hours later, Lyft charged her credit card $150 for “cigarette burns” in the car seat.
“I did not cause the damage,” Hicks fumed.
Hicks couldn’t have caused the damage because she doesn’t smoke. But none of that seemed to matter to Lyft, which insisted on charging the $150 damage fee.
Is this a scam? Can rideshare companies like Lyft and Uber arbitrarily charge your credit card without your permission or asking for your side of the story? And how do you fight an frivolous damage fee?
