Elliott Advocacy is a nonprofit organization that mediates cases between consumers and businesses. These are commentary articles that detail our efforts and provide educational information for consumers.
Ever considered medical tourism?
Bill and Eleanor Seavey run a small inn near Hearst Castle in California, but when they go on vacation, they head south. In a few weeks, they’re planning to visit Los Algodones, Mexico, just across the border from Yuma, Arizona, for some sun – and dental work.
Sondra Wolf fractures her patella on a trip to the Canadian Rockies. Although she files a valid travel insurance Trip Mate claim, the company is stalling on her payment. But why?
Emanuel Bryant hires TMShipping to transport his car to Las Vegas. But when the company fails to show up on time, it triggers a cascade of unfortunate events. Can we fix this?
Basic economy class airfares are getting complicated. And that’s leaving many travelers wondering if they should completely avoid basic economy airfares.
Sue Elwell is one of those travelers. She’s planning to visit her mother in Albany, N.Y., and is unhappy with the restrictions on the lowest-priced basic economy class tickets. On American Airlines, passengers with these tickets are allowed no upgrades or schedule changes, they’re the last to board and they’re not assigned seats until they check in.
Hackers are trying to steal your vacation. They’re coming after your personal data, your credit card information and your loyalty points.
Worst of all, they might already have them.
Getting into a timeshare is easy. Getting out of a timeshare isn’t.
A day isn’t 24 hours. More like 41 hours, as Edd Vinci discovered when he had a Ritz-Carlton problem involving a cancellation and Expedia.
Some hotels allow you to cancel a reservation up to 24 hours before your arrival without penalty. So Vinci, who had booked a night at the Ritz-Carlton Dove Mountain in Tucson, believed he had plenty of time when he canceled his stay a full 41 hours before his arrival.
He was wrong.
When is a Holiday Inn actually a Rodeway Inn? When you’re booking on TripAdvisor, that’s when. At least that’s what Thomas Burgei discovered when he tried to make a reservation through the site and encountered a TripAdvisor website error that he couldn’t resolve.
Alyson McFarland’s Alitalia problem may be solvable. She’d missed her flight from Johannesburg to Tunis even though she showed up at the airport on time. But the solution isn’t going to make her happy, and it probably won’t make you happy, either.
At first, Beverly Parker’s Greyhound bus problem looked like a slam dunk case. Valuables had gone missing from her checked luggage during a recent trip from Birmingham, Ala., to Albion, Mich. And Greyhound wasn’t exactly breaking a land speed record to help her. But then I read the details of her request, and a simple case suddenly became complicated. It wasn’t the $150,000 claim amount that fazed me. My computer adds a few extra characters if I don’t release the zero key fast enough. I was certain that was a typo.It was everything else.
