Bayard Allmond is told his rental car won’t come with an extra driver fee for his wife, but when he gets his bill, he finds the surcharge, anyway. Is there any way to get his car rental company to make good on its promise?
It’s not your imagination. Congress seems to be paying closer attention to travelers’ welfare.
When it comes to airline fees, there’s no shortage of outrage. The simple mention of the word “ancillary” or “surcharge” in a story is enough to draw hundreds of comments.
I’m always on the lookout for new fees, so when Katherine Walton emailed me about her recent stay at the Chateau Timberline, a hotel in Packwood, Wash., she had my attention.
Search for a flight between Washington and Los Angeles on United.com and you’ll find a notice posted high above the fares saying, “Additional baggage charges may apply.”
When Stacey Koprince rents a car with her partner in Hilton Head, SC, there’s an additional driver fee of $5 a day – a fee Enterprise had promised not to charge. What now?
To get an idea of what the hotel bill of the future might look like, take a look at your present bill at the Atlantis in the Bahamas.
Codesharing, or allowing multiple airlines to sell tickets on the same flight as if it were their own, can lead to a lot of confusion. And it’s more than just a matter of, “What flight am I on?”
When a Hampton Inn hotel charges Alia Naffouj twice for the same room, there are two surprise overdraft fees on Naffouj’s credit card. Hampton is dragging its feet on a refund. Is there anything Naffouj can do to get the money back?
The airline industry is profitable again, thanks in no small part to the billions of dollars in fees it collects from passengers every year. And it’s not just reservation change fees ($2.3 billion), checked baggage ($2.7 billion) and “miscellaneous” fees (almost $3 billion) that air travelers shelled out in 2009; now carriers are getting even more creative with their charges, imposing them for everything from redeeming frequent flier miles to carrying a bag on the plane.
