Instead, she received an apologetic e-mail from the Excellence Playa Mujeres, saying that while the hotel was “truly very sorry” about her canceled flight, it would be keeping her money. “They were unwilling to refund a penny,” says Li, who works for the city of San Francisco. “Not even in hotel credits.”
She and her husband lost $1,656, the entire cost of the hotel.
[continue]
But in October, Coleman’s wife was diagnosed with cancer.
“Her diagnosis is positive and the doctors tell us — nothing is certain, of course — that it will be a hard year, but expect that she will lead a long healthy life.”
That’s when things got a little complicated.
[continue]
[continue]
[continue]
[continue]
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.
[continue]
It looked like a lost cause.
Betty van Iersel had prepaid $3,900 for an all-inclusive seven-day French canal tour on the barge Luciole. But two weeks after she’d wired the money to the cruise line, a financial emergency forced her to cancel.
The Luciole’s owners refused to return her money, citing their refund policy. Her travel agency, Annapolis-based Special Places Travel, which specializes in European barge tours, told her that she could only get her money back if her cabin was resold. And that seemed like a remote possibility.
“I can’t afford to lose this money,” van Iersel wrote to me. “Do I have any options?”
An increasing number of cases that cross my desk look like van Iersel’s: Because of a policy or rule — not always clearly disclosed — a favorable resolution looks improbable. Though each case is different, they all tend to have one thing in common: They could have been completely avoided with a few simple preventive steps.
[continue]
