policy

How do I choose the right travel insurance policy?

Editor’s note: This is part two in a series of posts about travel insurance sponsored by Access America. Here’s part one.

Nina Boal needs a travel insurance policy. But with so many choices out there, which one should she buy?

“I want to see if I can buy appropriate policy,” she says. “I checked online, and can’t find any direct answers.”

She’s right. An online search for “travel insurance” is likely to pull up a long and confusing list of possible answers. But there are really just three options.
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What’s the TSA’s policy? Search me!

Just a few days before the busy holiday travel period, the Transportation Security Administration has decided to change the rules of flying – again.

At the beginning of this month, the agency began enforcing its name-matching requirements for airline tickets. Passengers must now provide their full names as they appear on a government-issued ID, their date of birth and their gender when they book a flight.

After a terrorism scare involving explosive devices shipped by cargo, the government banned printer cartridges from luggage.

And the TSA started implementing several new screening measures, including an enhanced “pat-down” protocol for air travelers who opt out of a full-body scan.

The agency appears to be phasing in these new procedures unevenly, leading to frequent confrontations with air travelers. At some airports, passengers are being randomly asked to go through the scanners, while at others, they must all be screened by the machines or by hand. At one airport last week, passengers were both scanned and frisked.
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London hotel takes a hard line on stranded air traveler’s refund request

Yotel is a Japanese-style capsule hotel at London’s Heathrow airport. It won the Business Travel World Award for best accommodations — a fact that its managers repeat endlessly in their email signatures. But volcanic eruptions? Not their problem.

John Ward discovered that when he was trapped in Istanbul last week after the volcanic eruption. An associate tried to secure a refund of his room deposit, with disappointing results.
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Help! Southwest Airlines stranded my puppy in Little Rock

puppyIt was just a matter of time before Southwest Airlines, which started accepting pets as passengers earlier this year, got into a dog-fight with a customer. Actually, this one’s more of a cat fight.

Jonathan Camp’s rescue puppy, Gatsby, had to be left in Little Rock, Ark., after airline employees decided he was too big to fly. Southwest’s policies are clearly spelled out on its Web site, but there is always room for interpretation — and it appears Camp and Southwest didn’t see the policies in the same way.

Camp asked me to intervene after Gatsby was stranded.
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Starwood tweaks onerous cancellation policy after customers compare it to airlines

wWhen Stewart Sheinfeld redeemed 10,000 Starwood points for a night at the W Chicago Lakeshore, he found a strange new rule at the bottom of his confirmation. It said if he canceled his room after 6 p.m. on the day of his arrival, he wouldn’t just lose his points — he’d also have to pay $689.

“I was shocked,” he says.

Sheinfeld checked the W’s rates on its site, and found that they were $279. That meant instead of forfeiting his points for being a no-show, Starwood was threatening to charge him the rack rate — the hotel equivalent of sticker price — for the room.

“This makes the airlines’ rules look good,” he says.

Has Starwood lost touch with reality here?
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Are hotels redefining “day” to raise revenues?

super 8If airlines can redefine the meaning of a day, then why can’t hotels?

At least one of them is, according to reader Catena Fugazotto. She recently booked two rooms at a Super 8 in Norwich, NY, for her daughter’s graduation. She was told she could cancel either one if she called within 24 hours of her stay. Trouble is, they couldn’t agree on when her stay actually begins.
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