Summer travel advice? Try being nice

Steve Wood/Shutterstock
Steve Wood/Shutterstock
Are you still forgetting to pack your manners when you travel? If you are, then please meet Grace, a flight attendant who recently turned to me for some career advice.

She’s had it up to here with her job, and she wants to know what to do next.

“I’m very aware that I’m in a service position,” she told me. “I am polite, not surly or rude.”

But passengers rarely return the favor.
[continue]


147 comments

How to tell the TSA how to do its job – and how to get it to listen

Micha/Shutterstock
Micha/Shutterstock
If you’re afraid a TSA agent might bungle your screening when you fly somewhere this summer, maybe you should do what John Klapproth did when he was traveling from Seattle to Anchorage recently.

Like many air travelers, Klapproth declined to use the TSA’s full-body scanner, and was sent to a holding area for an “enhanced” pat-down.

“I told the TSA agent that was no problem,” he says. “I explained to him that I was a retired state corrections officer with 25 years experience doing pat-searches in a maximum security prison and knew what to expect. I also told him that I knew a proper pat-search could be performed without touching my genitals or anal areas and that I did not consent to be touched on either area.”
[continue]


39 comments

Should I fire my travel agent?

Photopixel/Shutterstock
Photopixel/Shutterstock

Question: My fiancée and I are planning our destination wedding in Jamaica this summer and are using a travel agent. We’re also using the travel agent for our honeymoon at a different resort on the island. We will be in Jamaica for two weeks. There are about 40 people booked at this time, with only a couple more to book. She has been going through Apple Vacations to help book the flights and hotels.

Our problems began back at the beginning of this year. Our agent had a couple of relatives pass away. We have tried to call and email the agent several times with little or no response. We even went to her house (she works from home) and talked with her in person, voicing our concern of the lack of communication.

We also have asked her, on a couple of occasions, to charge part of our stay to our credit card, she has not done this yet. We would like to space out the charges so we don’t get hit with it all at once.
[continue]


31 comments

I probably can’t help these customers, but should I still try?

paris2If you knew you were a consumer advocate but knew you probably couldn’t help a consumer, what would you say?

For example, if you heard from someone like Donna Hamilton, who is looking for a refund on French taxes, how would you respond?

Hamilton made two purchases on her credit card in Paris last year. You can get your French “value-added” tax refunded if you’re leaving the country, and there are several services that help you, refunding the purchase directly to your credit card.
[continue]


39 comments

Bad holiday travel advice – and the bad pundits who give it

I’m done with offering the same dry travel advice every year at about this time. Finished!

You’ve seen the tips: book your tickets early, travel on the holiday, spread your legs for the TSA and you’re guaranteed to have a good trip.

But the travel advice you’re likely to read around the holidays is growing mold, and not once in all of my years of offering it to my good readers has anyone written to say “thank you for recycling.”

You deserve better.
[continue]


93 comments