Staff! It’s almost 2024 and travelers keep making the same mistakes.
It seems like their best method for success is to communicate via polite, concise email questions rather than phone calls, online chat, or web forms. These customer service email addresses can be harder to find, but that means they may get faster attention or better service. Plus, they provide a clean, written report that you can forward two weeks later if you don’t hear anything.
And if you don’t, aim higher. When Amy from St. Paul, Minnesota, wrote to me asking for help with a $1,172 United Airlines credit that was proving impossible to use, I suggested she elliott.org/company-contacts, a site run by Elliott Advocacy, a nonprofit that does Tripped Up-like work providing contact information for travel providers. She told me she wrote to a United customer service representative and heard a resolution the same day. “Magic!” she said.
If emails sent directly to your service provider fail, complaints may be filed with your credit card company, the Better Business Bureau, your state’s attorney general (or insurance department for insurance-related matters), and the federal transportation department (for flights).
Make sure you’re right
Passengers often write to me indignantly, complaining that an airline has canceled their entire itinerary just because they missed one leg. Yet that is a widespread, well-documented rule. Not fair? I absolutely agree, but there’s nothing I can do other than tell you to (please) write to your congressman.
People also often refuse to buy travel insurance because they think that if they get sick, they can simply provide a doctor’s note and the airline, cruise line or hotel will refund the money. But this isn’t a primary school, and although companies sometimes make exceptions, you can’t count on it. Tong, from Sebastopol, California, wrote to me to say that when his wife, Elizabeth, fell ill with Covid-19 during a trip to Italy in October, easyJet would not refund them $390 for an unused flight from Naples to Palermo. That might have worked during the peak of the pandemic. Not anymore.