Their best method for success, it seems, is to communicate through polite, concise email queries rather than phone calls or online chat or web forms. Those customer service email addresses are sometimes harder to find, but that means they may receive faster attention or better service. Plus, they make for a clean, written record that you can pass on two weeks later if you don’t hear back.
And if not, aim higher. When Amy from St. Paul, Minn., wrote me asking for help with a $1,172 credit from United Airlines that proved impossible to use, I suggested he use elliott.org/company-contacts, a site run by Elliott Advocacy, a nonprofit that does something like Tripped Up and provides contact information for travel providers. He told me he wrote to a customer care executive at United and heard back the same day with a solution. “Magic!” he says.
If emails sent directly to your service provider fail, what might work are complaints to your credit card issuer, the Better Business Bureau, your state’s attorney general (or insurance department for cases related to insurance) and the federal Department of Transportation (for flights).
Make sure you’re right
Passengers often write to me in exasperation, with complaints that an airline canceled their entire itinerary simply because they missed a leg. However, that is a widespread, well-documented rule. Unequal? I totally agree, but I can’t help but tell you to (please) write to your member of Congress.
People also often refuse to take out travel insurance because they think that if they get sick they can just submit a doctor’s note and the airline or cruise line or hotel will reimburse them. But this isn’t grade school, and while companies sometimes make exceptions, you can’t count on it. Tong of Sebastopol, Calif., wrote me that when his wife, Elizabeth, contracted Covid-19 on a trip to Italy in October, easyJet would not refund them $390 for an unused Naples flight to Palermo. In a peak pandemic, that might work. No longer.
