Their best method for achievement, it seems, is to speak via polite, concise email queries quite than phone calls or online chat or web forms. Those customer support email addresses are sometimes harder to search out, but meaning they could receive faster attention or higher service. Plus, they make for a clean, written record you’ll be able to forward two weeks later if you happen to don’t hear back.
And if you happen to don’t, aim higher. When Amy from St. Paul, Minn., wrote to me asking for help with a $1,172 credit from United Airlines that was proving unimaginable to make use of, I suggested she use elliott.org/company-contacts, a site run by Elliott Advocacy, a nonprofit that does Tripped Up-like work and provides contact information for travel providers. She told me she wrote to a customer care executive at United and heard back the identical day with an answer. “Magic!” she said.
If emails sent on to your service provider fail, what could work are complaints to your bank card issuer, the Better Business Bureau, your state’s attorney general (or department of insurance for insurance-related cases) and the federal Transportation Department (for flights).
Be sure you might be right
Passengers often write to me outraged, with complaints that an airline canceled their entire itinerary simply because they missed one leg. Yet, that’s a widespread, well-documented rule. No fair? I absolutely agree, but can do nothing except let you know to (please) write to your member of Congress.
People also often decline to get travel insurance because they think that in the event that they get sick they’ll just submit a physician’s note and the airline or cruise line or hotel will refund them. But this will not be grade school, and although corporations do sometimes make exceptions, you’ll be able to’t count on it. Tong of Sebastopol, Calif., wrote to me that when his wife, Elizabeth, fell unwell with Covid-19 during a visit to Italy in October, easyJet wouldn’t refund them $390 for an unused Naples to Palermo flight. At peak pandemic, that may need worked. Not anymore.