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Catch up on the latest stories from the Elliott Report

A blizzard canceled my flight. Why won’t Road Scholar refund my $5,999 trip?
Karen Carano, a registered nurse from Garrison, N.Y., let Road Scholar book the airfare for a 14-day program in Chile and Argentina, then watched a historic blizzard take out her departure. The replacement flights the tour operator found would have put her in South America three or four days late, and when they disappeared, Road Scholar kept the $5,999 program fee on the grounds that she had canceled inside 24 hours.

Amazon deleted his 25-year history. Here is how he got it back.
Rafael Guimaraes, a business jet pilot based in Brazil, lost a 25-year-old Amazon account, his Prime membership and an $800 Kindle library after his bank declined a $650 purchase in Costa Rica. Amazon’s American and German operations each told him the other one owned the problem, and the password recovery page demanded a phone number he had never had.

Holiday flights are packed. Board last anyway.
Air travel is heading for its busiest holiday season on record, with the average domestic Thanksgiving round trip at $402, up 31% from last year, and most major U.S. airlines charging about $10 more for a checked bag. Frequent fliers who board last and deplane last say rushing saves them nothing, because everyone ends up waiting at the same baggage carousel.

Look who decided your airline seat is big enough
The Federal Aviation Administration told Congress this summer that it sees no reason to set a minimum seat size, closing out a fight that ran through two congressional mandates, a federal appeals court and 26,100 public comments. Its own peer reviewers at the National Academies had already found that the research behind that answer can’t establish whether cramped seating slows an evacuation.

Let’s end the gotcha clause that’s making your hotel room more expensive
Hilary Azzaretti found the same rate on a Croatian hotel’s own website and on Expedia, with better cancellation terms from the booking site, so she handed her reservation to the middleman. A lawsuit filed in Seattle says Expedia’s lodging contract bars a hotel from selling for less on its own site, which builds a commission of 15% or more into the rate you pay everywhere.

Secret tunnels, breathing lamps: How Capella created a sustainable resort in Sydney
Anthony Metcalfe runs a 192-room hotel inside Sydney’s restored 1915 Department of Education building, where a shared tunnel between two heritage landmarks let the developer avoid a new excavation and the turndown gift comes from a female-owned business on Groote Eylandt. Seven years of restoration produced a luxury hotel that hands guests a QR code pointing them to somebody else’s coffee shop.

Samsung sent my broken projector back and called the case completed. Is there a way out?
William Hunt bought a $365 Samsung Freestyle projector that stopped working eight months into its one-year warranty. The authorized repair center found the unit defective and couldn’t source the parts, so Samsung closed the ticket, mailed the broken projector back and marked the service completed. Two months of calls, emails and an executive complaint produced nothing until he sent a demand letter citing the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act.

Json Cheung’s Apple account was disabled in the App Store and iTunes, and it had nothing to do with a payment or a top-up. He appealed once through Apple Support and was turned down, and Apple doesn’t publish a second level of appeal. Where do you go when a company closes the only door it offers you? Here’s our team’s advice on Backchannel.

Behind this line: who qualifies, and the two dates that decide whether you get paid or get nothing. Plus, what to do the next time a mandatory fee turns up on the last screen.

A Members Only story like this runs in every issue, along with Backchannel and the vault.