Our advocacy team can’t do this without you.

We spend every day fighting for you — advocating cases, writing about consumer problems, pushing for positive change in the industry — but today we need your help to keep the lights on.

We’ve raised only one third of what we need to keep operating for the next three months. Every penny you contribute goes directly to the advocacy.

Here’s what that fight looks like from ground level. I just received this from Carole, who reads my column in the Palm Beach Post.

“Your repeated advice to keep a written record of correspondence during a dispute, and to contact the CEO when other efforts fail, proved invaluable during my case with American Airlines,” she reports.

After the airline turned down her request for compensation under European consumer protection law, Carole followed our advice and emailed the airline’s CEO and two other senior executives to request a review.

“Within 30 minutes of sending the message, a staff member called me personally, and the matter was resolved in my favor,” she says. “Thank you — and please keep writing.”

I can only keep writing because of the support of readers like Carole — and you. Please make a tax-deductible donation before the fundraiser ends.

Catch up on the latest stories from the Elliott Report

How a French château became a modern art spa — minus the clichés
Monique Pignet didn’t want a castle. Her family bought one in the Loire Valley anyway, restored it by hand over 17 years and turned it into a wellness resort with more than 40 resident artists, a spa inside ancient caves and a former fire juggler running the place.

StubHub told me to sell my Lady Gaga tickets elsewhere, then they charged me for it
Tony Rogozinski called StubHub to cancel his Lady Gaga listing before selling the seats privately, and an agent assured him no further action was needed. The listing stayed active, the tickets sold on the site a second time, and StubHub charged him $864 for an order he couldn’t fill.

Holland America canceled my cruise because of a pricing error. Can it do that?
Cindy Woodring booked a 10-day Zuiderdam sailing at $479 a person, applied a $200 credit and paid the $758 balance in full. Three days later Holland America called the fare a pricing error and billed her $1,530 more, then offered a complimentary stateroom upgrade to anyone willing to pay it.

Hells bells! How did these AC/DC tickets go from front stage to the worst seats in the house?
Jerry Auer paid $506 for AC/DC tickets at Notre Dame Stadium after StubHub’s seating chart showed Section 121 beside the stage, and the official venue map put those seats behind it. StubHub fixed the flipped map the day after he reported it, then used the corrected version to tell him he had bought precisely what he ordered.

Triple-stacking and high-low tracking: New strategies for preventing luggage loss
Virgin Australia scanned my son’s purple Peak Design rollaboard in Queenstown and again in Melbourne, then lost track of it for almost 48 hours. Travel experts now recommend stacking trackers on separate networks, adding a battery-free QR tag and photographing the 10-digit barcode on your bag tag at check-in.

Resort fees have been “dead” for a year. Did anyone notice?
The FTC’s fee rule has required hotels and booking sites to put the full price in the first number an American traveler sees, with taxes and optional add-ons the only things allowed to appear later. It stops at the border, so a room booked on a non-U.S. site sits outside the whole system.

Rising hotel taxes need better disclosure. Here’s the fix.
Topeka’s transient guest tax rises to 8.5% on Jan. 1 to help fund tourism marketing, a theater and a planned downtown ice rink, and the deputy mayor has noted that residents don’t pay it unless they stay in a hotel. The hotel industry generated $85.1 billion in taxes last year, and your folio still reports the whole stack on a single line marked “taxes.”

Jane Miller accepts that she owes Sixt $133.70 for a tire she damaged on a rental in May, and she has been asking since June for the paperwork behind the other $600 in administrative, towing and loss-of-use charges. Sixt has denied her dispute and says the claim is headed to collections. What can a traveler do to keep a disputed bill away from a collection agency? Here’s our team’s advice on Backchannel.