Five stars, every one of them. (Illustration by Dustin Elliott)
🤖 The reviews were all posted the same week — I've been tracking travel scams for decades, and the newest ones don't need a con artist, just a clever AI prompt. A hotel can buy itself a review page full of five stars, then seed a Reddit thread that reads like a stranger doing you a favor. You can read the full story today.
On Backchannel, Chris Gralapp is flying Aeromexico again and running into a 10-kilo cabin limit that counts the roll-aboard and the personal item together. Wearing the heavy stuff is only half the answer.
For Members Only: Filing a complaint about robocalls has always felt like shouting into the void. The FCC wants to change that. Plus my long-awaited Forbes exclusive story on Seoul's coffee scene. — Christopher Elliott
FEATURED ARTICLE
How AI bots are deceiving travelers — and what to do about it
More than 20 percent of luxury hotel reviews were written by AI last year, double the rate in 2022, and 57 percent of the fakes carried five stars. Reputation firms run sock puppet accounts across platforms and seed discussion threads that read like honest advice. The tells are there if you know where to look. How do you spot a review a machine wrote?
THIS WEEK'S PODCAST
Opening the F-Files on our most spectacular advocacy failures
For weeks we brought you the consumer cases my team resolved. This one is about the cases we lost. Welcome to the F-Files, the pile-ups and disasters we couldn't fix, and I have to admit Iden and I had way too much fun recording it. This episode contains explicit language and adult themes, so listener discretion is advised.
ELLIOTT CONFIDENTIAL
Opening The F-Files On Our Most Spectacular Failures
OUR UNDERWRITER
Travelex Insurance Services is a leading travel insurance provider in the United States with over 55 years combined industry expertise of helping people dream, explore and travel with confidence. We offer comprehensive travel insurance plans with optional upgrades allowing travelers to customize the plans to fit their needs. Compare plans, get a quote and buy online at Travelexinsurance.com.
📌 Here’s what you missed this week
Catch up on the latest stories from the Elliott Report
How AI bots are deceiving travelers—and what to do about it
A Baltimore engineer booked a Hershey, Pa., hotel on reviews praising its upscale amenities and attentive service, then found a broken air conditioner and dirty sheets. He checked the timestamps and saw the reviews had all posted in the same week.
Why I turned down a $15,000 case
A Pennsylvania carpenter says a fraudulent Western Union transfer cost him $15,000, and my team couldn’t take the case. It’s also the peg for our relaunched podcast, which opens on another file we lost and the twist that brought it back two years later.
JetBlue, Southwest and a week that changed everything
JetBlue announced a domestic first class cabin on Sept. 1, and the next morning Southwest said it’s opening airport lounges in four cities. For 25 years these were the two airlines that did it differently, and that ended in about 24 hours.
How to find $4,762 when Comcast says it’s gone
A San Francisco reader meant to pay her credit card and sent $4,762 to Comcast by mistake. The refund came back on a prepaid debit card, and by the time she checked the balance it read $82, with no transaction list anyone could produce to explain it.
Banned by JetBlue after booking through the wrong website
A caregiver who flies Hartford to Fort Lauderdale twice a month paid $468 through a site called Farehub. JetBlue’s records show the ticket was bought with someone else’s travel voucher, and an agent stopped her at the gate.
Do you have a high travel IQ? Here’s how you can tell
A behavioral researcher watched one traveler come apart over a gate change in Tokyo while another passenger walked away and solved it. Travel IQ is the gap between what you think you know and how the world works, and there are seven signs yours needs work.
Americans are tearing down surveillance cameras. Then they’re lining up for one at the airport.
Americans spent the summer packing city council meetings and cutting down license plate cameras, and last week the company behind them rewrote its privacy rules. A lot of those same people drove to the airport, walked up to a checkpoint and let a machine photograph their face.
OUR UNDERWRITER
TravelInsurance.com makes it fast and easy to compare and buy travel insurance online from top-rated providers. Our unbiased comparison engine allows travelers to read reviews, compare pricing and benefits and buy the right policy with a price guarantee, every time. Compare and buy travel insurance now at TravelInsurance.com.
💬 What you’re saying on Backchannel
Better gate-check that bag, senior.
Chris Gralapp found out the hard way that Aeromexico caps cabin baggage at 10 kilos, and that the limit covers the roll-aboard and the personal item together. The rule is still on the books this year, so the plan is to pack light and move the electronics into a coat pocket before anything reaches the scale. Is the weight limit about faster boarding or about checked bag revenue? Here’s what our team said on Backchannel.
OUR UNDERWRITER
Yonder Travel Insurance is an online travel insurance comparison site offering 5-star customer service from friendly humans, guiding you from quotes to claims. Our experts have poured over hundreds of policies from the top travel insurance providers in the US to provide the best travel insurance recommendations for the type of trip you take. Compare travel insurance options at Yonder Travel Insurance.
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