Michael Sly, Queenstown’s compost king, shows off a handful of fresh lawn latte powder at his fruit stand. (Photo by Aren Elliott)
👋 Happy Friday — It may be sweltering hot back home (it sure is here in Seoul), but it’s the dead of winter in New Zealand. I visited the South Island to report on how one entrepreneur is growing watermelons right now and maybe saving the planet. On Backchannel, we’re doing our first Ask Me Anything session. Feel free to send me your questions now. I also have a report on a devious hotel scam in our Members Only section. Have a great weekend!
How Queenstown’s compost king grows watermelons in the dead of winter
On the shortest day of the year in Queenstown, New Zealand, the ground is frozen hard and the valley sits in shadow. Michael Sly is out harvesting watermelons and eggplant. His secret is a steaming pile of food scraps from the town’s hotels, and the whole region is counting on it to hit a carbon-zero target by 2030. How does a compost pile grow summer fruit in winter?
🔓 PLUS: Four hotel booking sites are mailing refund checks for a fee they added through a pre-checked box. Whether you get one depends on where you live. The details are in our Members Only section. Scroll down for more.
Our company contacts just got the biggest upgrade ever
All week, I’ve been talking about our massive changes to the Elliott Report and the new Backchannel forum—all designed to help you get the information you need faster and easier.
But we’ve saved the best for last.
Our company contacts got a big upgrade yesterday evening.
They look different—they’re easier to read, easier to access—but that’s not the biggest change. It’s what’s going on behind the scenes. We’ve created a system that will boost the accuracy of the contacts by 80 percent.
Our goal is to eliminate bounced emails and 800-numbers that never answer. Executives hire large reputation management companies to hide their names and addresses. This redesign will make that all but impossible.
By the way, today is the last weekday that our entire newsletter is free. You can read everything because there’s no paywall.
P.S. Upgrading is what keeps the consumer journalism in this newsletter funded. You’ll get the Members Only section in every issue, the private forum on Backchannel and the rest of the extras.
OUR UNDERWRITER
Cavalry Elite Travel Insurance takes the worry out of travel by providing 24/7 access to medical and security professionals combined with the best medical evacuation and security extraction services. Cavalry gets you home safely when you need it most. Learn more at Cavalrytravelinsurance.com.
📌 Here’s what you missed this week
Catch up on the latest stories from the Elliott Report
In Queenstown, tourism sustainability comes down to earth
Hotel food waste from 95 percent of the town’s luxury properties becomes 1,200 tons of soil a year. The produce goes back into resort kitchens, and the surplus sells from a roadside stand that runs on the honor system.
StubHub says the Rick Springfield concert was postponed, but it wasn’t. Can I get a refund?
A rescheduled date never made it into StubHub’s system, so his tickets stayed locked on the night of the show. The venue confirmed the concert went ahead, but the company’s records still list it as pending.
Who pays for a flat tire on a Turo rental? It’s complicated
A blowout at 40 mph in the New Hampshire mountains turned up two front tires worn down to the metal. Turo cleared him of fault, reversed itself an hour later and billed him $500.
Booking.com rented him a room with blood on the walls. Why won’t it refund his $313?
A studio apartment in Penang, Malaysia, came with bloodstains, mold and someone else’s hair in the bedding. Booking.com says the refund is the host’s call, and the host says cancel.
The ugly truth about August travel: Why you should stay home—or do this
August travel means thin staffing, dirty rooms and more cancellations, all at peak prices. Why the system breaks down every summer and how to work around it.
Would you pay extra to use the overhead bin?
If you’ve ever wondered what they’ll think of next—at least when it comes to airline fees—here’s your answer: Jetstar announced this week that it will soon charge you to put a bag in the overhead bin.
A stunning reversal for airline consumer rights
The government hasn’t assessed a single civil penalty against an airline for violating consumer protection rules this year.
OUR UNDERWRITER
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💬 What you’re talking about
A first solo trip to Glasgow, and what you said about the StubHub refund
Vicki Burton is 70 and taking her first international trip, solo, to Glasgow in January. The flights and hotel are booked and she’ll be there for Robert Burns’ birthday. Michael Shaikun told her to carry a no-fee credit card, charge in local currency and learn the tipping customs before she goes. My answer ran longer: Burns suppers sell out weeks ahead, Medicare stops at the border, and it’ll be dark by 4:15 in the afternoon. What would you tell a first-time solo traveler?
Yesterday’s StubHub case drew comments all day, and several of you had had enough of the company. George Schulman pointed out that the Wall Street Journal reported StubHub’s World Cup ticket mess wiped out its profits for the quarter, with the stock down to $7.24. OnePersonOrAnother made the point I keep coming back to: a human can always override an automatic denial, and the hard part is reaching the human who can. One of you said the lesson is to buy from the venue’s own site and skip the resellers. What do you think?
OUR UNDERWRITER
EMBARK Beyond is a luxury travel advisory dedicated to creating thoughtfully designed experiences that go beyond a destination. Focused first on client needs, we have built (and continue to build!) relationships with the world’s most sought-after lifestyle and fashion brands to open the world - beyond imagination - to our clients. Find out more at EMBARK Beyond.
MEMBERS ONLY
Information and insights for Elliott Confidential PRO subscribers
Four hotel booking sites are mailing refund checks for a fee nobody agreed to pay
More than 12,000 people in Washington state are getting checks for questionable hotel booking add-ons.
The Washington attorney general’s office just announced a settlement with Lexyl Technologies and Bookonline.com worth $750,000. The fees they allegedly charged are a common complaint among our readers.
From November 2023 through March 2025, four booking sites added a “refund protection” fee to hotel reservations through a box that arrived already checked.
The sites were Hotel-rates.com, Room77.com, HotelGuides.com and Bookonline.com.
The box sat at the bottom of the reservation page, below the billing fields, in light gray type. To get the fee off your bill, you had to click a second box agreeing to “downgrade your experience to no refunds and no exchanges for any reason.”
The attorney general’s office alleged this violated Washington’s Consumer Protection Act and a federal statute called the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act. ROSCA is the part worth remembering. It’s federal, so it doesn’t stop at the Washington state line, and it’s the law behind most of the enforcement you’ve seen against pre-checked add-ons and hard-to-cancel subscriptions.
The mechanism has a name: negative option feature. A seller treats your inaction as your consent. You didn’t say yes and you didn’t say no, so the company counted the silence as a yes.
Both companies cooperated with the investigation and rebuilt their checkout pages so the fee is now opt-in.
What this means for you:
Checks go out within 90 days of the filing, to the last billing address on file. If you’ve moved since 2025, that’s a problem you have to solve yourself. The envelope reads IMPORTANT NOTICE REGARDING REFUND.
A partial refund already received doesn’t disqualify you. Those consumers get checks for the balance.
Outside Washington, you aren’t in this settlement. ROSCA is enforced by the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general rather than by individuals, so the route is a complaint to your own state’s office, not a lawsuit.
Remember to screenshot the checkout page before you pay for a hotel. A pre-checked box is the best exhibit you can bring to a credit card dispute. Without it you’re arguing about what a website looked like months ago.
Also, read the confirmation email line by line rather than checking the total. These fees are built to survive a glance.
The takeaway: If you booked a hotel through one of those four sites between November 2023 and March 2025, watch your mail. Everywhere else, screenshot the checkout before you pay. You can read the attorney general’s announcement or file a consumer complaint.