🛟 A personal note from Chris
I write Elliott Confidential to give you the truth about your rights as a consumer. Your PRO subscription makes that independent reporting possible.
I want to personally invite you to join us today.
Through Monday, Sept. 7, you can upgrade to a year of PRO for $59.50 instead of the usual $85. That comes out to about $1 a week.
Here’s what you get:
Members only reports. An exclusive, fully researched dispatch in every issue — including cases like today’s reader who got banned by JetBlue.
A private Backchannel. Direct access to three private channels where we answer all your consumer questions.
The keys to our vault. Unrestricted access to every book and guide I've written, including How To Be The World's Smartest Traveler.
Your upgrade directly funds our advocacy work. I appreciate you reading and being part of this community. — Christopher Elliott
Are you a travel dummy? (Illustration by Dustin Elliott)
✈ Ever booked a flight through a site you’d never heard of? — One of our readers did for a JetBlue flight. An agent stopped her at the gate in Fort Lauderdale with some bad news: She’d been banned. You can read the full story today.
On Backchannel, Robyn Whittingham is taking her son, his wife and their two toddlers to Spain and Italy, and she wants to know whether the border waits she keeps reading about are real. I went and got her the numbers, along with the two rules that can lift a family with small children out of the kiosk line.
For Members Only: Airfare to the most popular Labor Day destinations is running nearly 20 percent above last year, hotel rates are up 9 percent, and the worst of the traffic lands in an eight-hour window on Friday. What the weekend costs, and when to leave. — Christopher Elliott
JetBlue banned her at the gate over a $468 ticket she paid for
Athena Smith flies from Hartford to Fort Lauderdale twice a month to look after her 95-year-old mother, and JetBlue is the only airline that does it nonstop. She paid $468 for her last round trip through a site called Farehub, and she has the credit card statement to show for it. At the gate in Fort Lauderdale an agent told her the ticket had been bought with someone else’s travel voucher, and that she was banned from the airline until she paid for it again. Can she get her seat back?
OUR UNDERWRITER
Southwest Airlines is dedicated to the highest quality of customer service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and Company Spirit. We are committed to providing our employees with a stable work environment with equal opportunity for learning and personal growth.
📌 Here’s what you missed this week
Catch up on the latest stories from the Elliott Report
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.
Can you turn tourists into conservationists? How one tour operator is trying to close the “say-do” gap
RealNZ raised $270,000 for predator control and replaced invasive pines with about 30,000 native trees across the lake from Queenstown. Its chief executive says the hard part is getting visitors to care once they start comparing prices.
The Bruno Mars ticket glitch that only affected fans with disabilities
A Chicago reader filtered Ticketmaster for ADA seating and watched every seat he selected come back unavailable. The next day the same seats were available through resellers, at a markup.
Avis charged her for returning a car early. Then things got complicated
A medic working in the North Sea cut a rental in Spain short after a family emergency, and the bill nearly doubled. Avis called the extra charge an error, refunded most of it and kept about $130.
How to get a refund when your luxury hotel stay goes to the dogs
A Westin resort on Hilton Head Island caps pets at 40 pounds, two to a room, and then let shepherds and pointers ride the elevators. A Lifetime Titanium member wrote to the general manager and got silence.
OUR UNDERWRITER
Surf Air Mobility is a California-based air mobility platform. With its AI-enabled SurfOS software and electrification programs, Surf Air Mobility provides technology designed to support the modernization of air operations and the adoption of next-generation aircraft. Surf Air Mobility currently operates one of the largest commuter airlines in the United States by scheduled departures, which provides operational scale and real-world operating data to validate and deploy its software.
💬 What you’re saying
Are Europe’s border lines as bad as you’ve heard? Plus, what a high travel IQ looks like in the comments
Will this line ever end?
The comments on yesterday's story about travel IQ filled up with readers adding to the list. Sandra Gershenfeld would put registering with STEP on it, because the State Department knowing where you are can be the difference between someone looking for you and nobody knowing you're missing. Linda Smith backed her up with her son on a Sri Lankan beach during the tsunami, out of touch until he reached the airport to fly home. Rachel and Gerri Hether both voted against making airlines text gate changes, Gerri because much of the world doesn't post a gate until 20 minutes out, which ends the problem before it starts. Would you add an eighth sign?
Robyn Whittingham is flying to Spain and Italy with her son, his wife and their two toddlers, and she asked on Backchannel whether the Entry/Exit System waits she keeps reading about are real. Elizabeth Uppenbrink told her not to worry, since her clients cleared Rome and Catania in about 20 minutes recently and Frankfurt took her maybe 10. I think Elizabeth is right, and I went after the numbers anyway. Read the rest of my answer, including what changes in Italy after Sept. 6
OUR UNDERWRITER
Travel Leaders Group is transforming travel through its progressive approach toward each unique travel experience. Travel Leaders Group assists millions of travelers through its leisure, business and network travel operations under a variety of diversified divisions and brands, including All Aboard Travel, Andrew Harper Travel, Colletts Travel, Corporate Travel Services, CruCon Cruise Outlet, Cruise Specialists, Nexion, Protravel International, SinglesCruise.com, Travel Leaders Corporate, Travel Leaders Network and Tzell Travel Group, and its merger with ALTOUR. With more than 7,000 agency locations and 52,000 travel advisors, Travel Leaders Group ranks as one of the industry’s largest retail travel agency companies.
The rest of this newsletter names names.
Our exclusive Members Only stories go beyond the alerts and to the detail: who's running the scams, what happens to your information, and what to do if you already gave it up. PRO subscribers get one in every issue, plus Backchannel, our private forum, where you can bring me your own case. It costs about a dollar a week through Labor Day.
GET 30 PERCENT OFF AND FULL ACCESS