Jodi is a cancer patient who had to switch to Blue Shield of California this month. When her doctors couldn’t get approval for a scheduled chemotherapy appointment, she turned to our site for help. Here’s what she wrote:

“Blue Shield now runs approvals through a company called Accolade and my doctors are having trouble getting the information needed for a scheduled chemotherapy appointment this week,” she says. “I don’t even have a phone number to contact Blue Shield — they just send you to Accolade and the agents there are unhelpful and don’t seem to understand how health insurance works.”

Jodi sent an urgent email to the company executives that we list on our site and got a call back from Blue Shield of California executive the next morning.

“They are taking the case on and getting me the required authorizations,” she says. “I just wanted to thank you for having this site.”

Perhaps not coincidentally, we also received an email from Blue Shield of California the same day demanding that we remove the names and emails of its executives from our site.

Not gonna happen.

Stories like Jodi’s are why we keep those contacts public. But we can’t do it without you. Our fall fundraiser is wrapping up, and we’re nearing the 30% mark with just three days to go. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today.

Catch up on the latest stories from the Elliott Report

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.”

Your hotel room isn’t guaranteed. Here’s the fine print they’re hoping you won’t read.
Omer Malik reserved a king room on a low floor at a German chain hotel because he thinks about exits and stairwells for a living, and the front desk told him at midnight that a guaranteed room type belongs to elite members. Hotels have stretched run-of-house assignment, once a discount option, across full-price bookings, and a confirmation now commits the property to little more than a bed configuration.

Stephen Yi bought Anaheim Ducks tickets on StubHub at a price below what the section usually goes for, and about 48 hours later the tickets disappeared from his Apple Wallet. The Ducks confirmed in writing that the seller had recalled them, the same seats showed up relisted at a higher price, and more than two weeks on, StubHub’s order page still reads “Tickets Delivered.” What makes a ticket site produce the seats instead of closing the file with a refund? Here’s our team’s advice on Backchannel.