When Hawaiian Airlines canceled Rich’s flight at the last minute, he paid $877 more to fly his daughter’s family of five to Maui on United. The airline balked at covering his costs, so he contacted us for help.

We didn’t wave a magical wand to help Rich, but our team did something better. We supplied him with executive contacts — and we showed him how to fight.

Rich got $1,250 in flight credits as a result.

“I want to thank you for being willing to help me,” he says. “Without your article and comments in our local paper, I may not have tried to get a reimbursement.”

That’s what we do. But our advocacy work depends on readers like Rich — and you. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to our fall fundraiser today.

Catch up on the latest stories from the Elliott Report

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.

Help! My $1,866 Lenovo Yoga is an expensive paperweight
Tracey Croisier’s $1,866 Lenovo Yoga 9 started dropping from 100 percent to 30 percent battery in two hours less than a year after she bought it, and an in-home technician replaced the battery and the motherboard without fixing it. Six repair tickets later the laptop was peaking at 134 degrees, and a Lenovo representative suggested she turn it off during her 10-mile drive to class.

Help! Swiss bumped us to the back of the plane, and now our refund is gone
Mila Schoun paid $3,274 for premium economy from Miami to Prague, and Swiss moved him and his wife to economy for the long leg home, a downgrade worth $165 under European rules. The airline told him he had already collected an Easy Cash card at the Zurich airport, and he had never seen one.

Experian said his credit was unfrozen. So why couldn’t he buy a car?
Robert Boisvert asked Experian to lift a credit freeze so he could finance a car, mailed two certified letters with copies of his ID and his utility bills and waited three months. Experian told our advocates the freeze had come off the day he asked, and the only letter that reached him said his account was inactive.

David Stuebner was logged into his AAdvantage account, booking two tickets on American Airlines, when the fare came up at $1,791. While he entered his wife’s passenger information, the price climbed to $2,325 without any change to the flights, dates or fare class, and more than an hour with reservations agents got him no explanation. Is this a bait and switch? Here’s our team’s advice on Backchannel.