A NOTE FROM CHRIS

Last week I unlocked everything, including the rebuilt Elliott Report, the Members Only section, the private Backchannel. It was all free.

I did that because I built this for you and I wanted you to see it.

I had to bring the paywall back on Sunday evening, but I want to invite you to stay by upgrading your subscription today.

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🗂️ Hello from Seoul — Today’s a catch-up day, which around here means working through the mail and then, when it gets too much, leaving to find coffee. Seoul turns up more good roasters than I can get through in a month, and I think the search is turning into a story.

Today's featured article is about what happened to the things your fare and your room rate used to include. A first-class cabin with a basket of popcorn instead of a meal. A $500 hotel room with no coffee maker (see, I can’t stop talking about coffee). Don’t forget to take our positively incendiary poll. Over on Backchannel, a reader planning an expensive trip to Costa Rica wants to know whether travel insurance is a scam, and I'd love to hear from anyone who has filed a recent claim.

In our Members Only section, a federal appeals court just handed you an extra car rental bill in Colorado, and maybe elsewhere. I’ll have all the details over the paywall. — Christopher Elliott

Catch up on the latest stories from the Elliott Report

No-service summer: Why your vacation feels so cheap (but costs so much)
A first-class cabin with no meal and a $500 hotel room with no coffee maker. Companies cut service instead of raising prices after the pandemic, then found no reason to bring it back.

A child wouldn’t buckle up, so Porter Airlines canceled the entire flight
A crew found a young child standing on a seat after the plane pushed back in Victoria, British Columbia. The airfield closed at 12:30 a.m., everyone deplaned, and the airline still hasn’t said which category it filed the cancellation under.

States are doubling down on consumer protections. But why do airlines get a pass?
Washington has stopped fining airlines, so states and cities are writing the consumer rules instead. A 1978 law keeps every one of them out of the airport.

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.

A reader asks whether travel insurance is a scam, and what you said about that Porter Airlines case

Marian Styles is planning a two-week trip to Costa Rica in January and says her experience is that travel insurance companies exist to deny claims. She’s buying refundable airline tickets and weighing whether a policy is worth the money on top of that. It’s a fair question and the answer depends on what you’re insuring against. If you’ve filed a claim and been paid, or been turned down, she’d like to hear about it. Is travel insurance a scam?

Almost none of you thought Porter Airlines should have canceled the flight where a young passenger wouldn’t sit down. Sam Phillips Gershenfeld asked why the airline didn’t just deplane the one family and rebook them, and plenty of you went after the parents rather than the airline. Warren Bennett turned on me instead, saying the story was short on incident reports and citations, and that he’d never thought of the Elliott Report as the National Enquirer until now. He’s right that the record is thin, and Porter still hasn’t told us which category it filed the cancellation under. Was Porter right to cancel the flight?