Travel

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Delta Trips Up Legitimate Passenger Not Allowed to Check-In Overseas

Herb and Deb WeisbaumVeteran consumer reporter Herb Weisbaum, known as the ConsumerMan, recently was coming back from a vacation in London with his wife when they had difficulty checking in for the Delta flight home.

The check-in kiosk at Heathrow airport asked him to swipe the credit card with which he purchased the tickets. Being a cautious international traveler, Herb left most of his credit cards at home including the one used to buy the tickets.

A Delta supervisor said she could not issue boarding passes without his card to help prevent credit card fraud. Having a passport was not good enough. He was given several options, one worse than the next:

  • Buy two new tickets for about $6,000,
  • Somehow get a picture of the card used to purchase the tickets, or
  • Have someone go to his hometown airport in Seattle with his card.

    • Herb decided to call his next door neighbor at 3 a.m. Seattle time, give him instructions on how to get into his house, and have him text a picture of the credit card to London.

    Why in the world were passengers like my friend not explicitly told they needed to fly with the credit card that was used to purchase the tickets? A Delta spokesperson pointed to a link on the Delta website:

    *MOUSE PRINT:

    “To safeguard against credit/debit card fraud, the purchaser may have to show us the credit/debit card along with a valid photo ID. The time varies based on the billing address of the credit/debit card or the country of travel. If the purchaser is not traveling, they can show us their credit/debit card and ID at an airport ticket counter or another ticket office location, whichever is most convenient.”

    Poking around online, MrConsumer found complaints dating back as many as 14 years about Delta’s surprise policy.

    One would hope by now the airline would have figured out how to better communicate this unexpected and potentially costly policy to customers. What do you think?

    You can read Herb’s full story here.

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    Hotel Charged Our Reader $566 Falsely Claiming They Caught Him Smoking

    This past summer, we told you about a travel writer who was falsely accused of smoking in his hotel room and was charged $500 for doing so. The hotel used a supposedly sophisticated smoke detection system in guest rooms.

    One of our readers posted a comment that the same thing had just happened to him and his wife at a big Las Vegas hotel:

    Las Vegas Venetian Scam! Yeah don’t stay at the Venetian. Was there 4 days for our anniversary trip.

    Everything was going perfect until checkout July, 17th. They charged us $566.90 for smoking in a room because they received an alert on their so called “100% accurate sensor Freshair. Funny thing is wife and I have never smoked a day in our life or smoked that one night they said it went off. Tried to be diplomatic upon check out only to be kicked down the road. What an insult. How stupid do they think people are? Being non smokers we support non smoking hotels and don’t even think about the sensors. But to accuse someone without any kind of investigation or show a print out of the alarm is unbelievable. Only a verbal time of approximately 11:52pm given. Tried to ask valid questions but they could not be answered.

    We followed up with our reader to get more details. When he got home he did two things — he filed a dispute with his bank and he and his wife went to get a nicotine and drug test. They passed the tests which was no surprise because they are very careful in their home because their son was born with a lung disease.

    I also directed him to Seth Kugel at the New York Times who writes the “Tripped Up” travel help column. Seth followed up with the hotel, but they refused to provide the proof that their monitoring system caught the Turners smoking.

    All was not lost, however, because after a three-month investigation, the Turners’ bank, Hancock Whitney, sided with them, and reversed the hotel’s charge:

    smoking fee reversal

    Congratulations to our consumer who fought hard and won. And hat’s off to his bank for taking an interest in his case. Unlike credit cards, debit cards like the one used by this consumer don’t have traditional chargeback rights by law, but the bank put through a claim anyway to Visa, perhaps as a fraudulent or unauthorized charge.

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    Nonsmoking Hotel Guests Charged Erroneous $500 Smoking Fee

    Complaints are beginning to pile up about hotels that has been assessing some guests a $500 smoking fee when they check out. The fee comes as a complete surprise to them because they claim they don’t smoke.

    Travel writer Zach Griff had just such an experience at The Pell by Hyatt hotel near Newport, Rhode Island this summer over the July 4th holiday. He writes:

    During checkout, I reviewed the hotel folio (which I always recommend doing!) and noticed a $500 smoking charge on the bill.

    The thing is, I’ve never smoked, and certainly wasn’t planning to start during the holiday weekend with my [eight-month-old] daughter in tow!

    He raised the issue with the front desk, but got a hostile response and no immediate resolution. So he posted a video online and discovered that others had been wrongfully charged a huge smoking fee too at that hotel and others.

    The hotel warns on its website that there is a fine for smoking in the room:

    *MOUSE PRINT:

    No Smoking

    We checked some review sites, like Trip Advisor and Yelp, and sure enough others found themselves in the same predicament.

    At the center of the controversy is a product called Rest Sensor which is a smoke detector that sends a timestamped notice to the hotel billing system whenever it detects smoke in a guest room. The manufacturer’s pitch to hoteliers to adopt their system stresses the financial benefit to the hotel and the accuracy of the system:

    *MOUSE PRINT:

    Rest Sensor income

    Rest Sensor accuracy

    After learning of the writer’s social media video, the hotel general manager reached out to tell him he would make sure his credit card is not charged. And the hotel said he would be getting a refund. As a travel writer, he worried about all the other guests he read about who were fighting for their money back from this and other hotels.

    We asked Hyatt corporate management to comment on this issue, but a spokesperson for The Pell responded instead:

    A top priority is always to create a comfortable environment for all guests and colleagues. The Pell is a non-smoking property (including cigarettes, vapes and e-cigarettes) and uses sensor technology to help maintain a smoke-free atmosphere and high air quality standards within the hotel. This policy is communicated throughout the hotel and in the guestrooms. At this time, we are looking into this situation further and working to extend assistance to guests who have expressed prior related concerns.

    Your comments on this issue are welcome below.

    ====================================
    SIDEBAR: Connie Francis and MrConsumer
    ====================================

    Connie Francis passed away last week at age 87.

    Four decades ago when MrConsumer was a consumer reporter at Channel 7 in Boston, he had the opportunity to meet Connie Francis who was being interviewed on the daily talk show of which he was a part. Whenever a celebrity visited, I would always ask if they would be willing to do a “consumer” interview about their purchasing habits, etc.

    She said she didn’t think she would be a good candidate. So I gave her an example of a question I might ask. “Let’s say you had a relatively new toaster and it went on the blink… what would you do?” She responded: “I’d have someone get me a new one!”

    I smiled but we didn’t do the interview.