“We didn’t do anything to it,” she says. “It won’t turn on. The red power button light blinks over and over.”
At the time, I had no idea how rare her complaint was — and how fleeting. I asked her to send me the documentation on the busted household appliance. But within hours, Beeman reported back.
“They fixed it,” she told me. “All for free.”
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In this week’s episode of The Christopher Elliott Show, I dissect my own scamminess, talk about force majeure events and Acts of God and travel.
What a fun discussion! Thanks for joining in.
Tune in to the hashtag #elliottshow on Facebook, Google Plus or Twitter on Tuesday at 10 a.m. EDT to see the next episode. Then click on my YouTube channel for a live afterparty wrap-up (see archived video, above).
By the way, there’s still time to answer this week’s question! We’re heading into that time of the year when thunderstorms and hurricanes throw a wrench in our travel plans. But has an airline, hotel, car rental company or cruise line ever invoked the weather or some other natural disaster in a way that didn’t make sense, or seemed inappropriate?
I’m writing a story about the right way, and the wrong way, to invoke the ol’ force majeure clause. What do you think?
It was February, and she and her husband were looking forward to escaping the cold Toronto winter. They’d booked a week at the Husa Cayo Santa Maria through Transat Canada. The trip was booked through her sister-in-law, who is a travel agent.
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This is the online edition of Elliott’s E-Mail, my free weekly newsletter. Please join me Tuesday at 10 a.m. EDT for Travel Live, a half-hour conversation across Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus. Tune in to the hashtag #travel at 10 a.m., and I’ll explain the rest. Our topic: When travel companies invoke and “Act of God” to deny you a room, transportation or cruise. At 10:30 a.m., I’ll do a live YouTube broadcast, which will be archived on my channel.
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Maybe I should have said “no” to the case.
All the warning signs were there. The complaint involved an experienced hotel guest who checked his luggage at the front desk of a chain property in Irving, Texas. One of the bags had gone missing, and the traveler filed a claim for thousands of dollars above the property’s legal limit of liability — one clearly disclosed on his receipt and written into Texas lodging law.
Worse, the emails between the hotel and the guest showed that the customer quickly turned hostile, threatening to sue if he didn’t get more.
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Maybe it was the string of customer-service disasters, starting with the Costa Concordia tragedy last year and leading up to the recent Carnival Triumph “poop” cruise, on which passengers were left adrift in the Gulf of Mexico for five days without working toilets.
Maybe it was the threat of government regulation from Sen. Charles Schumer (D.-N.Y.), a vocal critic of the cruise industry, that made it move.
Then again, maybe we should just take the cruise industry at its word on its decision, announced just before the Memorial Day holiday, to introduce a passenger “bill of rights.”
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