Washington Watchdogs Track Consumer Woes

Buried in government file cabinets and advocacy group document rooms in Washington, D.C., are the remains of thousands of Americans’ bad vacations.

Consider the horrors detailed in their complaints: The elderly woman who was denied a refund for a trip to Las Vegas even though her husband died as they were about to pack. The tourist who was so traumatized by her cruise ship roommate that she slept on deck for a week. The new bride who began her honeymoon by sitting in a befouled airplane seat.

With travel at record levels, Washington is awash in protests from unhappy voyagers.

“People generally don’t write the federal government with complimentary letters,” says Norman Strickman, an air-travel watchdog who heads the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Aviation Consumer Protection Division. (The agency’s address: U.S. Dept. of Transportation, C-75 Room 4107, Washington, DC 20590; telephone [202] 366-2220.)

What can Washington do for these aggrieved citizens?

In serious cases, the federal government and national travel groups can crack down on travel scheme artists, bring erring companies to justice, damage travel agents’ reputations by banning them from industry organizations and mediate to get customers apologies and refunds.

But not always. The man who wrote to the Department of Transportation because a flight attendant spilled orange juice on his lap did not get much revenge, nor did the woman who complained to the American Society of Travel Agents that she needed a refund because her stateroom was directly over the cruise ship’s disco.

Writing Washington is not always about getting results. For some travelers, it’s about winning an audience long after the rest of the world has stopped listening.

Robert Serr hoped someone, anyone, in a position of authority would hear him out. “I just thought people should know,” said Serr, who believes his honeymoon was ruined by what he suspects were the remnants of a dirty diaper on his wife’s airplane seat.

After the incident--which happened on a Northwest Airlines flight from Minneapolis to Florida--Serr fired off an angry e-mail to the Department of Transportation’s Aviation Consumer Protection Division. The department reached federal public health authorities on Serr’s behalf, urged Northwest to contact Serr and entered his complaint in a report on the airline’s performance. Northwest gave Serr two free tickets.

The Department of Transportation created a SWAT team to act on the most serious problem flights. The Federal Trade Commission created “Operation Trip-Up” to combat travel fraud. National associations, such as the American Society of Travel Agents and the National Consumers League, are inundated with testimonials and collect records on the worst abusers.

Strickman compiles monthly performance reports on 10 major U.S. carriers. Even the nit-picky complaints get included, like an Ohio woman who protested that when her airline put her in a hotel for a night, it gave her “male-oriented deodorant.”

With more trips come more complaints. The Transportation Department’s numbers are up in all categories: flight delays, mishandled baggage, overbookings and consumer complaints. Calls and letters reached 7,665 in 1997, up from 5,985 five years before.

Most reports of travel nightmares fall into familiar categories--delayed flights and vacation rip-offs. But some vacation horror stories are more absurd.

For those, there is Stan Bosco.

The head complaint wrangler at the American Society of Travel Agents in Washington, Bosco has reviewed most of the society’s 5,000 complaint records on file--two years’ worth. The society needs a warehouse to store the rest of the gripes. (The group’s address: ASTA, 1101 King St., Alexandria, VA 22314, tel. (703) 739-2782.)

“We’ve had people write to us saying, ‘It rained every day of my vacation. I want my money back,’ ” said Bosco. A more memorable call: “One lady went on a cruise and let them match her with a roommate. Her roommate had a habit of bringing a different gentleman into her room every night. So she slept on the deck.”

In that case, Bosco wrote to the cruise line and said he got a portion of the customer’s money back. Mostly, Bosco mediates complaints informally and keeps records of problems with the society’s member agents. About five or six agents who consistently ignore complaints are expelled from the group each year, he said.

With his sympathetic ear, Bosco soothes travelers who have been hung up on elsewhere. But when vacation bummers cross the line into fraud, he calls in the big guns.

The Federal Trade Commission, aided by Bosco and groups like the Washington-based National Consumers League, combat vacation schemes. A popular ruse: Marketers promise customers they will become travel agents with a simple tutorial--but the certificates prove bogus, and customers do not get the discounts and freebies they were promised.

Hoaxes ranging from pyramid schemes to Internet fraud rank among the commission’s top five complaints and have cost consumers more than $12 billion, the commission says. Law enforcement authorities, working with the commission in the “Operation Trip-Up” crackdown, made 36 stings against travel schemers since the campaign began in 1997.

As for tips on how to minimize vacation misery, travel industry experts recommend that tourists take pictures and keep journals--for legal purposes, not memories.

“You expect a nice tropical paradise and instead you get rats and mold,” Bosco sighed. “Sometimes it just happens that way.”