Woe Is You? Where Weary Travelers Can Seek Redress

There’s so much to complain about in the traveler’s world, but so little time. And such limited recourse.

Or at least so it seems as I sift through the correspondence this section receives each week from angry or despondent travelers.

“We would like you to know of our very unpleasant experience,” one begins.

Another starts, “I am 71 years old and was bumped by a flight attendant.”

The happy travelers seldom write, of course, and they vastly outnumber the unhappy ones.

But when things go wrong and travelers seek explanation or apology from the industry, they often get neither on first approach.

Air travel generates the most complaints to this department, but cruise lines, hotels and tour operators disappoint their share of customers too. Some of the tales provide inspiration for a column, but beyond that I have no standing to do anything about them.

So where should an unsatisfied traveler complain?

In many cases, there’s an agency somewhere that wants to hear and count your complaints. The U.S. Department of Transportation, for instance, compiles month-by-month figures on consumer air-travel gripes.

It’s far more rare, however, for an organization to do something about customer complaints, such as getting a refund or a credit toward a future purchase for a traveler.

Here is a list of public and private entities that track travelers’ complaints, beginning with local groups and concluding with national ones. A few general rules apply:

* Have a written account of your problem, as full of detail and as devoid of emotion as possible. (In fact, except for the Department of Transportation, all of the groups below require that complaints be in writing.)

* Complain as soon as possible after the cause for the complaint has occurred.

* When complaining directly to a travel company, say exactly what compensation you want.

* To register a complaint, begin with your travel agent, if you used one. Next, write to the company that made you unhappy and keep a copy of your letter. If the company replies, keep a copy of that too. If you’re dissatisfied with the response, consider contacting one or more of the organizations listed below.

* And if all you really want is a sincere apology, preferably face to face, you’re chasing perhaps the most elusive prize of all.

My advice: Steel yourself for disappointment on that front, tell all your friends which company disappointed you and how, and move on.

Here are places to turn to:

Travel Consumer Restitution Corp. This quasi-public agency was created in California in the mid-’90s to protect Golden State consumers who book travel services through California companies. A reserve fund of more than $1 million has been established to reimburse travelers who don’t get paid-for services from a California-based travel seller. For claim forms, contact the organization at P.O. Box 6001, Larkspur, CA 94977-6001; fax (415) 927-7698. (No public phone, Web site or e-mail is available.)

California attorney general. Consumers who want to check on the registration of a travel seller, report an unregistered seller or register a complaint can contact the office at 300 S. Spring St., Los Angeles, CA 90013; telephone (213) 897-8065, fax (213) 897-8846. For broader questions about companies that do business in California, contact the attorney general’s Public Inquiry Unit, P.O. Box 944255, Sacramento, CA 94244-2550; tel. (800) 952-5225, fax (916) 323-5341, Internet https://caag.state.ca.us/piu/mailform.htm.

American Society of Travel Agents. ASTA, a trade group, takes complaints only about its member companies. ASTA says it tries to mediate complaints and will tell inquiring consumers whether a member has two or more unresolved complaints within the last six months. Contact ASTA’s Consumer Affairs Department, 1101 King St., Suite 200, Alexandria, VA 22314; tel. (703) 739-8739, fax (703) 684-8319, https://www.astanet.com.

U.S. Tour Operators Assn. USTOA, another trade organization that tracks complaints only about its members, reviews complaints and forwards them to tour company executives. Contact USTOA at 342 Madison Ave., Suite 1522, New York, NY 10173; tel. (212) 599-6599, fax (212) 599-6744, https://www.ustoa.com.

Better Business Bureau. Write to 550 W. Orangethorpe Ave., Placentia, CA 92870. For complaints or general information about businesses in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, call (909) 825-7280, fax (909) 825-6246 or go to the bureau’s Web site, https://www.bbbsouth land.org. In Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, call (805) 963-8657, fax (805) 962-8557 or go to the Web site https://www.santabarbara.bbb.org.

U.S. Department of Transportation. This agency takes travelers’ complaints, mostly about airlines. Viewable on the agency’s Web site, monthly figures track tardy flights, mishandled baggage, oversold tickets (resulting in bumped passengers) and consumer complaints. Consumer complaints were up about 44% from 1999 to 2000. (Lest you think all the news is dismal on the complaint front, look at the agency’s most recent figures. The DOT received fewer consumer complaints about U.S. airlines in December 2000 than it did in December 1999, a decrease from 1,227 to 1,077. That’s about one complaint for every 50,000 passengers boarded.) Contact Department of Transportation, C-75, Room 4107, Washington, DC 20590; tel. (202) 366-2220, https://www .dot.gov/airconsumer/problems.

PassengerRights.com. The Web site at https://www.passengerrights.com makes it easier for travelers to lodge complaints with airlines and federal officials. The site, born in April 1999, is a commercial venture (aimed at winning paid subscribers to a newsletter), but its free features may well be handy, especially the pages that demystify the workings of the airline, cruise, rental car and hotel segments of the travel industry. (Warning: Don’t spend too much time browsing through the site’s collection of horror stories, or you’ll be afraid to go anywhere.)

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Christopher Reynolds welcomes comments and suggestions but he cannot respond individually to letters and telephone calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012 or e-mail chris.reynolds@ latimes.com.