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How to Complain
Kirby's Korner · November 10, 2000

The Web is awash with ways for travelers to let their voices be heard -- and to get information to protect their rights while traveling.

The newest venture of this type is My Travel Rights, a Web site operated by the Consumer Travel Rights Center.

The Center presents itself as an advocate for travel consumers, although it is actually controlled by the Association of Retail Travel Agents. There's nothing wrong with that, and My Travel Rights performs a valuable service, but the relationship between the two groups raises obvious questions.

Visitors to the site get a handful of articles about their rights, arranged by type of travel, and about pending government activities related to travel. There are also ways for travelers to easily complain to industry companies and U.S. legislators about unpleasant experiences.

Just a couple weeks after the site opened, according to ARTA spokeswoman Pat Funk, My Travel Rights was "getting a lot of traffic, getting a lot of consumer complaints."

"The traveler just doesn't understand" the rights that are available, she said, and airlines are not straightforward with consumers.

Airlines "lie, they're untrained, . . . they won't hire people," according to Funk. "The airlines' idea of customer service is, 'Do it yourself.'"

Funk acknowledged that My Travel Rights is not deep with content yet, but plans are underway to expand. This is a venture worth keeping an eye on.

Perhaps the best known travel-complaint Web site is PassengerRights.com, run by a Floridan who also operates a "work at home" travel agency -- otherwise known in the trade as a "card mill." The main point of that site is to provide a way for travelers to e-mail complaints to airlines, hotels, and other travel providers. Copies of each complaint are also sent to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The site has some freely available "travel rights" information, and visitors can also sign up for a subscription-based newsletter outlining rights and problems, Travel Confidential, at $59 per year.

Complaints.com offers a discussion-board-type of service, where dissatisfied consumers can post messages about their complaints. If the consumer provides an e-mail address for the offending company, Complaints.com promises to forward the complaint to the firm.

The site has a "Travel & Leisure" section of complaints, although the amount of traffic in the section appears small. And the site's design is simply clunky.

eComplaints.com does Complaints.com one better. It has a discussion board and forwards complaints to companies. And its travel-related board appears to be more active.

eComplaints also offers advice on how to complain, including sample letters and tips on what to do next if the letters don't work. Another nice feature is a database of real-world addresses for the headquarters of many companies -- though some of the addresses examined were terribly out of date.

I'm on record several times advocating a written letter of complaint to a company over an e-mailed complaint. There's something about the permanency of the printed page that catches attention and is harder to ignore than the fleeting electrons that make up e-mail.

But if you want to try your luck with e-mailed complaints -- or learn more about when you should complain -- you now know where to start.

(Modesty prohibits me from mentioning one of the best Web sites around for consumer travel information. Visitors to Ticked now have a travel-related discussion forum for sharing their complaints.)

An update: I commented recently on a proposal by the International Air Transport Association to control a proposed ".travel" top-level domain on the Web, which would create Web addresses similar to the familiar ".com" addresses. The American Society of Travel Agents opposed the proposal, claiming it would put too much power in the hands of the airlines.

ASTA has now changed its mind, after IATA promised to set up a board that would make all decisions respecting the ".travel" domain. All travel industry segments would be represented, IATA said, and the airlines will never have a majority voice.

This is probably the best outcome we can hope for. Let's move ahead with ".travel," even though I still don't think it will solve many problems.

David Kirby is the senior editor at the start-up dot-com company iJET Travel Intelligence and was the founding editor of Interactive Travel Report. His column appears on Friday. You can reach him at david@ticked.com.