Snow travel chaos: Your rights for compensation

Name: Budget Travel LLC
Price range: $

By Sean O'Neill

October 3, 2012

Heavy snowfall forced airlines to cancel about 8,200 flights in the past week. Most of the stranded passengers have since been rebooked and flown to their destinations. If you were a flier whose plane was delayed or cancelled, you may be furious at the additional expenses you faced. Here are a few thoughts on how fliers can recoup costs that they may have lost during Snowmageddon.

No one should have paid a ticket change fee

Most airlines waived their customary fees for changing a ticket during the storm, but in the scrum, you may have accidentally been billed anyway. This mistake happens most often when a traveler voluntarily pays to upgrade to a more fancier class of service, in the hopes of being placed on a plane faster.

Whatever the reason, if you are accidentally charged for a ticket change fee, dispute it immediately. Submit your claim for reimbursement via your credit card company. Eye your credit card statement like a hawk, too: You need to file a complaint within 45 days of your flight, as a general rule.

Skip the phone and write a complaint message instead

When a customer service hotline fails to resolve your issue, you're better off starting to send e-mails and letters than continuing to work the phones. It's much easier to keep a useful, powerful record of what has been promised and what has been overlooked when everything is in writing. Find out the best way to contact your airline at the On Your Side wiki. (You may also want to read the useful blog post "6 stupid things customers do when they have a service problem.")

What's not going to happen

Sadly, the airline isn't required to pay for the cost of your night's stay at a motel during a storm. Let's say an airline rebooked you on a morning flight and you decided to stay at a motel overnight (instead of sleep at the airport). The cancellation was beyond airlines' control, so you do not have any automatic right to compensation beyond being rebooked (or receiving a refund if you decide not to fly at all).

Foreign airlines are often more generous than American ones. So if you flew an airline that's based overseas, contact one of its company representatives to see if you may be entitled to some compensation for additional costs you braved—from meals to phone calls to lodging.

Are you less likely to fly in 2011?

Fees. Delays. Long lines. Awful customer service. Invasive, humiliating, seemingly random security procedures. The list of annoyances and aggravations related to airline travel just grows and grows. Every traveler uses some personal mental calculator to figure out when flying, driving, or hopping a train or bus makes the most sense for a given trip. The question is: Have things gotten so bad with air travel that you've recalibrated your personal equation? Few people are going to board a train from New York to Chicago for a two-day business conference just because they're peeved by baggage fees and TSA checkpoints. But what about shorter-haul flights? Are you more inclined to drive or use ground-based public transportation on a trip that flying would have been a no-brainer in the past? For that matter, are you shifting the kinds of vacations you're planning and the destinations you'll visit—because flying is more of a headache, less convenient, and less affordable than it's been in the recent past? An executive of an RV maker, for instance, quoted in a Wall Street Journal story about booming recreation vehicle sales, was quoted as saying: "Our best commercial for our industry is the airlines," Robert J. Olson, chief executive of RV maker Winnebago Industries Inc., told analysts recently. "If you haven't gone on an airline lately, it's a real hassle." But is it so much of a hassle that you're changing the way you travel, and even the places you travel to? Some travelers won't even consider flying anymore to anywhere within reasonable driving distance. MORE FROM BUDGET TRAVEL: Where are you going in 2011? 6 travel lessons from Europe's "Winterchaos" It's a new day for flier's rights: We're human beings, and not just cargo!

Instant translations of street signs with your cell phone camera

What if you could point your cell phone video camera at a foreign-language sign and see an instant translation of the words on it? Word Lens allows just that. The iPhone/iPod Touch-only app, released mid-December, uses your camera to perform Spanish-to-English translations, without making a single keystroke on your phone. Want to know what "las salchichas a la parrilla" means on a restaurant sign in front of you? Just point your camera and Word Lens pulls up the relevant English translation ("grilled sausages") immediately and displays it within the image, replacing the Spanish words. So you don't have to go to another screen or wait for more than a half-second. See an astonishing YouTube video of this cool tool: Another huge plus for travelers: Word Lens works with a built-in dictionary. It does not need to connect to the Internet, and your phone is not hit with data charges while roaming in a foreign country. Being offline makes it different to Google Goggles, a straightforward translation app for Android and iPhone devices that provides more accurate translations because it pulls results from the Web. Downsides: Word Lens translations are far from perfect so far, and the tool doesn't recognize handwriting yet. Translations for other languages are in the works, and the focus on Apple products is just the beginning. Word Lens is "free" to download but you have to pay about $5 for each language you want to translated. The tool is currently on a half-price sale through Dec. 31 and is available via iTunes. Find more info about the tool at questvisual.com. MORE FROM BUDGET TRAVEL A free Google app for point-and-shoot translations Extra Mile Awards 2010: Google Goggles and other tools and people that make travel better Google's new window decals may help travelers Vote now: Help us identify the coolest small town in America!

Theme Parks

How many rides do you ride on a day at Disney?

The number of rides enjoyed by the average Disney park visitor may seem surprisingly low. So what's the average? Nine rides. In a whole day. Considering that a one-day adult ticket costs $87 and change, and entrance for a child age 3 to 9 is $78.81, this means typical visitors are paying roughly $9 or $10 per ride. A recent New York Times story highlights Disney's secret strategies for shortening the lines at park rides, and these efforts -- which include starting parades to draw park goers into less crowded areas, and sending out a Jack Sparrow actor to amuse folks in line at Pirates of the Caribbean—have sometimes been able to inch the average number of rides to 10 per person per day. Though some Disney enthusiasts enjoy shopping, parades, and other aspects of the experience just as much as the rides, the cost-per-ride ratio still strikes us as pretty excessive. What do you think? Is a three-minute Disney ride worth the equivalent of $9 or $10 a pop? For that matter, if you're an avid Disney visitor, do you tend to hit more or less than 10 rides in a typical day? If so, would you care to offer tips for newbies who are trying to get the most ride-age for their dollars? MORE FROM BUDGET TRAVEL: Confession of a Disney Cast Member Ask Trip Coach: Walt Disney World Whose Disney World is it? Do you like the idea of a day with no kids at the Disney parks?

Google's new window decals may help travelers

Google hopes that the next new thing in smarttphones may be something called "near-field communications," or NFC, technology. It's a way for a cell phone to download data from a sticker that's about four inches apart from it. In December, the company began giving businesses in Portland, Ore., stickers that say "Recommended on Google." If you own an NFC-enabled smartphone, such as a Nokia C7 or a Samsung Nexus S, you will be able to tap your cell phone on the decal and download information about the business, such as customer reviews. Your phone could also automatically download virtual coupons good for discounts. Google doesn't own NFC technology. But the company's support is powerful, along with the support of cell phone makers like Nokia and Samsung. Earlier this year, three major wireless carriers—AT&T;, T-Mobile, and Verizon—announced their support for an NFC payment system that would let customers pay for items with their mobile phones instead of using physical credit cards. It won't be a surprise if all high end smartphones have the technology by the end of 2011. MORE FROM BUDGET TRAVEL Guide to getting online from virtually anywhere Coming soon: Turn your smartphone into a hotel room key How do you use a cell phone boarding pass at the metal detector? Vote now: Help us identify the coolest small town in America!

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