Where to post travel gripes online

When you have a complaint with a travel supplier, you obviously take it up first with that supplier. Sadly, in my experience, all too many suppliers all too often stonewall your complaint—and all too often compound the insult by sending a reply that is totally unresponsive to your complaint, ending with "we're looking forward to serving you again soon." When that happens, your options are limited. You can:

• Write your experience off as another lesson learned the hard way and get on with your life.
• Try to enlist the support of any or all organizations that might help you: a government agency (state attorney general, consumer protection agency), a trade organization (Better Business Bureau, American Society of Travel Agents), a media outlet with an ombudsman, or consumer function, or such.
• Do as much as you can to give the supplier a black eye.
• Take the supplier to court—small claims or higher, depending on what's involved.

Over the years, I've written many columns and reports about how to complain effectively, and I've often recommended court action as the only practical course if you really want your money back. This column is about the third alternative—giving a supplier a black eye—and how you can easily do it online.

All-purpose gripe sites

Several websites position themselves as places where consumers can post complaints. Although most cover a wide range of consumer markets, travel figures prominently in each—no doubt paralleling disproportionate consumer problems with travel suppliers. I list only those sites that specifically focus on complaints; many other sites post more general consumer reviews of travel suppliers, favorable as well as unfavorable:

• Complaints.com appears to be one of the larger complaint sites, with lots of travel listings, and is easily searched.
• ConsumerAffairs.com seems to have fewer travel listings, but is also easily searched.
• My3Cents.com is easily searched and offers outstanding links to other useful sites.
• Rip-offReport.com is easily searched but has fewer travel postings than some of the others.
• TheSqueakyWheel.com promises aggressive follow-up to complaints ("We get refunds"), including emailing the named supplier every time someone reads a complaint, but it lists comparatively few travel complaints and has limited search capabilities.

These and other complaint sites generally post complaints, offer general guidelines about where to complain and how to do it, and provide links, snail-mail addresses, and even names for places and people you might want to send messages to: suppliers, government agencies, etc.

Company Sites

Customers or employees of some companies have been so incensed that they've established gripe sites targeted to individual suppliers. Among them are:

• Untied.com (United)
• DeltaReallySucks.com (Delta)
• AlitaliaSucks.com (Alitalia)
• ShameOnExpedia.com (Expedia)
• VictimsOfExpedia (Expedia)
• ShameOnOrbitz.com (Orbitz)
• WooGone.com (WooGo, a vacation rental agency)

A diligent search would probably unearth more of the same. There's a good bit of venting on some of these sites—so much that you may have a tough time figuring out exactly what went wrong.

U.S. Department of Transportation

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) actively collects complaints about airlines (email airconsumer@dot.gov) The press often picks up on the complaint "scores" it reports. However, except in a few limited cases, the DOT does not actively pursue any individual consumer's case. The government issues no comparable reports for any other type of travel service.

Do gripe sites work?

I really don't know. According to industry conventional wisdom, some major suppliers do monitor gripe sites—to sic their lawyers on anything libelous, if nothing else. I've never heard of any real success stories, however, where someone actually got some money back through a posted gripe, or got the supplier to change its practices.

Meanwhile, if you're trying to get a fix on a supplier you don't know, by all means check it out on one or two of the gripe sites. And if you have a problem a supplier won't resolve, list it on all of them.