Truth not always a frequent flier

June 28, 2000
Web posted at: 2:28 p.m. EDT (1828 GMT)

By Christopher Elliott
CNN.com Travel Columnist

All right, I admit it. Sometimes I bend the truth when I'm traveling.

I've plugged my headphones into the armrest without paying the $5 in-flight movie fee. When the air host came by to collect, I'd say, "It's just a noise-canceling headset," which it is, but that's not all it can do.

I've complained about an old back injury when picking up my rental car in the hopes that a sympathetic agent might upgrade the cheapo matchbox car that I ordered. I neglected to mention how old the injury was (almost two decades).

In other words, I've lied with the best of 'em.

Traveling, fibbing

But I'm a saint compared with other travelers. Check out the remarkable story of the flying kidney donor, which comes to us courtesy of a passenger service agent for Delta Air Lines in Orlando, Florida:

"She came to the ticket counter and said she needed to change her reservation because she had to get to Atlanta immediately to donate one of her kidneys to her sister," the agent remembers. "She was in tears. My heart went out to her, so naturally I waived the change fee and additional collections that I would normally have had to charge her."

Then a supervisor asked him to look up the donor's frequent-flier file.

"Lo and behold, this lady had already donated three of her kidneys! Her father had already died at least three times as well," he says. "Plus she had numerous other emergencies."

Is the bogus donor an anomaly in the traveling industry? Not a chance. Hotel guests misrepresent the facts, too.

"I've seen it all," says William Petrella, general manager of the Westin Grand in Washington. "The worst are charges for in-room movies and for the minibar. Guests tend to have a selective memory about those. I've also heard people say they have a particular rate when we know they don't have that rate -- we know they couldn't possibly have that rate."

'Keeping score'

Los Angeles psychologist Judy Rosenberg specializes in treating compulsive behavioral disorders.

"Everyone is keeping score," she notes. "For travelers who have had a negative experience, lying is a way to equalize things. And they don't feel any remorse because they've already been lied to by the travel industry. For them, it's payback time."

Yet not all travelers resort to lying, even when confronted with evidence that someone has not been entirely truthful to them. Take the case of Alexander Velaj, who rented recently from Hertz at Washington's Reagan National Airport.

"I arrived with a confirmed reservation in hand, but the gathered crowd was told that there was a back-up servicing cars and to expect a wait of about 60 minutes," he remembers. But being a frequent visitor to Washington, the Stamford, Connecticut, insurance agent suspected the car rental company wasn't telling the whole truth.

"I'd noted that the Hertz lot has a fair number of luxury cars, presumably held back for VIPs. I quietly approached the manager and gently mentioned how irate I would be if those VIP cars were still sitting around in an hour," he says.

Five minutes later, the manager discreetly slipped him a car assignment and sent him on his way. The manager had been caught telling a half-truth, and Velaj's implied threat to tell the other waiting patrons of the available cars made him want to get rid of the informed customer as soon as possible.

No measure of honesty

It's difficult to quantify the distrust between consumers and the travel business. The Gallup organization's annual "honesty and ethics" poll doesn't include any tourism-related occupations. A recent Harris poll asking consumers to name the brands they consider the best did not mention any travel-related products. The remaining surveys of travel suppliers -- from the glossy magazine polls to the grassroots online ballots -- generally measure customer satisfaction, not trust.

Is this a lost cause? I hope not. I think most travelers would feel more comfortable being as up-front with an airline, hotel or car rental company as they can. I think suppliers, despite their sometimes checkered past, want to come clean with us as well.

But someone needs to take the first step.

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