Help! United Canceled Our Trip to Paris. Or Did It?

Dear Tripped Up,

Last Oct. 10, my wife, a friend and I arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport to fly to Paris on a trip we had originally planned for April but had to postpone. At the United Airlines check-in counter, agents told us our reservation had been canceled — by us! Even weirder, the same thing had happened three weeks earlier, when the airline sent us an email saying we had canceled our trip. That time, we called and insisted United reissue the reservation for the same price, which it did by giving us a travel voucher and instantly redeeming it. At the airport, though, we watched as supervisors got their supervisors involved, and we were eventually told that something about the voucher had raised questions about fraud. We missed our flight and bought last-minute tickets for that evening’s 11 p.m. United flight to Paris. Then that flight was canceled, though this time for everyone. Given the day’s stress and frustration, we gave up on the trip, had dinner and went to the airport Marriott before heading home the next morning. We believe United owes us for the cost of the last-minute flight ($4,475), a portion of the earlier canceled flight ($3,099), the cost of our transportation, hotel and meals that day ($1,178) and the money we lost on nonrefundable plans in France ($2,007). Can you help? Connie, Towson, Md.

Dear Connie,

Have you ever tried to solve a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle that someone put through a wood chipper? Me neither, but now I know how that might feel.

Still, I think I’ve got it — a trying tale not just of United, but one of a Google search gone wrong, a badly timed shoulder injury, an accusation of fraud, a miscalculated credit card chargeback, unwarranted credit and a New Jersey-based travel agency with a bone to pick and an owner who answers to the name of “Alec Baldwin.”

This specific loony sequence of events is unlikely to befall other travelers, but other loony sequences will, and there are lessons to be learned here — because every party involved shares some blame.

It’s easiest to explain chronologically, so let’s turn back the clock to January 2023, when you reserved your original April flight on what you thought was a phone call with United. It wasn’t. Instead, a click you made on a Google ad led you to call a travel agency named The FareHub, which, you said, did nothing to disabuse you of the notion that you were speaking with United. (I wrote about dubious travel websites earlier this month.) The FareHub issued your tickets via email, in a format generic enough you didn’t notice the difference.

Only in March, when a member of your party hurt her shoulder and you called (the real) United to postpone the trip did you discover The FareHub was involved. It was a United agent who explained that two of the January charges on your credit card statement, to “United Air” and totaling $10,659, were not to United at all. (This might be a good time to remind everyone that we should all regularly examine our statements.)