Whose fault is it?
Taking control when it’s ‘out of our control’
It’s not our fault.
You’ve probably heard that line a time or two, especially from your airline, hotel or cruise line. It’s the old “act of God” excuse — or to put it in less theological terms, an event “beyond our control.”
Reasons matter. That’s because under the rules of most travel bookings, a company owes you nothing if these events keep it from opening or operating. Blame it on Mother Nature, and the company can get away with almost anything. But there’s a way to counter the oldest excuse in travel.
“‘Circumstances beyond our control’ are hard to define, to say the least,” says Stan Sandberg, co-founder of Travelinsurance.com.
Indeed, impossible to define, sometimes. Consider John Thompson’s recent flight from Las Vegas to Boston by way of Washington. The carrier blamed “weather or air traffic” on a brief delay of his outbound — both events it claims it has no control over.
But that’s not how Thompson re- members it. He says his flight from Las Vegas to Washington also was held up because it was overbooked, something the airline can control.
“The delay was extended by another 20 minutes because no one was willing to take a $1,000 voucher to give up their seats,” says Thompson, a project manager from Chelmsford, Mass.
In the end, he had to spend the night in Washington, which cost him $125. The airline initially refused to cover his extra costs, but after I contacted it, Thompson was reimbursed.
“When someone uses the ‘circumstances are beyond my control’ excuse, they are utilizing a classic negotiation technique: the abdication of authority and responsibility,” says Kwame Christian, director of the American Negotiation Institute, a consulting firm. The most important step you can take toward resolving your dispute is to persuade the company to accept the responsibility, he says.
More often than not, it probably is their fault that they couldn’t operate their flight, offer you accommodations, a berth or a car.
The cop-out is a symptom of a much bigger problem: an industry that’s used to getting away with it.