My wife and I are unplugging, taking a few days off, and heading to Spain. (No actual fishing will take place; only the metaphorical kind.)

While each hotel where we’re staying has complimentary wi-fi — even the small places in rural settings, amazingly — the U:TB offices will effectively be closed. A few posts are set to autopilot for next week, but forgive me if comments that get caught in the spam filters don’t make it out as quickly as usually. (Or, vice versa, if you see a bunch of ads for pharmaceuticals in the comments, bear with me…) We’ll be back to normal in a week and a half.

Have a great week+!

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Downgraded: Airborne
I’ve always found the boxes of Airborne nutritional supplements to be silly (a healthcare product that proudly proclaims it’s “created by a schoolteacher!”). But now, they’ve been forced to change their packaging. Gone are the germs, the sick people, and the claim to prevent inflight illness.

Downgraded: Airline maintenance
A frightening report on outsourced aircraft maintenance companies, where some staff can’t read the instructions. Shudder… (via Consumerist)

Downgraded: First class on Qantas
Like everyone else, Australia’s Qantas is feeling the pinch. First class has been removed from flights to San Francisco, Buenos Aires and Melbourne-Hong Kong-London routes. Not much of a loss, really, since business class is where the action is.

Upgraded: the environment
A positive side effect of the economic slowdown: Fewer flights means less pollution.

Upgraded: US Airways luggage delivery
The passengers whose flight landed in the Hudson River have gotten their luggage and belongings back, including things left behind on the seats. Nice! I just hope that getting your stuff doesn’t always require such dramatic landings…

Upgraded: Momondo
Danish airfare aggregator (reviewed here previously) just got an upgrade, by including Ryanair fares in its searches. That’s a big change for the ultra-discounter, which has kept its fares exclusively on its own website until now.

Downgraded: Exit rows on Qantas
Qantas will start charging an extra fee for the exit rows. They’re not the first, but still, annoying. (Thanks, Rob!)

Downgraded: Business sense
If a business model failed miserably for Skybus, I’m sure it’ll work just fine a year later, in a significantly worse financial climate, right? Right? JetAmerica, a new startup, is trying out the Skybus model themselves, with 9 seats for $9 on every flight. Minneapolis and Newark are the biggest destinations, but the operations are run through Toledo. Cranky has the rundown. Who wants to start the bankruptcy countdown pool?

As predicted here, Expedia has decided to make its temporary elimination of the airfare booking fee permanent. This follows in the steps of Priceline and Hotwire, which stopped adding a surcharge over a year ago.

The Expedia fee was scheduled to go back into effect on June 1. The company had two choices: Quietly reinstate the fees, and face the marketing wrath of the no-fee competition, or “permanently” kill the fee with a big fanfare. How’s the fanfare sound on your end?

The big agencies still get a cut of the sale, unlike most mom-and-pop travel agencies, so the extra booking fee monies were additional revenue. Many customers (31%, according to here) were doing their searches on the major agencies’ sites, and then going to the airline to book directly and save the fee. Now, the agencies’ fares should be on the same level as the airlines’ own websites.

Interestingly, Expedia also cut change fees in the same breath:

Other fee changes also were announced Wednesday. Expedia.com said it will eliminate the change-and-cancel fees on hotel, car rental and cruise reservations and on most flight reservations. Flights that are part of certain package deals will still be subject to a fee when reservations are changed or canceled. Expedia.com said it will resume charging $20 [on June 1, 2009] to make a flight booking over the phone, a fee that was halted during the promotion.

Eliminating change-and-cancel fees is nice, but it’s just the surcharge, not the totality of relevant fees. Airlines are charging $100, $150, or more to change itineraries for non-refundable booking classes, and Expedia can’t waive those fees. The elimination only applies to the surcharges which Expedia tacked on.

In any case, this puts pressure on Travelocity and Orbitz to make fee cuts permanent as well. Both of those sites’ fee-elimination policies have a sunset clause, and fees are scheduled to re-emerge on June 1. Neither site is commenting on whether they’ll follow Expedia’s lead or not. We’ll see if there are more announcements of newly-permanent fee reductions in the coming days…

One of the great frustrations of booking travel — air, hotel, car, whatever — has been the difference between initially-quoted price and the final bill. For hotels, the problem has often been surcharges like resort fees, local occupancy taxes, and other mandatory fees that aren’t included in the base rate. That may be changing, if only for European customers.

In an effort to meet the terms of European Union regulations, Pegasus Solutions, which provides hotel rate information to travel agencies and most major booking sites, is requiring hotels to break out their fees in a way that hasn’t been required before.

But just because a hotel is required to report all the parts of a room rate, that doesn’t mean you, the customer, will see things broken out when you go to book:

Once Pegasus provides the pricing breakdown to distributors, it will be up to each website where there are no governmental mandates, such as in the U.S., to decide how — or if — they want to display the information.

All websites that sell hotels eventually give consumers the total price, including taxes and fees, but some distributors force consumers to take two or three steps. Sometimes, distributors require credit card information before revealing the bottom-line price.

That means that US customers might still end up with partial quotes, lumped-together taxes and fees, and worst of all, surprises like mandatory resort fees, payable upon check-in.

The resort fee has always been my greatest hotel peeve. If it’s a mandatory charge, it should be quoted up front, with the rate. Now, with the Pegasus initiative, these fees will hopefully be visible — somewhere. But will the US consumer benefit? Unless they’re doing searches on EU-based search engines, I doubt it.

The major online travel agencies have been escalating their competition over the price and transparency of surcharges, for hotel booking fees as well as airline booking fees. So here’s a challenge to the agencies in the US:

Start breaking out the price of a hotel stay, including your fees, their fees, and the taxes. Be thorough about it, and show them right up front. Include the resort fees. Don’t make us go all the way to the brink of purchase before showing us the numbers. Give us the facts, up front, the first time.

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Wednesday’s post on the premature declaration of the demise of rewards cards brought some angry responses in my e-mail inbox. One example:

How can you even suggest that the existence of these cards is anything but a fraud committed against the American consumer? People are fooled into thinking that points have value, and your blog is perpetuating the myth that we can get a free lunch. Shame on you.

My, my, how the economic climate has changed. A post on points and miles even a year ago wouldn’t garner such vitriol. Today, it’s a “fraud.”

But my view remains. I rise again in defense of reward-earning credit cards, and their responsible use.

Let me be clear: I have no love for credit card companies and their abusive practices and devious schemes like two-cycle billing and universal default. I also have little pity for customers who spend more than they can afford and run up five-digit card debts, regardless of whether they grow irrational at the prospect of a “free” ticket or other reward, or simply want to keep up with the Joneses. (If people run up huge medical bills and are forced to use cards, they will find my pity, as well as my anger at our dumb health insurance system, but that’s another issue…)

The role of rewards in pushing people into debt is likely overstated: The tendency to overspend has been driven by the desire to pursue a certain lifestyle with the purchased objects and services, not earn a few points or cash back. Just look at the latest iteration of the Pew “luxury vs. necessity” survey, gauging which objects people claim they can’t live without. In a survey whose takeaway message is actually that people are ratcheting down their material expectations during this Great Recession, flat-screen TVs still came in as “necessary” for 8% of the population. I love my plasma tv, but a “necessity”? Seriously?

And yet, Americans as a group are coming to their collective senses, financially, and are starting to pay for things with money they have, rather than money they borrow. Debit card purchases exceeded credit card purchases for the first time last month, according to Visa.

That said, I still firmly believe in the responsible use of rewards-earning credit cards, with three conditions: 1) If you use such a card, you must be able to pay your bill off monthly; 2) you must be responsible in your spending, as well as your payments; and 3) you must not pay excessive annual fees, compared to the value you receive in rewards.

If you carry a balance, focus on your interest rate, not your rewards. And if you don’t charge much at all, avoid cards with annual fees, period.

If you can live within your means, then by all means, plow your spending into your cards and use the cards as an interest-free loan every month.

Several readers asked what I’m carrying in my wallet. So here’s full disclosure. I personally have four cards, only one of which has a fee. They are:

• American Express Starwood card
  $45 annual fee, fees waived the first year
  I use this card for domestic travel, restaurants, Costco purchases, and most automatic payments (like insurance, utilities, etc.) The card yields one Starwood point per dollar, plus periodic bonuses. (It currently has a 10,000 point bonus for new signups, with another 15,000 point bonus if you charge $15,000 to the card within 6 months.) Points are swept monthly to your Starwood account, where points can be spent on hotel rooms (generally at places I like to stay), can be converted to frequent flyer miles at favorable rates, or can be spent on plane tickets (though I’m no fan of the latter option). I very much like the option of converting 20,000 Starwood points to 25,000 miles on a range of airlines. I aim for 2 cents per point or mile in redemption value when I cash in my points (and I often get far more than that),which puts the value of the rewards in the 2 to 2.5% range.
• Chase Freedom Plus Visa
  no annual fee
  This exact card is no longer offered to new accounts, but something very similar is. I used to carry a United Airlines Mileage Plus Visa, but the annual fee was just too high, and I was locked into United miles. So I converted to this, which has no annual fee, comes with Visa Signature benefits, and offers a wide range of reward options. I use this card nearly exclusively for groceries, gasoline, and drugstores, for 3 points per dollar. Points can be converted to cash, 1 point for 1 cent, or can be converted to United Airlines miles (5000 miles = 6000 points) or other rewards at generally favorable rates. I get an effective rebate of 2.5% here.
• Citibank Dividend MasterCard
  no annual fee
  This is the black sheep in the wallet. (I looked: It’s actually not even in my wallet right now, and I may have card’s precise name wrong. It’s no longer offered at the Citibank website.) It has a cashback feature, but I rarely ever use the card unless there’s some benefit that comes with paying with MasterCard (Hyatt had a worthwhile MasterCard promo at one point, which I recall). There was also a time when Citibank was giving zero-interest rate cash advances with no transfer or finance fees. None. Insane. With no other balance on the card, it was a six-month interest-free loan, and it even paid a cash rebate. Citibank paid me to borrow their money, so my rate of return was infinite. (No wonder one share of their stock costs about as much as a Big Mac.) A more realistic rebate rate is closer to 1%.
• Visa card issued by my credit union
  no annual fee
  This is my go-to card for international travel — no currency conversion fees, no annual fees, and simply no BS make this a great choice. The downside: I’m not earning rebates or points, but I’m saving big bucks on currency conversion fees. And if I ever need to carry a balance, this would be the card, with a fixed 8.6% rate.

I’m comfortable with this mix, for now, with two cards in regular use, both yielding over 2% on purchases, one card for international use, and one warming the bench. Could I be doing better, and milking even more out of my cards? Perhaps.

Could I be doing better? Perhaps. I’m always open to suggestions.

So, wise and worldly readers, what’s in your wallet?

For years, savvy consumers have used credit card spending to beef up their frequent flier mileage balances, their hotel points, or just plain old cash. For those who paid off their bills in full every month, cards have been a great way to put off payment for three to six weeks, while earning a nice return — of hundreds or even thousands of dollars’ value — through rebates or points.

But credit card companies have always hated clients who paid off their bill on time. (With a taste for irony, they call them “deadbeats.”) And now, with the Obama administration starting to tighten the leash on the banks that were allowed to run amok with usurious rates and obnoxious fees for the last decade, the question arises: Is the party over for credit card points?

No. The banks may be cutting back on the size of credit lines, but the rewards card is unlikely to go anywhere.

Ron Lieber, in the New York Times, addresses this question head on. I agree wholeheartedly with his assessment:

So will credit card companies kill reward programs or drastically scale most of them back? Of course not.

“If you strip away the reward component of a credit card, it’s essentially a commodity,” said Rick Ferguson, editorial director at the loyalty marketing company LoyaltyOne. “The reward is what gives it its personality. It works from a branding perspective as well as a mechanism to influence customer behavior and consolidate spending on a particular card.”

That last part is crucial. People who spend a ton generate fees galore from merchants, and that money helps the card company stay in business. So you may soon see card companies giving away more goodies or lowering annual fees for people who hit certain spending thresholds each year. American Express already does this on a number of cards.

This last point is key: So much of the discussion in the media has focused on interest rates and the fees charged by banks to the debtors. This ignores the profits that banks make on processing the transactions themselves. Those fees may be charged to the merchant, but the bank doesn’t care where it makes its money, as long as it makes it.

Bottom line: Reward credit cards aren’t going anywhere. If your bank starts to get chintzy with its rewards, or starts hiking an annual fee, call them up and negotiate. Threaten to start shopping around for an alternative if they don’t maintain — or improve upon — the status quo.

Downgraded: The image of the pilot
The recent hearings surrounding the Colgan Air crash in Buffalo have focused on lack of training and cross-country commutes. But they have also brought attention to the low pay that starting pilots receive at the commuter airlines. Salaries for first officers at regional airlines can be terrible: $25,000 a year for starters, and only $33,000 on average after three years. See also this graphic, listing the average salaries by category.

Upgraded, but not quite enough: Kayak’s search engine
A month ago, I reviewed the airfare aggregators or metasearch sites. I gave TripAdvisor’s new engine the win, largely because of its ability to estimate ancillary fees like luggage fees. Now, Kayak is adding a baggage fee estimator as well, as pictured below. But it’s not quite to the level of TripAdvisor’s engine, which takes into account factors like elite status, and allows for a more granular approach to fees than simply asking about number of bags.

Downgraded: Nicknames and Abbreviations
TSA is rolling out the first phase of its “Secure Flight” policy, which means your plane tickets will have to match your identification more precisely than in the past. “During this phase of the Secure Flight program, passengers are encouraged to book their reservations using their name as it appears on the government-issued ID they will use while traveling.” And that means that, at some point (though not today), you won’t be able to use a middle initial on your ticket if your ID uses your full middle name. Which will piss off thousands of passengers while doing absolutely nothing for security. Asinine.

Downgraded: Hotel searches for Columbus, Georgia
If you’re staying in the town of Columbus, Georgia, you won’t find much in the way of hotels if you search the major online travel agencies. Why the boycott? Expedia was ordered to pay occupancy taxes to the city on the basis of the displayed room rate (the one paid by customers booking on the site). Previously, they had been paying the occupancy tax on the basis of the wholesale rates which they had negotiated with the hotel. So, now the major sites are simply not listing hotels in Columbus, GA at all. I’m no lawyer, but I can see the agencies’ point here: It makes sense to me that local taxes should be based on the rate paid locally — in this case, at the wholesale rate. I’m sure Columbus hoteliers are thrilled…

Downgraded: InterContinental brands
InterContinental is downgrading their properties’ service requirements. Gary Leff has the rundown, which, depending on the brand in question, includes delaying the purchase of new beds, cutting restaurant hours, cotton towels, and overnight front desk service.

In the last week, the PR machine has been going into overdrive, hitting my inbox with news innumerable promotions, designed to get people into hotels. A common theme: Freebies.

But be careful, and read the fine print: In many cases, your reservations may not count toward the threshold for elite status. If you travel enough to earn (or come close to) frequent guest status at one of these chains, these promos may not be your cup of tea. But if you’re not looking to get a gold or platinum membership card, and just looking for a good deal, then book away!

A few standouts:

1) Radisson Free Friday Nights
Book a Thursday or a Saturday night, and Radisson will throw the Friday in for free at many of their locations. And the free nights earn points! (Maybe enough to earn you the elite parking space…) From the release:

From May 15 through Sept. 15, 2009, guests will receive a free Friday night stay when staying two or more consecutive nights (Thursday or Saturday night required). Friday is Freeday is available for booking starting May 8 at participating Radisson hotels and resorts properties in North, Central and South America; Asia Pacific; and at Radisson Edwardian Hotels in the United Kingdom. [...] In addition, members of the goldpoints plusSM guest loyalty program will qualify for the 1,000 Bonus Points Every Night goldpoints plus promotion, effective June 1 through August 31, 2009, including the free Friday.

Full offer details are here.

2) InterContinental Buy Two, Get One Free
The InterContinental group — which includes Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, and of course InterContinental — is offering a buy-two-get-one-free offer. You’re not tied to weekends, which is good, but you don’t get the free stay “inline.” Rather, you get a voucher for later use. You can stay any 2 nights — and not even 2 in a row — between now and July 3, 2009, and then get a voucher for 1 free night to use from July 3 to December 26, 2009. Repeat four times, earn up to four vouchers. Big downside for Priority Club members: You don’t earn ANY points… neither for the stays that earn the free nights, nor the vouchered free nights.

3) Expedia Free Nights
Not nearly as generous as the Radisson offer, but a broader range of hotel options. 1334 hotels are included in the Expedia offer at last check. Timeframe is fairly short, only through mid-June:

For a limited time, book a stay of at least 3, 4, or 5 consecutive nights on Expedia at select Expedia® Special Rate hotels and your last night is free. Terms of offer vary by hotel. Offer is valid only for new standalone and vacation package Expedia® Special Rate hotel bookings made on or before 5/31/2009, with travel completed by 6/15/2009. Participating hotels are subject to availability at the time of booking and all applicable terms and conditions.

Let no one ever accuse Ryanair of tasteful restraint. The Euro-discounter who refuses to rule out anything in the quest for cost savings and revenue streams has now declared that customers wishing to get a boarding pass for their flight will need to pay for it. No matter what you paid for your ticket, you’ll still have to pay more to actually use it.

Ryanair passengers face a £5 charge per flight to print out their tickets at home as part of moves to abolish check-in desks and increase revenues. The policy replaces Ryanair’s practice of offering free online ticketing and charging anyone who opted for face-to-face check-in £10.

In future, anyone who arrives at the airport without a pre-printed check-in card will have to pay a £40 “boarding card re-issue fee”. In-built restrictions to the online ticketing system mean many customers will be unable to print their tickets when they book, raising the chances for penalty charges from customers who think they have completed the process.

Ryanair says its system won’t allow customers booking more than 15 days before their flight, or within four hours of one, to check in at that time. So those who book farther in advance will have to revisit the website nearer the time of their trip to check in.

Wow.

It’s hard enough when you’re traveling and don’t have a printer nearby. (Yes, many business hotels offer boarding pass printers, but what if you’re on vacation and staying at a rental villa? Not every traveler is printer-equipped.) But now you’ll be charged a fee to do the check-in yourself, even if you have access to a printer? Amazing.

It’s actually laughable, but I’m honestly impressed at the nerve of this. They’ve taken a cost-saving measure and turned it into a source of revenue. They’re ditching check-in counters already, so the revenue from this fee comes on top of personnel and infrastructure savings. Shameless.

I think it’s high time for customers to start charging fees themselves, and submitting invoices to the airlines that nickel-and-dime their customers. Send past-due notices with late fees, while you’re at it. Could be fun. How about an ink and paper fee of fifty cents per page? Send the airline a bill! An online networking fee for the time spent on their site? Send a bill! An airline selection fee, to account for the opportunity cost of not booking with a different carrier? Send a bill!

…But good luck collecting.

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If you needed another reason to pack light on your Caribbean vacation, here’s a good one: On some routes, Air Jamaica will accept multiple checked bags, but will only deliver one bag on the flight you’re actually traveling on. The other bag, who knows? All this for the low, low price of $25! Huh?? Seriously.

On Monday, Air Jamaica started charging passengers $25 for the second checked bag on flights from New York to Grenada and Barbados, but the second checked bag won’t be on their flight.

Air Jamaica will transport the first checked bag on passengers’ flights, at no charge. All other bags will be transported within seven days and must be picked up at the airport, Air Jamaica said.

When will your second bag arrive? No promises, but you can check their website to see when the bag will be available for you to pick up. How very convenient…

While many airlines have restrictions on the number of bags they will accept during specific times of the year, often to/from Caribbean or Latin American airports, their restrictions impose a hard limit on the number of bags. The reason: At certain times of year, residents of those countries fly to/from the United States to visit friends and relatives, with large quantities of merchandise in tow. If all the bags and cargo were loaded, the plane would be overweight.

But Air Jamaica isn’t doing it that way. Rather, they’re accepting the bag, charging a fee, and then offering you the equivalent of a lottery ticket that your might see your bags eventually during your trip.

And a one week window for delivery? Your vacation might be over by the time your bags arrive. To charge a fee and not even have a sense of when your bags might arrive is chutzpah.