A Mansfield, Texas man is furious at American Airlines over a misunderstanding about how much it would have cost for his two grandchildren and their parents to pre-board flights on a recent trip. He says the airline is charging for a service that it sometimes allows for free.

Mike Phelan says he told his daughter and son-in-law before their trip that American Airlines no longer announces pre-boarding for families with small children, as was the previous practice. But if a family asks a gate attendant to let it board early, the attendant, if possible, will comply.

Good advice. That’s AA’s policy.

But as readers of Dave Lieber’s Watchdog column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram first learned, when the four family members tried that strategy at the airport, Phelan says, they were told that the pre-boarding fee was $9.50 per person for each leg of the trip. Since there were six legs, the cost would be $228.

The family turned that down and struggled to board, the granddad says, “with their backpacks and all the paraphernalia that young parents have to travel with nowadays. It was very disappointing to me.”

These days, boarding early is considered a privilege because of the rush to find baggage space inside the cabin. High costs for checked baggage have caused more travelers to pack more in larger carry-on items.

I contacted American Airlines to learn more. Spokesman Tim Smith offered an apology and said that if the couple had spent the money to pre-board, they would have gotten a refund.

American doesn’t charge families to pre-board, he said. The confusion may have come from two pre-boarding options that do cost money.

A year ago, American Airlines unveiled two new fees for pre-boarding available for purchase during check-in and at self-service kiosks. These privileges are not sold at the gate.

Up to one hour before a flight, travelers can pay $10 to be included in Group 1, the first to board after travelers with elite status walk on the plane. “Be among the first to board and stow your bags,” the airline promotes.

The second is called the “Boarding and Flexibility Package,” which includes: Group 1 boarding, standby status for an earlier flight on departure day, and a $75 discount on the service charge when a flight needs to be changed. This costs $9 to $19 depending on the markets.

In June 2011, the U.S. Transportation Department said airlines collected $5.7 billion in fees last year from checked luggage, ticket changes and other optional services. American collected $1 billion of those fees. Boarding fees accounted for “a tiny fraction” of that, the airline says.

American used to board passengers in five or six groups. Now there are three.

Elite passengers and military personnel are supposed to board first. Then Group 1, including those who bought the extra options.

Here’s something to remember if you need to pre-board:

Spokesman Smith says, “Our policy is we don’t announce it, but anybody who feels like they need some extra time or some reasonable reason for pre-boarding is more than welcome to tell us about it, and if it’s operationally possible, we’ll make every effort to do that.”

Operationally possible? That means the plane arrived on time, its cabin has been cleaned and the catering service is complete. If a plane is ready, and you have a special need, AA staff is supposed to let you on, Smith says.

Yes, AA does charge for pre-boarding, but if you walk with a cane, have more than two children or might slow down boarding in any other way, don’t pay for the service.

Ask for it for free.

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Dave Lieber shows Americans how to fight back against corporate deceptions in his wonderful book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong. Are you tired of losing time, money and aggravation to all the assaults on our wallets? Learn how to fight back with ease — and win. Get the book here.

Read The Watchdog Nation manifesto here!

 

The 2011 Texas Legislature offers lawmakers the chance to provide more oversight of how the North Texas Tollway Authority collects fines and fees on unpaid toll bills.

State Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, is preparing a bill that would lower the fees and penalties charged to motorists on top of their tolls.

State Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, has already introduced Texas Senate Bill 343 which lowers the amount a toll authority can charge for an administrative fee from $100 to $50. However, NTTA does not charge the maximum fee of $100 — and its bills are still considered extraordinarily high by those who complain.

Motorists complain that a 45-cent toll bill can end up costing hundreds of dollars by the time NTTA is done billing those who haven’t paid.

For the past year, The Watchdog asked readers who complained about the NTTA’s practices to send Nelson their complaints in writing to help lawmakers understand the problem. Nelson’s staff said last week that her office has received 140 written complaints. She is still collecting them.

As readers of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Dave Lieber Watchdog column learned first, Sen. Nelson explains: “I am working on legislation to lower the cap on administrative fees that the NTTA can charge, and to have those capped fees apply to the entire invoice regardless of how many separate violations are on that invoice.

“My goal is to stop these fees from adding up to unreasonable amounts for vehicle owners, while allowing the tollway agency to reasonably cover their expenses.”

Whatever happens, the tollway authority won’t make it easy. Nelson said a year ago that when she questioned the NTTA, “they’ve been very defensive.”

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More Watchdog Nation News:

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Criticism comes from the inside, too. Current NTTA Chairman Victor Vandergriff of Arlington complained in a public meeting a year ago that the authority’s budget may depend too much on penalty fees.

The payment system confuses many drivers. No signs on the toll roads explain the process. The NTTA no longer uses tollbooths. Drivers who keep a TollTag on their windshield must remember to keep enough cash in their accounts.

For vehicles lacking tags, license plates are photographed and bills are mailed after the fifth transaction. Car owners billed by mail are charged 50 percent more than what TollTag users pay.

Motorists are supposed to keep their addresses up to date with the state so the bills arrive properly. Sometimes, though, car owners say they never received initial bills but learned later that they owe hundreds of dollars.

The NTTA says that it mails the letters and that if they don’t come back, it considers them delivered.

In October, I reported how a woman went to jail for 27 hours for failing to appear in court for an unpaid toll bill that she estimates was for $11.

She said she never received the bill.

I won’t defend scofflaws who don’t pay their tolls. As a TollTag account holder, I certainly don’t want to cover other people’s costs. But I was curious about how much the biggest toll runners owe. A Public Information Act request to the NTTA provided the answer.

The NTTA won’t release names, but its records show that the No. 1 scofflaw owes $72,000, followed by four drivers who each owe more than $60,000.

How you can owe that much is beyond me. The NTTA won’t say how much is for tolls and how much is for fees and penalties.

For most customers who get into trouble, though, it’s small tolls and big add-ons. Two motorists have complained to me that although they tried to pay their bills, the NTTA still sent their accounts to its collection agency.

David Spruiell of Arlington says his toll bill was for $8.56, but “I obviously misread the bill.” He mailed a check for $9.56 — $1 more. The authority sent the check back with an explanation that he had overpaid. He says he tried to call twice but gave up when the lines were tied up. Next he got a notice from a collection agency that he owes $208.

When he called to complain, an NTTA staffer told him that he could negotiate to pay less. “This is a one-time offer,” he was told. “I’ll take $138 if you pay today.”

He didn’t take the offer.

“It’s not like I didn’t try to pay,” he says. “A late fee of $10 would be acceptable, but not $200. I don’t want to have a warrant issued against me, but this is crazy and reeks of abusive misuse of a public agency.”

The NTTA says it is not equipped to handle overpayments on its pay-by-mail system.

Roger Beaman of Mansfield acknowledges that he paid his $10.45 bill three days late. His problem? He forgot to write his car’s license plate number or invoice number on the check. He has two cars in his household. When the NTTA received the check, it credited it to the wrong car.

One car had a $10.45 bill, and the other had zero. But the NTTA put the $10.45 into the zero account, giving it a credit, while the other account went delinquent.

When he called to complain, a staffer promised to fix it but never did, he says. He kept trying. One NTTA staffer told him that if he sent $7.95, it would go away. He did as he was told, but that didn’t work either. A collection agency seeks $182.

“I can say their check-handling skills with my account would get a failing grade,” he says.

NTTA spokeswoman Kimberly Jackson says, “It is important that customers contact us early if they have any questions so we can work with them to resolve the issue quickly and at the lowest cost for the customer.”

Jackson says the NTTA plans to make an improvement: “We will be implementing a program in 2011 through a track-and-trace program with the U.S. Postal Service. We soon will be able to track when a letter was delivered.”

That will help, but it can’t come soon enough. The NTTA builds massive road projects, but it seems to have problems with the mail. When I called last month to order new Velcro strips for my worn TollTag, the NTTA sent me a replacement set.

Three different times.

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Read the previous Watchdog Nation report called “Here’s how to take back some of the authority from the North Texas Tollway Authority.”

Read the previous Watchdog Nation reported called “Watchdog Nation says: Give ‘em hell, Victor.”

Read about the woman thrown in jail at “Women goes to jail for unpaid toll.”

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Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. The new edition of his book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, is available in hardcover, as a CD audio book, ebook and hey, what else do you need. Visit our store. Now revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

WatchdogNation.com is pleased to invite you to a wonderful charity event we are co-sponsoring for Summer Santa, the all-volunteer children’s charity co-founded by Watchdog Nation creator Dave Lieber in 1997.

Announcing the 2010 Summer Santa “Flipping for Kids Pancake Supper.”

Former Dallas Cowboys Pro Bowl player Russell Maryland is Honorary Chairman. He’ll be there. We’re raising money for the Summer Santa 2010 summer camp program.

The pancake supper is from 5-8 p.m. on Friday, March 26, 2010 at Nelson’s Restaurant, home of gourmet pancakes at 621 E. Southlake Blvd. in Southlake, Texas.

(Site of old Classic Cafe in Timarron Village near Byron Nelson Parkway). www.nelsonsrestaurants.com ||  817-416-8700.

Cost is $10 for adults, $5 for children ages 2-10, infants free.

Enjoy pancakes while Summer Santa raises money to send area kids in need to summer camps. Dave invites you to learn more about Summer Santa, which he helped start as an all-volunteer charity with no physical office or paid staff. Overhead costs are among the lowest in the non-profit world, so almost every dollar donated goes to pay for the many programs that help several thousand North Texas youngsters each year.

Read about this wonderful charity at SummerSanta.org — designed to remind everyone that helping children is needed year-round, not just at the end-of-the-year holidays.

Oh, and please download the official pancake supper flyer here, print it and hang on your frig so you don’t forget!~

P.S. If you can’t make the supper, but want to donate to our 2010 summer camp fund and send a child to camp, you can donate here through Summer Santa’s site using PayPal.

Powerless against the power company

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My Open Letter to Oncor Electric Delivery:

Celeste Bird says she cannot communicate successfully with anyone at Oncor Electric Delivery about the repeated power outages in her Grapevine, Texas neighborhood.

Even before the recent cold weather and heavy snow made the problem worse, she says, the power regularly went out for at least half the neighbors on her street.

“You have to work hard to even get a person at Oncor, and they won’t tell you anything,” Bird said. When she does reach someone, she says, she gets a “from-the-book answer saying maybe next time they will check into it.”

Many complained this month that they couldn’t get information from Oncor about when power would be restored after snow and wind caused half a million residences and businesses to go without electricity, some for an extended period.

These days, with emerging technologies such as Facebook and Twitter, it’s easier than ever to communicate with customers — if you want to. So on behalf of Bird, her neighbors and many others, The Watchdog last week wrote an open letter:

Dear Oncor,

What do you do now to communicate with thousands of frustrated customers who call in with complaints, specifically about power outages and also recent high bills?

From my mail, it appears that these recent weeks are among the most difficult times for Oncor in recent years. I hear about more complaints which you are receiving than ever more. More requests for meter re-reads, questions about smart meters, theories of no-show meter readers and inaccurate meters.

I sense a lot of frustration among your customers. They say it’s difficult to get information from you. They wonder, because they are dealing with an automated phone system, if complaints are received properly. They don’t like the lack of human contact, the inability to give feedback. They don’t like NOT knowing if a power restoration crew is scheduled, when it will come, when power could come back on.

The public wants you to be more accessible, more transparent and more available to help them in their times of need. It seems like you aren’t using technology as best you could. In this age of fast-moving communication, it would seem that Oncor could do more than use automated phone lines to take information.

I wonder why you don’t make this information available on a Web site so we can check the latest. This, as you know, is the most basic form of easily distributed rapid information — for free — and customers are clamoring for it.

I received calls from people who wanted to know how they could find out if their power would be turned on? What do I tell them?

I can’t think of another product we buy each month that we understand less about how you bill and whether the price and quantity are correct. People are supposed to trust your systems and equipment. Yet people feel a loss of power and control of their lives when it comes to electrical power.

The Watchdog

Oncor spokeswoman Carol Peters responded.

She checked Oncor records and confirmed that Bird has complained many times, even to the Public Utility Commission of Texas. But, she said, “there’s no way for us to tell a customer when their power is going to be turned on.”

The great snowstorm of 2010 was Oncor’s worst winter storm ever. Complaints were up, but that was not unexpected, she said.

Rather than dwell on Oncor’s recent unpleasantness, Peters wanted to focus on the future. She promised that greater transparency is coming to Texas’ largest electricity transmission company.

A new Web site is about to be unveiled by the state, working with the large transmission companies, both she and a PUC spokesman told me. Customers will be able to log on and retrieve more detailed information about their electricity usage and bills.

When is this coming?

“It should be announced fairly soon, but it will be the first step toward total visibility on your electric bill,” Peters said. “It’s almost finished.”

The second part of the transparency movement, she said, is the installation of smart meters, scheduled for completion by 2012.

When smart meters are installed, Peters said, customers won’t have to call utilities to report outages. Utilities will already know because a smart meter sends back usage information every 15 minutes.

“This is the brave new world we are heading for,” Peters said. “This is a transformative period for Oncor.”

Until the smart system is installed and while more old-fashioned methods are used, Peters said Oncor is interested in doing “anything we can to improve communication before we deploy” the new meters.

Celeste Bird says she and her Grapevine neighbors can’t wait that long, adding, “Maybe it’s time for some competition if the one choice we have for service can’t provide the type of service we pay for.”

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Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. The new 2010 edition of his book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, is out. Revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber