Travel&Vacation

Seniors on the Go

Let’s say you decide to buy an airfare-and-hotel package online. You select your flights and hotels, then you face a laundry list of options: insurance for sure, sightseeing tours, rental cars, attraction admissions, whatever. Let’s further say that all you want is the air plus the hotel. You click “buy,” but there’s a surprise waiting for you on the final tabulation, in the form of a bigger charge than you expected because you didn’t “un-click” one or more options. That’s just a nuisance if you can still go back and undo the deal, but it’s an extra expense if you’ve already accepted the deal.

What’s the story? Some options on the list are on an opt-out basis: Unless you positively indicate you don’t want to buy them, the supplier automatically adds them to your total. And opt-out pricing, like hidden-extra pricing, is one of the current ways that all too many travel suppliers try to increase their take from you beyond the featured prices.

As an example, I tried a one-week vacation package from my home airport to Honolulu—airfare plus a week in a hotel—through both Expedia and United Airlines:

United showed insurance ($82 for two people) as an opt-out extra (but no other extras) prior to asking for credit card info. Additional extras, if any, would appear after the “buy it” stage.

Expedia, on the other hand, offered some 40 optional extras before the site asked for credit card info, but none were pre-marked as “accepted.”

This practice isn’t limited to online travel sites. Some travel agents routinely include one or more extras in your total package or itinerary: Maybe they tell you, maybe they don’t.

In my experience, insurance is the opt out you’re most likely to encounter. It’s almost routine, even on straight air tickets, when you book flights within Europe on European airlines, and common on airfare-and-hotel packages. EasyJet, for example, automatically adds cancellation insurance to an ordinary air ticket on an opt-out basis.

But you sometimes find other extras as well. On some tours, airport transfers and such are left out of the promoted price and added back as opt-out extras.

Here’s an even more invidious form of opt-out pricing. When you rent a car in a foreign country, the agent at the desk may hand you a rental agreement with “accepted” pre-entered into all four of the insurance programs most rental companies sell: collision, liability, personal property, and ADD (accidental death and dismemberment). That’s not too bad when the acceptance is obvious and spelled out in English. But often it isn’t, with a contract in a language you can’t understand.

I’m not trying to steer you away from travel insurance. When you buy a totally nonrefundable ticket or package, or one with big cancellation penalties, cancellation insurance often makes good sense. But, in my view, you, the customer, not the seller, should decide whether you buy insurance at all, and if you do buy, you should choose the specific policy that best meets your needs.

Sometimes the supplier’s insurance is a good deal, especially for senior travelers, who face escalating age-based rates on independent policies. But not always. And that means extra steps when you buy: Check the supplier’s price, then stop the process while you look at quotes from other insurance suppliers, then go back to the main purchase process.

As far as I can tell, more suppliers are looking to opt-out pricing for hidden extras as a way of making their services look less expensive than they really are. That practice is especially annoying when you’re buying online, since you often rely on price-comparison sites and some of the pricing information they list may understate the true prices.

The only defense is vigilance. Watch for any opt-out choices you may see, and weigh what you get carefully before you purchase the extra. Often saying no will avoid lots of unnecessary expenses.