Spas for real men
From a friend of mine in Finland, comes this photo of a spa for real men. In a country where every respectable home has its own sauna and rolling in the snow after super-heating your body for ten minutes is a national obsession, we learn that soaking in a spa, hot tub or Nordic outdoor pool is ranked as a close-behind pleasure.
Here is an example of the Finn’s can-do attitude. When someone grows up with the ability to frolick in steaming fresh air pools it is hard to let go, even on construction sites when forced to overnight away from the family home and more refined civilization.
Note, the abundance of dirt for mudpacks that hints at more exotic spa treatments. Heck there may be a gentle rub with heated stones and earth-mover oil. In any case this is the perfect set-up for the Finnish ritual of subjecting yourself to successive temperature contrasts. Enjoy.
Feds launch crack-down on unsafe rental cars
It turns out that some rental car companies are ignoring manufacturer recalls and renting out cars that may be unsafe. Recalled cars are regularly rented prior to having the recall item fixed.
NHTSA says the crackdown was prompted by “incidents involving allegations of personal injury and death” allegedly caused by “safety defects” on rental vehicles, including a 2004 case documented in an ABC News report in which two sisters died in a PT Cruiser rented from Enterprise that had been subject to a safety recall.
No federal law requires that rental companies fix recalled cars before handing the keys to consumers, and as the ABC News report documented, not all firms have policies in place to ensure that vehicles under safety recall are repaired before they’re rented.
American Airlines now charging customers for right to buy airline tickets
Many European passengers planning to fly on American Airlines are now being asked to pay an additional US$10 for any ticket purchased through a travel agent served by specific computer reservation systems. American Airlines’ rationale is a bit complicated, but the bottom line is that passengers will see an increase in their costs to travel.
The solution is to just book on another airline. With these international computer reservation system contracts having contracts that last for years at a time, it is hard to understand the AA demand that travel agents pay them for the privilege of selling AA tickets when there are scores of other airlines out there.
A spokesman for American Airlines defended the decision and explained: “Unfortunately, Travelport very recently notified American of dramatic booking fee increases for bookings made in markets outside the US using the GDSs owned and operated by Travelport – these being Apollo/Galileo and Worldspan.
“These GDSs have become significantly more expensive to American than all other booking platforms in the affected international markets. To the extent that agencies particularly value the service of one of these GDSs, American has asked them to absorb their cost premium to American, known as the Booking Source Premium, to the degree necessary to bring the net cost of such GDSs reasonably in line with the cost to American of other GDSs.”
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
