I have this group of four ladies, all school teachers, who go to Mexico once or twice a year. They're great folks, I always enjoy dealing with them. They're underpaid, of course, and they don't have much flexibility in their vacation schedules, so we always try to get them good deals on their Easter and Christmas holidays. This year I sent them to Puerto Vallarta on a package that was supposed to accommodate four women, two beds, two rooms.

The problem was they turned up in Puerto Vallarta on Sunday and discovered that the hotel was holding reservations for two women, one bed, two rooms. The company who provided the package forgot to mention the room type we booked did not offer two beds. The teachers refused to accept it, got themselves into the correct room category, and emailed me from an Internet cafe yesterday morning to let me know the hotel planned on collecting additional money for the change in room category. I swung into action.

Only to hit a brick wall. The tour vendor said it was my agency's fault for not knowing that when they said '1 double 2 beds' they meant '1 room double occupancy 1 bed and 1 murphy bed.' I asked to talk to Customer Service. I got a guy who was swamped with work, to which I am entirely sympathetic, who promised to get back to me "sometime this week."

"No," I corrected him gently. "You will get back to me today or tomorrow. My clients are worried about having to come up with extra money for your mistake, and their vacation is compromised. I expect to hear from you this afternoon." He agreed, but I knew he wasn't going to make my request a high priority. I could tell from the sound of his voice.

This morning I called him back and asked where we were at. He apologized for not calling me and immediately launched into an explanation of his solution: Tour Vender X would be happy to split the cost with my agency, accepting partial blame for the room category problem, and my clients would pay the rest on site when they checked out.

"That's unacceptable," I said calmly. "Your company made the mistake, and I have documentation clearly stating the clients were to get two beds per room, and so you will pay the entire amount." He refused, and my tone of voice got sharper. We went back and forth a little. I requested to speak to a supervisor, my usual escalation of responsibility when someone has reached the limits of their authority. Naturally, she was in a meeting. Do supervisors ever do anything but have meetings? Haven't you noticed they're never available on the spot? It's really mysterious. But I left a message to be called, and got on with other things.

Well, she called this afternoon, and I went ballistic. She was, not to put too fine a point on it, a bitch. She told me it was our fault for not knowing what they meant when they said 'double room.' I said we weren't psychic, and we would never have booked one bed for these clients since we've been doing their vacation for years. She then took me to task for not being the original booking agent. I said, perfectly correctly, that it didn't matter since I was doing the follow up on behalf of the original booking agent. She asked me how I knew what had happened since I wasn't there for the booking. I was, I said, it was made in my hearing. "Did you review that agent's notes? You're just going on an overheard conversation," she said snippily. When I wouldn't accept that as germane, she told me some women "like to share a bed," which really cheesed me off. Finally, after exchanging several pungent, increasingly irritated volleys, I told her Tour Vendor X had better find that money pronto or 28 years of excellent business relations would be jeopardized by her intransigent and adversarial attitude, and hung up the phone. At which point I let out a piercing scream.

The client sitting on our sofa winced. I was embarrassed, not having noticed him, but he seemed impressed. "You can represent me any time, lady!" he said admiringly. I put in a call to our sales rep, and went on with my day. There was, I think it is fair to say, seething. Also some fuming. But generally speaking I tried to just wait until the rep called back. Cold, uncaring, I repeated silently.

Within the hour she called back and left a message on my voicemail that the president of Tour Company X had decided they would pay the money since we were such good customers, and not coincidentally members of a rather large consortium. She mentioned confidentially that the supervisor was only temporarily in charge of Customer Service while they were hiring a new manager. I was relieved to hear it wasn't someone they thought actually was good at CS. And I was very happy to fax my clients the resolution I thought all along was the correct one.

The moral of the story is don't mess with my clients, and don't tell me you'll do me any favors when I discover your mistake. I may be cold and uncaring about how swamped I am with work, but I'll go to the mat with anyone who tries to do my clients wrong. I am the traveler's advocate in any situation. It's the best reason I know of to use a travel agent rather than booking a tour yourself. We have a lot more clout than any individual traveler, and we're not afraid to use it.

But I still don't want to talk about Italy.

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