You ask the travel expert

Travel guru Simon Calder

Single supplements, fixed rate tips and airline booking fees exercised you when we asked for your questions about travel.

Fortunately, our regular expert Simon Calder, Travel Editor of The Independent, was on hand to dispense all sorts of travel wisdom.

On May 15 our 'ask the expert' will be on the subject of benefits. Click here to send us your questions .

1. Do you have to pay a fixed tip charge on cruises?

2. Why do companies charge single supplements?

3. Can a holiday legally be more expensive than advertised?

4. Shouldn't the fuel surcharge reflect current fuel prices?

5. I bought flights on my credit card but I was charged for using the card to buy each flight, even though it was all paid for in one transaction. Is that right?

6. My flights are non-refundable. Is there any way around this?

7. Why was I charged £100 correction fee to change the name of a passenger I booked a plane ticket for?

Usually when I go on a cruise I am able to choose the size of my tips and who I pay the tip to. I have recently come off a cruise with an American company and was disgusted when the company made us pay $588 for a 24 night cruise on board.

Although I complained they basically said they were in their rights to demand this payment. Can they lawfully demand payment which is not in the contract?
Reg Chopra

This is always a tricky one. More and more companies, particularly with US connections, are automatically adding tips to your on-board account.

My understanding is that this is always optional, so it seems you were wrongly advised; in practice, many British travellers go straight to the purser's desk and announce their intention to pay cash tips.

Generally, any travel purchase from a no-frills-flight to a luxury cruise has to be available at the price stated, so you have the law on your side.

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I have just received an invitation to pre-register for Cunard's new cruise ship Queen Elizabeth. I enquired whether they have any single cabins and was told they would sell a double cabin for sole occupancy with a single supplement of 175%. This is terrible discrimination as they obviously don't want single people travelling on their ships.
Martin Holland

Single supplements arise because much of the travel industry is designed on the basis that people will always travel in twos.

If you don't fit into this mould, then you can often find that you have to pay far more ... of course the most extreme case is hotels where the rate is the same whether there is one of you or four.

So what can you do about it? Choose a cruise line/holiday provider who offers supplement-free departures, though these will inevitably be off-peak. Or re-think how you holiday.

Many adventure operators have arrangements where single people of the same gender share rooms or cabins and pay no surcharge. Or spend under £15 for membership of the YHA.

Cunard says: All three of our ships have double rooms only - there are no singles.

Therefore people travelling alone are charged a supplement which varies according to the grade. On the Queen Elizabeth it is 175% of the double occupancy fare for grades below AA.

The fare is 200% of double occupancy fare for the grades above. Details are given in the current brochure.

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I booked a holiday with my local office of a big travel company but it was at a much higher price than advertised. The lady at the till lowered the price but it was still more than the actual brochure price.

I reported it to my local trading standards who said the company did not break the law, they can increase the holiday price at any time. I can't understand why a holiday increased in price by so much in less than 3 days, when I asked for an explanation they simply could not give me one.
Jacqui Sterling

Well, Jacqui, I'm sure a lot of other annoyed people will agree with you, but ultimately the deal you do depends on the price as it applies at the moment you book.

Some companies will give you an option, with no price rise, but you will be lucky to get more than 24 hours before you have to commit.

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Last July, we booked a touring holiday in the USA with Cosmos, part of the cost of this holiday was a fuel surcharge of £161 each. This was at a time of high fuel costs, so we accepted the deal.

The same holiday now does not have a surcharge, presumably because costs have gone down. We have been in touch with Cosmos but they say, basically, tough. Is this correct or indeed fair?
Jeff Pollitt

Correct? Yes. You agreed to pay this. The fact that the price of oil has fallen is irrelevant. Fair? Lots of us who've booked at the "wrong" time would think not.

But Cosmos quotes the rate that the airline would have charged them including the fuel surcharge at the time the customer made the booking - in this case a year in advance. They said it's just like putting fuel in your car.

You wouldn't go back to the petrol station for a rebate if you hadn't used the petrol bought earlier. Furthermore the administrative costs would be uneconomical if they had to contact each customer when fuel surcharges went up or down. They point out that the customer got an early booking reduction of £75 per person on the holiday.

There are plenty of aggrieved people who have had to pay a surcharge only to see the price of oil plummet. Nothing at all you can do about it. Remember: airline fares or anything else can change by the minute.

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I made a booking with a scheduled airline on 11th March, for return flights for four people from Edinburgh to Paris. The surcharge for paying by credit card was £16.

When I received my card statement I found that the booking had been treated as four separate transactions.
George Simpson

This scheduled airline , like many other airlines, seeks to make a fat profit out of how you pay. By comparison with one low cost airlines, £2 per person per sector isn't bad, but it's still far more than the airline actually pays (probably around 1 per cent of gross).

Debit card payments, in particular, are seen as an excellent way of adding hidden extras to flight prices. For a 20p transaction the low cost airline charges up to £40 for a family of four on a return trip as a "payment handling fee".

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When I tried to cancel a future flight, during the process there was a pop-up window that said "Cancel Entire Booking? Please be aware that all cancellations are 100% non-refundable." I did not proceed with the cancellation.
Henry Lloyd

I'm one of thousands of people who feel there is a fundamental discrepancy between the airlines' ability to do whatever they want - change/cancel/delay flights arbitrarily, without any consumer recourse.

But if you want to change anything, you get clobbered. That's what you agree to. The airlines make much more money out of NOT carrying people than out of flying them, because they get to keep the tax.

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I booked my friend and his brother a return flight to Sweden from Liverpool with a budget airline. I made a mistake on the first passenger's first name and was charged £100 to correct it.
Ian Watson.

Yes, it's harsh - I've been penalised by other airlines by a similar amount for getting the date wrong by one day. They are no longer flexible, and warn you to check before you hit that "buy now" button.

Incidentally, £100 for a correction isn't by any means as bad as it can get.

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The views expressed are those of Simon Calder, not the BBC.