Peter Greenberg TODAY Travel Editor • Profile • E-mail

What happens when you buy a ticket for a cruise, airline flight or an organized tour — and then cancel? Do you — or perhaps more appropriately, can you — get your money back? What's the true meaning of "nonrefundable"? And what about undisclosed service fees and charges? Or taxes? Should you be taxed for something you didn't actually use?

For starters, we're talking about hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars and who — legitimately — deserves them.

I start with the story of the dream trip that wasn't. This story appeared late last year in the Washington Post, written by reporter Cindy Loose.

It's all about an elderly woman who purchased a cruise from Princess Cruise Lines. But she didn't just purchase the cruise through the cruise line, she also purchased her air travel and all other aspects of the cruise — shore excursions, port fees, surcharges and taxes, directly from Princess. And when the cruise line sent her on an absurd air itinerary with numerous hard-to-make connections and she missed her cruise, things got ugly.

From Cindy Loose's story: "The 78-year-old woman, who lives on a Social Security pension, missed the Alaska cruise she'd spent 10 years dreaming about. Princess Cruises kept not only the $2,500 she had paid for the cruise and airfare, but also the $559.80 the airlines refunded because the woman missed the last flight to her cruise.

The woman didn't know until after she'd paid and her tickets had arrived that she was being sent to Anchorage in a roundabout way on three airlines, with three legs in each direction. That's according to her daughter, who asked that her mother's name not be used because she'd suffered enough, and 'I don't want people asking her about it and making her rehash it over and over.' Seeing the difficult flight route, the daughter tried to talk her out of going, but the woman insisted she'd make the best of it.

The woman arrived at 6:30 a.m. at BWI Airport for the first of her May 19 flights to her cruise. She and an elderly friend got to Minneapolis just fine. But the Northwest flight to Seattle was delayed by mechanical problems, causing the two women to miss their connection to Anchorage.

In Seattle, Northwest agents urged the two women and about 25 other passengers to run and try to make an Alaska Air flight, the woman said. But that Alaska Air flight to Anchorage was full. So was the next one. Finally, the women were boarded on a third flight.

But after they'd settled in, an Alaska Air attendant told them they had to get off the plane because two of the airline's own passengers had just shown up. Two young people were so sympathetic to the elderly travelers that they offered to give up their seats, saying they lived in Anchorage and were in no hurry. But 'the flight attendant was adamant that we should de-board the plane' and wouldn't allow the switch, the woman said. She wanted to call her daughter back in Washington but couldn't figure out how to use pay phones that required credit cards. She said two Alaska Air representatives refused to allow her to use company phones for a long-distance call. Moments later, the woman's traveling companion had an asthma attack.

Near midnight, the two finally made their way back to the Northwest terminal. Northwest offered to put them in a hotel and fly them to meet their ship at another port the following day. 'At this point my body was weak, I had a severe headache and was so tired and confused I could not think. I would miss the glaciers, the part of the trip I was most excited about, and I was too exhausted mentally and physically to continue.' Instead, Northwest flew them home without charge." (Read the entire Washington Post article here)

Loose reported that the woman's daughter had been fighting — since last May — for a refund from Princess as well as a refund for the unused air tickets.

Princess Cruises took a very hard line in this case, claiming that under its stated refund policies, since the woman essentially canceled her cruise within 30 days, that she was entitled to no refund. It would stick to its contract stating the woman would lose 100 percent of her payment.

Loose did some additional digging and discovered that United Airlines did refund the unused ticket money — to Princess!

When Washington Post readers read this sad tale, the response was intense and immediate. Dozens of readers wrote letters and sent money — ranging from $9 to one couple who sent thousands so that the elderly woman could not only take her dream cruise, but also take a friend.

It was the kindness of strangers to the rescue — Princess, only under pressure, refunded the taxes and fees to the 78-year-old woman. But the story became ground zero in the discussion of refund policies and what travelers are entitled to receive.

In the case of the 78-year-old woman, getting a refund proved nearly impossible because the cruise line has a stated policy in its contract that if you cancel for any reason within a specified period of time, you get absolutely nothing back. Translation: You need to buy trip cancellation and interruption insurance.

But there are three issues here that are worth noting, because they apply to all of us. The woman had  purchased everything related to her cruise — including her airfare — through Princess. She had, in effect, relied upon Princess to her detriment (in legal terms, it's called detrimental reliance,and more on this later). Had she bought her own airfare separately and then missed her connections, then by all accounts she would have been completely without legal standing, unless she had bought trip cancellation/interruption insurance.

Second, she had never flown on her trip on United, and hadn't used the bulk of her tickets.

If the airline had then refunded that ticket price to Princess, why didn't Princess then refund that money to the woman? In the end, when the Washington Post uncovered the fact that Northwest did, in fact, refund that money, only then did Princess announce it would send the woman a check for a few hundred dollars.

And third, this woman not only paid for her trip, she paid port fees (these are per-head fees that are assessed on a cruise ship by individual ports based on the number of passengers on board), government fees, shore excursion fees, surcharges and taxes — all for things she never got. What happened to all of that money? The cruise line simply kept it!

We checked with the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Department of the Treasury and individual state tax departments to find out where the money goes — and each reported that the taxes should be refunded regardless of a cruise line's refund policy — to the passenger.

How much money are we talking about? It's huge.

And it's not just the cruise lines. It's tour operators, airlines and other travel providers. When someone cancels, what happens to all those fees and taxes, and why aren't they given back to consumers?

It seems the industry, as a whole, doesn't want to provide many answers.

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