Back in June, my bf and I were invited by a good friend of ours to go on a cruise in March for his birthday. We gladly accepted and then were directed to work with Maureen, a family friend, who was in charge of putting the group package together. We had never been on a cruise before, and so we had a few questions... price differences for rooms, dates for payments, veteran discounts etc. Every time we had questions, the responses were in ALL CAPS, or we'd receive multiple emails in one single day to rush us that our deadline for deposit was coming up (including facebook messages to hurry up or miss out)! What's the rush? I had told her that we'd be paying on Fri (payday), and if anything was that much of an emergency, she had both our phone numbers to call.
After multiple back n forth emails about the early special deadline on Friday, we booked the deposit that same Fri. Later she told us that we missed the deadline because it was on "Florida time". And I'm supposed to know that, how? Being that she was a "family friend" of our friend, we just brushed it off and paid EVERYTHING in full, just to not have to deal with her rude emails again.
Fast forward to last week, where I just accepted a great job at a CPA firm; where the busiest time of the year is March through the end of April. Unfortunately, because I do not want to jeopardize my new opportunity, we decided to cancel. Luckily, after reading the cancellation fees over and over, we were still within the cancellation time where there would be little to no penalties. When I asked Maureen what the penalties are, she responded quickly with $250 and no other explanation. I reiterated what I had read online and asked her to clarify, and she very hesitantly asked if we ever read the booking she sent in the beginning that stated the fees. Yes, we did, but is it too difficult to do your job and clarify?? All I wanted was a clear picture of what I was losing. Her response then, was $25 Cancel fee, $50 her fee, leaving us with a $1485 credit that was to be used as a "future cruise credit". At least we had answer finally.
The way I understood was, $250 deposit would go toward a credit and the rest was to be credited back to the original payment card, (after losing the $25 fee).
Whatever, we did not want to argue and had to cancel regardless of her attitude; so after saying, yes please cancel our cruise, she very selfishly said, "sorry to hear that and even more sorry for your friend". Uhm, excuse me??? This is MY trip that I'm losing money over which has nothing to do with our friends! If they had their own personal discount because they gathered a group, hey, I was saving them money to begin with, not making them pay more by cancelling, there's a difference. I was very much looking forward to 7 days of Caribbean fun with friends, and I shouldn't be made to feel guilty for cancelling this super awesome cruise because of a new job that I accepted!
And as if I didn't feel bad enough already, she had the audacity to immediately call my friend to tell her that we'd cancelled instead of my being able to talk to her myself to explain why we were no longer going.
This is by far the worse experience I've ever had in booking a vacation, and believe me, I'm a traveler. Planning something like this is supposed to be FUN, not stressful. I apologize for being a cruise "newbie" bothering with questions. I guess because she is retiring, she no longer cares about being professional, even if that means being super rude to her friend's friend. I still have every single email and not once ever was there a "thank you", except from me to her.
Thankfully, in the end, she was wrong about the numbers and the $250 deposits are now a cruise credit and the remaining balance ($1085) was quietly put back into my account by Carnival. I received no email or call or confirmation from her saying that this was going to happen.
Because of her, I'm very sorry to have ever accepted my friend's birthday bash to begin with, and I'm super hesitant to have to book my "future cruise credit" with Black Diamond Travel in the future. read more
