THEY ARE A SCAM! THEY TAKE YOUR MONEY AND PRETEND TO BOOK YOUR CRUISE!
We used FCV a few times several years ago, and all went great. So, when they called to sell us on a pre-paid vacation package in 2016, we were excited to start making the payments (a sort of vacation layaway plan). We explained exactly what we wanted to the sales person, an Alaska cruise for 4 in an exterior room in early August. We didn't need airfare. We were given a price and made all of our payments as agreed. When the time came to book our cruise, the staff seemed responsive. We received our booking number for a Royal Caribbean Cruise in the first week of August, and we started making plans such as obtaining passports and arranging childcare. By June I was starting to wonder why we hadn't received boarding or itinerary information. So, my husband began trying to contact FCV via phone and e-mail. After receiving no response, we called RC directly. They told us that FCV had failed to make the final payment, and our booking had been cancelled. They also told us that the ship was full leaving no chance to rebook.
We were finally able to get someone from FCV to call back, but often it would take 2 to 3 days between communications, and we had to initiate every single time. They did take responsibility, claiming it was due to an employee error on the part of someone who was no longer employed there. After over a month of sporadic communication, we were finally offered $1000 credit to apply to the same cruise in 2019. We were told to call back to rebook in February.
Well, we called back in January and were told that the first two August sailing were unavailable. We are both public school employees and beholden to the school calendar. But, at this point we've been waiting since 2016 for this trip and agree to figuring out how to make a late August sailing work. We book the trip and again receive a booking number and are told "don't worry, we've got this covered". I confirmed with the RC website that we had a balcony room on the correct cruise. While I was on the site, I noticed that there were rooms on both of the early August sailings which we had been told weren't available. About a week later, I logged back onto the RC website, and it didn't recognize our booking number. I again called RC, and they let me know that the reservation had been cancelled and they had no other reservation in our name.
When my husband was able to speak with someone at FCV, he was brushed off and told, "this happens a lot...because of price changes". This person, however, did not offer to fix it, AND no one from FCV had even attempted to contact us to change our booking or warned us that this could happen. So, I have to think they did it on purpose and did not intend on contacting us.
So, here it is--2019. We've given them well over $4000, and supposedly have a $1000 credit which is completely useless if they don't actually intend on paying for our cruise. We've had 2 bookings, both of which have been cancelled without anyone from First Class Vacations contacting us. One was cancelled less than a week from when it was made! We've asked them to book our cruise, pay it in full and transfer control of the booking to RC, and have gotten no response. My husband tried calling this morning and even offered to wait as long as it took to talk to the person who booked our second cruise. She claimed she would call by the end of the day, but you guessed it, nothing.
We've now started the process of trying to get a refund, along with contacting the attorney generals in both states, the BBB, and consulting with a civil attorney.
If you would like to give thousands of dollars to a company and in exchange get to wait days for return phone calls that may not even come, use FCV!
If you would like to rearrange your entire summer schedule as well as the schedules of anyone who will be helping you and then not even have a vacation, use FCV!
If you would like to pay a travel agent thousands of dollars only to have to spend hours upon hours figuring out what the hell happened to your cruise and what to do about it, use FCV!
If the hope of a trip is worth $5000 to you, go ahead. You won't actually get a trip, but it's fun to think about it--use FCV! read more