Both my husband and I where recently this year ripped off by Carnival Crusie Lines. We where also past Carnival cruisers, and they still managed to jip us out of refund. Back in April of this year, my husband and I bokked for the Carnival Destiny. We originally where scheduled for leavign on September 30th-October 7th. We had already given them our $500.00 deposit. However, my husband notified me about 3 weeks or so before leaving for the cruise that we needed to call and re-schedule for another date. This was because, my husband, who happens to have a Union job, previously requested on his work sign up sheet for our vacation on September 30th. However, during the process of all the other employees signing up for September vacations, the boss someway, somehow scerwed up and wrote my husband down for a completely different date in September. We had always, received excellent treatment from Carnival in the past 4 cruises, so we thought with us calling to request a re-schedule of a the same cruise but on a different date, we assumed tit wouldn't be a problem. Well, where we in for it! I called and explained the situation to our usual travel/booking agent. (We used the same person all the time.) I told her that underneath the circumstances, it wasn't our fault that we had to re-schedule. We orignally did have plans to go etc., etc, etc. She told me first, that in order for us to still go on the different date, we needed to cancel the current cruise in their system and then re-book all over again. However, the catch was that, we where going to loose out on our $500.00 deposit, and we would then have to pay a more expensive price for the other cruise, due to it being so late in the game. She then explained to me, that if I simply wrote a letter to their Consumer Services Department, they would go ahead and automaticall take the $500.00 and put it towards a future cruise. This way our money would not go to waste. Well, a few weeks later, we got a letter back stating that they refused to do this!!! They literally told us that "they gave our circumstance some consideration" and had to decide against it! Then they threw in the death blow when they said that we where welcome to a complimentary freee upgrade on the next cruise!!! But we where already getting those anyway for being past cruise customers... I tried e-mailing them on their web site and even calling their customer service and noone could or would help me.
The worse part of it all is that, they technically do owe us the $500.00 refund because we called to cancel within the 29-8 days time frame! Why make a rule and then go against it themselves? We suffered a pretyy awful and embarrassing set back because of this. We lost out on $500.00 and we could have used that towards groceries and bills. We had to scrape and scrimp just to get by for the next few months after this.in fact, we are still recuperating. Then other financial emergencies came up soon after this and we didn't have any money!!! I'm still going to do whatever I can to get my money back because this is extremely inconsiderate, rude of them. This is how they treat their past cruisers! Never again. I hope the owner, Micky Arison, goes bankrupt!
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