Booked 4 day cruise on carnival cruise lines july scheduled for december as 25th wedding anniversary getaway. Prepaid for a shore excursion in Freeport in october. Left on cruise as scheduled and took shore excursion as scheduled on monday in freeport bahamas. The cruise so far had been ok. Not as good as one we had previously taken as the service was definitely not up to par. On Tuesday upon arriving in Nassau, Bahamas, I attempted to withdraw funds from the ATM to take with us onshore to purchase souveniers and ride the bus to the beach. The ATM receipt advised that I had no funds available. I called the bank from my cell phone ($13.00) and was told that the funds I should have had available had been placed on hold by carnival cruises. I spoke with the customer service desk and was told that I had been billed for a shore excursion. I told them that the shore excursion had been paid for back in October. She told me that she knew that but they had to put through another charge in order for the tickets to be printed out. She apologized and said that the money had been returned to my sail and sign account and that I could use that to purchase whatever I wanted on the ship. I asked her to return the funds to my debit account so that I could get cash and she advised that she was sorry but any unused funds would be returned to the account after the completion of the cruise. I advised her that this was unacceptable because I needed cash in order to go ashore. Her response was that there was nothing she could do. We spent the day on the ship doing absolutely nothing worthwile, seeing Naussau Bahamas from the dock only. Some 25th wedding anniversary this turned out to be. We contacted ship management the day of debarkation and requested half of the cruise amount refunded or another cruise to this destination as recompense. We were issued a complaint number and told to call. We called the day after we returned home. Our funds had been returned to our account minus the $88 gratuity. We objected to that as the service was lousy and it was refunded but were told that while they were very sorry that this had happened, there was no way we would receive any further refund or cruise. They advised they had the right to hold funds at their discretion based on the spending exhibited on the cruise. We spent $8.99 on a picture the first day in Freeport which was applied to the sail and sign card. Carnival regularly puts a $50 hold on your card when you board then up to $200 per person while you are on board. I knew that and I knew that they would also charge me $11 per day per person for gratuities. The money they held was in addition to all of this that I had in the account already available for their holds. The money they held was for a service that had already been paid in full 2 months before the actual sailing. All I wanted was to be able to see Nassau up close and personal and their unnecessary hold on my available funds left me stranded with no cash and nowhere to go except their boat. We have since heard from them again as they again advised us that we would not received anything more from them regarding our complaint. We asked them not to send any additional cruise information via email or regular mail and no more phone calls from their agents and even this went unheeded as we recently received a flyer asking us when we were going to sail with them again. When the agent called again I asked him why he thought we should choose carnival after our experience. He told me I should have cashed a check at the service counter on the ship so that I could have had cash. Do you think anyone ever even offered this during any one of the 5 trips to the service desk? NO!!! Unbelievable.
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