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We've all heard the old adage that if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Still, we fell for the tactics of Caribbean Cruise Line, which operates out of Florida and offers so-called free cruises to the Bahamas for those willing to pay just nominal taxes and port fees. Upon calling CCL when we received
their solicitation at the start of 2010, a slick sales representative tried vigorously and repeatedly to "upgrade" us into a more expensive package giving us "more time in Nassau" except that, when pressed, it seems all we got was a longer time on the water, the time in Nassau was the same for both trips. This alone should have made us suspicious, but finally, when we insisted on just the basic package, we were charged those so-called taxes and port fees of $59 each on a credit card, and told we had eighteen months to actually book our cruise. We still trusted CCL.
The problems began when we tried to actually book a year-end cruise to the Bahamas in December. It seems the embarkation point for the cruise changed from Fort Lauderdale to West Palm Beach, contrary to the vouchers we had received, a change of which we were never informed but, we were told by CCL, we still had to drive to the Lauderdale "Welcome Center" to pick up our actual tickets this was absolutely required, CCL refused to either mail the tickets to us or have them waiting at the boat for us. They also refused to give any reason for their unreasonable and time-and-gasoline consuming demand, and we refused to make a round trip of nearly two hours just to get tickets. But then, the not-so-charming CCL representative with whom I was speaking told me that if it was inconvenient to add an extra two hours to the two days drive from our home to their departure point, it was no problem, they could give us some hotel stays for merely a $50 deposit charged to our credit card plus our agreement to a time share presentation.
We told CCL "thanks, but no thanks" and began to demand refund of those so-called port fees and taxes of $59 each as provided in Paragraph 7 of CCL's Terms and Conditions. After the first half dozen demands for that refund, by phone and fax, we got a call from CCL's Shauntal who suddenly told us that we could pick up the tickets at West Palm Beach after all, weren't we lucky? We told Shauntal that we did not feel lucky, as in the meantime we had checked Caribbean Cruise Line over the internet and found how many people had a very bad experience with CCL and consider it an abusive scam all we wanted was the promised refund of those taxes and fees. We're still waiting for that refund promised in CCL's Terms and Conditions and would not cruise with them if they were the last cruise line on earth. Yes, when it sounds too good to be true, it is.
