Comments on: A Sea Miles swindle? Carnival confuses “per cabin” with “per person”

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:15:14 +0000

I have both a Carnival SeaMiles card and a Delta SkyMiles card I use them to pay all my expenses except electricity, or an average of $2000/month. I’ve had the SkyMiles card since 2001 and the SeaMiles card since 2007. So far I’ve redeemed two first class round trip tickets from Orlando to San Francisco, and Orlando to Salt Lake City then San Francisco back to Orlando. I have enough miles on account for another first class ticket and a coach ticket. I haven’t used the SeaMiles points yet, but I have 42,000 which equates to $500 as is clearly explained on their website https://www.seamiles.com/public_3.csp .

“The NEW SeaMiles Rewards program allows you to redeem your SeaMiles as freely as you’ve earned them on Any Cruise Line…Any Time. No Restrictions, No Blackouts, No Fees.

Every 5,000 SeaMiles can be redeemed for a $50 discount, PLUS you will earn a $50 Bonus Credit for every 20,000 SeaMiles redeemed off a cruise booking of your choice. Or use your SeaMiles on your air, car or hotel booking.”

This is what it’s said since I signed up for the card three years ago, so the “NEW” program is at least three years old. I just took a 7 day Western Caribbean cruise and a balcony stateroom on deck 8 came to about $1000/person for a double occupancy. Using the SeaMiles chart, 100,000 points gets you $1,250. In otherwords, roughly one free 7 day cruise for 100,000 points per person. If you never earn bonus miles then 100,000 points is 1.25% return, which is better than most cash back cards’ 1% return. My return on SkyMiles has been about 1.5%.

By: Jan Ruppert

Jan Ruppert — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:15:36 +0000

In 2004 my husband & I also started using the Carnival Sea Miles Master Card…We usually get past guest discount, back to back discount or Military discount, which we book through our Carnival Cruise Specialist. When it’s time to pay the balance of our cruise, we then have our booking transferred to the Sea Miles department & our points are then redeemed for the balance. Because we always do back to back cruises, we would never have enough points for a ‘free’ cruise BUT (AND that’s a big but) we are charging our purchases anyway, paying our credit card every month in full, So any amount of a discount is worth it to us! We have saved at least $1000.00 on our cruises since we started. All our literature says that the program is subject to change at any time…We have had our problems using it, figuring out how to get the best prices, etc, but not enough yet to stop using our Carnival Sea Miles Master Card…

By: Jan Ruppert

Jan Ruppert — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:06:19 +0000

In 2004 my husband & I also started using the CarnivaSea Miles Master Card…We usually get past guest discount, back to back discount or Military discount, which we book through our Carnival Cruise Specialist. When it’s time to pay the balance of our cruise, we then have our booking transferred to the Sea Miles department & our points are then redeemed for the balance. Because we always do back to back cruises, we would never have enough points for a ‘free’ cruise BUT ( AND that’s a big but) We are charging our purchases anyway, paying our credit card every month in full, So any amount of a discount is worth it to us! We have save at least $1000.00 on our cruises since we started. Besides all our literature says that the program is subject to change at any time…We have had our problems too using it, but not enough yet to stop using our Carnival Sea Miles Master Card…

By: David

David — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:13:21 +0000

Charles is correct – Carnival’s terms and conditions include a choice of venue section that requires all litigation to be conducted in U.S. District Court in Miami, so a suit in Small Claims Court would be thrown out. As to Stuart’s situation, I went back and looked at the old literature and points charts from a few years ago and they did, in fact, quote points with the description “FREE Cruise for Two” and, as an example, a 7 night Ocean view cabin was 100,000 points (on certain specified cruise ships). So at some point they did change their language – I’m not sure when. Does anyone out there know exactly when the change was made?

By: Charles

Charles — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:24:06 +0000

Two things I would like to address.
1. For the lady that said she would cancell her trip on Carnival and book with Holland America. Carnikval Corp. ownes both of the Cruise Lines, so I dont think you will much difference in the customer service between the two lines.

2. For the person who said that a lawsuite on Carnival would have to be filed in a Maritime Court. That is not correct. All lawsuites filed on Carnival go through the Florida District Courts.

By: Linda Stangle

Linda Stangle — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:54:04 +0000

I had a positive experience with my sea miles…we could not do a cruise at this time and could not use the points for air miles…so I called sea miles to see if the points could be used for a resort, and they do have some available, we chose Myrtle Beach Sc area where we have stayed many times, they gave us a choice of two places on the ocean, that would have cost us nothing for a week (we have 58,000 miles) and one in Surfside about 4 miles from Myrtle Beach not on the ocean, that would have been $73 for the week..I did not book right on the spot because I wanted to check the places out, the one on Surfside Beach had an excellent review, when I called back to book a day later the one I wanted to have was not available, however they had a two bedroom for $95 . we did take this, and it was a wonderful place, it was the Plantation Resort, it was the cleanest place we have ever stayed in, it would have cost us $975 to stay there for the week, so , we will probably not collect points again and will go for a cash back card, but this is just another option for using this card.

By: John

John — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:25:46 +0000

Banks continue to be very rude especially to us consumers that pay off their credit cards monthly and do not carry balances where they make their extraordinary interest rates. I applied for the Seamiles Visa card and earn 3x the seamiles for booking any cruise line, we sail on many lines and hate restrictions, our 112,000 seamiles is worth $1370, and I found lowest price online and used them with my travel agent great program for regular cruisers

By: Daniele

Daniele — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 02:51:59 +0000

Oh I hate seeing all these comments on the Sea Miles Account. We’ve earned 102,000 points and I am very dissappointed that when I went online to book the cruise, I noticed that they went up about 10,000 on each cruise. As I get closer and closer to our goal, they pull away. As soon as I get to use my points, I will never use this type of card again. I have a very good credit score and they up’d my interest from 14% to 24% for no reason!!! Beware!

By: mark whitehead

mark whitehead — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:10:29 +0000

After earning 80K Sea Miles, I was planning a vacation in the future. I did not use my card for a while and received a letter stating my account was closed and that all miles were no longer valid. Contacting the bank, BARCLAY’s, was of no use. The agent was of no help and could not answer any questions. The supervisor was RUDE and would not answer questions and did not want to be bothered with “helping me”. He continued to read from the same scrpit no matter what I asked and continued to ask, “Will that be all Mr. Whitehead”.

I would think companies like BARCLAY’s and CARNIVAL would be interested in the consumer since this is their business.

By: Steve Smith

Steve Smith — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:35:38 +0000

This is terrible. This all about crying that you did not get as much as you wanted for nothing, I mean nothing. This makes no sense I have had the card and CLEARLY knew that it was per person. It is just a credit card, and I take it as nothing more but people please, this is the most rediculous post I have ever seen. get a life or better yet get a grip on yourself.

Steve

By: Stuart

Stuart — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:08:39 +0000

Just wanted to let you know that SeaMiles finally made things acceptable for
us. I sent one more email to SeaMiles customer service letting them know we
were pursuing this issue through several avenues including contacting the
Attorney Generals. They responded with a favorable offer. The offer was an
upgrade for our stateroom and they restored 85k points/miles to our
SeaMiles account to use toward another cruise. Here is the contact person
that responded to us.

Mike Vietri
Vice President, Loyalty
SeaMiles
office – 416 398 1555 ext. 431

He was understanding, very helpful and very nice. He agreed that the use of
135k points was out of line. And he took care of us. So now we have enough
points to go on another cruise with very little money out of pocket.

Stuart & Susan Harstrom

By: Stuart

Stuart — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:38:52 +0000

Lianne,

We booked an inside stateroom on the very bottom deck, next to the ship’s Medical Center, which we thought was 87,000 points. But that was times two. So we had to use 135,000 of our SeaMiles points, which was all of the points that we had at the time, PLUS the $800. So it was a lot of points plus the cash. If you look at the screen shot up near the top of this blog you will see the point value beside the stateroom. These points are per person now, not per stateroom. So as you can see it takes a lot of points to go on a “free” cruise. You can also see from that screen shot that there is no way of knowing that the points are per person, they appear to be per stateroom.

Yes, we feel that we were scammed, or at the very least, mislead by SeaMiles too. That is why we are no longer using their card.

We now have a Card that pays us cash back and we are taking that cash and saving it for future cruises. Thanks for the advice.

By: Lianne

Lianne — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:30:55 +0000

Hi Stuart!

Just curious, what level of cabin class were you trying to reserve? I definetely think your were very much mislead and scammed by Seamiles, there are exceptions (particularly with hotel cards which are better and airline cards which employ magic points hoodoo) but a general rule of thumb is that a CC point can be considered to be woth $.01 in redemption.

If you were looking at an inside or outside stateroom, then $870 for two people (particularly in today’s economy as a repeat cruiser) seems very reasonable. If you were looking at those Balcony or Suites then it leans into “too good to be true” territory.

Just some friendly advice as you go card shopping. Travel cards and cashback cards can be a great way of *discounting* your vacation costs, but getting freebies (other than hotel cards) can be more trouble than its worth. :-)

By: Stuart

Stuart — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:44:01 +0000

Thanks for the advice. We do not stay in hotels much, so for us now the cash back card is the way to go. And we can use the cash for any type of vacation.

By: Carver Farrow

Carver Farrow — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 01:35:06 +0000

@Stuart

Cash is certainly king, but don’t let this scam sour you on some of the legit deals. For example, if you stay at Marriotts regularly, it may be worth getting their card. The $135k that you spent would have been enough to get you a week at the Marriott located on the Champs-Elysee. I redeemed 150K points last year for 7 nights there. The price in dollars for the room was about $700 per night for a total valuation of $4900.

Of course the downside is points lack the flexibility of cash so it really depends on your travel habits.