What's the book corporate America doesn't want you to read? Find out now -- or you could get scammed.

No bed in my ‘Destiny’

January 18, 2004

Q: Last fall I took a Caribbean cruise on the Carnival Destiny with my family, and I was very disappointed by it. Before the trip we decided to add another person to our cabin. I called my travel agent to make sure we would have three beds and not two beds with a cot or a rollaway bed. My agent assured me we would be rebooked into a cabin with three beds.

But when we boarded the ship, we discovered that there were only two beds. We were offered a rollaway but I refused because there was no room for it. I notified the purser’s office and called my travel agent from St. Thomas. Fortunately, my brother had an extra bed in his cabin, and I decided to stay there. My agent promised she would get some of his fare reimbursed, since he had paid a single rate for his cabin.

Since I’ve been back, I have not had any cooperation from Carnival whatsoever. The cruise line has offered us a $50 certificate towards our next cruise. I’m not happy with that. I paid $550 for the cruise and a bed to sleep in and I feel I should be reimbursed for the full amount of the cruise.

– Dolly Dawkins

A: If you booked a three-bed cabin, but didn’t get it, you’re entitled to some kind of refund. The question is: How much – and who should pay for it?

I asked Carnival for its side of the story. According to the cruise line, your travel agent made a group reservation for your family. Because your travel counselor wanted to secure the best possible cabin for you, she waited until shortly before your sailing to give you a room assignment (that allowed her to secure an upgrade for your family).

When three passengers occupy a cabin, the third berth can come in one of two forms – either an upper berth that pulls down from the wall or a rollaway. If you get a rollaway, then it’s normally brought in during the evening turndown service and then removed in the morning so that it doesn’t clutter your cabin, according to Carnival.

“If there’s no specific cabin assignment, then it’s a crap shoot as to whether they will receive an upper berth or a rollaway,” Jennifer de la Cruz, a company spokeswoman, told me. “It just depends on what is in inventory within the section of the ship where that group is being berthed at the time cabin assignments are done.”

Carnival’s records show that during the voyage, a representative from the cruise line’s groups department e-mailed the ship’s chief purser to request your cabin be switched (this was probably in response to a call from your travel agent).

According to the pursers’ office logs, a note was left in your cabin asking you to contact the purser. De la Cruz also told me that “multiple phone calls” were made to both your cabin and your brother’s, with no answer.

“The bottom line is that Ms. Dawkins received what was booked and paid for,” she says. “Carnival did not fail to provide the third berth, but did in fact provide what was booked.”

Carnival appears to have done the best it could to accommodate you during your cruise. I think there may have been a disconnect between you and your travel agent, though. She obviously shouldn’t have promised you a berth with three beds, because Carnival couldn’t guarantee one with the kind of booking she had made.

You might want to consider taking the matter up with your agent.

Is that reason enough to get rid of your travel adviser, or replace her? No, I think this was probably an honest misunderstanding. And as I’ve noted in the past, a good travel agent is worth every penny you pay in fees.

But I’d strongly recommend that the next time you take a cruise, you should pay closer attention to the type of booking you have. It wouldn’t hurt to confirm your room assignment with the cruise line instead of relying exclusively on a third party. Not only does it give you peace of mind, but it also ensures that your wires won’t get crossed the way they did.

In addition to $50 shipboard certificates, Carnival also offered you a 50 percent refund and a 50 percent discount on a future voyage. Although that was the result of an air-conditioning problem on the cruise, and had nothing to do with your case, it’s extremely generous. Bottom line: The cruise line has already given you $275 and a $50 voucher, plus another coupon worth as much as $325.

I think Carnival has done enough.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

1 comment

  • Mekhong Kurt, Bangkok, Thailand

    The point on which I immediately focused — sort the same way a fighter pilot’s target-acquisition radar locks onto a target — is that when this passenger was offered a roll-away bed, she said, “. . . I refused because there was no room for it.” Were I a representative of the purser’s office in this situation, I would have been strongly inclined to respond, “Then just where, Madam, do pray tell, do you expect us to put a proper *bed* if there’s no room for a *roll-away*???”

    Without even considering the unrelated refund, etc. this passenger received, she presumably found everything other than the bed arrangement satisfactory, and did get to take her cruise.

    And she wanted a *full refund*???

    That’s akin to this. Were I to have a confirmed first- or business-class ticket and a confirmed aisle seat — I don’t care for middle or window seats — then got aboard only to discover through overbooking (or for whatever reason) I was about to be downgraded one class, I wouldn’t exactly be thrilled, true. BUT let’s also a friend of mine had bought two adjoining seats only to have the other person fail to show up, so he offered me the other seat (in my originally booked class).

    Now I demand a full refund — even after the airline promised to reimburse me some portion of my ticket and granted me a credit of some sort on a future flight. I would be being quite unreasonable.

    In other words, I f,eel this complaint borders on bogus, as far as the cruise line’s role is concerned. (The travel agent may be a different matter, true, but that’s well-addressed already in the article.)

    My purpose in writing this comment isn’t to pick a fight with the passenger, but to point out that no, the customer — passenger, in this instance — *isn’t* always right. And when a passenger with a dubious claim is accommodated, that (1.) makes travel more expensive for everyone *else* and (2.) gives people within the industry yet one more reason to be wary of their clientele — and, therefore, wary of us *all.*

    I’ve had exactly one major hiccup traveling. Nearly 20 years ago, I was living in Macau and took a flight Hong Kong-Dallas.Fort Worth International-Hong Kong, departing Hong Kong before Chinese New Year then returning after, with a stopover in Los Angeles each direction. On the return flight, almost as soon as we departed LAX we blew an engine and were forced to return to LAX. Of course, practically every Asian person in the Western Hemisphere was on the move, and flights were packed. My airline made a heroic effort to get me out — but it wasn’t until SIX DAYS later they succeeded.

    This was not their fault. One major factor was that I had a dirt-cheap economy ticket. A second was, as I said, that the flights were solidly booked. A third was that because I had flexibility, within limits, on my date I had to be back to work, I stayed flexible with the airlines, giving way to other passengers on tighter timetables (meaning I was at least partly responsible for having to twiddle my thumbs in Los Angeles for nearly a week).

    The airline not only put me up in a hotel, but in a beautiful boutique one. I didn’t have a room — I had a suite, complete with sitting room, kitchenette, a very nice rest room, and an extremely comfortable bedroom. The suite was even generously appointed with high-quality imitation art objects.

    The airline also gave me a voucher each day for $35 for food and drink in the hotel restaurant, coffee shop, and bar.

    I happened to become friendly with one of the check-in clerks, and after two or three days, I was chatting with him when I idly asked him how much my suite would cost me on a walk-in basis. My jaw hit the floor when he told me the heart-stopping amount of $1,200. That’s not a typo: One thousand, two hundred dollars per *might.* Seeing my shocked reaction, he hastily added my airline had a deep discount, so was paying “only” $550 per night.

    As I said, it took until the sixth day for me to get on a flight back to Hong Kong, and that flight left in the evening, so my airline had to pay for six full days at the hotel, i.e., $3,300 for the suite plus $210 in voucers, for a total of $3,510.

    My round-trip ticket had set me back only right at $800. In other words, my airline paid nearly 4-1/2 times my ticket cost — paid it JUST for my accommodation. Plus, of course, the cost of hauling me across the Pacific and back (and to and fro between Texas and the West Coast).

    Which brings me back to this case. No, I wasn’t complaining. I was just darned glad we made it back safely. (The return was very iffy, and it was not at all clear we would make the airport until our tires were on the tarmac, but that’s another story.)

    But once I learned how much it was setting my airline back to house me during The Long Wait, I reflected on the expense to which it was going to accommodate me, and the fact that it somehow had to recover that expense. I have no idea if the airline had insurance that reimbursed it for putting me up and feeding me — but even if it did, it was paying an insurance premium, another cost to be recovered.

    All associated costs with taking care of me and the other passengers — most were delayed at least one day, though I think I was the only one to sit for six — had to be recovered somehow.

    And that’s built into ticket prices, running the costs up for everyone else.

    As did this passenger’s case.

    If I feel my airline went much further than necessary — which I did, and do, though I appreciate it to this day — then I for *sure* feel this lady has been well and truly compensated above and beyond any reasonable expectation. And, to repeat myself, 100% reimbursement is, simply, a ridiculous, over-the-top demand.

Previous post:

Next post: