How companies get away with ‘free’ cruise schemes
Nearly everyone is familiar with the call: A too-goodto-be-true offer for a “free” cruise, promising a stress-free Caribbean getaway — as long as you BUY NOW.
But it’s when would-be travelers actually start to look at the details of their “free” vacation that things can get messy.
Available dates may be severely limited. The seller may try to add on a hotel stay — for a price. Travelers may find out they’ll need to first sit through a timeshare presentation or pay government taxes or port fees — despite the prohibition by Florida law that the only allowable charge for a prize is the cost of delivery.
And those who cancel may find getting a refund to be nearly impossible.
“When you start asking those questions and thinking about the hoops you have to jump through, the hassle might outweigh the ‘free’ cruise part,” said Colleen McDaniel, senior executive editor at Cruise Critic, a cruise review website that has seen numerous complaints about “free” cruise offers.
Still, many travelers bite, lured by a steeply markeddown vacation. All too often, such “free” travel offers can be deceptive schemes perpetrated by Florida-based companies trying to piggyback on South Florida’s status as the Cruise Capital of the World.
Last year, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services received 1,028 complaints about travel or vacation plans, making it the No. 8 most common complaint. The department characterizes “free” cruise deals that require travelers to pay additional fees as travel scams.
How it works
The scheme typically begins with a phone call telling the listener that he or she has won a “free” cruise, or asking the consumer to participate in a political survey. Some start with a post shared on Facebook, a text message or a mailer.
Some travelers take the deal — often only to rethink it when they can’t book a date that matches their schedules or when they find out about additional fees.
When they try to cancel for a refund, they find themselves trapped in a complex web of companies working together to market the “free” cruise, handle the booking and charge consumers — making it difficult, if not impossible, to secure reimbursement. In most cases, none of those companies is the actual cruise line.
While the issue is not new, several consumers recently reached out to the Miami Herald about problems with “free” or discounted cruise deals. Among them was Rebecca Wood, a retail worker from Port Wentworth, Ga., who was planning to sail on an early October voyage on Fort Lauderdale-based Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line.
Wood and her boyfriend, Spencer Brown, said they received multiple unsolicited calls for a discounted cruise vacation — with the caveat that they’d have to sit through a timeshare presentation. The callers said they were representatives of Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line, Wood said. But the phone numbers were actually associated with a Tampa-based travel agency called Blue Star Cruises. (Wood has filed a complaint with the state of Florida.)
During the booking process, in December 2016, agents at Blue Star gave the couple a different number to call if they had questions, Wood said. It belonged to Orlando-based Grand Celebration Cruises.
Grand Celebration Cruises’ name was similar to the name of the ship the couple was booking — the 1,900-passenger Grand Celebration, owned by Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line. But the firm’s name actually belonged to an inactive company in Florida.
Thinking they were being contacted by the cruise line, Bahamas Paradise, Wood and Brown went ahead with the $428 reservation.
Then, shortly before the couple’s sailing, the trip was canceled. Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line’s ship was chartered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to house hurricane relief workers in St. Thomas from Sept. 23 to Dec. 23. As a result, all the voyages in that time frame were canceled.
The cruise line promised via a news release to refund affected travelers, so why were Wood and Brown struggling to get their refund?
Although they didn’t know it when they booked, they were dealing with four marketing companies at once. None of them was the actual cruise line, Bahamas Paradise.
Blue Star Cruises called offering the discounted cruise. Fort Lauderdale-based Reservation and Fulfillment Services Inc. emailed the itinerary. Fort Lauderdale-based Royal Seas Cruises emailed the notice that the cruise was canceled. And the nowdefunct Grand Celebration Cruises billed them.
“This whole time we thought we had booked directly through the cruise line,” Wood said. “It was extremely misleading.”
She said she spoke to multiple representatives at Reservation and Fulfillment Services, for which she had contact numbers from email correspondence regarding her itinerary. The options offered: to take an all-land vacation in Florida, take a ferry to the Bahamas, or reschedule the cruise for another date within the next six months — but pay the port fees again.
“We said, ‘None of these options are going to work for us, we want our money back.’ And (the representative) said, ‘Well that’s not going to happen, ‘” Wood recalled. “They said, ‘You paid a discounted rate.’ I said, ‘What I paid shouldn’t matter. I’m not the one that is canceling the trip.’ “
Wood was caught in what experts allege is a tactic that is tried on hundreds, if not thousands, of travelers every year. The players involved in this complicated scheme may change, but the strategy remains the same.
“It’s all about plausible deniability,” said Christopher Elliott, a consumer advocacy expert who has helped many travelers unravel these kinds of schemes across the travel industry. “You have entity A, the cruise line; entity B, the travel agency; and entity C, the fulfillment company. If something goes wrong with the trip, there is some finger pointing, some shoulder shrugging, but nobody is going to get a refund.”
When asked about Wood’s reservation, Royal Seas Cruises vice president Melissa Hanson said via email that Wood and Brown, who made the reservation, “is not and has never been a customer of Royal Seas Cruises, so we have no information relating to them.”
Emails provided by the couple to the Herald tell a different story. One, from Royal Seas Cruises, the marketing firm, cited the couple’s reservation number and was signed by the company with a street address matching the one for Royal Seas documented in state records. The server address from which the email was sent, royalseascs. com, re-directs to royalseascruises.com.
The other companies involved in Wood and Brown’s reservation — Blue Star Cruises, Reservations and Fulfillment Services Inc. and Grand Celebration Cruises — did not respond to several requests by the Miami Herald for comment.
Wood has yet to secure a refund.
Fighting ‘free’ cruise offers
Wood’s next step: Consider filing a lawsuit. But she and other victims face challenges there, too.
Most maritime lawyers don’t take on “free” cruise deal cases because the amount of money involved doesn’t justify the legal costs of hiring an attorney, said three Miami-based maritime attorneys.
“Unless you’re dealing with a case on a class action basis, it’s hard to justify the time and tremendous expense of litigation,” said Michel Winkleman, a maritime lawyer with Miami-based Lipcon, Margulies, Alsina and Winkleman. “That’s part of a broader problem with corporations in general where they are taking advantage of individual consumers on such a small basis and it makes it difficult for lawyers to seek recourse for them.”
Major cruise lines allegedly have been involved, too. A 2012 class action lawsuit that claimed Carnival Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean International and Norwegian Cruise Line authorized Resort Marketing Group and related companies to make recorded robocalls offering “free” cruises, reached a settlement of up to $12.5 million in 2017.
Because the defendants were major corporations, Chicago-based Burke Law Offices and Massachusettsbased Broderick Law and Law Office of Matthew P. McCue stand to share as much as nearly $4.4 million in fees and costs, although the court has yet to award legal fees.
Also as part of the settlement, consumers who received unwarranted phone calls could be awarded up to $900 for the calls if they filed a claim.
Why this persists
So if such practices are known to occur, creating problems for many consumers, why do these companies persist?
In part, it’s because the lawsuits that are filed generally name only the companies involved, and not the individuals who own or run them. Most businesses are registered as a corporation, partnership or limited liability company for tax purposes and to protect the owners against personal liability in case of legal proceedings.
A company may be shut down, but the individuals who run it are insulated, and can start a new company running a similar operation.
Most of the class action suits target companies for breaching the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which restricts telemarketing calls and requires telemarketers to get written consent from consumers before robocalling them. As a result, the company may be shut down, but “the individuals can take all their assets and move them to a new company,” said Elliott, the consumer advocate.
All they need to do is file the new company name and articles of incorporation or organization online at sunbiz.org. The cost: between $70 and $160.
The government’s powers are also limited.
The Florida Attorney General’s Office’s Consumer Protection Division, which gets many of the complaints, has only civil enforcement duty and can’t press criminal charges against individuals.
And though the state attorney’s office may be able to pursue criminal charges, there isn’t much incentive for them to do so.
“Think about how low in the totem pole this is for them,” Winkleman said. “If they are dealing with murders and rapes, this is really at the bottom of the totem pole for them.”
Your emoji keyboard will soon get a little larger, because Unicode Consortium has just unveiled a slew of new icons for the upcoming year.
The company, which is the gatekeeper for emojis, made the announcement late last week in a blog post, revealing that a total of 157 new emojis for the 11.0 series will arrive on phones between August and September.
They include a variety of new human emojis with different skin tones and hairstyles. Users will be able to choose between red tresses, curls and even bald ’dos. The brand is also introducing men and women superheros and villains with varying skin tones. The characters, however, aren’t as specific as Black Panther or Spider-Man.
Wondering about the animal options? A mosquito, parrot, peacock, kangaroo and swan, among several others, have also been added. New clothing and activities, like a softball and flat shoes, will be featured, too.
The emojis are just samples. Tech vendors are allowed to make changes to fit the overall theme of products. For example, Google altered the cheeseburger emoji in 2017, placing the cheese on top of the bottom bun instead of on the burger. After a flood of complaints, the corporation switched it back.
Unicode is accepting proposals for the 12.0 series, which is expected to drop next year. The deadline for submissions is at the end of May.