ROUGH SAILING
Ariz. couple struggles to get $17K refund after cruise line canceled trip
Having just retired from her job working for the state of Arizona, Virginia VanWinkle, who goes by Ginger, booked a Mediterranean cruise with the luxury line Crystal Cruises to celebrate with her husband and family. ● “It was going to be this fabulous cruise, you know, on the Mediterranean, flying into Rome and ending up in Monte Carlo,” VanWinkle said. ● She and her husband, who live in Tucson, picked Crystal Cruises because they had sailed with the company during a July 2019 cruise to Alaska. Pleased with the service, they booked the European sailing two months later and looked forward to departing out of Rome in April 2020.
“It was going to be like this dream cruise with everybody,” she said.
In March, the new coronavirus pandemic disrupted their plans. Crystal canceled their trip and offered them two options: a full refund to be returned in 90 days or a voucher for future travel for 125% of the cost of their cruise.
Having paid more than $20,000 for herself and her husband and unsure when they might feel safe to travel again, VanWinkle opted for the full refund.
“Who knows what will happen that far out in the future,” VanWinkle said about the uncertainty of taking a credit.
She waited 90 days. And waited some more. The refund never showed up on her credit card. So she called her contact at Crystal Cruises. And called him again after waiting some more.
“He’s always kind and sweet on the phone but he always tells us the same thing. That we’re in a queue,” VanWinkle said. “He can’t tell us where we are in the queue, but we will get a refund.
“But he doesn’t know when.”
Disputing the credit-card charge didn’t work
VanWinkle did what consumers are advised to do in such situations. She contacted her credit card company, Chase, to challenge the charges. The bank opened an investigation. After looking into the issue, they had good news and bad news.
Chase would credit her account for the initial $2,953 deposit.
However, the remaining payments, totaling more than $17,000, could not be refunded because the 60-day time period they had to challenge the charges under the Fair Credit Billing Act had elapsed.
That seemed unfair to VanWinkle, who said she would have challenged the charges sooner if she had known the clock was ticking.
“If we didn’t believe that Crystal would have refunded our money within that 90 days, we could have gone to Chase and said Crystal Cruises just canceled our cruise. We did not cancel it. They canceled it and we want our money back because the service wasn’t rendered,” VanWinkle said.
Crystal Cruises’ response
A spokesperson for Crystal Cruises told The Arizona Republic in an emailed statement that it is “working systemically on refunds, and at this time, we cannot give a specific date when Mr. and Mrs. VanWinkle’s refund will be issued.” It added that the cruise line has processed “tens of millions of dollars in refunds.”
“We know that they did not receive their refund by our original good faith estimate. We recognize and understand Mr. and Mrs. VanWinkle’s frustration and we know we have come up short in our standards to provide six-star service to them,” the statement read.
In August, the Miami Herald reported that Crystal’s parent company, Genting Hong Kong, would stop making payments to its creditors due to the COVID-19 crisis. But in an email to The Republic, Crystal said it continues to process customer refunds.
“From the beginning, our teams have worked diligently and to the best of our ability to address each refund, however, given the voluntary suspension of cruise operations across our entire fleet until 2021, the sheer volume of refund requests in such a short period of time has been challenging and we are experiencing longer delays,” it said.
The team said the cruise line “remains committed to honoring our contractual obligations with our guests, including the processing of refunds.”
The Arizona Republic reached out to Chase Bank’s credit card division for comment on VanWinkle’s predicament. A spokesperson said the situation is being investigated.
The push for more consumer protections
Historically, the United States has had limited consumer protections for travel. Yet, with the pandemic leaving many travelers in the same predicament as VanWinkle, there have been a couple of pushes to provide more protection.
According to Katie Conner, a spokesperson for Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, his office has received more than 340 travel-related complaints in 2020.
On Oct. 2, Brnovich and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, backed by a bipartisan group of 40 attorneys general from across the U.S., sent a letter to Congress urging that new protections for consumers accompany additional bailout money for the airlines.
Meanwhile, the Federal Maritime Commission, which oversees the cruise ship industry, is accepting comments on amending its rules to require more timely refunds.
Specifically, the recommended include:
● If a sailing is canceled or passenger boarding is delayed by at least 24 hours for any reason other than a governmental order, the cruise line must pay a full refund within 60 days of the refund request.
● If a sailing is canceled or boarding is delayed due to a government order, a changes
“We recognize and understand Mr. and Mrs. VanWinkle’s frustration and we know we have come up short in our standards to provide six-star service to them.”
Crystal Cruises statement refund must be given within 180 days of the request. This would also include customers who cancel at their own discretion within 60 days prior to the governmental action.
● If a public health emergency is declared and the sailing is not canceled, the cruise line would have to give any customer who opts to cancel a credit equal to the amount of the deposit the customer paid.
The move comes after an investigation launched by Commissioner Louis Sola in July, looking into ticket refund policies by the cruise industry.
It concluded: “A clear and consistent policy toward ticket refunds as well as the financial responsibility requirements will eliminate uncertainty on the part of the consumer and will provide clear terms upon which industry may plan for future operations.”
In the meantime, without these protections, consumers like VanWinkle continue to wait wondering when and if their refund will arrive.
“That’s still a lot of money to me,” VanWinkle said. “And I want my money back.”