Second most popular/false claim: "No, that's not a debit card number I just gave you, the charge will go through." Sigh.

Srsly? Why s ths n rtcl?

Ryl Crbbn dd NTHNG wrng.

Ths cstmrs trd t s dscnt whch thy dd nt qlfy fr!

* hear whining

What a relief. One less person I have to here whining on the ship.

Substitute Student with Senior or Military etc. Customer service when someone is using a discount they do not deserve? Where exactly do you draw the line?

Say "knock knock."

The ship is at anchor. Those people are parasailing. You can see the faint outlines of the line pulling two sitting parasailers.

@sonneillon: Make your own cruise, it's cheaper and better for you.

or use a credit union.

@floraposte: Dr. Suess had a book entitled "the tough coughs as he ploughs the dough" or something along those lines. it was pre-kid book times.

really though, don't abuse chargebacks. that's not very nice at all...

These Cruise companies make it sooooooo easy to find reasons to avoid their services. There are so many choices to spend your travel dollars more wisely and you can actually enjoy yourself! how do these companies stay in business?!? These kind of events are the rule not the exception with cruise comapnies.

I'd sail on that in a heartbeat!

gotta love crooked travel agencies that promise discounts larger than the sky just so they can get their commission....yet the traveler has to suffer right in front of the gate to start a misserable vacation.
good job travel agency!

@italianscallion33: very plausible, but the travel agent is still at fault. the agent's been flirting with the rules to be a successful travel agent, and it backfired here. the agent should make the customer whole.

@cw22books: oh snap!

@P_Smith: Have you actually see the prices for cruises these days? exorbitant is hardly the adjective I'd use. For those who either like cruises or are willing to give them a chance, they are very cheap. I like to vacation for under 100 bucks a day! But yeah, the food is more like prepaid rather than free. It would be like saying the shampoo snd stuff in a hotel's bathroom is free.

And you say this is a convention from the Chicago Manual of Style? Or do you just mean the bit about ending punctuation placement?

Use of single quotes to indicate emphasis or replace italics is one of my biggest online peeves, so I had to verify that CMOS wasn't to blame. Here:

Quotation marks do not usually indicate emphasis. Rather, they indicate irony or double entendre, both of which are also discouraged in academic publishing.

_This is how we denote un-styled italic text._
*This is how we denote un-styled bold text.*
'This is how we denote a nested quotation.'

@Esquire99: People still live in West Virginia?

@thebigbad: It's not like anyone in West Virginia can read what he said anyway...

However, a reservation is priced on double occupancy. The 3rd and 4th passengers in one cabin don't cost as much per head as the 1st and 2nd passengers do. So, four people in two cabins will generally (depending on the price of the cabin class) cost a bit more than four people in one cabin.

I personally would never trust my vacation plans to a travel agent.

But what are the odds that a *discount* rate for two children and (presumably) two adults would turn out to be identical to the *non-discounted* rate for {unspecified number, unspecified status)? I can see where that could contribute to the confusion.

I wish we had a lot more detail about this!

After reading the article, I still don't understand it.

Assuming that everything she says in the article is accurate:

The lady, Mary Hoefs, was in charge of making arrangements for a family cruise. She bought tickets for a family in WV, for a family in TX, and for herself (as indicated by her use of the word "here") in AZ. She paid for all of these.

She paid $1787 for the family from WV, a special rate.
She paid $3275 for the family from TX.
She paid $3275 for the family from AZ.

At the time of embarkation, the family from Texas, who had paid the full rate of $3275 (same as the family from AZ) and not the reduced rate of $1787 (like the family from WV), were taken aside and told they had to pay extra.

If they paid $3275, then how is the cruise line saying they got the WV discount of $1787?

And if the WV discount price is $1787, why would the cruise line want $800 to make up the difference - which would only bring the total to $2587 instead of $3275?

Moving on from that, she is upset that the cruise line didn't inform her of the discrepancy beforehand - how on earth would they know? ESP? If, as their rep says, "the guests from Texas were booked as being West Virginia residents," how could the cruise company be expected to know where they actually lived, before they show up with ID in hand? (Since she booked all the tickets through a travel agent, I'm assuming that all the tickets were delivered to her, so it's not like the cruise company would have gotten returned mail or something.)

I understand and sympathize with what a nightmare that must have been to have this all going on at the boarding location, but... what? The cruise company should send out agents to check passengers' IDs a month beforehand?

I feel like there's so much missing, so many details - what does the travel agent say about it all? surely s/he was contacted to find out if or how they were booked like that, where's that agency's input? - that it's impossible to conclude whether this was bad customer service (they incorrectly charged the TX family $800 more even though they had already paid the full, non discounted rate) or good customer service (the TX family got a promo rate - erroneously or fraudulently - that was $1488 less than it should have been, and only had to make good $400 of that unauthorized savings).

@jazzjunkie: "Free"? You actually believe the food is "free", not a part of the exobitant cost of the ticket?

And as for "not being frisked by TSA", how exactly do most people get to the cruise lines? Walk? Take the train? The cruise ships pick them up at their homes? Cruise lines stop at only a few ports, not everywhere, and most passengers fly to those locations.

You obviously didn't think this through very well.

It's just dumb luck that @j-o-h-n hasn't had to gum his dinner. So far.

Why take a cruise? Because some of us don't like being stuffed into a tin can and herded from point A to B, being frisked and robbed by TSA employees at every turn.

@italianscallion33:
Please. The family went through a professional and should have been held harmless for that professionals conduct. The cruise line accepted their payment and had zero chance of booking those cabins to an alternate party at that late hour so to insist on further payment is borderline criminal. To say "the family should've gotten a better travel agent" ignores the fact that the cruise line clearly let the ticket purchase be processed without verifying the validity of the discount until boarding, which sounds shady to me. And how does one know they need a different agent until AFTER there is a problem?

Sort of along the lines of receiving an AARP discount but you must show your AARP card at check in to keep the discount.

UK quoting style makes far more sense (and I say this as one from the US) where the period only goes inside the quote if it's part of the actual quote. Why would you put something inside the quotes if it isn't part of the quote?

So I think RCL was justified in charging them the full rate and they should take it up with the travel agent

Teeth are a countable object, regardless of whether you can count the particular teeth of which you speak.

Beat me to it.

Not that I'm saying I don't do internet deals. But if that is the case... sometimes those "deals" turn into "duds."

@j-o-h-n:

TEH HE! I still have all my teeth (cefin fur me wisdumb tooths), but still can't afford this cruise (cuz me safin mooney fur me rut kennel eyes ned). Oh also, the use of ain't is much more common in eastern PA, not really a WV thing.

All cruise lines have a lot of discounts - some are very attractive - but the rules are very specific about who can use them and who can't.

I agree, the cruise line isn't at fault here - the booking travel agent is ...

Just a theory, but a plausible one, no?

@coren:
According to the article I get the impression they only have a Texas address and nothing to do with WV. But you bring up a valid point. If assuming the travel agent used the travel agents address for mailing purposes and assuming the agent is based in WV then I can see how this could have gone through. However, thats lots of 'assumings'.

Expedia.com is considered a travel agency and they do book Royal Caribbean cruises.

In that case - who's fault is it?

What if they lived in W.V. at the time of the booking and moved in the intervening months? While it does seem to be the booking agents fault RC should never have charged them the extra at the gate. The cabins were already booked, and the dollars they got will not offset the bad press. At worst, they could have informed the guests of the problem, allowed them on with no additional charge and taken the matter up with their booking agent. That is abysmal customer service.

The problem here is the travel agent and not the cruise line. They probably were shopping prices and one travel agent offered them a deal that might have sounded to goog to be true. Turns out it was to good to be true. Rather than be ticked at the cruiseline they should direct their anger at the travel agent that lied to them just to get his comission on the sale.

Also, sometimes one might take grammatical liberties to be more alliterative.

@coren:
You have to give an address when you book anything esp. on-line as the agent probably did. When it didn't match then it should have been denied. I had this happen on Harry and David. Found a coupon code for residence of Ca. only and I'm in Az. The system came back and told me, 'california residence only'. It didn't go through because my address didn't match. Just like it should have when the travel agent put through their TX address.

@takes_so_little: That would be the travel agent, not RC.

@supercereal: Actually, no, it wouldn't. *can of worms opened* Because cw22books is using quotations to denote a certain word or phrase that is not part of an actual quotation uttered by a person/thing, then the use of the period outside the quotation marks is perfect acceptable. If he/she were retyping the entire sentence, then yes, the period WOULD go inside the quotation marks. In this instance, the quotation marks could easily be replaced with italicized words. But, if he/she doesn't know how to do that, then quotations are okay.

This is why you don't deal with a middle-man whenever possible. Travel agents are scum.

@scootinger:
I completely agree esp. w/ your point #2. When they booked they had the info then they were not from WV. The discount should have never gone through the system with their Texas ID/address. Have to give credit though to Royal Caribbean for checking the ID to the discount. If only our Federal Gov. were this diligent in cross checking program recipients to entitlements.

I've been in every state on the eastern seaboard along with Kentucky, Tennessee, Pennsylvania and Alabama (where I live) and have seen toothless people in every single state.

I'd say there's a good chance the travel agent tried to use a trick to get them a good rate that ended up backfiring.

When you deal with a travel agent, you expect them to know their trade well enough that everything is taken care of. Yes, mistakes happen, but this agent should have known that using a state specific discount would be a no-no and there would be a huge probability that the family wouldn't be allowed on the ship not being able to provide the required information to board.

If the passengers weren't advised of this requirement when they booked then I think the travel agent owes them something. Not RCL.

Too bad the departure and destination are not given as it will lead to much banter and disagreement on Consumerist as poster make their own assumptions.

@j-o-h-n: No, I'm not from West Virginia, but I must correct you. It would be "fewer teeth". It's very important when insulting large groups of people that you don't make any mistakes that would make you seem anything less than worthy of throwing said insult.

I'm not faulting the victims, but why would anyone want to take a vacation where you're a captive audience? If you stay at a hotel and find some of the charges are outrageous, like meals, you can always go elsewhere if you have or want to.

Cruise ships aren't as many or as used as airplanes, so there isn't going to be the same amount of outrage, despite the ripoffs being worse. Maybe the laws protecting airline passengers should be extended to cruise line passengers.

2) If the people from Texas somehow got the discount, it's Royal Caribbean's fault. They should eat the difference...heck, I bet they're still making a profit on them.

NOOOO! Havent you been reading the Consumerist lately, all credit cards are evil remember!

Or maybe we should be asking what Royal Caribbean has against Texas.

I'm an outside cruise agent and I always check what the discount is for (it's in the rules) and always tell people to make sure they qualify for ANY discount.