This Carnival Cruise Customer Service Scam Cost a Family Their $900 Vacation

We’ve warned you before about travel scams involving fraudulent phone numbers for airlines’ customer service call centers. 

Passengers fall prey to that con when they look up an airline’s contact info via an internet search engine and dial a number on the search results page that goes to a bogus call center. A fraudster on the other end of the line then pretends to represent the carrier in order to get enough financial info from the caller to pull off a swindle. 

The scam has become so widespread and so successful on Google that consumer protection experts now strongly advise (read: beg) travelers not to use the search behemoth at all to find customer service numbers for airlines. (Instead, go to the carrier’s official website or, better yet, its mobile app.)

But flyers aren’t the only ones who have to worry about phony customer (dis)service reps. Cruise passengers are being targeted too. 

A Customer Service Scam Involving Carnival Cruise Line

As reported by local TV station NBC 4 LA, Brittany Paine of Castaic, California, called Carnival Cruise Line a few days before a planned sailing to Ensenada, Mexico, in order to ask about a cabin upgrade.

Instead of helping with that request, the representative Paine reached over the phone told her that she had an “outstanding balance” of $294 for a “deck fee.” 

After paying that amount and hanging up, Paine got suspicious and called Carnival back, only this time she used a different phone number that she found. 

“‘No, ma’am, that was a scam,'” Paine said the (real) Carnival rep told her. “‘We wouldn’t have charged you a deck fee. Go ahead and dispute that with your bank.'”

That first call, in other words, hadn’t been with Carnival. 

How Customer Service Travel Scams Work

There are at least two reasons passengers may end up dialing a fraudulent customer service number.

One is because a fake number was posted online, including in search results. The other way happens when scammers reach out directly to the ticket holder via text or email with a bogus account alert, and customers dial the number provided in order to address the (fake) issue or claim a (fake) prize. 

How do the scammers know you have a trip coming up?

Colleen McDaniel of Cruise Critic told the TV reporters that posting details on social media about an impending cruise often gets people into trouble. 

“Somebody who has booked a cruise might say, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so excited. I booked a cruise for my family for June,’ and then they name the ship,” McDaniel said in the report. 

That can be enough info for scammers to step in and ruin your vacation. (For the record, though, Paine says that couldn’t be what happened in this case since she didn’t post about the cruise on social media.)

After Paine disputed the $294 charge from the fake customer service reps, her bank refunded the money. 

But that wasn’t the end of the ordeal. She soon got an email alert notifying her that someone had logged into her Carnival account and canceled her cruise. 

Paine can’t be sure how that happened, either, but it’s likely that the scammer, armed with Paine’s booking number from the initial call, was bent on retaliation after Paine got the fraudulent charge reversed. 

In any case, Carnival had already rebooked the cabin and the ship was full, so Paine was out $900 due to the line’s late-cancellation policy. 

Carnival eventually refunded that amount—TV reporters nosing around probably helped move that along—but Paine and her family still missed out on their vacation. 

How Cruisers Can Protect Themselves Against Customer Service Scams

So what have we learned?

• Don’t use Google to find a company’s phone number for customer service. There are many documented instances of bogus numbers appearing at the top of search results. Make sure you go to the company’s official website or mobile app and obtain contact info there. This is crucial when it comes to airlines, but it’s also a wise course of action with regard to cruises, hotels, third-party booking engines, vacation rental companies, and probably any other type of transaction, travel-related or otherwise. 

• Don’t post details on social media about an upcoming trip. Keep it vague, especially with the ship name and departure date. The safest time to post about your travels is when they’re over.

• If you receive what appears to be communication from a cruise line, call or write back to verify using the contact info on the company’s official website. This is especially important if somebody contacts you asking for payment. Hang up and call back using a legit number that you found via official channels.