Gerrard Kaonga
This sounds like one of the worst holiday experiences ever...
A family from Kentucky seemed to have the holiday from hell after making one small error.
Mother Tiffany Banks had planned to enjoy a Carnival Cruise vacation with her four children and husband but it didn’t go as expected. Not at all.
Explaining in a series of TikTok videos, Banks explained her shock at discovering what went wrong.
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Two days before the family was set to fly to Florida to board the cruise ship, without her knowledge, the booking was cancelled.
To make matters worse, the holiday had already been paid in full. Ouch.
Banks was sent an email about the off-ship excursion cancellations and called the company to investigate.
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A representative told her that she had cancelled the $12,000 reservation for the ship’s largest room, the Excel Presidential Suite, through the online system.
Just like anyone else, Banks went into panic mode, wracking her brains trying to figure out what had happened.
Speaking on her TikTok social media page, thathippiedoc, she said she and her kids broke down in tears.
She added: “We have nearly $15,000 tied up in for this vacation, including excursions. The room itself was I think $12,000 or $13,000, and then we’ve got a few grand tied up in excursions, and actually with almost $2,000 for flights.
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She insisted she hadn’t cancelled and hoped for the best, that it was simply a glitch in the system.
Carnival said that her room was already reserved by another customer and offered her another room, the cheapest on the ship according to Banks, who did not feel it was an adequate replacement.
The company also refused to issue a refund and insisted it was against their cancellation policy they said no money will be returned within 15 days or less of the cruise date.
Hoping for the absolute best the family flew to Miami anyway hoping to board the ship but the ship sailed off without them.
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It wasn’t until later that Banks discovered she had been a victim of a type of identity theft as she and her husband accidentally shared their cruise booking reference number on Facebook when they posted a screenshot of an email a few weeks back.
The same day that it was posted, someone made a Carnival account and added the number to their profile. Then two days before the cruise departed, the person cancelled the entire booking.
The person hasn’t yet been identified and despite being offered another trip by the company, Banks said she and her family will never be using the cruise ship company again.
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A Carnival Cruise spokesperson told LADbible Group: "While we are not going to comment on any specific guest complaint or incident, it is never a good idea to post personal information about your travel plans, including a confirmation number for a booking, which could allow a bad actor or identify thief to use that information in inappropriate or even illegal ways. "