Travel agent reservation jacking?

[Cruisemom39]

No! She did not authorize them to get the booking in the first place.

 

You must escalate this within RCI until it is fixed. Someone pulled a fast one here and don't give up until it is resolved at no cost to your friend.

 

Could someone at the "Vacation Specialist" desk be pulling a fast one on RCI and taking bookings for an agent friend or be a part time agent themselves?

 

I agree with your suspicion, as noted in my earlier post. If this is how this situation truly transpired (i.e. an RCI Vacation Specialist sending the res to a TA w/o consent) then RCI Res. has a serious problem.

 

This is reminscent of another thread involving RCI Res a few months ago, with murky details regarding resolution/fraud.

[travellady]

Just a theory as this sounds fishy and I don't want to believe RCI would send a booking to an external agent:

 

Sherin65 said her friend called because she lost the number and had to book fast as prices were going up. Sherin65 then said "I think" this is the number I gave her, and that number was RCIs. Possibly one of two things occurred, the friend lost the number again, was too embarrassed to ask for it so did some searching on her own and found the numer for the royalcaribbean website that is a travel agency and not really RCI. A second possibiliy is Sherin65 gave her the wrong number.

 

I don't believe we know the entire story here, we can't be so quick to blame RCI for transferring the booking if we don't know that really happened.

 

Remember, "the truth always lies somewhere in the middle"

[critterchick]

One other thing, sorry. She may have to pay a fee to this agency anyway for transfering/cancelling this cruise.

 

Oh, HELL, no! The credit card companies did that years ago. They would send you a card that you didn't ask for and then charge you an annual fee and ding your credit rating if you failed to pay it. This is why we have consumer protection laws now. Your friend didn't ASK to have the reservation transferred, it was never DISCLOSED to her until the deed was done, and she has NO obligation to pay squat. She should cancel the booking and start over. And if the TA tries to keep some of the money, she should contact her credit card company and dispute the charges. The consumer protection laws will help her there, too.

 

 

Stories like this make my blood boil.:mad: :mad:

[Ericknow32]

Has anyone thought that maybe the person that the OP's friend talked to made a mistake. Maybe the person said this because she misread the OP's friend's reservation on the computer screen. The simplest reason is often right reason.

[sherin65]

Uptate: I just called the number provided by the OP. It IS a number to RCI, but it's for booking through an RCI "Vacation Specialist"...kind of like a Carnival "Personal Vacation Planner". Anyway, I explained that "someone" had booked their cruise by calling this number, and their booking was transferred to a "travel agency". I asked several times how this could have happened without the client's consent, and was told that this client should call the RCI "Resolutions Department" to get this resolved. So, sherin65, please have your friend call: 1-800-205-9812 and give their booking number. Hope this helps!

__________________

 

 

Thank you! This is very helpful.

 

I'm the OP. I haven't talked to my friend again to find out the outcome. I'm pretty sure she called the number I gave her. I'm also more sure that I was on the official RCI website when I gave it to her. I don't typically go to other travel sites very often.

I doubt if she's going to cancel or transfer the reservation, we just want to get the dining issues straight so that our families are in the same area at dinner.

 

She is very confused about how this happened. I plan to give her the info above and have her try to find out. It may have been a mistake but she and I are both shocked because she felt she was booking through the cruiseline the entire time. Her rep even told her to give her booking #s to me so that I could call and have us arranged at dinner together(she didn't have my #s when she called).

 

Once this is all resolved I'll post our outcome.

 

Thanks to all of you for your help. It has been a bit shocking for us because we don't deal often with travel agents or cruise bookings for that matter(trying to change that one).;)

 

Sher

[jaxon41]

Please keep us updated when you find out something.

[sherin65]

 Please keep us updated when you find out something.

 

I will. My friend has been working doubles the last two days and I haven't been able to talk to her. I hope to find out something tonight.

[MariTenor1]

Sherin: I hope all turns out well. I, too, am curious to hear their "explanation"

[sherin65]

My friend called RC and they told her the name of the travel agent she mentioned it but I've never heard of it before and she hadn't either.

 

She told her rep that she thought she was talking to RC the whole time. The RC rep even had to call her back while trying to get everything arranged. They are suppose to contact her about transfering the reservation to RC. If there turns out to be any kind of fees involved she's decided to not push the issue. She told me she called the number I gave her from the RC web page. No one seems to have an answer as to why a TA has her account.

 

The customer service person she was transfered to did get the dinner reservation aligned with ours.

 

I guess it's a lesson learned, be very sure of how you make contact with any travel plans. I think it's also a good idea to check on things, while talking to a RC rep myself, she noticed that my son was listed as being 57 years old for our next cruise. She corrected it for me but that may have caused a bit of a problem at check in when he showed up being 13.

 

Thanks again for all the help.

 

Sher

[imsulin]

sherin...I really hope that your friend gets receives a full explanatiion of why her reservation was transferred to a travel agency! I'm not sure what's going on here, either, but this has been a very interesting thread, and please keep us informed! And..thanks to all posters as well! Happy cruising!

[TPKeller]

If there turns out to be any kind of fees involved she's decided to not push the issue.

I fully understand that some people do not like confrontation. But even more fully than I, unscrupulous businesses understand that and in fact count on it to make their unethical profits.

 

If there was improper activity, please urge your friend to insist upon resolving this with no penalty. Not only will she benefit, but so will the rest of the unsuspecting world when another dishonest business is called on the carpet!

 

Theron

[smeyer418]

Irovan. Yes there is. One is http://www.royalcaribbeancruise.com I would never book with one that tries to use another company's reputation to get sales.

This clearly would be called cyber squatting and if royal carribean complained, the website would be transferred to them. Federal law.

[TPKeller]

This clearly would be called cyber squatting and if royal carribean complained, the website would be transferred to them. Federal law.

This was discussed on the thread that was referenced earlier here. I don't think anybody was ever able to say for sure, but at least I opined that RCCL wouldn't bite a hand that was feeding them them bookings, even though it is very, very slimy. I guess slimy money deposits just as good as clean money.

 

Theron