American Cruise Lines Cancelled our Cruise and Kept our Money

[garyh456]

My wife and I booked a cruise on American Cruise Lines to celebrate our 50^th Wedding Anniversary. We paid $15,840.00 for an American Revolution Cruise that was to depart April 11, 2020. We have never spent this amount of money for a cruise and had been saving for this special occasion.

American Cruise Lines cancelled the cruise and kept our money. We contacted them with no success. We engaged a highly regarded law firm to assist us but American Cruise lines stone walled them and dragged the process out so we incurred even more legal fees.  We spent an additional $5,644.08 in attorney fees in an effort to get our money back.

Our attorneys advised us we had a solid legal case but that the additional costs of filing suit would be more than the money we already lost.

American Cruise Lines is not a reputable company. They kept our money and refused our rightful refund knowing that legal costs to pursue the case would make filing a suit against them unlikely.

Do Not Do Business with American Cruise Lines. They do not respect or value their customers and treat them terribly. Do Not Trust Them!

[surmy555]

It feels like there must be more to this? When ACL cancelled our August Upper Mississippi cruise we had our refund in about 45 days, much faster than the mass market cruise line refunds we received for several other cancelled cruises.

[bhopal21]

There is far more to this saga than the original poster has shared.

 

Since this is his first and only post on Cruise Critic I doubt that we will ever be privy to the whole story with ALL of the details.

 

Mike😊

[Aulanis]

@garyh456    I guess an obvious questions might be did you use a credit card

for the payment or part of the payment =If so your card provider should

be able to help you.

Were you offered  a credit for a future cruise instead of the cash.

What was the reason they would not give you a refund.

 

[Ray in NH]

On 11/3/2020 at 11:41 AM, garyh456 said:

My wife and I booked a cruise on American Cruise Lines to celebrate our 50^th Wedding Anniversary. We paid $15,840.00 for an American Revolution Cruise that was to depart April 11, 2020. We have never spent this amount of money for a cruise and had been saving for this special occasion.

American Cruise Lines cancelled the cruise and kept our money. We contacted them with no success. We engaged a highly regarded law firm to assist us but American Cruise lines stone walled them and dragged the process out so we incurred even more legal fees.  We spent an additional $5,644.08 in attorney fees in an effort to get our money back.

Our attorneys advised us we had a solid legal case but that the additional costs of filing suit would be more than the money we already lost.

American Cruise Lines is not a reputable company. They kept our money and refused our rightful refund knowing that legal costs to pursue the case would make filing a suit against them unlikely.

Do Not Do Business with American Cruise Lines. They do not respect or value their customers and treat them terribly. Do Not Trust Them!

It would be interesting to hear more about this ...  What has been posted is very different from our experiences with American Cruise Line (seven previous cruises with ACL).

We had a cruise cancelled earlier this year and received credit toward a cruise scheduled for next year -- with minimal exchanges between ACL and our travel agent.

They (ACL) were even easier to work with than the two other cruises we had cancelled this year (with a different cruise line).

 

NRayH

[Izena]

I agree there must be more or someone with a vendetta.

I was scheduled to cruise April 2020, ultimately it is rescheduled for April 2021.  I had an another cruise scheduled for May 2021 which I cancelled and received whole deposit back.   All of these changes have gone smoothly.  
 

I have been impressed with American cruise lines response to covid.  This has been a very hard year for cruise lines.  I am anxious to get cruising again —even with masks,  social distancing and modified shore excursions.

[Ray in NH]

On 11/6/2020 at 10:57 AM, Izena said:

I agree there must be more or someone with a vendetta.

I was scheduled to cruise April 2020, ultimately it is rescheduled for April 2021.  I had an another cruise scheduled for May 2021 which I cancelled and received whole deposit back.   All of these changes have gone smoothly.  
 

I have been impressed with American cruise lines response to covid.  This has been a very hard year for cruise lines.  I am anxious to get cruising again —even with masks,  social distancing and modified shore excursions.

Izena,

 

Totally agree.  With three cruises cancelled this year, we are anxiously awaiting our next upcoming cruise, 15 May 2021 (hopefully, it will be a "Go").

 

NRayH