My husband and I are new to the cruise scene. We are scheduled to cruise in about 4 days for our honeymoon. I tried booking some excursions for us, with a lot of headache! First off, because the carnival website does not pull the CSV number through their websites, my credit card processing company would not approve the charge. However when it was first declined, I had no idea why. It was then when I called my credit card company that they informed me of this and how they do this for the security of their cardholders. My credit card processing company told me that all I needed to do was call carnival and have them call the merchant number and get the approval code so that my charges could be approved.
So I called carnival back, where I was on the phone for almost 2 hours because no one there seemed to know what I was talking about and was told that I could try to charge one excursion at a time. When I had already explained to them that it had nothing to do with the amount that I was trying to charge, it was because on carnival's side they do not require a CSV code (the 3-digit code on the back of the card), the lady was very rude and told me that she spoke with their accounting department and told me that they do not make calls to the merchant so they do not know what to tell me. I asked to speak with a supervisor and she gets on the phone, only to be even more rude and unhelpful as the last person that I spoke to was.
She told me that there was nothing they could do for me. That I would need to call my credit card processing company and have them deal with it because they were claiming it was on my credit card company's side. The "supervisor" I spoke with said her name was Dawn **. I asked to speak with her manager and she told me that was not going to happen. I then asked her who I could talk to and she said no one. She said everyone would tell me the exact same thing. She told me that the only other option was to use a different credit card, which I only have one credit card, and I explained that to her. I told her that I wanted to speak with someone above her regarding this situation because being told that I am SOL, for a lack of better words, was unacceptable.
She then gave me an email address and said that was my only option (guestsolutions@carnival.com), which did not work when I typed up a long message. I called my credit card company back and spoke with a supervisor who told me that she has NEVER heard of a company saying they would not call the merchant and give their merchant ID number so that they could get approval and process the credit card. She then told me that it was a large purchase (about $500.00) and that if it were her and they were treating a customer like that, she wouldn't waste her time or money on it. I then explained to her that if I had the option and could get a refund, I would definitely cancel the whole thing and go with another cruise line.
I then called Carnival's customer service AGAIN, only to have them send me through several people again (another 45 minutes on hold, pretty much) only to be hung up on by the person who answered. I emailed their email address that I found on the website yesterday and still have heard nothing back. I wish I had taken the comments that I read about Carnival's cruise line to heart before making the decision to purchase these tickets. So much for a good honeymoon with no problems.
Now we are going to set off to cruise in 4 days and not be able to take any shore excursions because they are not willing to help us or even try to help us. I will definitely NEVER cruise with Carnival again and we have a couple of friends who were going to book a cruise with them, dependent on our return and feedback. Hopefully, nothing else goes wrong once we get on. But at this point, I am terrified because of all the comments that I have read so far on here. Not only that, we haven't even gone on our cruise yet and already they are not willing to help us out. If this is the way they continue to conduct business, they will eventually not have any business at all!
