Complaint Review: Bahama Cruise Lines - Internet

Around the 1st week of November, 2011, I was called and asked to give a few answers for a survey. I was told that if I completed the survey, I would be given a FREE 3 day, 2 night cruise to the Bahamas for 2 people. I answered the question, which seemed random and were questions along the lines of, "How many people live in your household?" and such. They only asked about 10 questions. After the automated survey, a woman came on the phone and very politely told me that I won the cruise as a promotional and that I would be called back within 3 days to set up the cruise.

Three weeks later I finally got a call, in which a nice woman with a thick Caribbean accent told me all about what I could expect on the cruise and asked me questions like "Does that sound good to you?" and "Doesn't that sound nice?" She asked me how many people would be going on the cruise with me and said that there was a minimum of 2 people and a maximum of 4. Having a cruise "minimum" sounded odd, but I told her there would be 2 people total. She also said that I would not need a passport to go to the Bahamas, which I'm not sure is true or not. She then asked me for a credit card number to have on file that the cruise line required "in case anything went wrong on the cruise that I would have to pay for." I told her very nicely that I was not comfortable giving a credit card number because I had no way of verifying the legitimacy of the cruise.

She then when into more detail about the cruise and the Bahamas and then asked again which type of card I would be using. She said that once I paid the fee, I had 18 months to set up the cruise, as long as I gave them 30-60 days in advance, but she said I could not plan the cruise for Dec 24-Jan 4. She also then said that the credit card was to pay for the 59$ per person fee to pay for the Government Port fees to go on the cruise, which seemed to contradict what she said earlier. When I again repeated my concerns, she put me on with a gentleman who said he understood my concerns and said that everything was voice recorded and that upon payment, I would receive a receipt and that the banks would have to verify the transaction, so "it was safe." He said that the voice recordings get set to the credit card company as verification on the transaction and offered me to look at the cruise website to verify it. I told him that there was no way of knowing that what he just said was even true and that website could be faked.

He continued to try to ease my concerns by saying that the "half million dollar company that he worked for would not jeopardize its operations for simply 118$ to pay port fees for 2 people". I then asked him if he could send me anything in the mail. He said that "this is the 21st century and everything is done electronically", including the receipts, and that it would not be possible for the company so send anything by mail. I then asked him if they could call back in a few days after I had a chance to check into the company and he said that he couldn't because this was a limited offer and that it had to go in before January because taxes for next year would raise the cost of the promotion and he wouldn't be able to give it to me. I don't understand why he could've waited 3 weeks to call me, but couldn't call back in 3 days or so. I kept telling him that it didn't seem right and he told me that if I didn't provide a credit card, I would have to miss out on the cruise. As a way of trying to convince him to call me back at a later time, I told him I did not have my credit card nearby to give it to him. Before I could say another word, he simply said, "Ok well we won't be able to accommodate you at this time, have a good night" and he hung up the phone before I could stop him.