- Report: #956497
Complaint Review: Costa Cruise Lines - Internet
Reported By:
Leila -
Menlo Park, California, United States of America
Submitted:
Updated:
-
Author Not Confirmed
Why?
Costa Cruise Lines
200 S Park Road, Suite 200 Hollywood Florida Internet, United States of America
Phone:
800-247-7320
Web:
http://www.costacruise.com
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Costa Cruise Lines Upaid judement from 1st anniversary trip, all the savings and paid time off have been wasted by Costa Cruise Lines!!! Internet, Internet
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1st anniversary trip, all the savings and paid time off have been wasted by Costa
Cruise Lines!!!
My husband and I spent a year saving up for our 1st anniversary trip. We called the cruise line to verify any travel documents needed in order to travel out of the country. I, a US citizen, was told to bring my valid passport while my husband was told to bring his green card and valid passport. They sent false information to me in writing in the packet along with boarding passes for the cruise. The money spent on tickets included the service of providing the correct travel
information.
We flew 17 hours to Italy to be denied entry and to be detained in the airport for 15 hours!!! Our vacation turned into a nightmare when we were treated as if we were trying to illegally enter Italy. I was separated from my husband, not fed properly, sleep deprived and stuck in a place that we did not speak the language. Ultimately we were forced to purchase last minute $2,500 return tickets to the US and forced to leave Italy. We lost $600 on the Hotel because we were unable to cancel 48 hours in advance. On top of that we missed our cruise to Greece and Turkey. We lost our yearly vacation days, our vacation money and our excitement for our 1st anniversary trip.
We attempted to resolve the issue with Costa Cruise Line for 9 months to no avail. Costa Cruise lines customer service was atrocious! They would not work out any deal with us and told us they would not give us our money. We took them to small claims court and won the judgment for $5,060. 4 months later, we still have not heard anything from them.
Getting antsy and angry, I made several attempts to reach Lawrence Clutz, the international claims supervisor who never returned my calls. I finally got a hold of him thinking this was going to be put to bed but I was wrong! He was rude, disrespectful and he states they are NOT going to pay us our money even though we won a judgment against them.
They wasted $5,000 of our hard earn money, 1st anniversary vacation, a year calling them multiple times, unpaid time off spent at court, vacation hours, hotel stay, a cruise and two good paying customers. They apparently dont care about their customers as they have sunken a cruise ship, set another on fire and treat their customers this way! I hope the world knows not to do business with this company ever again!
My husband and I spent a year saving up for our 1st anniversary trip. We called the cruise line to verify any travel documents needed in order to travel out of the country. I, a US citizen, was told to bring my valid passport while my husband was told to bring his green card and valid passport. They sent false information to me in writing in the packet along with boarding passes for the cruise. The money spent on tickets included the service of providing the correct travel
information.
We flew 17 hours to Italy to be denied entry and to be detained in the airport for 15 hours!!! Our vacation turned into a nightmare when we were treated as if we were trying to illegally enter Italy. I was separated from my husband, not fed properly, sleep deprived and stuck in a place that we did not speak the language. Ultimately we were forced to purchase last minute $2,500 return tickets to the US and forced to leave Italy. We lost $600 on the Hotel because we were unable to cancel 48 hours in advance. On top of that we missed our cruise to Greece and Turkey. We lost our yearly vacation days, our vacation money and our excitement for our 1st anniversary trip.
We attempted to resolve the issue with Costa Cruise Line for 9 months to no avail. Costa Cruise lines customer service was atrocious! They would not work out any deal with us and told us they would not give us our money. We took them to small claims court and won the judgment for $5,060. 4 months later, we still have not heard anything from them.
Getting antsy and angry, I made several attempts to reach Lawrence Clutz, the international claims supervisor who never returned my calls. I finally got a hold of him thinking this was going to be put to bed but I was wrong! He was rude, disrespectful and he states they are NOT going to pay us our money even though we won a judgment against them.
They wasted $5,000 of our hard earn money, 1st anniversary vacation, a year calling them multiple times, unpaid time off spent at court, vacation hours, hotel stay, a cruise and two good paying customers. They apparently dont care about their customers as they have sunken a cruise ship, set another on fire and treat their customers this way! I hope the world knows not to do business with this company ever again!
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Robert
Irvine,California,
U.S.A.
Observations
#2Consumer Comment
Thu, October 18, 2012
First off I would never sail with this cruise line(or actually any owned by Carnival) so realize this is strictly non-legal observations as to your situation.
If by chance with the suit they did show up in court and you prevailed..then good for you and you need to start looking at other methods to get them to pay on a judgement. If this is the case then you can pretty much ignore everything past this point. Otherwise....
If your judgement was a "Default" Judgement where the only reason you prevailed was because they didn't show up. There is a good chance that you didn't properly serve the court papers on them. If this is the case, it may take a while but you will eventually get a notice from the court that your judgment was vacated(voided) and you need to go through the proper steps to re-sue them.
In looking at the documents you posted, you are selectively picking and choosing what works for you without looking at the entire document at parts that work against you. You say you weren't refereed to the Embassy Web Site, yet you were if you actually read the information above what you marked.
-------------------------------------
Travel documents / Visas
Guests must have in his or own possession proper documentation required by the government of the port of embarkation and all ports of call. The guest is advised to consult with his or her travel agent, the appropriate governmental agencies and embassies to determine what documenation will be required.
Costa assumes no responsibility for advising the Guest of immigration or any other governmental requirements...........Guests who are citizens or residents of a North American country may wish to consult the following sources on the most current travel document requirements.
---------------------------------------------
One of those links is to the State Department
So if you end up going to court, you will probably loose because of that one section. Keep in mind that there is something else that while inferred was not really specifically mentioned. You were not denied boarding by Costa, you were denied entry by the Italian Government..so Costa is totally out of the picture as you are not going to be able to hold them responsible for something out of their control. They deal with what is required to get on the ship, they don't deal with getting you into the country.
If anyone besides you is at fault for you being detained in Italy it is the Airline as they(like Costa) is supposed to make sure that all of your documentation is in order before you get on that flight. They are not responsible for the Cruise, but perhaps you can go after them for the extra expenses to get back.
