Traveler's Aide: Deals too good to be true usually are
— -- Question: In March 2011, I booked a Princess cruise via the cruise line's website. The cruise was advertised as a 20-day Caribbean Grand Adventure from New York to Fort Lauderdale. After I received my confirmation, I made arrangements to return home from Fort Lauderdale after the cruise.
In April, I logged onto the Princess site and noticed my sailing was only listed as an itinerary for 10 days. I called Princess and got the run around for almost two months. I had another Princess cruise planned in May, so I figured I would speak to the sales office when I was onboard. I did, and the director was confused when she saw my confirmation. She made copies and faxed them to the home office in California. She suggested that they might be able to transfer us to another ship to complete the second 10 days. I thought this was pretty reasonable.
Now Princess says this was a system glitch and the cruise is only 10 days. They claim that I am the only person who had this problem. I have five different documents that state that I purchased a 20-day cruise. Am I wrong for expecting what I originally booked? What can I do?
— Suellen Pierce, Wall Township N.J.
Answer: Although the itinerary that Pierce booked was listed as 20 days long on the Princess website, and she received a confirmation of that extra-long voyage, the cruise in question was, in fact, only 10 days long. The Caribbean Princess was headed to dry dock immediately after the cruise, not continuing onwards on a sailing of any length.
"The cruise in question was a 10-day cruise and the pricing was correct for the 10-day voyage," says Princess representative Julie Benson. "There simply was not a 20-day cruise."
It was a mistake akin to what's called a "fat-finger fare," when cruise or airline fares or hotel rates are mistakenly loaded into booking systems at prices that are too good to be true. These apparent deals quickly vanish when the mistake is discovered, so few travelers tend to book them—unless word spreads online and frugal (or unscrupulous, depending on your perspective) bargain hunters flock to take advantage of the error, hoping travel providers will honor the erroneous prices. Some do, some don't.
The culprit behind Pierce's double-length itinerary snafu was an error in the Web booking tool, according Benson. Princess wasn't aware of the problem until Pierce contacted the cruise line to ask why her itinerary was suddenly half as long as she expected.
"Since the error was technically not within our reservations system, but an error specific to the Web booking tool, it was not easily detectable by Princess," says Benson. "It took a while to uncover this because our staff work within the reservation system and they could not recreate the booking error."
In the meantime, Pierce called Princess repeatedly and faxed her confirmation showing the 20-day information, as requested, to the cruise line. It took almost four and a half months for Princess to give Pierce the final word that it was unwilling to honor the extra-long cruise, though Benson points out that Princess told her from the beginning that the 20-day cruise did not exist and was thus impossible to protect or book.
"We should not have continued to ask for her confirmation copies but, again, the agents here could not see what she saw and therefore continued to request this information from her," says Benson.
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