A $15,000 Carnival cruise that a Kentucky family had been planning for a year was canceled just two days before it was due to set sail due to “identity theft” after the family accidentally shared their reservation number online.
Tiffany Banks, a mother who was scheduled to sail on the Carnival Celebration with her husband and four children, was shocked to learn the trip had been canceled without her knowledge the day before the family was due to fly to Florida to depart on the cruise.
In a series of TikTok videos, Banks said she had no idea her already fully paid holiday had been ruined until she received an email about the cancelled boat trip and called to investigate.
A Carnival customer service representative told her through the online system that her $12,000 reservation for the Excel Presidential Suite, the largest room on the ship, had been canceled.
The mother, a nurse, said she “completely panicked” and that she and her four children were all crying.
“We’ve spent about $15,000 on this vacation, including the trip. I think the room was $12,000 or $13,000. Then we have a couple thousand dollars for the trip, and then actually about $2,000 for the plane ticket,” she said in a May 12 TikTok video.
Banks said she never canceled her trip and wondered if there was a glitch in the system.
Carnival offered the family two of the cheapest interior rooms on the ship instead because the room they had reserved had been booked by someone else, but the mother felt that wasn’t an adequate alternative.
Carnival also refused to offer a full refund because its cancellation policy states no refunds are given within 15 days of the cruise departure date.
The family flew to Miami and tried to board the ship anyway in hopes of a last-minute solution, but they were unable to get on and the ship departed without them, Banks said in a tearful video post.
Instead, they stayed at an Airbnb in Florida and tried to make the best of the change in plans, while their mother shared a frustrating update on TikTok.
In one video, she responded to “haters” who accused her of hiding something or not telling the whole story.
“I’m an open person. I talk too much. I give out too much information. It’s just my nature,” she said, which ironically proved to be a prediction of what was to come in this story.
A few days later, Carnival called Banks and explained how her long-awaited cruise had been canceled.
According to a recording of the call that Banks shared on TikTok, the cruise line told Banks she was a “victim of a form of identity theft” but that there had been no security breach on Carnival’s end.
According to the video, Banks and her husband accidentally shared the cruise booking reference number when they posted a screenshot of an email to Facebook a few weeks ago that was counting down to their vacation.
The same day the reservation number was posted on Facebook, someone created an online Carnival account and added the number to their profile.
Then, 48 hours before the cruise was due to depart, the person canceled all stateroom reservations for the entire family, a Carnival representative told Banks in the recording.
Banks said Carnival told her the IP address of the person who canceled was believed to be in British Columbia, but they were unable to identify the scammer.
The company offered the mother a $10,404 credit toward a future cruise if she posted on social media that Carnival had resolved the issue.
But Banks said she wasn’t interested and questioned how someone could so easily take over a booking without any verification procedures.
“We’ll never be on a Carnival ship again,” she said.
The Post reached out to the carnival but did not immediately receive a response.
