Buyer Beware! SCAM

[LMaxwell]

 

I like using PayPal, it's a second layer of protection I get PayPal batting for me in disputes, and I got my Credit card I used to pay PayPal also working for me. And with PayPal, I will have an instant receipt as proof of payment.

 

Yes! Important distinction here. You can make Paypal payments with your credit card. This is the far preferable way to go. Avoid debit transactions.

[Alg63]

Sorry to hear this however for others BUYERS BEWARE

NEVER EVER send money to a Paypal account for Travel.

 

Every licensed TA has to be independently insured/bonded or working thru an agency that is IATA/ARC certified or similar. These TA's have something similar to an escrow account where client funds HAVE TO be kept (keeping this in simple terms here)

 

Always work with a reputable online agent, airline or major company, checking their credentials and NEVER pay by paypal and pref not by check either

Although debit cards do not have all the same protections as a credit card, bank issued debit cards are still bound by Visa/MC regulations for debit cards and if the biz is fraudulent, you do have some recourse

[BiXLL]

Last night I got another email from him. Not sure what to do at this point

 

 

Bill

 

 

 

I dont have your money in my account to pay it. Please resolve the dispute with paypal. Once you have done I will have your payment processed with NCL and then you will be good to go. Once again please accepr my apology. Thanks

 

 

 

 

 

Sincerely,

[cruisecritiquer]

Actually, if you would both reread my example, it was a 3rd party, independent personal shopper, just like the TA in question is a 3rd party, independent travel agent. It's an apples-to-apples comparison. Unless you're using a personal shopper contracted with or provided by the store, the store has nothing to do with your contract with the personal shopper. If the agent is not contracted by NCL to sell cruises for them, if he's just put up a virtual store-front and is hawking cruises and stealing the amount beyond the basic deposit, there's absolutely nothing that they're legally or morally obligated to do for the OP or anyone else that was scammed.

 

Just like there'd be nothing that Macy's could or should do if an independent personal shopper only delivered $300 worth of goods when he was given $1000. Macy's would probably laugh in the face of someone that called them up and said, "Hey, I paid this guy from Personal Shopping Agency to buy me $1000 worth of goods from your store and he's only provided me with $300 worth! What exactly are you going to do about it?" The only thing they're going to do is ask, "Did you contact Personal Shopping Agency through Macy's, or by recommendation or referral from a Macy's employee? No? Sorry, nothing we can do to help you. Next time you should use OUR in-store personal shopper or buy it yourself."

 

I think you are misunderstanding what I'm saying. I am NOT saying that Macy's should reimburse the OP for any damages sustained from the transactions with this criminal. However, NCL should investigate this matter rather than ignoring me OP's concern. his name is listed as a travel agent on NCL website. NCL should take these complaints seriously and should severany business or contractual relationship they have with him. A lot of people go to the NCL website to find a travel agent that works with and Cl, and they should do their due diligence to make sure that their customers are protected. This has nothing to do with having a viable cause of action in a quart. This is about protecting customers and the integrity of the businessand the information listed on the NCL website.

[Alg63]

FYI you cannot tell a licensed TA that you want the name on the invoice to show as paid to the cruise line, if you want an invoice or cc statement to show as paid to the cruise line, you need to book directly through them

 

If you book a hotel on Delta's website it will show as paid to Delta, not to the hotel, same as if you book a hotel, rental car or airline on Expedia, Travelocity etc, it will show as paid to them. If you book a cruise through one of the major cruise retailers it will show as paid to the cruise retailer. It may REFERENCE your cruise, and you may have an invoice .. however the money should be sitting in an escrow account

 

As for a TA holding back their comm, again, they are required to pay the cruise line on your behalf from funds sitting in a secured account. If you do not go ahead with your cruise, and depending on the time you cancel prior to cruise, they may or may not get their comm. No one should worry about how a "real" TA calculates or works their comm, it should not affect you in ANY way unless the TA charges you UP FRONT for the services they are providing you with, whether or not you choose to take them up on it. This is something new that some TA's do (and some good ones as well) because often they can spend 10-20 hours with someone then they decide not to book, and they have done all that work for them.

Why? because hotels, airlines and rental car co's have all decreased their comm since the advent of online, and have to make a living somehow

[Mrs. Squirrel]

FYI you cannot tell a licensed TA that you want the name on the invoice to show as paid to the cruise line, if you want an invoice or cc statement to show as paid to the cruise line, you need to book directly through them

 

 

I use a large online TA agency with the same initials as a famous alarm monitoring/security system company. When I give my TA my cc info, the charges always come through on my cc with NCL as the payee, not the TA agency. I have booked 4 cruises with them, to date. This is important to me, not just for fraud protection, but because I use the NCL BoA cc and I want to make sure I get the double points for NCL purchases.

 

To all those posters who've been hurt by this, I wish you the best of luck getting resolution.

[cruisecritiquer]

Sorry my post up there is so riddled with typos...I was on my phone. :)

 

I don't know how NCL became Macy's but that's "tap to speak" for ya. LOL

[SissasMomE]

Last night I got another email from him. Not sure what to do at this point

 

 

[/i]

 

DO NOT mark the dispute with Paypal resolved! This guy is a shyster. Once you mark it resolved with paypal, you cannot reopen it! Tell the jerk he is to immediately pay NCL with YOUR money like he was supposed to do, or you are contacting the Florida Attorney General today. Who the heck does he think he is trying to negotiate this with you?!

[SissasMomE]

and for God's sake, contact the AG. That would have been the first thing I did. This guy has a criminal record.

[cruisecritiquer]

Last night I got another email from him. Not sure what to do at this point

 

 

[/i]

 

Let's start with what NOT to do. What you don't do is listen to that criminal and release that dispute from paypal. :(

[Mrs. Squirrel]

DO NOT mark the dispute with Paypal resolved! This guy is a shyster. Once you mark it resolved with paypal, you cannot reopen it! Tell the jerk he is to immediately pay NCL with YOUR money like he was supposed to do, or you are contacting the Florida Attorney General today. Who the heck does he think he is trying to negotiate this with you?!

 

Agreed. He is trying to get you to release the dispute, so that PayPal releases their hold on his account for the amount of your payment. I bet it is not really 'your' money that PayPal has frozen, because my guess is that 'your' money is long gone already. It probably went to pay on someone else's cruise or into his pocket. The hold is probably currently tying up another cruiser's money. Let the PayPal dispute resolution system work and report this to the proper authorities. SissasMomE is right. You can't file a dispute with PayPal a second time on the same transaction.

[luddite]

Last night I got another email from him. Not sure what to do at this point

 

 

 

[/i]

 

Cancel. Now. I syour PayPal linked to your bamk account or a credit card?

It should be against a credit card and this is one of the reasons. Tell PayPal the deal is off and you want your money back.

[WaldosPepper]

Last night I got another email from him. Not sure what to do at this point

 

 

"Bill

 

I dont have your money in my account to pay it. Please resolve the dispute with paypal. Once you have done I will have your payment processed with NCL and then you will be good to go. Once again please accepr my apology. Thanks

 

Sincerely,"

 

[/i]

 

It would seem, by your previous posts, that you provided these funds to him some time ago. Is this correct? If so, then under no circumstances should you remove your dispute from PayPal. You must protect your funds in whatever way you can, and releasing that hold would be detrimental at this time.

 

For what it's worth, I reached out to Norwegian via email, and provided a link to this thread, along with some information I learned during my research. I have received a reply thanking me for alerting them to the situation, and assurances that they are looking into the matter. I certainly don't expect instant resolution for any of you, but they are taking the matter seriously. Hopefully this will help you and others who have fallen victim to the fraudulent activities of this TA.

[LMaxwell]

FYI you cannot tell a licensed TA that you want the name on the invoice to show as paid to the cruise line, if you want an invoice or cc statement to show as paid to the cruise line, you need to book directly through them

 

 

All of my payments to my TA show the Cruise Line name, not the TA name. Find a better TA to deal with.

 

OP, are you in a different state than this scam artist TA is in? I'd get the FBI involved (potential bank fraud across state lines) and get the TA's State Attorney Generals office on the phone. I don't play games with people when they start jerking around with my money. I give them one attempt to resolve it IMMEDIATELY and then I go nuclear; let them learn a hard lesson.

 

Good luck!

[rimom71]

For what it's worth, I reached out to Norwegian via email, and provided a link to this thread, along with some information I learned during my research. I have received a reply thanking me for alerting them to the situation, and assurances that they are looking into the matter. I certainly don't expect instant resolution for any of you, but they are taking the matter seriously. Hopefully this will help you and others who have fallen victim to the fraudulent activities of this TA.

 

Thank you, Barbara. As awful as this has been, I am very, very thankful for the CC community and how most people have rallied around to be supportive and helpful.

 

For everyone who keeps pointing out that one should use a "reputable" agent, I did my homework, he was vetted by both NCL and that cruise bidding website, and his reviews were excellent. Even the bidding website CEO told me that they have been working with this guy for "years" with no problems up until the last month or so. I booked my cruise last January. Presumably things were fine then.

 

My point is, I guess, that even those who are experienced travelers can fall victim to unscrupulous business people. And the lesson about never using Paypal for this sort of transaction, well taken.

[BiXLL]

I agree totally. I too checked the guy out and found nothing but good reviews. I also want to second the THANK YOU to all that have posted about this and have offered thier advice.

 

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

[deerby27]

This is what I have done so far: Got him banned from the clearing house website. Disputed the payment to PayPal and my credit card company. Reported his activities to the Florida attorney general, the BBB of Central Florida, NCL, CLIA (which by the way he is a member). It seems that I am the only one so far that he had the money to make my final payment.

 

The other thing I have forgotten to mention, is that there was a $101.00(less) per person difference in the cruise price that was on the NCL invoice. When I questioned him on this, he told me that is was his commission. I was always under the impression that any commission came back to him from the cruise line. The original price I got from him was good and it what I was prepared to pay and at that point I was happy that the final payment had been made to fight with him any more.

[Alg63]

Incorrect. Comm can be managed in one of two ways - and it may depend on the TA, the volume the TA is doing etc.

The TA in come cases may be allowed to pay the TA the amount less their comm, or the comm may be paid to the TA at a certain point after full pay is made - for example, within 10 days of final pay date, 1 month prior to sail date, after departure etc

[AlaskaAtLast]

Just an FYI for the original poster, you can also tell your story of warning on ripoff report d o t c o m. I posted a problem with our pool builder on there and with their optimization software, their stuff comes up on the first couple of pages of a google search.

 

Good luck. I hope you get things resolved and can enjoy your cruise.

[cheaperts]

A note about Paypal from me, a Paypal merchant:p, we use Paypal for our card processing, just like we used to with a merchant processing company. We still pay 2.5-3% in fees, this is just he cost of doing business nowadays in this plastic society, so you pay 3% more for my t-shirts, and your cruise, and groceries, etc etc. I chose to use Paypal "virtual terminal" service several years back and drop our processing company because the cost was better and the funding to us was faster and more reliable. We process charges at times over 10K, and processed in excess of 150K total last year. Using Paypal does not indicate that a merchant is shady, on the contrary, the handful of disputes we have ever fought were all because a customer was ripping us off, and every time Paypal rolled right over on us and gave them money back regardless of the evidence we presented to defend ourselves. The dispute process with Paypal goes like this:

 

Customer files complaint

 

Paypal immediate seizes funds either from the paypal balance of the merchant if he has money in the paypal system OR they draw it back from the bank account they deposit funds into for him.

 

They then sit on it for the time specified for the parties to answer inquires and respond to paypal's requests for info.

 

Paypal makes decision on who wins and sends funds to the winners card/account.

 

Even if a merchant disappears or goes belly up the buyer is most likely going to be made whole.

 

I booked our cruise in the spring with an agent from the site that is being discussed, he did make a charge to paypal for 150 or 250 and told me upfront that there would be 2 charges, one to NCL and one on Paypal for his commission. All went well, I believe this guy was in Florida and sounded like he was from New Jersey....Sounds to me like the same guy, cash flow monster must be eating him up!

[deerby27]

I took others advise and filed a report on The ripoff report.

[SissasMomE]

Have any of the people who have already paid in full had luck getting this guy to pay NCL?

[deerby27]

So far, I think I am the only one!

[rimom71]

Here with an update. The TA never paid despite multiple calls from us and NCL corporate. NCL gave him until this afternoon to pay before they cancelled our cruise, but the TA has been completely unreachable for the past two days (the TA told my husband that he had no intention of paying until NCL "pressured him"). NCL allowed us to pay the balance directly to them using our credit card, with no penalties. When this ordeal began we were off to a somewhat bumpy start with NCL customer service, but now I am extremely impressed by how helpful NCL corporate was with our issue and how hard they advocated for us. Well done NCL! We are looking forward to our cruise on the BA on 11/10!

 

Several days ago, I filed detailed complaints with the Florida AG and the Florida Department of Consumer Affairs. I tried to dispute with Paypal but was outside their 45-day complaint window, so they automatically dismissed my dispute (which, once again, reinforces never, ever paying for travel--or anything else "long-range"--through Paypal). So glad that my Paypal is linked to a credit card, so I am disputing the charges with them directly. It may take a while for them to investigate, but I see no reason why I should not get my money back eventually.

[B6ConMe]

rimom71, I have been following this thread from the beginning and hoping that things would work out for the best for you and your loved ones. I'm so happy for you that things are finally settled to your satisfaction and also glad that NCL has come around, as I expected hoped they would, to give a helping hand and make it right as much as they could.

 

Happy cruising, hope you love your cruise vacation with NCL.

And good luck with the follow up with this distasteful situation.