Celebrity Cruise company / travel agency double booked our room! How can we get full reimbursement for trip costs?

[Iamcruzin]

31 minutes ago, Dread_Pirate_Roberts said:

Expedia took our money, and was supposed to send it onto Celebrity. We booked through Expedia. I'm now being told "never do that",  but this was my first cruise, and I've had good experiences with Expedia. 

I know Expedia took your money but did Celebrity Cruises show up on the credit card statement or Expedia. Expedia is a national company so I think they are trust worthy. It's when you book with a Mom and Pop agency and you make payment directly to the agency that there could be an issue, should the agency go out of business or just be fraudulent. As I understand it Celebrity refunded your money so they got payment either directly from your credit card or was paid through Expedia. Either way, how could payment be made without a reservation? One has to ask were did your payment post to?

[Georgia_Peaches]

20 minutes ago, Dread_Pirate_Roberts said:

We were told we did not have a reservation at all for the cruise, and someone else was booked for our room.

This part is so confusing to me...and I'm not doubting you at all, but I wonder why Celebrity took responsibility and refunded you for a reservation they say you didn't have?  How did they even know how much to refund?  A refund suggests they got your money, so what room was that money assigned to?    Rhetorical questions, of course.

[awhcruiser]

1 hour ago, Georgia_Peaches said:

This part is so confusing to me...and I'm not doubting you at all, but I wonder why Celebrity took responsibility and refunded you for a reservation they say you didn't have?  How did they even know how much to refund?  A refund suggests they got your money, so what room was that money assigned to?    Rhetorical questions, of course.

Good question.  I would have checked the Celebrity website, not Expedia, for a confirmed reservation on the day of the cruise booking!

[wrk2cruise]

I don't blame OP at all for what happened to them.  From what I understand Celebrity accepted responsibility for the mistake or whatever happened.  To me what what I understand the OP has reported is a full refund of the cruise cost (of course that should happen) plus a Future Cruise Credit of $450.   As I have stated before I believe that is a bit light given the circumstances of arriving at the pier and being denied boarding due to Celebrity's fault.  Of course I don't know what the value of the cruise was.  My expectation for a situation like this would be a refund plus FCC in the amount of the original cruise fare as a good will gesture for having to eat the additional travel expenses.  As I have posted before I would be making this expectation known to the executive office.

 

I'm not sure what OP would be claiming with travel insurance.  Only thing I can think would be trip interruption which might cover loss of any pre-paid expenses from the time of interruption.  The issue is going to be if the failure of the common carrier (Celebrity) is going to be a covered reason.  Even if accepted Celebrity refunded the cruise cost so the only costs covered might be the change fee for the flight home.   They probably wouldn't argue about 1 overnight with expenses but any more than that you will probably have to prove no other flights were available.

[alexandria]

On 10/7/2024 at 11:35 AM, Dread_Pirate_Roberts said:

And after rebooking our flight, we had 2 days to "waste" so we found a couple gardens and did one tour. I don't expect them to pay for these activities, but I do think it is reasonable to expect the at-fault party to pay for our flights and our hotel.

Sorry, but unless you were completely unable to book a flight home within a day of the "missed" sailing, it is not reasonable to expect that a hotel room for several extra nights be paid by others, at-fault or not.  What happened to the return airline ticket for your original post-cruise flight home?  Were you not able to receive a refund or travel credit when you cancelled that flight to fly home earlier than expected? 

 

 

On 10/7/2024 at 11:27 AM, Dread_Pirate_Roberts said:

There are only a couple of flights per day from Ft. Lauderdale to Detroit. If we miss the morning time, then there is only one afternoon time. All of these factors weighed into our decision to stay a few days.

Are you sure about that?  There are generally five or six non-stop daily flights from FLL to DTW and two or three of them (depending on the day) depart at 2:30 pm or later.  When you add in flights that have just a single stop, there are nearly one hundred flights per day from FLL to DTW.

 

As others recommended, a travel insurance claim for your non-reimbursed and non-refundable expenses should be made.  They will decide what "else" you may be able to receive based upon the coverages for the plan you selected.  Otherwise, since your cruise fare was fully refunded, you don't have any recourse.  Consumers do not enjoy the same protections when denied boarding on a cruise that they would receive if involuntarily denied boarding on an overbooked airline flight.   

[Suzi66]

There is a lot to be said of purchasing at least one thing through the cruise planner as I have recently discovered.  The cruise is not with Celebrity but RCCL.
We have a B2B booked and our son & DIL were in the room next to us.  A couple of months ago they discovered that they will be having their second child and will be too far along to come on the cruise so we asked our TA to cancel their room.  She contacted the wholesaler that she booked it through and for them to cancel it as RCCL won't let her do it directly.
A week ago I got an email from RCCL saying that our drink package and internet that I had purchased when it was on sale (a really good deal at the time) had been cancelled. 
I rang them to discover it was because our booking had been cancelled.  I told the guy at the other end that we hadn't cancelled (and he would have seen that it was paid in full) and he reinstated our booking and our room.
We couldn't get our drinkpackage and Wifi back at the price we paid and the wholesaler is the one that has to organise that, also we are waiting for our money and our OBC to return to us and hope that will happen soon.

But the morale of this tale is that if I didn't have anything purchased and didn't watch my app every few days I may not have noticed that our booking was cancelled and we could have lost our B2B room as it could have been resold.
Celebrity have done that to us before in the space of 3 hours when the 3rd leg of our B2B2B transpacific got accidentally cancelled by the same wholesaler and we ended up having to move to another room.

[zgscl]

On 10/7/2024 at 11:04 AM, wrk2cruise said:

 

I'm not sure what OP would be claiming with travel insurance.  Only thing I can think would be trip interruption which might cover loss of any pre-paid expenses from the time of interruption.  The issue is going to be if the failure of the common carrier (Celebrity) is going to be a covered reason.  Even if accepted Celebrity refunded the cruise cost so the only costs covered might be the change fee for the flight home.   They probably wouldn't argue about 1 overnight with expenses but any more than that you will probably have to prove no other flights were available.

I think they have a good case for the flight change, and probably one night in the hotel. They may have a case for the original airfare if there is some sort of “trip in vain” clause in the policy. 
 

Not sure the value of their booking but I agree a $450 fcc is very light compensation for this whole mess regardless of who is at fault.