Beware of the Coral Princess

[ortho_rn63]

Just wanted to let everyone know how our stay was at the Coral Princess. We booked through an online site and got a fantastic rate. We arrived at the hotel to be told they had overbooked and we had been ugraded to a penthouse room! The room was great and the hotel was very nice. So far, everything is great....the staff that was at the desk seemed very helpful and friendly.... we now know they were too friendly.

On our arrival home we had a message from our credit card company's fraud department telling us of charges that had occurred in SJU after our cruise had sailed! The only place we used the credit card was the hotel!!! Absolutely no where else in SJU was that card used.....

BEWARE of your card. Thankfully I had notified the cc company before we left of our travels so they were on the lookout!!!!!

[CRUISERTN]

OrthoRn - Sorry we never got to meet on the cruise. The meet and greet seemed to never happen. CruisySusy and I were there, along with our husbands, and it started raining heavily...we hung out for a while, and no one showed up.....hope you had a good cruise. We found the quality of food and service to have gone down quite a bit during the last two Princess cruises in the past 4 months. Otherwise, a great cruise. Thanks for the info on the SJU hotel. Something similar happened to us after using our card in a hotel in Costa Rica several years ago. Our card's fraud department caught it and contacted me when charges were being made at Sak's in New York and several other high end department stores.

 

Another thing for everyone to be aware of in SJU are the taxi drivers if you negotiate a rate without getting a paper in advance with the price written down from a taxi stand. They will automatically add $5 or $10 to the price, and beware at the airport of porters grabbing your bags right out of the taxi before you can turn around, rolling them inside about 30 feet and demanding a "fee" of $10........I gave him a dollar a bag for just rolling them inside for us, yet he threw the money back at me and said his "fee" was $10....when I challenged him and told him I was calling the airport police because he was ripping people off, he immediately disappeared.....this was one of the porters in uniform.....so beware.....

 

Also, when you arrive at the airport for your return flight home, make sure you run your bags through the USDA scanner to check for fruits and vegetables before you get in the check in line to check luggage and get boarding passes. We knew about this in advance, but some people did not and after standing in line for 30 minutes to check in, they were turned away to go and get their bags scanned by USDA first to get the sticker on their bag showing it had been checked before being allowed to check in. The security check point with the carry on luggage was extremely slow and while the line was not very long, it still took us 30 minutes to get through. Many people had liquids in their bags, bottles of water, cell phones in pockets, etc. and it slowed everything down tremendously, so allow for plenty of time at the airport....I would allow at least 2 hours.

[BJAMINGIRL]

Sorry to hear about your problem in SJU, I will say that we just stayed there and loved it and had no problem with our credit card. I'm afraid until they can improve credit card security, these things happen everywhere.

 

Know someone that ate dinner in Aspen Colorado at an upscale resturaunt and had $3500 worth of ski equipment purchased on their American Express within 30 minutes.

 

I will stay at the Coral Princess again and will recommend it to others without hesitation.

 

Best luck to you

[JRarey]

We loved our stay a few years back at the Coral Princess. Great service, great little areas to sit and relax.

 

I am sure they have addressed the credit card issue because they can't afford the bad press about such issues.

[NaClH20]

We stayed at the Coral Princess in late January and have had no problems with the credit card. We also had a great time. I think we had the least desireable room in the whole place, but it was still very comfortable. Of course it could be the effects of Medalla beer!

[quincytoo]

OrthoRn - Sorry we never got to meet on the cruise. The meet and greet seemed to never happen. CruisySusy and I were there, along with our husbands, and it started raining heavily...we hung out for a while, and no one showed up.....hope you had a good cruise. We found the quality of food and service to have gone down quite a bit during the last two Princess cruises in the past 4 months. Otherwise, a great cruise. Thanks for the info on the SJU hotel. Something similar happened to us after using our card in a hotel in Costa Rica several years ago. Our card's fraud department caught it and contacted me when charges were being made at Sak's in New York and several other high end department stores.

 

Another thing for everyone to be aware of in SJU are the taxi drivers if you negotiate a rate without getting a paper in advance with the price written down from a taxi stand. They will automatically add $5 or $10 to the price, and beware at the airport of porters grabbing your bags right out of the taxi before you can turn around, rolling them inside about 30 feet and demanding a "fee" of $10........I gave him a dollar a bag for just rolling them inside for us, yet he threw the money back at me and said his "fee" was $10....when I challenged him and told him I was calling the airport police because he was ripping people off, he immediately disappeared.....this was one of the porters in uniform.....so beware.....

 

Also, when you arrive at the airport for your return flight home, make sure you run your bags through the USDA scanner to check for fruits and vegetables before you get in the check in line to check luggage and get boarding passes. We knew about this in advance, but some people did not and after standing in line for 30 minutes to check in, they were turned away to go and get their bags scanned by USDA first to get the sticker on their bag showing it had been checked before being allowed to check in. The security check point with the carry on luggage was extremely slow and while the line was not very long, it still took us 30 minutes to get through. Many people had liquids in their bags, bottles of water, cell phones in pockets, etc. and it slowed everything down tremendously, so allow for plenty of time at the airport....I would allow at least 2 hours.

 

Same thing happened to us with a man at the San Juan cruise terminal. we had bypassed the porters with our luggage, and had actually bought our ticket for the taxi, a man came up and actually grabbed my dh's luggage out of his hands and when dh asked if he was the taxi driver the man said yes, and loaded the luggage into a waiting cab about two feet away, turns out he wasn't the actual driver and he wanted a large tip!!! Dh was mad and gave him a couple of bucks ( I wouldn't have) and the man started saying something nasty in spanish, What a scam!!!

 

We didn't know about scanning our checked luggage first through the USDA screens. They did hold our spot for us while we quickly did it.