Gephardt: Utah Family Struggles To Get Vacation Refund
Jan 21, 2021, 6:15 PM | Updated: 7:40 pm
WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah – Ian Willey loves to cruise and is sad that he had to cancel an upcoming trip due to COVID-19.
The reason the KSL Investigators got the call is that he and his wife are “having a debacle” getting a refund from the cruise line, Carnival.
When their scheduled voyage had to be scrapped last August, Willey said Carnival told them they would be getting a refund of about $2,000 — but instantly there were issues.
“[Carnival] said, ‘Yeah, we issued it but your bank blocked it,’” Willey said.
In the months since Willey and his wife have been on the phone with both Carnival and the bank multiple times trying to get that refund to go through. Each blamed the other at which point Willey said he asked Carnival to just send him a paper check.
Carnival agreed but more than a month later, still no check.
Willey said it’s left a hole in their budget, especially following Christmas.
“Waiting for this check has been strenuous on us,” he said.
Not sure where else to turn, Willey called the KSL Investigators, who reached out to Carnival on his behalf.
Just like that, some good news for Willey.
“We checked with our reservations team and indeed there was an issue processing their refund,” a spokesman wrote, adding, “We have printed their refund check and it will be mailed to them this week.”
A few days later, Willey said that the check finally arrived.
“We truly feel without your help we may not have received it,” Willey said.
Willey said it was a frustrating experience. Still, he’s excited to book another Carnival cruise as soon as he safely can.
“I want to have a continuing relationship with Carnival, if we can make sure that, you know, things like this don’t happen again,” he said.
Carnival said it sincerely apologizes for the delay and is giving Willey a $500 cruise credit and a $600 per stateroom onboard credit for his trouble.
The pandemic has caused unprecedented interruption to the cruise business and Carnival has issued more than 1 million refunds, its spokesman said.
