"free" cruise?

[beckzay]

I posted this on the Carnival board too, but wanted to check here too :-)

 

Has anyone ever gone to one of those "free" cruise presentations? I've gotten many calls before from places offering a free cruise,but I got one the other day that sounded different. So, my husband (the skeptic of ALL skeptics, lol) called back to find out more. Turns out, it's suppose to be a new agency (checked the agency, it's a real agency here) that is running a promotion in hopes that you will use them for all future travel needs. All we have to do, lol, is attend a 90 minute presentation about travel. That's all they said. They didn't say whether it was for timeshares, vacation property, etc. They didn't ask for a credit card, but we did have to meet income requirements.

 

Anyone been to one of these things? Even ones for timeshares? I'm hesitant to go, but then again a semi-free cruise would be awesome.

[mikefast]

I know this isn't the same thing, but my son worked for a car dealership that offered a free cruise with the purchase of a new car. The cruise was just one of those 3 or 4 night cruises, on the lower deck. In other words, the cheapest cabin they could get. It cost the dealer probably 200 dollars. Anyway, one of the customers came back really upset. Seems the cruise company had called him and asked him if he wanted to upgrade, they gave him all kinds of options, he, thinking the cruise was free answered yes. By the time everything was done, the very short cruise cost him well over 1,000 dollars. He should have paid more attention, but he sure wasn't happy. I suppose the cruise is free, but you have to be careful what you agree to. You may be in for a rude awakening.

 

 

[ranchingal]

We did this one time too. Went to the rpresentation and got the certificate. After attempting to book "available cabins" repeatedly, we demanded our port fees back.

Just a gimmick IMHO.

If you want to take a cruise...Book it yourselfl You get what you pay for.

[Alexis]

I won a free cruise from a newspaper drawing.

Went to a travel agent and everything was ready for us in a packet.

Now for the presentation "free" cruise nightmare.

We got a "free" cruise after attending a presentation. I had to send them $50 right off the bat to let them know I was really interested. Then they wanted the port charges, taxes and of course wanted us to upgrade too.

Now it came time to pick the days and weeks you wanted to cruise.

I had to pick three different times that I wanted. Choice 1, 2 and 3.

There were so many black out dates that it was next to impossible to get anything. It had to be so many days from a holiday and so many days from a weekend and so on. Then they informed me that I would not be notified which date we got until 2 weeks or less, prior to sailing. If your first date came and went, you knew you did not get that one. :mad:

I am stubborn enough to not just give up and I continued to try to get a time. Being retired was a big plus for us. I had the time to keep filling out paperwork.

Well, after months of paperwork, we finally received word that we would be sailing from CA and we could pick up our documents on the pier.

I should add that we bought the presentation and still got this mess.

Last presentation we ever attended.