This Carnival cruise ship passenger lost $3,556 to a Zelle scam

Cruise ship passengers beware: Never use Zelle to pay for a cruise, excursion or any other part of your vacation. If you do, you could end up like L. Williams, a former Carnival Cruise Line customer who got tangled up in a Zelle scam. 

A con artist pretending to be a cruise consultant tricked Williams into paying for a Carnival cruise with Zelle. That set off a chain reaction that left her $3,556 in debt – and banned indefinitely from the cruise line.

Here’s how paying for a cruise or excursion with Zelle could land you in the same boat.

Booking a mid-winter Caribbean cruise

Williams’ strange ordeal began over 5 years ago, when she and her family decided to take a Caribbean cruise. An acquaintance recommended a guy named Josh as a cruise consultant who could help the family with the booking. 

“My brother booked a [different] cruise with Josh, too, and so I texted him,” Williams recalled. “I understood him to be a Carnival cruise consultant.”

Josh wasn’t a cruise consultant, but Williams missed all the clues.

The first red flag? Josh was using his own private telephone number to conduct business. Real cruise consultants are reached via official cruise line channels. 

But soon Josh presented Williams with a tropical itinerary that sounded perfect for beating the mid-winter doldrums – and the price was right. She was especially pleased that the Carnival cruise would embark from Galveston,Texas, not far from their home. 

There was just one hitch: Josh wanted Williams to pay for the cruise with Zelle. 

Danger ahead: A cruise consultant who only accepts Zelle

Williams says she didn’t want to use Zelle to pay for her cruise, but Josh insisted it was simple. He told her that it was his preferred payment method – something that Williams should have seen as a glaring red flag. 

She didn’t.

Real cruise consultants would never request a customer pay with anything other than a credit card. However the preferred payment method of scammers is Zelle: instant and easy. 

But with dreams of that tropical cruise clouding her judgment, Williams opened the Zelle app on her phone. After entering Josh’s phone number into the recipient field, she added the cost of the cruise and pressed “send.” Instantly, the $3,556 appeared in the bank account of Josh, a virtual stranger. 

If you guessed that Williams and her family never got to take that cruise and were denied boarding at the pier, you would be wrong. Strangely, this Zelle scammer actually booked that cruise and the family sailed as scheduled. However, he paid Carnival for that cruise with a stolen credit card.

It would be many years before Williams would find out what he’d done and how his scam would impact her. 

Carnival Cruise Line: You’re on the Do Not Sail list

Williams says she never heard from Josh again after the cruise he booked for her. That was another red flag suggesting that Josh wasn’t who he said he was. But given the global pandemic that hit soon after their return from the Caribbean, Williams didn’t give it much thought. 

“I also never heard anything from Carnival to give me any idea that there was a problem,” she told me. “I continued to receive advertisements from the cruise line.”

Which is why Williams says what happened next was so shocking to her. 

“Our extended family told us they were going on a Carnival cruise and so we decided to go too,” Williams explained. “I booked two cabins on the same cruise without indication of a problem.”

After making those plans and receiving a confirmation for the cruise, Williams assumed she would soon be on her way back to the Caribbean. It was the family’s first cruise since the pandemic.

But when she signed into the Carnival website and attempted to make the final payment for the cruise, she got a surprise. Her reservation had been deleted without any additional information – the rest of her family’s cruise reservations remained intact. 

Williams called Carnival to find out what had caused what she thought was an error. Then her surprise turned to shock. According to the cruise line representative, her name was on the Do Not Sail list, and the reason was disturbing: fraud. 

Related: Planning a cruise this year? Here’s how to avoid common mistakes

A stolen credit card and an unpaid for cruise

Williams couldn’t believe what she was hearing from the Carnival representative. A supervisor repeated the information and explained a bit more. 

“He said the credit card that was used to pay for the cruise all those years ago was reported stolen,” Williams told me. “Apparently, after we returned, our entire cruise was charged back, so it wasn’t paid for.”

Now Carnival wanted Williams to pay for that cruise. Worse, getting unbanned wasn’t even up for discussion. It was clear now that Josh wasn’t a cruise consultant, and Williams didn’t even know how to reach him.

Not sure what to do next, Williams sent her request for help to Consumer Rescue. 

Fact: Zelle payments have no purchase protection and aren’t reversible or traceable

When Williams’ request for assistance hit our helpline, I read through her rendition of what had happened – and her suggested resolution. She wanted Carnival Cruise Line to forgive the debt because she’d been scammed herself. 

I knew that was not going to happen.

Had Josh been an actual Carnival Cruise Consultant, she wouldn’t have found herself in her current situation. But he wasn’t – and the cruise line had no reason to give her a free $3,556 cruise because she was conned by a common scammer. 

By then, Williams had realized all the red flags she missed and the immense mistake she’d made sending the $3,556 to someone she never met and knew very little about. She didn’t even know his last name. In fact, we don’t even know if Josh was his actual first name. 

I made a big mistake here, but if Carnival had told me about the stolen credit card and chargeback way back when it happened, I might have been able to get my money back somehow. Now there is no way to reach Josh or track down my cash. I’m the one that is losing all this money AND getting banned from the cruise line for falling for a scam.

I explained to Williams that the only possible chance she has to be unbanned from Carnival is to pay that bill. Unfortunately, this will not guarantee she’ll be welcome back on board. Regular readers of this site know that cruise lines are more willing than ever to blacklist problematic passengers forever. That includes customers whose lapse in judgment has led them to fall prey to scammers who attempt to rip off the cruise line.  

Related: How to easily lose $500 to a vacation rental scam? Pay with Zelle

What to know about booking and paying for your cruise

Fake and incompetent cruise consultants and travel agents can be found all over the Internet. It’s not hard to run into these imposters while planning your vacation. They’re trolling on Facebook, Reddit and in other social media groups – even creating their own professional-looking websites. 

But just like with fake airline call centers, if you fall into their hands, you’ll not only lose your money, but your identity and reputation will be at risk. 

Here’s what to know about how to book and pay for your next cruise so you don’t end up like Williams.

Related: Is this the worst travel agent ever?

Never pay with Zelle or any other cash app

Instant money transfer apps, like Zelle and Cash App, don’t have any purchase protection for consumers. The Fair Credit Billing Act protects consumers who use credit cards to pay for goods and services. That’s why you should only use a credit card to purchase cruises and excursions. If something goes wrong, you’ll have that protection.

Zelle is only meant to be used to make small cash transfers to friends and family – people you know personally. It is against Zelle’s terms and conditions to use the app in any other way. Paying a stranger for anything with Zelle leaves you vulnerable. It’s the same as handing over cash to an anonymous person. If you don’t get what you think you’re buying you will have no recourse. 

Remember this: Professional cruise consultants and travel advisors always accept credit cards. And it bears repeating that scammers prefer Zelle because payments are instantaneous, irreversible and nearly impossible to trace.  

Use American Society of Travel Advisors: VeriVacation

A great resource for travelers is the American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA) website.

ASTA has just launched its VeriVacation tool which can connect you to an ASTA-certified travel advisor specializing in cruise vacations and other specialties.

Be careful using Google search

Recently the scam call centers I’ve been reporting on for the past two years have expanded to become “cruise consultants.” Cruise passengers report finding phony contact information listed in the search results and in social media groups for their favorite cruise lines. Just because a phone number is listed on Google, that does not mean it’s a valid number for an official cruise consultant.

Always get the contact information for the cruise line from its official website or app.

The bottom line

Unfortunately, for Williams she remains on the Do Not Sail list, missing out on the Carnival cruise with the rest of her family. She wishes she’d known the dangers of using Zelle before handing over her cash to a stranger, but hopes others can learn from her mistake.

If someone asks you to pay for your cruise or excursion with anything other than a credit card, just say “No” and book elsewhere. Remember this: Using Zelle to buy goods or services only benefits one person — and it isn’t the consumer. That’s guaranteed. (Michelle Couch-Friedman, Consumer Rescue)