IT'S YOUR MONEY
Friends
Bumped from 17-Day Cruise
Trip off despite $5,700+ payment

Henry Gilgoff

THE NOTICE suddenly given by Norwegian Cruise Line through a travel agency upset Karin Kalin. It almost reduced her friend Barry Kunzler to tears.

After months of planning, Kalin and Kunzler were told Norwegian was bumping them from the cruise they had booked for a trip from Miami to San Francisco through the Panama Canal.

Kalin, 56, a retired high school teacher from East Meadow, and Kunzler, 52, a machine shop worker who lives in Copiague, booked the 17-day cruise in November and gave a combined $800 deposit. They paid the remainder of their bill, totaling more than $5,700, in January. They were supposed to set sail in April and were bumped in mid-March.

"It's really a very frustrating experience," Kunzler said last week, "to have tickets in hand, to have paid the money, and then suddenly they put your lives in turmoil. For a worker like myself, who has limited time, it was really traumatic." Mirta Carreras, a spokeswoman for Norwegian, said that Norwegian may oversell to offset cancellations, and she said her company is not the only cruise line to do so.

Still, she said, it is unusual to actually have to bump somebody, though she declined to say how many customers were affected last year. She said one reason bumping occurs is that a certain category of cabins may be oversold.

Fran Sevcik, Norwegian's director of public relations, said she could not readily say what led to the Long Islanders' bump. Whatever the details, their treatment surprised Jeanne Sturm Sherman, president of the Long Island chapter of the American Society of Travel Agents. Sherman said she believes cruise line passengers rarely get bumped against their wishes.

Roz Resnick, Austin Travel's vice president of leisure travel, said a cruise line-like an airline-may oversell and then offer customers a deal to take a different date. With Kalin and Kunzler, their travel agency managed to book them on a comparable trip on another cruise line, but they still feel wronged.

Maria Doe, the manager of their travel agency, Friendship Travel Service in East Meadow, said she can understand the need of cruise lines to oversell. But bumping her clients against their wishes? "That's unethical," she said.

A Norwegian representative called Doe about the friends' bump, she said, and so she requested that the decision be put in writing. That March letter from Norwegian to the travel agency expressed regrets for any "inconvenience" experienced by Kunzler and Kalin.

In addition to giving a refund, Norwegian sent a certificate for Kalin and Kunzler entitling them to a future Norwegian cruise at half its fare. The conditions include a deadline: It must be used within a year.

Kalin isn't satisfied, and she has had a lawyer write to Norwegian to protest, claiming breach of contract and "severe reckless disregard" for its customers. "I don't think they compensated us enough for our aggravation," Kalin said. "If they're going to give me anything, they should give a free cruise." Jennifer de la Cruz, a spokeswoman for Carnival, said her cruise line does oversell on occasion, but she said Carnival reaches out for volunteers to rearrange their trip in the "rare" situation when that practice leaves a cruise overbooked.

Carnival's search for volunteers, with inducements such as a cabin upgrade on another cruise, is almost always successful, the spokeswoman said. Sevcik said Norwegian seeks volunteers, too, though Doe said the cruise line left her clients no choice.

Last year, my wife and I went on a cruise, a vacation given to us as a gift by our children. I never thought I might be bumped. Yet I also have to admit I never read all the disclosures from the cruise line we used.

Neither did Doe, the manager of the travel agency that made the arrangements for Kalin and Kunzler. But subsequently, she said, she did notice a disclosure in the cruise line's promotional material.

Although the cruise line said in that disclosure that it would try to "minimize" bumping, the company said it can withdraw accommodations -even after space has been booked and confirmed, and tickets issued.

Sevcik said: "We certainly don't like to find ourselves in this situation.

It's rare, but it does happen from time to time. We understand how people need to make their travel plans."

In the UK if a passenger pulls out of there holiday early on, they still loose their entire deposit (10-15%). If they pull out late, they will loose thier whole holiday payment.

It wasn't me. I was quoting a news report.