PSA: make sure if you’re calling a cruise line for something you are calling their official number.

I know most people probably wouldn’t do this or fall for it but I’m going on a cruise with my parents at the end of the month. My dad I guess wanted to call up Princess to ask about what it would cost to last minute upgrade our room. I don’t know where he found the number but he googled Princess cruise number and called whatever number he found. Moral of the story the person was a scammer from another country and was NOT affiliated with Princess. He told me he called to ask about upgrading and they told him “that would he $4,000” and when he told them he can’t afford that so never mind they then mentioned “by the way you have a $800 balance on your account and you won’t be able to do the cruise if you don’t pay it.” When he asked them what the balance was for they said “it’s taxes. We never charge the taxes at point of sale they come later on”. So he gave them $800 over the phone. He told me it took 2 hours to do it but he (my dad) wanted to let me know that he “cook care of it we still owed $800 but I paid it so no worries”. I knew right away that made no sense and I looked back at my invoice from the cruise when we booked and it said right on there paid in full and it included taxes. So I called up Princess myself and lo and behold they knew nothing about $800 being owed and that we paid it all when we booked.

Anyway, I just wanted to say these scammers while to me seemed fishy right away, to some people, especially my older dad it may seem legit. They even emailed him a few times and the emails while to me looked faked, I could totally see someone falling for it tho.

So just wanted to give a PSA if you ever need to call the cruise line, whichever one, make sure you have the legit number, because apparently scammers are somehow able to get their scam number out there to people when they try to google the real number.

Thankfully my dad said he was able to call his bank and get the money back but had I not noticed it right away he would have been out $800.