Florida Couple Charged $100K for Cruise Ship Dinner
Florida Couple Charged $100K for Cruise Ship Dinner
We’ve all seen prices going up lately but you can’t blame this story on inflation. So how did a Florida couple get a dinner bill for $100K on their cruise?
When you book a cruise there are plenty of free meal options which are usually pretty good. Now for those who want something different like Italian food, sushi, or steak, cruise ships offer specialty restaurants for a fee. This Florida couple, Alex and Alicia, recently booked a cruise on Royal Caribbean’s Symphony of the Seas. During their seven day cruise, they decided to dine at Jamie’s Italian which is one of the ship’s specialty eateries.
Alex and Alicia enjoyed a multi-course meal of crispy calamari, garlic bread, penne Pomodoro, arugula, and parmesan salad, followed by a lemon meringue cheesecake and hot chocolate with vanilla ice cream. When the couple checked their shipboard account, they saw a charge of $98,638.93 from the restaurant!
Obviously they didn’t eat $100K in food. It seems that someone erroneously entered an ID number into the gratuity box instead of the correct tip amount. Problem solved, right? Not really. Royal Caribbean reversed the erroneous charge but the charge still appeared on their credit card. That resulted in a hold on their card for the rest of their cruise. “This has been pretty stressful to deal with while on vacation,” said the couple. “We had our card decline while off the boat on an island, presumably because this authorization was locking up the available credit on the card.”
In the end, they saw this as a tech problem and not the fault of their server at the restaurant.