I completed my cruise on the Carnival Liberty on Sunday, 4 May and assumed (obviously incorrectly) that my credit card account would be promptly updated to reflect actual charges, especially since I received a printed accounting before leaving the ship.

I have contacted VISA and they show a large number of excess holds from Carnival.  These holds have resulted in my card being repeatedly rejected.

If you can deliver an accurate printed accounting before a guest leaves the ship it should take no more than 2 business days to submit the correct charges to the credit card company.  (DON'T TRY TO TELL ME IT IS A COMPUTER PROBLEM AS I HAVE WORKED MORE THAN 35 YEARS IN THE FIELD AND KNOW IT IS JUST AN EXCUSE TO HOLD MONEY LONGER FOR YOUR CORPORATE USE.)

I fully expect my account to be correctly credited and cleared in the next 48 hours. 

I took a cruise on the Victory last summer and my card was not released until 30 days after the cruise.  Carnival kept saying it was the credit card company's fault, but they in turn said carnival was the one who still had the hold on the card, for more than what I spent.  There seems to be a problem some where.

I posted on this subject previously, but some ships seem to handle charges differently.

On one ship I had nothing on my charge account but the total of my Sail and Sign Account (which is the norm), but on one cruise I noticed they seemed to run my card on a daily basis, but the charges totaled my Sail & Sign balance.

I don't know why they are erratic of late with their procedures, but when I sailed on the Liberty in October, only the total appeared on my Credit Card statement.

In regards to the hold on the account, this is something that different banks are known for, it seems some of their customer service staff do have brains to recognize that an authorization for a particular amount and an actual charge for the same amount are the same transaction. Others are stupid and won't recognize the fact. So if an authorization is requested, and isn't matched up, it creates this problem.

I don't know why it varies, my USBank and BofA Visa Cards, release the authorization after 3 days... I've never heard the bank to hold authorizations for longer than 7 days..but I would question that with your card holder.

 The painful saga of clearing excess holds on my credit card continues - 1 week down, HOW MANY TO GO?  It's really too bad and extremely frustratinig that this is happening as my cruise was fantastic.

At present I have made eight phone calls to various offices at AAA VISA customer support and Carnival's Customer Relations in addition to NO response to my original e-mail on this site.  Each day a small amount gets cleared but the largest dollar amount continues to be on hold.  Carnival claims they have sent FAX's twice with the required information but each time I check with AAA VISA customer support Carnival has failed to include the authorization #s for all the charges. Hopefully today will be the day they clear it up.

Does anyone know if there is any legal recourse to recoup interest on the amounts held despite repeated requests for release?  I am thinking the Kansas Attorney Generals office of customer affairs (??) or maybe the Feds may need to look into this matter for everyone, not just myself as it appears that Carnival and/or AAA VISA is making pretty good bucks by retaining the money longer than necessary. 

im sick and tired of carnival they are doing the same crap to me right now and i will never cruise with carnival ever again all they freaking want is money and im pissed

I have never had the problem. but I think I am just going to start using cash for my S&S from now on just to avoid getting caught in that trap.

I've never had this happen but I did have them open the S&S with $1000.00.  I had been told that was the best thing to do.  I didn't spend quite that much so they did not need reauthorization.  Within 24 hours the actual charges were on my card and there were no holds.  I had informed my card company prior to the trip what I was doing and where I was traveling and that I would be using the card for the S&S. 

SKI49,

You should not be getting charged ANY interest on "Authorizations", only on "merchant-reconciled transactions". Merchant-Reconciled Transactions can be disputed.

Since you've mentioned this is a AAA Visa card, I'm not aware of AAA issuing Visa Cards since they are not a banking institution. It is possible that their name is on the card, but the issuing bank would be someone different - like Chase, Household Bank, or Capital One.

If this miscommunications continues, I would recommend you do a conference call between the two, so they can get the matter resolved with you listening in.

I was told By my bank ( Commerce) that when you go on a cruise what you should do (and this is not just carnival but all cruise lines) is open a diffrent account for a very short time!! and use that for the cruise only!!! this way if anything happens and there are wrong charges on you CC it will not interfer with you normal banking I personly think its a great idea!!!! Put in it what you think you may want for the cruise this way everthing is covered !!! Good Luck all!!

Happy Sailing!!!

Yikes...sounds like this is not a common thing but if it does happen, what a nightmare. I think I'm going to just buy myself a Visa gift card and put X amount of dollars on it. Sorry for your hassles, hope they got sorted.

Hi, Christi, it seems like I read on one of the other threads that Carnival may not take the gift card because it doesn't have your name on it. You might want to check it out just to make sure. I'm going to take traveler's checks, I know they'll take those.

Happy Cruising to Ya!!!

:)  ~  Pam

I also have Commerce Bank and sailed the Carnival Miracle last week.  In addition to charging me the $311 lump sum that I went over on my sail and sign credit, they also have placed holds on my account for the individual charges totalling $311. So as of right now Carnival has over $600 of my money tied up since Saturday of last week.  I, personally, dont keep and extra $300 in my account at all times, and it is now tying into my rent money.  Carnival said there is nothing they can do about it and it will be put back into my account within 72 business hours which is today, but its still showing on my account,  I sure hope it goes back into my account before the 1st so I can pay my rent.  This is ridiculous!! I think I will stick to Royal Caribbean form here on out, I never have this problem with them.  This was my first time cruising with Carnival.

Ohhhhhhhhhh thanks for the heads-up, Pam!! Yikes. Travelers' checks--great idea, or maybe I'll just do cash. I have an Amex card I was originally going to use and they have excellent customer service. Has anybody here had any hassles with their Amex cards?

 Finally on May 20th the last hold was removed from my credit card.  It took multiple phone calls, e-mails and lastly a complaint to the BBB before it was cleared.  For whatever reason Carnival failed 4 times to provide the correct information to remove all the holds.  Each FAX they sent released a little more money until, after my complaint to the BBB, they finally provided the correct information and my account was cleared.

This experience makes me think that I need to find another cruise line or use cash as suggested in some of the follow-up e-mails I have received from others with similar problems.  It is really to bad as my cruises with Carnival have been great - only the accounting snafus after the cruise have caused any concerns.

Thanks to all who replied and good luck with any similar problems.  Be persistent, ask for a supervisor and file a complaint with the BBB  in order to get & keep the attention of the Carnival Customer Service reps.

Wow SKI49, I cant believe it took that long.  I hope that mine will be released by next week so I can pay my rent.  I used my tax return to pay for my cruise as a little gift to myself since I could never afford it another time on my income, and never thought that they would do this.  I mean I enjoyed my cruise, but not enough to get evicted for not being able to pay my entire rent, which will happen if they dont release the holds by next week.  I will definitely not cruise with Carnival again unless I use cash for the whole thing.