Even Savvy Cruisers Keep Falling For These 4 New Cruise Scams. But Why?

Ilana of Life Well Cruised and Emma of Emma Cruises are two of the largest and most trusted YouTube cruise channels, and yet they appear to be scamming their followers right now. Though to be fair to both, I have been up to it too.

Of course, none of us are scamming followers ourselves, but people pretending to be us are using our names, reputations, and trust to trick and manipulate even the most experienced and savvy cruisers. I’ll explain how and what to watch out for shortly.

Also, by the end of this, I’ll show you how scammers are able to lull even savvy cruisers like you into thinking scams are genuine because they know your next ship, date, itinerary, who you are cruising with, and likely even your pre- and post-cruise travel plans – and so when they target you it all sounds legit. You’ll be surprised how easily they are getting this information from you.

But, before I get into all that, I want to warn you about the most common scam I’m seeing right now which targets cruisers just when we need help with questions or issues about an upcoming cruise.

Customer Service Scams

And these are fake cruise line Customer Service Centres.

Here’s how the first of these works.

You have a question or issue with your booking, say on Carnival Cruise Line. So, you Google or use an AI tool like ChatGPT with the request “Carnival phone number” or “Carnival Customer Service phone number”.

Scammers have found ways to get their number to show up prominently in these searches. So, when you phone the number, someone will answer saying something like “Cruise Reservation Centre” and after asking for your booking reference, they will ignore your questions and say you have outstanding fees to be paid and risk having your cruise cancelled, or they can give you a large discount by paying it there and then.

I recently watched a video made a travel agent, Alex Robinson, who after one of his clients fell for this, he called the number, gave a fictitious booking reference and was then told he owed $290 per passenger for a series of fees, which included luggage handling, embarkation and disembarkation, and muster drill and safety briefing expenses.

I have seen far too many people posting in Cruise and Reddit chat groups about calling these scam Customer Service numbers for a wide range of lines including Norwegian, Princess, Disney, Royal Caribbean, and MSC.

So be cautious if you need to call a customer service number. I recommend checking the cruise confirmation for the number or going to the cruise line website and using their “contact us” page.

The second Customer Service scam is when scammers create realistic looking, but fake Customer Service accounts on social media.

They scan for travellers posting a question, complaint or issue on sites like X or Facebook, and message the traveller saying they’ve seen the issue and can help.

For example, a follower of mine (Barry) had posted about Holland America, and a supposed Customer Service account sent a message saying, “Hello, we’d like to look into this case further. Please follow back and share your reachable phone number so we can assist you better”.

The account looked realistic and even had over 123,000 followers. But once they got his contact details, the same fees and added charges scam played out.

I have found that real travel and cruise social media customer service accounts can be a fast way to resolve issues but be cautious and check the account is genuine. Like does it have a blue verified check mark, or they are listed on the cruise line main social media account or website.

Let me talk now about the fast-growing content creator scams I mentioned at the start, as scammers are seeing the strength in using known faces in the cruise world for their activities to fleece money from cruisers.

Content Creator Scams

A typical example is that posted recently by Ilana of Life Well Cruised who has over 500,000 subscribers on YouTube and over 200,0000 on Facebook. Scammers set up a fake profile on social media with her images and a slight, easy to miss tweak of her channel name, and posted links in various cruise platforms to get people to sign up. Many did.

Once they did, they started to get friendly messages from Fake Ilana, delighting them as they thought they were chatting directly to her. Fake Illana soon suggested they join her new VIP program that would also earn them money, asking to move their chat to the Signal platform to find out more about it and to get details on paying to join.

Of course, this is a more anonymous platform which would be hard to trace after they had been scammed.

At the same time the well-known Emma of Emma Cruises, who often posts about fake profiles like Illana’s being created, warned her followers about a new approach that scammers are using where they are texting or phoning cruisers pretending to be her and trying to get payments and credit card details.

But even smaller emerging creators are being used too.

In the same week that Illana and Emma issued their warning, Scott and Tom of Vitamin Sea UK posted that there was an account, also with a slight tweak on their name, engaging in friendly chat when people signed up that soon started asked if they could borrow $200 for a day because they were in urgent need of it, and that they would repay it in full with interest the next day.

I constantly see fake profiles set up using my images like these, though I also have had my images and names also used promoting special senior and solo deals that are scams, and my photos are also being used in romance scams through sites like a Facebook dating in Asia. Where unfortunately, some women have been caught out handing over money to fake me thinking we were going to be meeting up.

But it is not just cruise creators that scammers are using these days; they are also using well-known cruise line crew.

For example, there have been several fake profile scams pretending to be John Heald, the Carnival Cruise Line Brand Ambassador, who has a large social media presence answering Carnival passenger questions.

Some of these fake profiles get thousands of followers, making cruisers think it is legit.

The Fake John Heald then pretends to help Carnival cruisers to get on sold put excursions or access to various on-board events asking them to pay them him directly, while others use private direct message chat to ask people to buy him various items or lend him money.

Seeing some success, scammers have extended this to pretending to be loved Cruise Directors who are active online.

For example, most recently I saw there had been a profile pretending to be Marc Walker, a popular Royal Caribbean cruise director, which follows the familiar friendly chat, then a suggestion to meet up when he is going to be in their city between contracts, and then asking for money, often small amounts like $50 or $100, to tide him over saying he’s stuck somewhere and cannot access cash.

To avoid all these scams, look closely at the profile name and spelling, and check if there is a long history of posts before following a profile.

There is another scam a lot of cruisers are getting trapped by as they navigating changing cruise requirements.
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Visa and eTA Scams

There’s been a rapid increase in the number of countries requiring visas or eTAs (electronic travel authorizations) ranging from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, and recently in the UK and coming soon in Europe.

Most cruisers do a Google or similar search to find out where to apply for one, and scammer sites often appear high in search or in paid-for ads and are charging high fees to get them, which is completely unnecessary because you can go direct and pay a much smaller fee.

For example, I searched “apply for a Canadian ESTA” and all the top results were scamming sites, two using sponsored ads to ensure they were at the top. By going through the process on the first site to apply for one, it was asking for a $149 fee, but an actual Canadian ESTA only costs at time of making this $7 using the official site.

So, make sure you’re using an official site. To do so I find simply including the word “official” in any online search request, so say “official UK eTa site” as it will then show up the correct site first. Then also check the URL as it will usually have something like a .gov in the URL too.

So, by searching “official Canadian ESTA application site” the result showed the official Canadian Government site.

Ignore any listing that is a sponsored link as it likely will be a scam in some way.

Now I mentioned that scammers find it very easy to get all the information they need about our upcoming trip to make us think when they contact us it is a genuine contact. How do they do that?

Scammers Secret Tool

Scammers use cruise chat groups, roll calls, and online groups on social media for a specific sailing of a ship to do that.

By joining the group, they already name of the ship, dates, itinerary, get passenger names, and from the posts and questions information about travel plans, cabin booked, questions, issues and so on.

Not only does it give them enough information to know who you are, but they can contact you via Direct Messaging you. And as they know the sort of things that you’re concerned about or want to do, like some excursion or upgrading a cabin, they can find ways to scam you.

For example, what I am seeing reported is scammers in these groups start to ask if people want to join an excursion, take part in a group on-board joint slot pull, or arrange joint transfers and so on. Always asking for money to be transferred by an online payment system before the cruise and then disappearing once paid.

Being asked for an online payment is a warning sign, instead say you will pay them when you see them on the cruise.

 

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