RSSMore Heart Warming Stories from the Cruise Ship Industry … Cruise Ship Charged $30,000 in Medical Fees on Passengers Credit Card
Here is an amazing, touching, caring and heart felt storing coming from the Cruise ship 
and credit card industry. Your compassion is overwhelming. However, in this case the cruise industry may have been trumped by an even bigger bunch of corporate pirates.
A woman became severely sick, went into a coma while on a cruise. The cruise ship charged her $30,000 in medical fees and put it on her credit card account. One can only imagine the care she was provided by “Doc” from the Love Boat provided; however, the woman’s medical bills were covered by her insurance carrier. Did we also mention that the woman that was billed $30K also died?
Question: My mother got severely sick and went into a coma on a cruise and then died. The cruise ship charged her $30,000 in medical fees and put it on her credit card account. However, her insurance paid the $30,000 and the credit card bill for the medical expense only, but it took a few months and the credit card company hit her account, although they knew she was in a coma and subsequently died, with over-limit fees, finance charges, etc. She has no estate that needed to go through probate. Am I, as her daughter, liable or not?
- NINA (The Daily Breeze)
Enter the credit card industry and wanting to get blood from a stone. Trying to get over limit fees and finance charges from the dead. That’s about right for the credit card industry these days. Wait until they call you threatening that your mother will have bad mark on her credit report and it will affect future purchases.
By the way, the answer is no as long as one was not a joint card holder.
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15 Responses to “More Heart Warming Stories from the Cruise Ship Industry … Cruise Ship Charged $30,000 in Medical Fees on Passengers Credit Card”
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Health care overcharges are horrible, and happen everyday, not just within the cruise industry.
This hatred of the cruise line industry is petty, small, and boring. People make a choice when going on a cruise. Most people love them. Some don’t. My Aunt loves cruises. I hate them. But I don’t hate the industry. Move on.
I don’t understand why SM is constantly going after the cruise industry. There is no question that there are problems within the industry – cover-up and denial – but the stories I see here usually are not the cruise company’s fault.
Does the Doctor on the Cruise ship not deserve to be paid? Would the bill have not been higher if she’d been in intensive care in a hospital? Wouldn’t the hospital also have billed her? Since when do bills get tossed out when the patient dies?
As far as the finance charges – it’s the credit card company that one should contact. The CC company will indeed waive finance charges if someone contacts them and proves her death. I use to work probate estates and CC companies will stop finance charges when informed of a death and the probate process (in this case it would be simply insurance) to be paid.
KATABLOG … Read the post …
The CC didn’t stop the charges when they knew she had died!
R
For those of you that defend the cruise ship industry … answer me this question.
What is the difference between Aruba and the Cruise line industry when it comes to handling crime?
HMMM?
R
If the poor lady had to be airlifted from the ship to the nearest hospital on land, the bill could have very well been 30,000. I’m familiar with travel insurance because I travel quite a bit and do purchase it. Airlifting someone from a ship is not cheap!
I’m confused about the insurance payment and the credit card bill. It’s customary for the passenger to incur the charge then file with the insurance company for reimbursement. The only way for the cruiseline to do this is to charge the passenger’s onboard account. They don’t file directly with the insurance carrier. Now granted she died, unfortunately. However it appears from reading above the insurance company did reimburse the 30,0000. So why didn’t the estate pay the credit card bill?
Red, I have the utmost respect for this blog and I’ve been a Natalee Holloway supporter and reading here for the past 2 years but no where did I read that a crime was committed against this lady on the ship?
My Dad passed away last year and there were extensive hospital bills. The hospital didn’t come back to us and say hey forgetabout it, you don’t have to pay because he died. The estate did have to pay those bills.
I’m not defending the cruiseline but I think we need more information. Yes, $30,000 sounds very high but then we don’t know what charges made up those bills. Like I said above, airlifting someone is very expensive. Again, unless I’m misreading, it sounds like the travel insurance company did reimburse, so again why didn’t the executor of the estate pay the credit card bill. If the estate doesn’t agree with the amount charged on the credit card bill, it can always be disputed through the cc company.
I too love cruises. I loved Aruba the one time I was there and will visit again. I don’t make it a habit to whoring around and getting drunk with strangers on ANY of my vacations or in my daily life so I feel very safe any where.
#7 … you poor delusional individual.
You may want to talk to some of the families at this site and read their tales.
The International Cruise Victims Organization
Then again, you fall into the category, if it does not happen to me … it did not happen at all.
R
7 You are an idiot
My cousin had to be removed from a cruise ship while at sea…they said it would have been a $25,000 charge if we had not had insurance. We were lucky that we had taken out some insurance just before getting on the ship….thankful that he was covered
I happen to do volunteer work for the International Cruise Victims group. Anyone who reads the stories on the blog must be appalled at the cruise industry’s relentless denial of the crime situation on the ships. Nothing must interfere with its image.
We’ve seen how, in Aruba, a family that suspected nothing amiss suddenly finds that the norms of law and decency to which it was accustomed here, and which it believed prevailed everywhere, are not to be found.
There are parallel cases in the cruise industry. Yes, many people encounter no problem on a cruise. The same can perhaps be said of Aruba. But when you do … read the cases on the ICV blog and then you’ll be scared. Angry, too.
# 7 sounds like a bumbling “holier than thou” hypocrit – you know…one those morons that blame “victims” for their tragic fates…
BOYCOTT ARUBA!!
JUSTICE FOR NATALEE
Red: Yes, the CC company may put those charges on the statement because they have automated programs. But I’m telling you I had ten years experience getting these written off. Never did I handle an estate that paid CC interest for a decedent and often the CC company had to wait 9 months to a year to be paid because of the probate process.
I will say again that indeed I am concerned with the cruise company’s denial. If they deny it – it didn’t happen. It’s very irritating and IMHO bad for business. However, the the few incidents we’ve had with cruise companies (1)I got hurt on a very unsafe and poorly described bike ride; 2)another excursion was not as described and not worth the money 3)I got bitten by bed bugs repeatedly in a upscale cabin (shouldn’t happen at the lowest grade cabin); 4)cruise ship severely damaged luggage – we have found that in each case we must be very insistent and demand what we wanted done, making it well known that we would publicize the events – we did eventually get what we demanded.
The other side of things is that just like all the phony slip and falls at WalMart, some people see the cruise companies as their time to cash in and lie about events just to get a payoff.
Over the years we’ve discovered which companies react the best when an unfortunate incident happens, which travel companies go to bat for their clients (I love CruiseValue.com) and we always act as responsible citizens who understand that crime is everywhere. Just as if we were staying in a city hotel, we are careful that we maintain ourselves in a secure way. That doesn’t mean something can’t happen and it doesn’t mean that the victims of crime are at fault. It does mean that one needs to always maintain their wits about them.
I should add – our demands were never outlandish or meant for profit. For the ride I got hurt on, I demanded the cruise company pay my medical bills (even though I did have insurance, it was the cruise company’s fault). The cruise doctor told the officers that they were really lucky that I hadn’t broken both my legs because I fell through a bridge.
For the luggage, we demanded payment for the luggage – which happened to be the only expensive piece of luggage we owned!
For the bed bugs, I again presented the cruise company with my medical bills and insisted that we be moved to another room and that they treat all our luggage so that we could ensure we didn’t take any bed bugs home.
For the poor excursion we enlisted other people on the excursion to write their comments (because at first the company refused reimbursement) and the company eventually gave each of us a credit. It wasn’t just a “not so good” excursion, it was an excursion cut short by two hours and basically not worth going on.
I wouldn’t hesitate to travel on a Cruise ship. It may be the opinion of Scared Monkeys that the ‘risk factor’ is too high to travel on a cruise. But, in my opinion the risk factor is negligable. Bad things can happen on highways, cruise ships, aircraft, etc. I don’t ‘not fly’ because the occasional flight crashes. I don’t ‘not drive’ because roadway accidents occur. I don’t ‘not cruise’ because out of the millions of people who cruise, some fall overboard or become sick for example.
Same thing with Aruba. The simple fact is this. Of the millions who travel there each year as tourists, all have returned home ( except for a well-publicized instance ). Folks can believe what they want to believe. It’s the overwhelming opinion at Scared Monkeys that travel to Aruba is dangerous or that the gov’t is corrupt.
Having traveled to Aruba myself, I believe such opinions ( such as those promoted by Scared Monkeys ) are extreme and not well-founded. Not-withstanding the 1000′s of posts, and threads residing at Scared Monkeys which are intended to convince otherwise this fact remains: Aruba is a safe place to visit and no more inherently dangerous than most places in the United States or Canada.
One can chose to focus on the slimest of chances, that something bad could happen to an Aruban visitor….or one can focus on the fact that out of millions of tourists to Aruba, one remains missing.
I’ll chose to take my chances that I can travel to Aruba and arrive home safely. The odds my Monkey Friends, are greatly in my favour.