There’s something about the joy of booking a cruise that leaves people open to being taken advantage of. It’s almost like consumers are so excited to get away on their cruise that they leave themselves open to being taken advantage of.
Many scams are fairly pedestrian. Criminals find your phone number or email and tell you they are the cruise line and that you have an unpaid balance., If you don’t pay the owed money, then your cruise will be cancelled.
Related: Norwegian Cruise Line employee sounds alarm on new cruise scam
Many people panic and fall for this scam because they don’t want to see their cruise cancelled. The reality is that you should not trust anyone saying they’re from the cruise line asking for credit card information.
If someone calls offering an upgrade, for example, it’s best to hang up, and call the cruise line to ask how much it is charging for that upgrade. The price won’t change if the first person was legit, and if they weren’t, you will have protected yourself and learned whether there’s an affordable upgrade option.
When it comes to any unpaid balance, those can easily be checked on each cruises line’s website or its automated phone line. If you owe money, you can find out how much (and for what) at either of those places.
Cruise lines never ask for payment in gift cards and their employees never reach out for financial help for their own situations.
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Heald only communicates with Carnival customers through his Facebook page.
Image source: John Heald/Facebook
Carnival’s Heald warns of a scam
There’s only one John Heald and he communicates with passengers through his official Facebook page. He never reaches out to passengers via direct message nor will he email, call, fax, send a smoke signal, or communicate in any other way.
That has not stopped scammers from setting up fake John Heald accounts on Facebook and other social media platforms.
Heald, Carnival’s Brand Ambassador, shared a simple warning on his Facebook page, which has over 600,000 followers.
Please be very careful of these despicable creatures who are out to scam you by pretending to be me.
They are as fake as People magazines front cover voting me the most sexy man of 2025.
Seriously, please block these troglodytes and do not respond to them in any way.
Remember, I will always be here on this page if you ever need my help.
In most cases, the most obvious way to spot a fake Heald account is to notice how many followers it has. His actual account crossed 613,000 followers so the one with 73 asking you for gift cards almost certainly is a scam.
You can help end cruise line scams
When you come across an account pretending to be something (or someone) it isn’t, report that account. The social media sites do not seem to actively chase these frauds dow, but they will remove them (sometimes) if you ask.
“I report these people everytime I see them come up on my feed,” Gail Jankowski Wojciechowski posted.
Alex Hahn noted that Facebook does not always act.
I’ve reported several to Facebook, but they never remove them.,” he shared.
Rene Vance had a more positive experience.
“I reported this and another one and actually got a response that they removed one,” they added.
Randy Hettenbaugh thinks Facebook needs to do more to fix the problem.
“They need a better way to stop these people from posting fake info, or pretending to be John, or someone else. Just like AI photos should have a small ai put in the upper right corner of the photo,” they wrote.
(The Arena Group will earn a commission if you book a cruise.)
Make a free appointment with Come Cruise With Me’s Travel Agent Partner, Postcard Travel, or email Amy Post at [email protected] or call or text her at 386-383-2472.
