Carnival Cruise TCPA Settlement Requires Additional Information

Top Class Actions’s website and social media posts use affiliate links. If you make a purchase using such links, we may receive a commission, but it will not result in any additional charges to you. Please review our Affiliate Link Disclosure for more information.

Claimants in a Carnival Cruise, Royal Caribbean TCPA settlement have been asked to provide additional proof for their claims.

Class Members in the Carnival Cruise, Royal Caribbean class action settlement recently received an email from the settlement administrator asking the 2 million claimants to provide additional proof related to their phone numbers.

The claimants have until May 1, 2018 to respond to the settlement administrator with additional proof or to opt out of the settlement. The final settlement hearing has been rescheduled to July 24, 2018.

According to the email sent by the settlement administrator, “an unknown but substantial number of claims filed in this manner may be fraudulent.” Although more than 2 million claims were submitted to the settlement, this is not an automatic indicator of fraud.

Many of the submitted claims are likely to be valid as millions of calls were allegedly placed by the defendants. A statement in the third amended complaint supports the large number of claimants.

“Over the four years prior to the filing of this lawsuit, and extending until March of 2014 – long after the filing of this lawsuit in July of 2012 – millions of illegal pre-recorded telemarketing calls were initiated by Travel Services to consumers nationwide, promoting by trade name the cruise services of the Cruise Defendants,” the Carnival Cruise, Royal Caribbean class action lawsuit states.

Qualified claimants have been asked to submit verification that they own the phone number in question. This is intended to confirm the qualified Class Members and weed out any potentially fraudulent claims. As a reminder, consumers should only submit claims for settlements that they qualify for.

In July 2017, the Royal Caribbean class action settlement was preliminarily approved for between $7 million and $12.5 million, depending on the number of claims submitted. Claimants were initially required to submit their phone numbers which were affected by the telemarketing calls. The original deadline was Nov. 3, 2017.

The Carnival Cruise, Royal Caribbean class action lawsuit was filed by plaintiff Philip Charvat. Charvat alleged that Carnival Cruise, Royal Caribbean Cruises, and Norwegian Cruise Lines illegally called consumers with pre-recorded messages promoting their services. The prerecorded calls allegedly told consumers they had won a free cruise and required consumers to pay certain “fees” that the company kept as profit.

Charvat argued that the telemarketing scheme was illegal because none of the consumers gave their express consent to receive the calls. “The scope of the illegal telemarketing campaign at issue is also evidenced by records of consumer complaints obtained from the Federal Trade Commission in response to Freedom of Information Act requests,” the Carnival Cruise, Royal Caribbean class action alleged. Consumers reportedly contacted the Federal Trade Commission for years about the prerecorded telemarketing calls they received from Carnival.

Charvat sought to represent a Class of people whose cell phones were called with pre-recorded messages by Travel Services mentioning Carnival, Royal Caribbean, and/or Norwegian Cruise Lines.

The Class Members are represented by Matthew P. McCue of Law Office of Matthew P. McCue; Alexander H. Burke and Daniel J. Marovitch of Burke Law Offices LLC; Edward A. Broderick and Anthony Paronich of Broderick & Paronich PC.

The Carnival Cruise, Royal Caribbean Class Action Lawsuit is Charvat v. Resort Marketing Group Inc., et al., Case No. 1:12-cv-5746, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

UPDATE: On Oct. 28, 2019, the cruise line telemarketing class action lawsuit that ended in a $12.5 million class action settlement was granted final approval.

UPDATE 2: On Aug. 13, 2020, Top Class Actions viewers started receiving long-awaited checks in the mail from the Carnival Cruise, Royal Caribbean telemarketing class action settlement worth as much as $25.02! Congratulations to everyone who filed a valid claim and got PAID!

Join a Free TCPA Class Action Lawsuit Investigation

If you were contacted on your cell phone by a company via an unsolicited text message (text spam) or prerecorded voice message (robocall), you may be eligible for compensation under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

GET A FREE CASE EVALUATION NOW