Consumer Alert: No more automatic refunds for skipped ports?

Cruise lines are keeping your port fees. Why? Because they can.

Illustration by Dustin Elliott

It used to be more or less automatic: If your cruise ship skipped a port of call, you'd get the port fees credited back to your account.

Not anymore.

When Berna Sherlock sailed on the NCL Getaway in November, the ship skipped Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic.

First, NCL promised it would head to its private island instead, but then the captain decided to avoid that port, too.

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