An American couple have been stranded in Turkey and could soon be “homeless” if they don’t receive an $80,000 refund for a three-year cruise they booked that fell through.
“They kept leading us, keeping us hopeful until the last minute, just days before we were supposed to leave,” Kara Youssef, 36, told the New York Times about her and her husband Joe’s experience with Life at Sea, a trip that seemed once in a lifetime announced by Miray International Cruises in March.
“We sold everything we had to make this dream come true. We feel completely defeated,” he lamented.
They are still waiting for refunds and “could soon be homeless,” added Kara, a former humanitarian worker from Ohio.
Life at Sea — the brainchild of Miami entrepreneur Mikael Petterson and Vedat Ugurlu, Miray’s owner — promises the “ultimate bucket list world cruise” over three years, with prices starting at $90,000 for an inside cabin and rising to $975,000 for a suite, according to its website and the Times.
Kara and Joe Youssef are stranded in Istanbul. Kara Youssef/Facebook
When bookings opened in March this year, the team behind the tour “could barely keep up” with demand, Petterson told the outlet.
As the Nov. 1 launch date approached, there were concerns that Ugurlu’s proposed ship for the trip, the MV Gemini, was not adequately equipped for the 1,095-day journey — despite a $10 million retrofit from the Miray, the Times explained.
In a voice memo to his team, itinerary planner Robert Dixon claimed that he was denied access to Gemini’s engine room and was even told by an engineer that the ship could not hold enough fuel to cross the Atlantic on schedule, the Times reported.
Dixon also expressed concern about the ship being able to cross the South Pacific.
“Even if you spend another $10 million on the ship, I don’t think it’s enough to do what we want to do,” Dixon said in the memo.
Presentation of MV Lara by Life at Sea. Life On A Sea Cruise
Petterson and Ugurlu also clashed over how to collect payments — an argument that eventually led to Petterson walking away from the project altogether by June.
He was replaced by a team led by Miray’s then-vice president of business development, Kendra Holmes.
“It got to the point where one couldn’t be the captain, so they tried to sink the whole ship,” Holmes told the Times of Petterson.
However, at the same time, would-be passengers like Youssef are assured that the journey will continue as planned.
The couple paid a $5,000 deposit on May 6, and were told that a 25 percent payment was due on June 7, they told the Times.
Vedat Ugurlu, owner of Miray, is involved in the project. LinkedIn
“We were very nervous, first attending a webinar with the team that was leaving, then with Kendra Holmes,” Kara recalls of their first few interactions with the company.
The Youssef family finally began to feel more comfortable when Holmes began hosting daily webinars about getting a new ship, they told the outlet.
“Kendra is very persuasive and dedicated,” says Kara, adding that “[Kendra] very realistic, whereas Mikael [Petterson] has promised us the sun and the moon.”
On May 31, Holmes announced that Life at Sea would no longer provide an escrow account to process payments.
Instead, he said, the company protected passenger deposits using a bond filed with the Federal Maritime Commission — but the bond was never actually filed, the Times reported.
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However, in September, the Youssef family sold their apartment to cover the cost of the cruise, which has now reportedly been transferred to the 627-cabin MV Lara, the outlet said.
At that point, only 111 of the ship’s cabins were sold, but passengers were again assured that the voyage would sail as planned.
But on September 26, Miray lost its main investor who helped finance the purchase of MV Lara.
After receiving several cancellation requests, Holmes posted on the Life at Sea app that, per the terms of the contract, passengers who defaulted on the trip would now only get a 10 percent discount, according to the Times.
On Oct. 27 — when Youssefs and other passengers were in Istanbul, ready to board — Life at Sea postponed the launch to Nov. 11 in Amsterdam, and again to Nov. 30.
“We are disappointed and feel stuck, without information to go on but what we found ourselves,” said Kara Youssef when she read in a newspaper on November 16 that the MV Lara had actually been bought by another company.
Kendra Holmes also resigned from Miray on the same day.
Three days later, Ugurlu said in a statement that investors were withdrawing because of unrest in the Middle East. The next day, Miray said the cruise had been officially cancelled.
Passengers were asked to sign an agreement to spread the refund over three months, from December 2023 to February 2024.
But the first deadline has passed with only a few passengers receiving any funds, which Miray attributed to issues with bank documentation, the Times said.
By Dec. 28, Youssef’s family said they still hadn’t received any money, and that they had been staying in a hotel in Istanbul paid for by Miray for the past month.
Another would-be passenger, retired social worker Mary Rader, said she doesn’t expect to see her own $80,000 in refunds anytime soon.
“I haven’t received anything yet, but I don’t think so. My guess is that the company will be closed or restructured, and whatever I put in in cash will never be paid,” he told the Times.
The Life at Sea website advertises another launch date for November 2024.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
