Who are you going to sue? Once the money is reimbursed, there’s nothing left.
I’ll be absolutely amazed if the deposits actually get refunded.
How long was it between taking deposits from people and realizing they couldn’t buy a ship?
Honestly, I’m not very sympathetic to anyone who actually sold their house in anticipation of this, given the risks involved.
Once, on the radio, they interviewed a couple who sold their apartment, purchased a yacht, and spent the next however many years sailing around and around the world. However, that takes actual work, not just lying on a deck chair getting hammered.
Yeah, I have to agree.
And it takes a HELL of a lot more than work. Knowledge, perseverance and the ability to abstain from creature comforts and live in a small hectic place with another person for a long time.
I don’t really believe in ‘luck’ but you will also need a good dollop of luck. See knowledge above so you don’t have to depend on luck.
that …
they took money … and incurred cost for quite some time (salaries for x managers, office, travel, etc…) now they need to repay 100% of the money and on top of that pay for flights, accomodations and lawsuits, etc…
unless somebody adds a couple of wheelbarrows full of $20ies thats not going to happen (at least in full)
Presumably they had investors or angels in addition to just taking deposits to fund the creation & operation of the business. Those people are gonna get bupkiss back.
I’d bet folks who put down ticket deposits will get oh, 5 or 7 cents on the dollar. Tops.
Like Yoyo ma?
But they still had control over all their money.
And they owned a real boat , not a theoretical room in a theoretical boat.
Now they are homeless and broke in Türkiye. Mission accomplished!
The “genius” of this operation is they were getting the customers to finance it in advance. So theirreturn on investment could be huge even if its barely profitable.
While the big lines are normal big businesses with good access to credit and reputations to preserve and calculate profitabilty of each ship in a normal kind of way.
I’m sure that was part of the thinking, but the way I read the numbers (granted they always talked about how cheap the cheap options were, not the higher/regular options) I didn’t see anyway they’d cover their operating costs, purchase/refurb costs, and the medical (even after they started dialing down the expectations). I know cruise ships are masters at nickel-and-diming (more like fivers and tenners) every little minor need, but I was guessing that they were going to plan for a loss for part/all of the first 3 year cycle and then see major price increases.
Is there any information on how the sponsor of this project was capitalized? Until I see credible reports that all or most of the money has been refunded, I’m going to suspect this was an audacious scam from the get go. Collect tens of millions in deposits spend most of it on payments to “affiliates” then fail to deliver anything and say that the money was spent on “startup costs”
I thought you were going to reference this couple, whose boat sank two days into the trip. I guess they at least had a boat.
When it was over they said
We’re gonna need a less-sinky boat!
Last night’s Saturday Night Live had a story on the Weekend Update segment. Colin Jost read the news that the trip was canceled because they couldn’t find a ship. His reply was along the lines, “They could have asked me”, showing a picture of the old Staten Island ferry that he and Pete Davidson bought a few years ago.
Ah! I get it now. Knowing nothing about that, I figured it was a regular ol’ SI ferry and he was going to point them to the ticket office or something.
I am not sure if I need to start a new thread “Would you consider living on a cruise ship for 3 and a half years”?
https://us.cnn.com/travel/three-and-a-half-year-cruise-villa-vie-residences/index.html
Well they actually have a ship, which puts them a few steps ahead of the other guys.
“Buying” a cabin is pretty wild. You have to drop a shitload of money and all that gets you is a discount on your monthly rates. Spend a quarter million to “buy” a balcony cabin and you’re paying 48k a year instead of 72k a year for the privilege of cruising.
With discounts like that, you can’t afford not to buy!