Cruise Planners

I would give this business zero stars if that had been an option. My husband and I chose to use Cruise Planners to book our airfare, rental car, and trip insurance for an upcoming trip to Hawaii. It was settled via email and one phone call to an employee, who told me that the insurance would cover us should we have to cancel "for any reason". I have saved correspondence from myself and this company telling them that I wanted the insurance. We paid our $400 deposit over the phone in December 2017 - which was never stated to be non-refundable, not even on the invoice. Fast forward to this week. The owner of the home we had booked in Hawaii had to cancel our reservation along with 60 other people due to a re-permitting law in Hawaii. We searched long and hard for the perfect place to stay, and I booked it privately, so we knew we would just wait until she could take reservations and book with her. We have saved money to go to Hawaii, and realize it may be the one chance we get to go, so we want it to be perfect. My husband contacted Cruise Planners on 1/22/17 (almost 6 months from our trip date) to let them know about our unfortunate circumstance and assumed we would be able to get our $400 deposit back until we were ready to book again. To our surprise, we found out that we not only DID NOT have the insurance, even though I have correspondence stating I wanted it (they failed to tell me it wasn't part of the payment we had paid and would be a separate fee to be paid later), but the employee informed us that it wouldn't have mattered if we had the insurance anyway because this was not a covered reason. Of course, I was shocked because she made the insurance sound so wonderful over the phone - that it would cover "for any reason". My husband also paid via phone. No agreements of any kind were sent to us for signature; No terms and conditions were sent via email or mail regarding the insurance; No communication whatsoever was made regarding when certain payments were due, what would or would not be covered under the insurance, or that the deposit we paid was non-refundable. After our initial contacting of the company, we were obviously not satisfied, so we contacted the owner, Stacy Gestring. All of our correspondence has been saved. There was never any admittance on her behalf that she or her employee failed to provide us with the necessary information regarding our trip. She has refused multiple times to refund us our deposit, stating that it went to a consolidator to hold our plane tickets. I understand that. She has not been an advocate for the consumer when dealing with us at all - which is very surprising to me. Her emails have been short, unsympathetic, and she has not offered any resolution except to book another location or pay a change flight fee of $400 dollars when we are ready to book again. This is ludicrous. We are not going to pick another accommodation when we searched (and booked privately) our perfect vacation spot, just for the sake of going. We also chose to add the cottage to the insurance that we thought we had because it was a deal we couldn't turn down. We have asked her to consider giving us our refund since we were under the impression we would be covered and we were not given the proper information. She has refused, so we asked that she waive the $400 deposit or change flight fee when we get ready to re-book. She stated she would not. We are seeking restitution by other means now, since she personally would not take care of the matter. I have all of the correspondence between the company, Mrs. Gestring, and myself. And her employee that failed to provide us with the correct information even sent me a personal text message yesterday, admitting that she had not informed me of the terms and conditions of the insurance and she had not sent it to me via email. I would've hoped that Mrs. Gestring, as a local business owner and someone my husband has known well for years would've treated her patrons better.