Cruise passenger makes £1,000 mistake you must avoid

A Royal Caribbean cruise ship passenger has been left furious after being billed more than £1,000 while at sea.

And despite taking the issue to the cruise line, the business has washed its hands of any responsibility, claiming the fault lies with the individual.

One of the largest cruise lines in the world, Royal Caribbean takes holiday-goers on trips across the world on a daily basis.

With millions taking to the company's ships, it is always a busy time for those running the business from headquarters in Miami or directly on the vessels themselves.

And with passengers taken to some of the world's best and luxurious locations, including a $250 million (£200 million) private island, it is no secret that cruising is an expensive pastime.

But one passenger's time on the open seas with Royal Caribbean got significantly worse for their bank account after making a huge faux pas that left them an extra $1,300 (£1,058) out of pocket.

A £1,000 mistake

The passenger, whose identity remains undisclosed, had bought in to Royal Caribbean's Wi-Fi package.

This gives customers access to the internet while at sea, connecting to the ship's roaming internet network.

But upon coming back to dry land, their bill had been increased by a whopping £1,000 plus change.

Bringing the issue to light, YouTube personality Jayson Judson revealed that the passenger had taken the issue to Royal Caribbean who refused to help after he admitted one crucial detail.

Avoiding the same mistake

According to Judson, the Royal Caribbean passenger admitted they hadn't put their phone in airplane mode, something you can have switched on while also accessing a Wi-Fi network.

As a result, the individual's phone had been continuing with automatic updates to apps on the phone as well as incurring huge roaming charges outside of the person's data plan.

To make matters worse, it was reported that their child had also been streaming on-demand videos during the trip when not connected to the Wi-Fi network, eating up a tonne of roaming data and increasing charges.

A roaming reality

As reported by Confused.com, it is really easy to easy to eat up data when you've not got a Wi-Fi connection turned on.

The website reports that 200 megabites of data would last you an hour of watching videos, listen to 62 songs on Spotify, and browse web pages for 10 hours (not including embedded content on sites that takes up more data).

The reality is that unless you switch off roaming, you will be charged as your phone switches to satellites around the world, and in particular those over international waters that won't be in your phone contract.

LADbible Group has contacted Royal Caribbean for comment.