Class Action Filed Over ‘Free Cruise’ Robocalls Placed from Consolidated Travel Holdings’ India Call Center

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Two plaintiffs allege in a proposed class action that Consolidated Travel Holdings Group and a number of other individual and corporate defendants are behind millions of alleged robocalls placed from a call center in India offering consumers a “free cruise.”

The 95-page lawsuit explains Consolidated Travel Holdings Group is the parent of Consolidated World Travel, Inc. and Caribbean Cruise Line, Inc., companies that are no stranger to Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) litigation. The named plaintiffs, in fact, are already class representatives in a separate complaint in Illinois, Bakov, et al. v. Consolidated World Travel, Inc. (d/b/a Holiday Cruise Line). They allege in the case filed in Florida that Consolidated Travel Holdings Group is actually the alter ego of Consolidated World Travel, which, along with its co-defendants, operated a scheme that utilized Indian company Virtual Voice to call millions of U.S. consumers without consent to do so. 

According to the suit, Consolidated World Travel and six of its high-ranking employees, alongside telemarketing firm The Marketing Source, Inc. and software firm Sun Bridge Systems, LLC, hired Virtual Voice on a commission basis to help market and sell a “Grand Celebration Vacation Package.” The case says that during the class period, December 29, 2014 through March 20, 2016, Virtual Voice, through the use of “idiot proof” call technology and 47 scripted voice messages, called millions of U.S. residents with an offer of “a free cruise simply to show you a great time.”

The automated calls, the suit continues, began seemingly with a bona fide Consolidated Travel employee on the line. In truth, however, consumers were hearing a recording of a professional voice actor reading from a script approved by Consolidated Travel, the case alleges.

Perhaps worse, the lawsuit says, is that there was no actual free cruise being offered by the defendants. According to the suit, the calls themselves were misleading in that they claimed the consumer who received the call had been selected as a winner to receive a “free cruise.”

“What Consolidated Travel wanted was to ‘upsell’ the people who received Virtual Voice’s calls on bigger vacation packages that ran a thousand dollars or more,” the complaint reads, adding that the purportedly free vacation package came saddled with $118 in port fees. 

Whereas the plaintiffs’ Illinois class action pursues a single TCPA claim against Consolidated Travel, the suit detailed on this page was filed to include the additional parties to the company’s alleged conduct.