Tiffany Banks had planned a Carnival Cruise getaway with her husband and four children, but things quickly went awry.

In a series of TikTok videos, Banks detailed her shock at discovering the issue. Two days before their flight to Florida to board the cruise ship, their booking was unexpectedly canceled without her knowledge, despite the vacation being paid in full.

Banks received an email about canceled off-ship excursions and contacted the company to investigate. A representative informed her that she had supposedly canceled the $12,000 reservation for the ship’s largest room, the Excel Presidential Suite, through the online system.

Panicking, Banks tried to figure out what had happened. On her TikTok account, @thathippiedoc, she shared that she and her children were in tears.

She said, “We have nearly $15,000 tied up in this vacation, including excursions. The room itself was I think $12,000 or $13,000, and then we’ve got a few grand tied up in excursions, and actually with almost $2,000 for flights.”

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Insisting she hadn’t canceled the reservation, she hoped it was just a system glitch. Carnival informed her that the room was already reserved by another customer and offered her the cheapest room on the ship, which Banks felt was an inadequate replacement.

The company also refused to issue a refund, citing their policy against returning money within 15 days or less of the cruise date.

Hoping for the best, the family flew to Miami anyway, but the ship sailed without them.

Banks later discovered that she had fallen victim to identity theft. She and her husband had accidentally shared their cruise booking reference number on Facebook when they posted a screenshot of an email a few weeks prior. The same day it was posted, someone created a Carnival account, added the booking number, and canceled the reservation two days before the cruise.

The perpetrator has not been identified. Despite being offered another trip by the company, Banks stated that her family will never use the cruise line again.

A Carnival Cruise spokesperson shared: “While we are not going to comment on any specific guest complaint or incident, it is never a good idea to post personal information about your travel plans, including a confirmation number for a booking, which could allow a bad actor or identity thief to use that information in inappropriate or even illegal ways.”