Carnival Cruises (CCL) is sinking again

Carnival Cruises (CCL) is having one fiasco after another.  I had just about talked my wife into an ocean cruise when the Costa Concordia owned by Carnival hit the rocks and sank on January 13th.  I was watching the news on January 24th just as divers pulled another missing body from the wreckage. I could hear the postman's truck coming down the street and went to get my mail.

To my surprise there was a joint mailing from Carnival Cruises (CCL) and American Express (AXP) offering me a $100 on board credit if I would book a cruise on the already sunk Costa Concordia.  I called the 800 number on the offer to give them my opinion that it was not only in poor taste but a marketing blunder by them for not pulling a mailing weeks after the ship had sunk.

To my surprise instead of getting an apology and maybe a offering of a discount on another cruise - which is what I would have done if I managed the call center - the phone rep started ripping me a new one.  When I voiced that I thought she was out of line and asked to speak to a supervisor she really let loose on me again and hung up on me.

I was stunned!  Here was an opportunity to perform damage control and market to a potential customer another cruise and they chose to blow it by attacking me.

I wasn't a new customer.  Last summer my mother and I took a very enjoyable 14 day cruise to Alaska on the Holland America ship called the Amsterdam and thought the $12,000 total we spent on the cruise was a great value.

Enough about how poorly Carnival is handling this disaster let's look at the numbers.  They tell me more than just the ship has hit the rocks:

Barchart technical indicators:

• 96% Barchart technical sell signal
• Trend Spotter sell signal
• Below it's 20, 50 and 100 day moving average
• 35.44% off its previous 1 year high
• Relative strength Index 41.15% and sinking
• Recently traded at 30.79 which is below its 50 day moving average of 32.73