Left in limbo: Why scuba divers paid twice for liveaboard trip

When you pay upfront for a diving holiday, you need to know you can trust whoever is handling the money. A group of divers who headed to the Maldives this summer are still nursing bruised bank balances, as STEVE WEINMAN reports

Scuba divers are often advised to book expensive overseas trips only through reputable professional tour operators. There are sound reasons for this.

The recent experience of a group of US divers who ended up paying twice-over for the same liveaboard holiday would appear to add substance to this advice.

It also suggests that any booking agent who reserves the right to eject guests from a trip at any point without compensation just because it deems their complaints ‘disrespectful’ should be treated with caution. 

Nine out-of-pocket divers from the USA are claiming to have been caught out by the promise of a Maldives trip that they had trusted was being organised by one Jolene Stephens, a dive-instructor and owner of a now-defunct Texas-based company called Coral Dreams Scuba. 

The story started in mid-2024, as one of the divers, Beverly Payton of Cochranville in Pennsylvania, explains. 

Posts by Stephens headed “Maldives Madness” on Facebook scuba groups had drawn Payton’s attention, with their images of exciting marine-life encounters in the atolls. 

Stephens had been enthusing about a 10-day dive-trip due to start on 4 May, 2025 on the relatively new liveaboard EcoPro Seascape, run by EcoPro Divers (an operator which, it should be said in advance, emerges from this story with credit). 

When Payton requested more details in early August, Stephens told her that standard cabins were priced at US $2,800, and that a deposit lodged by the end of August would secure her a $500 discount.

Deciding that the trip would be a good way to celebrate her birthday, on 20 August Payton booked a cabin for herself and dive-buddy Susan Thibodeaux.

Stephens asked for a $1,000 deposit to be paid in cash, and when Payton insisted on the more conventional use of a credit card she says she was taken aback when Stephens asked her to submit an image of the card using the Messenger app. 

Payton requested a payment link so that she could upload her credit-card data in the usual way, but was told by Stephens that her website was “under reconstruction”. She promised that the credit-card image would be deleted after processing, so Payton reluctantly complied. 

It was an early red flag. “Looking back, I realise I dismissed many seemingly small but odd things about Stephens’ handling of this trip,” she admits.

Trip of a lifetime

Payton was one of nine divers who paid upfront for the “scuba trip of a lifetime”. The $2,800 quote included shared occupancy in a standard cabin, full-board meals and snacks, beverages except alcohol, taxes & fees and marine-park fees.

She continued to send Stephens scheduled cash amounts through a US payments service, and booked her flights to and from the Maldives separately.

“Stephens continued to post frequently and enthusiastically about the upcoming trip in a Facebook Messenger chat she created for trip participants, never suggesting that there were any issues with the Seascape booking,” says Payton, noting that the tour organiser had seemed “inordinately insistent that we purchase trip insurance in addition to DAN dive-accident insurance”.

Payton became concerned when Stephens issued a final invoice indicating that she still owed $1,982. She pointed out that she had in fact already paid $714 more than the $2,800 total originally quoted for the trip, and $278 more than the total listed on the invoice, having forgotten that “taxes & fees” were supposed to be included in the price. 

The final invoice included Maldives tax. “We later learned that it is illegal to charge tax for international trips, and that cost is supposed to be embedded in the lodging provider’s billing,” says Payton.

“Hun, I hate numbers and they feel the same way about me,” Stephens had replied when Payton pointed out the errors, and she promised to revise the invoice and return any overpayment. Payton’s buddy Thibodeaux received a similarly inflated final bill, which Payton advised her to query as she had done. 

“I was negligent in checking the original cost she quoted for the trip against her final billing,” Payton told Divernet. “I did notice however, that she did not correctly credit me with the $1,000 deposit I made and so I sent her a corrected statement showing the payments I had made. 

“Her excuse was that her book-keeper recently quit and she was handling the numbers part of the business until a new one could take over after having a baby.” The overpayment was never refunded.

Frantic messages

Checking her phone in the departure lounge at JFK airport in New York on 1 May, Beverly Payton was alarmed to see a number of frantic messages being exchanged between other divers who had booked the trip through the same woman. 

Jolene Stephens, who had until then been posting several times a day, appeared to be unavailable now that people required specific information about flights and the liveaboard in order to complete the Maldives Immigration Services traveller declaration form. 

EcoPro Seascape was not listed on the form’s drop-down list, and none of the divers had been given any details about their transfer to the boat, or how to contact Stephens outside the Messenger app.

When Thibodeaux contacted EcoPro Divers to ask it to confirm her place on its boat, reservations manager Djoana van Melis told her that her name was not on the system. “Please also note that while Jolene Stephens has been in touch with us for a booking request on this trip, nothing has been confirmed,” said van Melis. “Let us know if you need further assistance.”

Thibodeaux shared this disquieting news with the group, at which point another woman revealed that Stephens had told her she had decided to switch boats – as well as adding two or more nights at a resort. 

Another guest, Ryan Cunningham, was already in the Maldives, and confirmed that none of the divers had been booked onto EcoPro Seascape. 

Stephens finally showed up on the Maldives Messenger chat on the morning of 2 May to announce: “OK, I’m sending out a flyer with lots of info. I’ve been teaching the last several days…”  

Instead of the promised 10-day trip on EcoPro Seascape, the divers were now to stay on a “lovely” unspecified island from 4-7 May before taking a seven-day cruise on the liveaboard Spirit of Maldives (which, like EcoPro Seascape, emerges unsullied from the affair).

Stephens explained that because she had provided too few divers to fill the EcoPro Seascape, EcoPro Divers had wanted to charge her for the unused cabins, which she could not afford. 

The 43m EcoPro Seascape liveaboard is big enough to accommodate 28 guests in 15 cabins, so its operator would have been unlikely to expect a group organiser bringing a mere nine people to be in a position to charter the entire boat.

Already in transit

Payton says that only one of the nine divers was willing to accept Stephens’ late change of plans. “Despite numerous requests, Stephens never posted the informational flyer she promised, nor provided the name of the place we were supposedly staying before boarding the Spirit,” says Payton. 

When Stephens then suggested that the trip could be rescheduled for summer or autumn if group-members preferred, they responded angrily to point out that they were already in transit, and that their flights were non-refundable.

EcoPro Divers’ sales manager Steven Vandevoorde contacted the group to express surprise about what had happened. “Jolene was in touch with us since 8 June, 2024,” he reported. “We kept this trip in option for her a long time. She promised to confirm several times. Now and then she contacted me again asking if the trip was still available – it was. 

“There was no need for her to rebook you all on another trip, and the rate of US $2,800 was never an issue. This rate was already promised to her since 7 July, 2024, and even a month ago we told her booking was still possible.” Vandevoorde has retained all the correspondence.

The liveaboard already had a large party from Switzerland booked for the same trip, according to the operator, so there had been no question of Stephens being asked to pay for empty cabins, as she had claimed.

Ryan Cunningham shared a message received from Spirit of Maldives reservations representative Sasha Chuvilova stating that Stephens had cancelled a booking and never made the payment – despite being offered a special last-minute rate for the week of $1,200.

Chuvilova later told Divernet that Stephens had “placed a hold for 10 real guests at the very last minute, never paid a deposit, and I had to cancel the hold. Afterwards, the guests started contacting me directly, asking if their reservations were active – it was a shock for them. They even came to the Maldives expecting bookings that were never secured.

“I tried my best to support the guests – assisting with their insurance questions in case they filed claims and also offering them a good rate to still join Spirit Liveaboards if they wished.

“Jolene appeared to be a real person: she shared her PADI number, her Facebook page looked legitimate and she even asked for our bank-account details, claiming she had already paid our invoices… I truly feel sorry for the guests and how their vacation was affected.”

Out of pocket

After learning that they had no confirmed alternative reservations on Spirit of Maldives or on the unnamed island, and afraid of being left stranded in Male, the group of divers agreed to book the originally planned trip aboard EcoPro Seascape, which still had enough space to accommodate them. Payton booked using her credit card during a stopover in Abu Dhabi.

“This was a great decision,” she said later. “We enjoyed delicious meals, stunning dives, thorough dive-briefings, safety-minded divemasters and a crew that worked hard to ensure that we had a great experience.”

The divers were still out of pocket at the end of the trip, however, and later all demanded full refunds from Stephens.

These have not been forthcoming, according to Payton, with Stephens insisting that she had spent their cash on three days for them all at the mysterious “villa” and seven days aboard the Spirit. She had produced no evidence of paid receipts or booking contracts despite their requests.

“She maintains that it was we who changed travel plans and therefore she will pay no refunds,” says the frustrated diver. “She also suggested that we file a claim with our trip insurance.” 

Stephens had told Payton: “If you read the terms and conditions on the website, it says that changes may be made. I paid for a villa and a liveaboard. It WAS a trip of a lifetime. But you chose to go elsewhere and to pay another $1,650. That was your choice, but it does not make me liable to reimburse you so you can have a ‘cheaper’ trip.”

A few of the divers have obtained partial refunds from their credit-card companies. Payton has filed a fraud report with her credit-card provider, but to no effect so far. 

The divers have discussed the possibility of initiating a civil lawsuit and filing criminal complaints. Most had written to the police department and small-business association in Texas where Coral Dreams Scuba had been based, and Payton and several others filed a consumer complaint with the state attorney general, again with no result to date. 

They also took to social media to spread the word but “I doubt that I will ever see a penny of the money Stephens took from me”, says Payton.

’Spreading lies’

On the rare occasions when the divers received any response from Stephens she had blamed someone she referred to as Billy for “spreading lies” about her and deterring divers from booking trips. 

Billy Reedy II, also from Texas, had indeed gone online in March to say that he had been “removed from a fully paid trip because Jolene thinks she’s a chaperone dealing with kids”. 

In February 2024 Reedy had booked with Coral Dreams Scuba for a 19-dive trip to Roatan from 21-28 September, with a week at a resort, including a single-room supplement. He had paid a deposit of $500 and the balance on 1 July.

A group chat on 11 September suggested that those like Reedy who had paid the single-room supplement would instead be doubled up, because Stephens had overbooked and the rooms were not available.

When he mentioned to Stephens that “failing to provide the paid-for service does not entitle you to pocket the money”, he says she immediately removed him from the group and told him that he was “off the trip”. She said he would be out of pocket on the grounds that no refunds would be made after 90 days. 

After numerous requests for recompense Reedy took legal action, demanding his money with costs. After what he says was a difficult serving process (Stephens’ business address he says was a PO box at a UPS store in a shopping mall) she was served with a summons by mail and email, but failed to appear at the hearing this March. 

In her absence Reedy was awarded a judgment for repayment of $2,082 on 27 March, 2025, though the last we heard he had been unable to enforce it.

Divernet has made a number of attempts to contact Jolene Stephens in New Braunfels, Texas to get her side of the story but has received no reply.

Coral Dreams Scuba is understood to have been wound up but she now has a company called CDC Dive, arranging trips closer to home in Roatan, Cozumel and the Cayman Islands. 

Terms and conditions

CDC’s terms and conditions appear unusually harsh by industry standards. They state that the company “retains the right to cancel any trip before departure” and “will not be held liable for any refunds” – essentially leaving travellers with all the risk.

The company’s policy on non-acceptable behaviour is fairly standard – except for the severity and breadth of the consequences of crossing its line, which include automatic forfeiture of all payments, regardless of the circumstances or how far the trip has progressed.

This no-refunds policy can apply to any traveller who conducts themself in “a rude, disrespectful or offensive manner, or in any way attempts to create an unsafe situation within the dive-group or with any member of the group” – which is clearly a subjective judgment.

The policy contains an indemnification clause that is sweeping and much stricter than usual, requiring the traveller to cover any claims, fees or judgments. Most tour contracts include the right to remove someone from a trip – but they don’t usually strip away all rights to refunds and support.

The sort of experience that affected the nine divers is unfortunately not that uncommon. Not everyone who puts themself forward to collect the cash and arrange a trip is acting in a professional capacity, either, so the advice remains to be careful where you place your money.

Ideally, book trips if not directly through the provider with well-established, professional tour operators with a recognised track record (in the UK travellers are advised to use only agents covered by the ABTA/ATOL schemes).

Otherwise, be sure to carry out a thorough “due diligence” check online into third parties, however enthusiastic they might seem, and check the small print.

Paying by credit card can give you some means of redress in the event of problems or a dispute, and if possible take out travel insurance that covers such eventualities. 

To end on a positive note, Payton says that despite the sour taste left by events in the lead-up, the dive-trip itself turned out for the best: “Fortunately, our experience aboard the Eco Pro Seascape was exceptional. Everything was above our expectations,” she says.