Jump to content

Shorex Pre-Pay Reservations, OBC and YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!


ccrain
 Share

Recommended Posts

Ok, so I know the spiel. Prepay allows for better planning, better pricing, less cancellations, yada yada yada. Got it, moving on...

 

However now in order to use my shareholder OBC, which is assigned to me personally, to pay for Judy's Shorex reservations, I have to wait till we get on board - although the agent did offer the option to try and book the excursions through her software which might allow assigning payment to me - although now I have to do the math, write down the excursions, which ones to assign to me, which ones to Judy for payment, get out the excel spreadsheet, calculator, green eye shade, bankers light, scratchpad, etc.

 

The Princess Shorex website assigns payment the person going on the excursion, not the person making the reservation! So even though I have another $250 of OBC via the stockholder's benefit to spend, I can only spend it on my excursions - her's I have to pre-pay for with a credit card.

 

This is not good and it ain't going to happen...I am not paying for a Shorex with a credit card when I have ample OBC to cover it.

 

Anyone else found a different way around this new mess?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok, so I know the spiel. Prepay allows for better planning, better pricing, less cancellations, yada yada yada. Got it, moving on...

 

 

 

However now in order to use my shareholder OBC, which is assigned to me personally, to pay for Judy's Shorex reservations, I have to wait till we get on board - although the agent did offer the option to try and book the excursions through her software which might allow assigning payment to me - although now I have to do the math, write down the excursions, which ones to assign to me, which ones to Judy for payment, get out the excel spreadsheet, calculator, green eye shade, bankers light, scratchpad, etc.

 

 

 

The Princess Shorex website assigns payment the person going on the excursion, not the person making the reservation! So even though I have another $250 of OBC via the stockholder's benefit to spend, I can only spend it on my excursions - her's I have to pre-pay for with a credit card.

 

 

 

This is not good and it ain't going to happen...I am not paying for a Shorex with a credit card when I have ample OBC to cover it.

 

 

 

Anyone else found a different way around this new mess?

 

 

 

That does sound like quite a hassle. Couple thoughts: have Judy's name added as a joint - owner to the CCL stock, which would seemingly make the issue go away, or - book the excursion ahead of time using credit card and be mindful of cancellation window, then cancel and rebook onboard using the then available stockholders OBC.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That does sound like quite a hassle. Couple thoughts: have Judy's name added as a joint - owner to the CCL stock, which would seemingly make the issue go away, or - book the excursion ahead of time using credit card and be mindful of cancellation window, then cancel and rebook onboard using the then available stockholders OBC.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

 

We are joint owners. That's in the brokerage statement.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just did this. Called Princess (did not have to wait until we got onboard) and they put both excursions on account that had enough OBC. No problem and didn't have to change stock names or anything else.

 

Helen

 

That's what I am going to have to do...have to get my green eye shades on and calculator revved up!

 

At least they didn't saddle their agents with the same software 'feature' we have...

 

I wonder how much Shorex business Princess is losing to independents with this pre-pay thing?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you send in your brokerage statement information 60 days before your cruise the Stockholder benefits (i.e. $250) will get credited to your OBC within a few days of receipt of your paperwork. Then you can book shore excursions and use your OBC to pay for it prior to getting on board. The online booking process gives you both options to us current OBC or pay with Credit Card in advance. I just did this on my Sept. Panama cruise.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you send in your brokerage statement information 60 days before your cruise the Stockholder benefits (i.e. $250) will get credited to your OBC within a few days of receipt of your paperwork. Then you can book shore excursions and use your OBC to pay for it prior to getting on board. The online booking process gives you both options to us current OBC or pay with Credit Card in advance. I just did this on my Sept. Panama cruise.

 

I think the point is the $250 is going on only ONE person's account. If you are a couple then one person could have $250 and the other could have $0 which means the person with $0 has to pay by credit card while the other person has OBC to use.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That does sound like quite a hassle. Couple thoughts: have Judy's name added as a joint - owner to the CCL stock, which would seemingly make the issue go away, Does not matter. The entire shareholder OBC amount will be put on one of the two on-board accounts. It cannot be split between two people. or - book the excursion ahead of time using credit card and be mindful of cancellation window, then cancel and rebook onboard using the then available stockholders OBC. Which might not work if the excursion is waitlisted. When you cancel, you may not be able to get it back.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

 

see above in red

 

Sent from my Desktop using MTF

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Jui Jitsu the bureaucracy!

 

I keep forgetting to apply my anti-bureaucratic tactics to other situations as well.

 

Princess software is intended to save them money by not printing all those paper excursion pages we used to get. to minimize labor costs of agents and to make the process more automated and efficient. Now if enough people have to call in and manually reserve excursions to fix this problem and it blips their overhead expenses up a bit, they might be convinced to add a payment assignment line to their software - which I thought used to be there but has since disappeared.

 

We're going to give this a shot today and see what happens!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's what I am going to have to do...have to get my green eye shades on and calculator revved up!

 

At least they didn't saddle their agents with the same software 'feature' we have...

 

I wonder how much Shorex business Princess is losing to independents with this pre-pay thing?

 

Agree and I wonder how busy the Shoreex desk and area is on the first two days of a cruise.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So to be sure I understand this - I have booked and paid for an excursion on our upcoming Hawaii cruise. Obc has now been added to our account. I'd like to call Princess and cancel the original reservation, get a refund on my credit card, and re book using obc. No problem ? We have drinks and tips prepaid already so I want to ensure not to leave obc behind. And related question, can I get cash back from obc onboard?

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Canceling and rebooking an excursion only works if there is available space on the desired tour; if there is, then you don't even have to call Princess, you can do it yourself from the Personalizer.

 

As for refundability, each type of OBC has its own rules. Most that comes from Princess is not refundable, but you can look in your onboard credits section to see what is and what isn't.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Canceling and rebooking an excursion only works if there is available space on the desired tour; if there is, then you don't even have to call Princess, you can do it yourself from the Personalizer.

 

As for refundability, each type of OBC has its own rules. Most that comes from Princess is not refundable, but you can look in your onboard credits section to see what is and what isn't.

 

AND, as I was just told on the phone, cancelling and re-booking might make you subject to a higher rate as prices can change. I think Princess will end up adopting the airline seat payment model. No one will end up paying the same price as the prices fluctuate according to demand. Although this will not be in full force until the excursion reservations are non-refundable. Give them a few years...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And an interesting happy ending...

 

It turns out that changes to our account are almost immediately view able on your Princess site. So I was able to see the changes she made, very nice people BTW, upon screen refresh and we were able to maximize the use of the OBC.

 

No calculator or green eyeshades necessary.

 

Even able to enter credit card on my end via the website after all was said and done.

 

Now we have to wait for Princess IT to make the functionality changes to our site...

 

(Plus the fact that one agent noticed a missing FCC credit! That phone call saved me $100!)

 

Maybe this wasn't so bad after all!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can't one book an excursion for anyone? So if one person has the OBC, they make the reservations? Am I missing something here?

 

You can only book an excursion for people in your cabin, not for any friends or relatives in another cabin.

 

Now the question is if you sign in as one passenger in a cabin and make an excursion reservation for two people, with the charges both go to the account of the person who signed in or will each person get a charge to an individual account no matter who signed in?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You can only book an excursion for people in your cabin, not for any friends or relatives in another cabin.

 

Now the question is if you sign in as one passenger in a cabin and make an excursion reservation for two people, with the charges both go to the account of the person who signed in or will each person get a charge to an individual account no matter who signed in?

 

Based upon what others have said it appears that it does not matter who is actually doing the booking. Each individual person in the booking has to have enough OBC or it will ask for a cc. At least that is my understanding.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Based upon what others have said it appears that it does not matter who is actually doing the booking. Each individual person in the booking has to have enough OBC or it will ask for a cc. At least that is my understanding.

 

That is correct. On our website software, a person in a cabin can book for the other person, but the excursion is charged to that person and there is no selection as to which party to bill, like I remember there used to be.

 

However, the agents CAN select the party to be billed and that shows up on the website almost immediately. It even shows that the billing is to the other person. We just don't have a simple check mark on our GUI to assign billing. That is really all we need...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That is correct. On our website software, a person in a cabin can book for the other person, but the excursion is charged to that person and there is no selection as to which party to bill, like I remember there used to be.

 

However, the agents CAN select the party to be billed and that shows up on the website almost immediately. It even shows that the billing is to the other person. We just don't have a simple check mark on our GUI to assign billing. That is really all we need...

 

I guess they did change it then. I recall booking the old way and it showed up as a single charge to my account.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can I book in advance using OBC or not?

 

Yes. Use the website, book the excursions, but you can only book up to the amount of OBC EACH PERSON individually has. If one person has more, like a stockholder OBC or a Veteran's OBC, they cannot use that OBC for the other person in the cabin. The website will ask for a Credit Card.

 

In that event, call Princess and they will allocate payments among the cabin passengers to maximize use of OBC. Apparently they've been getting a lot of these calls and are getting rather good at it...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We had booked an excursion in advance complete with confirmation e-mail. Lo & behold; Princess changed it to a pre-paid excursion and cancelled our reservation without bothering to contact us. Here I was wondering what had become online of the reservations.

 

(I had posted this on another thread earlier today) Steve

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for this thread, I will be calling Princess to book 2 excursions for us, used most of my obc but DH has more obc, I tried this a couple weeks ago but the Princess rep. Said they could not do that, so I will try again. Thank you for the information

Cori

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
 Share

  • Forum Jump
    • Categories
      • Welcome to Cruise Critic
      • New Cruisers
      • Cruise Lines “A – O”
      • Cruise Lines “P – Z”
      • River Cruising
      • ROLL CALLS
      • Digital Photography & Cruise Technology
      • Special Interest Cruising
      • Cruise Discussion Topics
      • UK Cruising
      • Australia & New Zealand Cruisers
      • Canadian Cruisers
      • North American Homeports
      • Ports of Call
      • Cruise Conversations
×
×
  • Create New...