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Celebrity just tried to bump us


djmarchand
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My wife got a call from Celebrity last night. We leave in two days for a 10 day Mediterranean cruise. They said that they were over booked for that cruise and they had to bump us (my words, not theirs) on a mandatory basis. We booked this cruise 6 months ago and paid over $6,000 in full several months ago.

 

My wife was devastated. We had been planning this cruise for more than a year to celebrate her 60th birthday and was the most ambitious cruise we had ever taken (6 so far). She could not speak any further to the very polite agent who called, she was shaking and crying. So I took the phone.

 

Their initial offer was full refund of our cruise and airfare (also booked through Celebrity) and a future credit for the same trip less income taxes (presumably such a big payout requires tax withholding).

 

I then asked why us. We had paid in full for a specific room and just got our luggage tags a few days ago. She couldn't tell me. I said we have a contract with Celebrity and this is a breach of contract. She alluded to the mandatory bumping being covered by their terms of service, ie anyone can be bumped in a similar situation. I said that when we booked in March I doubt if it was oversold so why not go to the people who had booked after the ship filled and created the oversold situation. She couldn't answer.

 

So I said forget the future credit as we will never use it given the present treatment by Celebrity and I wanted a $10,000 cash penalty paid. This is similar to what the airlines now do. They offer large cash payouts to buy out a seat in an overbooking situation after the fiasco of the poor guy being hauled off a plane recently.

 

She said she would speak to her management and put me on hold. She came back after about a minute and said due to the distraught situation with my wife, our early booking, etc, Celebrity would rescind the bumping. She offered another $200 in OBCs for our distress.

 

I would have told them to stick it but my wife wanted to still go on the cruise so we took the deal.

 

I find Celebrity's approach of mandatory bumping atrocious. We each have our own restrictions/conditions for making a change and accepting the bump: fixed vacation schedules, etc. In our case I didn't think I could book a replacement cruise through Celebrity this season. The opportunity to go on a Mediterranean cruise this year would be gone for good if I accepted Celebrity's credit offer. That is why I insisted on a cash payout in addition to a full refund.

 

I know it isn't like an overbooked airplane where the flight attendant can make an announcement to everyone saying we are offering X$ if you give up your seat and then increasing the offer until someone takes it. It will take more work, more calls to find passengers willing to give up their rooms voluntarily but this is a much bigger deal than a $300 air plane ticket, 50 times as much in our case. That surely justifies the extra calling.

 

And mandatory bumping almost certainly results in a customer lost forever which was our situation as soon as they told me it was mandatory.

 

So, any similar experiences or thoughts?

 

David

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Attaboy for sticking up for yourself that way!!! Your future cruise credit would not cover an identical cruise next year or beyond. So Congrats. Do you feel they were going down a list until they found someone who wouldn't stand up for themselves and acquiesced?

 

Are you willing to book another cruise with Celebrity after this traumatic episode even though you got to keep your original cruise?

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Do you feel they were going down a list until they found someone who wouldn't stand up for themselves and acquiesced?

 

Are you willing to book another cruise with Celebrity after this traumatic episode even though you got to keep your original cruise?

 

I am not sure if they were going down a list. I got the impression that they had selected us among others in the same catagory (first time Celebrity cruisers I suspect) to bump. Their initial approach was absolute, it was going to happen whether we liked it or not.

 

Will we cruise with Celebrity again? Probably not. The whole episode has left me cold, even though we came out better ($200 more OBC) than before.

 

David

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I have not heard before of something like this, it is stressful to have to fight to defend your rights.

 

Bon Voyage

 

There was another instance, I believe it was the Eastern TA on Eclipse in April. Quite a few passengers were effected.

Are Celebrity overbooking as a norm now, expecting a certain % of passengers to cancel?

They should stop taking bookings when the ship is full.

How do they decide who gets bumped?

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There was another instance, I believe it was the Eastern TA on Eclipse in April. Quite a few passengers were effected.

Are Celebrity overbooking as a norm now, expecting a certain % of passengers to cancel?

They should stop taking bookings when the ship is full.

How do they decide who gets bumped?

 

Yes, it was earlier this year the same thing happened. It wouldn't surprise me if that had been the case too a few months back when X said there had been a leak on one ship, that know no one was aware of, and they were having to bump some pax from cabins on a cruise two weeks later :confused:. Sounds more like they've perhaps upped the overbooking percentage?

 

OP, well done for 'sticking to your guns' ;).

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This is incredible! When a cabin is blocked by the booking engine, it can't be booked by any other person.

In my case, the entire ship was sold, so they bumped off all 1300 passengers to another ship, sailing out 2 months later!

They offered 200 euros OBC as compensation plus an extra night in Venice for free

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You handled it beautifully.

 

I suspect that the order of bumping was, as you said, the fact it was your first Celebrity cruise - they did not want to anger one of their loyal Captain's Club members.

 

Please do enjoy your cruise - it is true that their CS before the cruise is so very different from the wonderful experience on board.

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It is very worrying reading about this. I am cruising in 12 days time. I have just looked at the current availability on my cruise and everything is sold out except one Aqua Class cabin. It certainly seems that Celebrity try to sell every cabin. I thought that they would keep a couple free to cover any maintenance issues, but maybe not.

 

It would be good to know the criteria they use when trying to 'bump' passengers.

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Two days notice

.Are they serious. Why did they want your cabin?

 

If it was a case of overbooking, they should give you or the next prospective victims an officer's cabin and double them up,.,Outrageous.....why not bump the recently booked or those with just a guarantee..whatever that means..but even that would be too cruel and way to short notice,..If it was overbooking, accepting more final payments than they have rooms to fill sounds very close to an ilegal practice...like selling 1000 tickets to a concert or game when you only have 500 seats,,...????

 

There have been several reports ofnoverbooking with last minute bumping quite recently on X...( use search) .We are on a known overbooked cruise for Jan on Silhouette,,,they keep assuring everyone we wont be bumped but no one trusts them and this shows why.

 

Hope OP has a nice cruise..hope others post on other soc media that Celeb follows...and would live to know what happened..

 

 

We no longer book cruises that involve and non refundable hitels air etc..not worth the potential aggravation

Edited by hcat
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I am so sorry to hear this has happened to you ... and for a special birthday celebration to boot. :( I have heard about this happening to one other patron before and they had already flown in and were at the port when they found out. I think this was about a year back now. That was the first time I even heard of Celebrity overbooking their cruises and handling the situation way falls way short of good customer service.

We had a cruise canceled by Celebrity before ... for a charter but we were notified far in advance (almost a year) and the port of San Francisco was being used so it wasn't a hardship for us at all.

 

The way Princess handles this is they put out move over calls / emails. Basically, whomever calls back first and is willing to give up their space is rewarded with another cruise with their payment for the cruise to be refunded as OBC on their next sailing. Oftentimes, it will also come with air change fees and an upgraded cabin for a different sailing. This is the proper way to handle overbookings, IMO. Since we live near a port that we sail from often and have very few time restrictions, we would jump at one of these offers....but have never gotten one. We are both retired, our milestone celebrations are pretty much in our rear view mirror and we could easily move to a different sailing ... different itinerary, different time of year ....you name it!

With that being said, I think the cruiselines should set something up in our reservations on how willing passengers would be to take a move over offer and those would be the ones chosen to get that phone call. They have nothing to lose by doing this and I would think that it would keep a lot of good will by not upsetting prospective loyal customers, such as you and your wife.

I hope your cruise is enjoyable and your wife has a happy birthday. Too bad it had to start like this and I certainly hope it turns itself around once onboard.

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I wonder if they try this approach with folks and hope that the person on the other end of the line just gives in. Glad you didn't.

 

Overbooking is pretty standard and, with all the computer metrics these days, probably usually works out. But we are humans, not machines, so sometimes the numbers don't add up.

 

I fully agree that there are better ways to handle this that are really cheap for the company, but also make the person on the receiving end feel like they got a deal. Instead, they've made everyone on sold out itineraries feel very, very nervous.

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David: hope you can enjoy your cruise. If I were you I would send an email off to the President about your experience. We had a poor cruise with RCI in March of this year & fired off an email about our cruise. We heard from the President's office within 2 days. We gave good points of the cruise & the problems. We also had indicated we would probably not cruise with them again. We have cruised 6 times with them & 11 with Celebrity so we are loyal to one company. We were each given $250 US on board credit but had to be used in 2 years. If you do it quickly enough you might get some more OBC on this cruise. Alfred

 

 

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David: hope you can enjoy your cruise. If I were you I would send an email off to the President about your experience. We had a poor cruise with RCI in March of this year & fired off an email about our cruise. We heard from the President's office within 2 days. We gave good points of the cruise & the problems. We also had indicated we would probably not cruise with them again. We have cruised 6 times with them & 11 with Celebrity so we are loyal to one company. We were each given $250 US on board credit but had to be used in 2 years. If you do it quickly enough you might get some more OBC on this cruise. Alfred

 

 

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Dear Alfred, what were the problems you faced for RCI to offer you $500 OBC as compensation?

How much did your cruise cost per person?

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Your post is very upsetting to me as we booked a guarantee cabin on Celebrity Summit sailing on September 24 and still do not have a cabin assignment and the cruise leaves in 9 days.

 

I just sent an e-mail to my TA to find out what is going on. I have been half kidding my DH that we might not get a cabin.

 

I can't believe they oversold your cruise. Glad you were able to resolve it.

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Seems oddly handled. Yes, of course they have the right to bump you. But when it clearly wasn't your fault and it was so close to the sailing date it seems they should have tried to make you a sweet offer rather than ram it down your throats. If they has said their full refund plus a free future cruise as an offer rather than an order, it would have gone down much better. It certainly was a reasonable enough offer that they wouldn't have had to go through too many people before someone would have taken them up on it.

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I am not sure if they were going down a list. I got the impression that they had selected us among others in the same catagory (first time Celebrity cruisers I suspect) to bump.

 

The list would start with people with no Captain Club status (you get status after the first cruise), and then people who book the cruise themselves without TA. That way Celebrity cruise only have to deal with you and not the TA who is more familiar with this kind of things.

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The problems were a variety from food quality to misinformation about where events were being held. Also poor experiences with guest relations. The big thing I think was they didn't want to lose loyal cruisers to the RCI brand & possibly Celebrity as well. I don't remember the cost but it was somewhere around $3500 Cdn.Alfred

 

 

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