AE_Collector

Okay must have been my imagination that I used it years ago. I see the icon for it so assumed it was usable. Thanks…..

9 hours ago, Steelers36 said:

 

Anyway, the outstanding unknowns for your situation are:

• What did you pay versus friends?
• Was/Is the CAD At Par promotion combinable with current sales promo (or the former B.S.E. promo).

 

I cant answer all of this so there is potentially answers in the unknown. Friends in Canada booked a balcony so they received the $100 US OBC each which was part of the BSE (Best Sale Ever). They booked Direct but may have booked online or at 1-800 Princess. So maybe they didn’t get the CAD at Par, not sure. Certainly a possibility.

Others booked with their CVP two days after sale ended so no OBC but handed a 20% discount to the CAD at par price we paid. The price we continued to see online remained the same after the sale so it wasn’t likely a price reduction of the cruise after that sale ended.

Thanks for all the info and opinions!

Trying to reply to many comments here….

Canadian at par is a 26% discount so yes very very good, but not 35%. $135 Cdn as .74 (26% discount) = $100 or the US price for Canadian $.

Whether booked under wrong code somehow or not, something messed up as friends who booked same day and are also Canadians did receive the advertised OBC. Yes Cdn at par is very good deal but if that disqualifies a bunch of other sale perks that paying in $US gets, the at par part is no longer worth what it seems to be worth. It doesn’t matter as they were going to delete and rebook the whole thing to try to get the OBC but I said to not worry about it is only $100. My reference to this part of the problem was just that this should have been a slam dunk for someone at Princess to either find an error or to determine that this part of the sale wasn’t valid with the Cdn at par. But instead I go no help.

Call centre for Canadians always seems to be in US so I don’t know about other parts of the world. Could be in the Philippines but I don’t believe I have ever overflowed to an off shore call centre and I was on hold for hours and hours multiple times trying to talk with someone booking our first post Covid cruise about a year ago. I think it was 13 hours in total on hold over 4 or 5 calls.

1 hour ago, memoak said:

We have the best CVP ever   She responds quickly to all of our question and now that she can book casino comps without going through the casino department we are getting 16 day cruises in full suites with Princess Plus, OBCand some casino play for about $4.500 pp

Lol, that’s yet another part of my frustration! My sister just completed her Ruby level so her fifth Princess cruise. She constantly gets casino cruise offers for half or less than what we pay along with all sorts of extras. If they rewarded “doing lots of Princess excursions” like they reward “going to the Princess casino” I wouldn’t be here complaining, I would be on another cruise. We don’t gamble at all but have thought many times I should open an account and gamble a few $ a couple of times in a cruise and see if I start getting offers.

2 minutes ago, Happiest when cruising said:

It’s all good, cruising is something we enjoy and just have to deal with it as it comes. I tuck away as much USD as I can during the year and have a USD bank account and credit card. My husband is better at just forgetting about it it and thinking USD once we are away. I am an old banker and my mind automatically still converts it, at the time I make a purchase. Then I have to decide if it’s worth it, that goes the same for excursions and any shopping we might do while we are away. These days, I definitely think twice about purchases. I also remember when the exchange was even higher than today. 

Yes for sure, around $1.60 at one point. We gave a cabin in WA at Pt Roberts that we bought at $1.42 exchange rate in 1995. While horrible to be locked in at 1.42 the good part of that is that the US selling prices plummet there when exchange is bad as its 80% Canadians. 

13 minutes ago, Happiest when cruising said:

I believe it was me that said up to 5.00 for the coffee that I like. I stick to my word and see I was correct for my favourite fancy coffee drinks. I don’t care how much the tea is, as I don’t really care for it. I do also like a large fresh brewed coffee in the morning, which is a reasonable price. Of course..they are adding on 18% for the gratuities on top of that. I won’t go into how I also need to add on about 38% to my final cost as I am Canadian. So…approximately 8.15 for my daily fix of a fun coffee drink. It’s easy to see why I will miss being able to use the old “coffee card” system and how I’m a little sad that I won’t be able to change out the mini bar, since it was finally going to be available to me in the next couple of weeks. But…time goes on and things change, I’m still going to have a great time. 

Yeah that part really adds up. We’ve almost always booked using the Princess CAD price so it’s 35% currently and most of the time it is a little below the real bank exchange rate. And that covers cruise price, port fees and taxes, and can cover all onboard spending including gratuities and excursions if you prepay and/or pre purchase OBC to cover it all. BUT…+35% is still a big hit. We were cruising a lot in the 2011-2018 time frame and there were a lot of times that CAD and US $’s were at par. We didn’t know how well we had it then. 
 

We primarily do Back to Back cruises and would have coffee cards from previous cruises to use (almost exclusively for the punches) so we would get the minibar swapped to our liking on the first cruise of alcohol/non alcohol items and could usually stretch it over two cruises (yes we are light weight drinkers) and then we would swap our second cruise minibar for coffee cards to use on our next B2B. So we easily accomplished having a cold alcohol or non alcohol drink or a specialty coffee over both cruises. But that came to a full stop as the coffee card went online. We had about 4 cards left to get coffees for everyone in our last cruise before they expired. Now we choose which we want, mini bar or coffee cards not understanding why we couldn’t choose one coffee card and half minibar but they have “solved” that now too.
 

Terry (in Coquitlam)

15 minutes ago, brisalta said:

 

Princess changed the name of the role from Princess Vacation Planner to Cruise Vacation Planner.

That clears that up…thanks!

10 hours ago, Times Prince said:

A different view:  We have used a TA from a large franchised agency who used to always get us a discounted fare plus a modest OBC.  However before 2020 her ability to offer discounts and OBC was diminished by some changes by Princess which apparently reduced her commission and ability to discount fares.  The amount of discount usually was in the ballpark of the cost of taxes.  OBC often came out of her commission which she could no longer afford to offer us, but used to be at least $25/person.

 

We've had a couple of cruises now where the Princess sale offer was good enough for us to book direct.   One CVP came and went with no real assistance.  But this year we have a new CVP who is at least keeping us informed of cruises and Princess offers, however we have not yet booked a new cruise through her.

 

We had a question about an OBC which appeared for other people on our upcoming cruise, but not for us.  We had the same response as the OP - Customer service was worthless, the CVP could only escalate, escalation professed no knowledge of the OBC, and all anyone could tell me was that my booking didn't show the OBC, which was my original complaint.  (Note: I since found out here on Cruise Critic what the OBC was for).  But I believe that Princess Customer Support has a major lack of people who know the complete picture of what OBC was offered, and under what conditions - i.e. a subject matter expert.

 

For special offers I used to always capture a copy of the original terms and conditions of the offer so I could address issues should they arise, especially where OBC is involved.   I suggest that for everyone and all it takes is to inconvenience some electrons to store an image of the offer on a computer.

Yes that’s what I’m talking about. The PVP can’t do anything or even answer generic questions about bookings since I’m looking for something they apparently can’t offer to us, only to others. I should point out that I’m never anything but polite in emails or on phone calls. I can certainly understand someone getting their back up against certain customers attitudes that they likely see but I would certainly be unhappy to think that was me.

Was the missing OBC you related to the recent “Greatest Sale Ever” that ended at the end of the day March 1? That was part of what got me started with this again. Friends booked the same cruise as us on the same day that we booked. They received the additional $100 each OBC for their booking and we did not. Enquiries brought responses of  “not available for this cruise” with no ability or willingness to investigate further. I realize that further discounts or extra OBC directly from a PVP is hard to investigate or explain but not receiving an OBC that was part of a published sale should have been dead easy for someone at Princess to look into for us. This lack of response resulted in us cancelling the cruise and combined with no messages back from anyone at Customer Relations or any help from either of two PVPs over a 1 month period of time finally has resulted in us exploring other cruise lines after 16 years, 43 cruises and 444 days with Princess. 

1 hour ago, Kellyansapansa said:

Is there a difference between a CVP and a PVP or are they the same thing?

 

The first couple of times we cruised with Princess we used a TA, and the next couple of times we just booked online ourselves.

 

I put a hold on one of the new Australian itineraries when they were released this week and received a call from a CVP today.

 

We currently have three booked cruises for 2 days, 14 days and 29 days. We had FCDs applied against two of the bookings, and had also made some instalment payments.

 

She shuffled around the FCDs to maximise our OBC, threw in some extra OBC and managed to reduce the fare on one of the bookings as well. She also managed to retain the cabins we had booked, and moved our instalment payments over so we didn't have to pay any additional deposit.

 

In short, it was a fabulous experience and I will definitely be keeping her number for future use. 😊

Excellent. I think PVP (Princess Vacation Planner) and CVP (Cruise? Vacation Planner) are being used interchangeably here.
 

From what you have said that’s exactly what I’m looking for from a PVP but have had no success at all. I’m thinking the same way that @Times Prince feels as well.  I'm not sure what brings this higher level of service including the ability to give a little extra OBC or finding ways of offering a bit lower cruise price. Over years and years I have only heard “not possible”. The logical thing for them to reward IMHO is the amount of cruising done with Princess but that isn’t what I am seeing at all. 
 

Do you have your own Princess people in Australia that you get when you call? I’m in Canada but get one of their west coast offices in the USA when I call, usually Santa Clarita or Seattle which I think is mainly a HAL office.

2 hours ago, JimmyVWine said:

Must be lots of Elites on board, as it seems that no one is buying them. 😁

We’re Elite and all of our grandkids have one.

1 hour ago, ldtr said:

Have been using a vacation planner since the restart.  I pick the cruises on line and put them on hold, then send him an e-mail and he applies the down payment.  On occasion he will make changes in the booking if he has access to a better price or additional OBC.

 

Keep in mind that the vacation planners only get credit if you book through them.  If you book totally on line then they will not be very interested in helping you with any issues on that cruise.

We’ve never booked online but have occasionally just called 1-800 Princess and booked. Mainly we’ve booked through the same PVP for years and up to 8 cruises totalling 88 days in one year. My gripe now is finding out other PVPs are giving out perks that we’ve never seen. Asking about it I get dead air so maybe as others have said, once you get to triple the requirement to make it to Elite they are looking for a way to unload you!

@jeromep
Yes there has to be a solution. The last straw for me was seeing others being handed discounts and extra OBC from a PVP while we have always had to pay the current listed price receiving no extra OBC and with our last booking we didn’t even get the advertised sale OBC. After weeks of trying to get answers from anyone or even a reply I gave up and cancelled our first cruise ever. One day maybe I will find a local TA I am happy with.

thanks for the reply….

Diversification is important and I bet this applies to cruising as well. If the ships are full of newbies and there is a downturn in the economy the newbies probably disappear. But the retired in a pension people are still around. 3 - 7 day cruises compared to the same cruise but a 21 day Grand Adventure is one thing but there are regular long cruises that aren’t bookable as shorter segments. Trans Atlantic’s and trans Pacific’s including all the NA west coast to Australia reposition cruises. The long time elites do these cruises and many of us fill the ships by booking “last minute”. Sure they don't make as much per day in onboard revenue but we all know how much effort and price cutting by Princess goes into filling the ships. As I’ve mentioned before, we never get a package but we exclusively do Princess shore excursions and at most ports, not just an occasional one. We frequently spend as much on excursions in total as one of our cruise fare with taxes and fees cost us.

We were in Caribbean Princess for not the first but the second cruise after it was the first Princess ship to go 100% medallion operation. Internet was mayhem as the elite minutes plan still existed but there was only instructions available for regular customers using the always connected internet plans. So everyone connected and 150 minutes later they were out of time and joined the lineup for Internet cafe help which circled the atrium. 

Yes good info, thanks!

Okay thanks. I’m surprised that no one mentioned needing to contact AON for the rest of it but that’s what happened. It will be interesting to try to figure how the FCDs figure into it when the dust settles as yes they may be gone as in payed out but they are a part of the cruise cost so their value shouldn’t disappear. 
 

Since the insurance is sold by Princess I’m surprised there isn’t an updated statement showing all the numbers. Maybe there will be but nothing I have found so far.

Thanks!

Removal of a low usage option is just like the minibar coffee card swap elimination. Removal of an option that some couldn’t care less about while others really feel the change. The more options we have the more likely we are to find one that works great for us and keeps us coming back for more.  

We recently cancelled our first cruise ever at a bit over 30 days before boarding and we had the Princess Vacation Protection deluxe plan for the basic plan price.

I assumed it would be a big drawn out process when I called the travel agent but quite quickly she was back on the line saying all done, you will receive the refund to your credit card soon. My first thought was that I thought I had to identify why we were cancelling to determine if it would be a refund or a future cruise credit.

Sure enough, I now see some of what I paid refunded to my credit card but not all. Presumably the refund would be cruise cost plus fees and taxes but not the cost of the insurance. But our refund so far looks to be around 70% give or take. Or maybe. It is all of the port fees and taxes and about half the cruise cost. Do I have to do anything else? I’m wondering now if Princess refunded port fees and taxes and just the % of refund based on days before the cruise and maybe I have to contact AON to get the rest?

And what happens about the two Future Cruise Deposits we used to book? They still show attached to the cancelled cruise when I look online. Will they eventually land back in our accounts or do we get paid out for them as well?

Thanks for any help!

There is no doubt that the internet is better now than it used to be. But cell providers and some home internet providers have no problem keeping track of how many GB of data you’ve used. The new system should allow them to give you an account of x GB per day of the cruise and then it quits working if you use it all up leaving you to choose if you want to buy some more or not. A small basic internet allowance shouldn't be hard to provide as a replacement for the old package of minutes for Platinum/Elite. 

18 minutes ago, kywildcatfanone said:

It's a perk for loyalty.  Also, I might not be going home right away.  No reason not to use a perk that is offered, especially when they are being taken away regularly now.

A perk that you run the risk of having us all lose by over using it. The laundry done onboard for us soon after boarding where we were travelling for a week before boarding as well as the laundry done several times while on a long cruise is worth so much more than laundry done just before disembarking that could have been done at home. But laundry is laundry to Princess and having to do too much of it threatens the perk for us all. The four biggest perks to me were captains circle loyalty OBC (Gone), Free Internet (No longer a free option), elite minibar (the squeeze is on) and laundry. Laundry is the only one of these four that hasn’t been touched … yet.

1 hour ago, Happiest when cruising said:

I have found it interesting to read about the free laundry. People actually send it out towards the end of their cruise, so they go home with all clean laundry. I don’t think that was the original intent of the perk.  Sometimes…we have created our own problems. 

Yes I’ve read that so many times. The free laundry perk for elite is such a welcome thing particularly when we have been travelling on land for days or a week or more before boarding a cruise somewhere. We have always looked at it as something to not abuse hopefully preventing any possibility of them discontinuing it. But the things I have read that people do makes it no small wonder that we have to wait for days to get it done. You never know how quick it will be until you board when you frequently get the notice on a slip of paper indicating three days for laundry due to the number of elites on board. I have long thought this to be an area that some limits would be welcome.

Are many ships sailing full? I’ve only been on two post Covid cruises but pre Covid it was getting bad on many cruises.

To me the only logical thing to do with the elite minibar considering the number of people cruising with packages is to offer either an exchange for OBC or a bar/drinks credit to replace it completely. I’ve been saying the same thing about the Elite laundry for awhile now since most cruises we did pre-Covid had 3-4 day laundry turnaround “due to the number of elites onboard”. Yes we still got free laundry but it was quickly turning into yet another reduced perk due to the delays. Unlimited Laundry could easily have some reasonable limits applied to it by giving elite a laundry allowance based on number of cruise days and all items already have a price list to use to make it work. The combination of too many elites on many cruises, and likely some people overusing it both for themselves and possibly for other travelling companions resulted in those of us who use it sparingly also being caught up in waiting days for our laundry to be done. I’m assuming this hasn’t been an issue yet Post Covid but it will be again.

1 hour ago, Thrak said:

 

I hate to say it but I tend to agree with your assessment. The loyal cruisers get more freebies and often tend to spend less money. They have already done the excursions and, if they want them again, they have learned to book them privately. They tend to not buy the pictures or the cruise video. They already burned out on buying Princess branded merchandise. I think JP is looking for a crowd of affluent younger people. I may be wrong but it seems to me that young people today tend to spend all they make rather than being more frugal as my wife and I were when young.

Yes a fair bit of truth to that. So many slightly different scenarios though. Highly unlikely we would ever cruise with a Plus or Premium package. And we don’t buy many drinks onboard but an occasional one. The thing that got us looking forward to a drink was the two for one (later the second one for $1) happy hours. But where we still spend quite a bit of cash is on Princess shore excursions. We don’t do the same cruise over and over, we keep trying to get to more new places thus we still do lots of expensive excursions. I only recall us doing one excursion that wasn’t Princess in 43 cruises. But I can see Princess splitting us all into two or maybe three groups to concentrate on. The basic, Plus and maybe the Premium groups. And large numbers of cruisers seem to be going for it so Princess knows where the $$$ is. We can still go along for the ride unless (like myself) we hit the wall and get ticked at their lack of support of us.

1 hour ago, mtnesterz said:

You mention that a loyalty program is important to you. I have read that those who sail RCI say they are happiest with the offered loyalty program. You might look into whether or not RCI would work for you.

Yes thanks, we have been looking at Celebrity as we have been on celebrity 4 times though it was 10 years ago and we have friends who generally seem happiest on RCI. Ironically they are a bit ticked with RCI at the moment as they have a long trans pacific about to start and learned after it was too late that they missed the window to book attendance at shows and everything is booked up now. They can still stand in line at shows to see if they can get in though.

Thanks for your input!