How often does your Carnival Consultant call you?

[r&rfraz]

we have a great pvp. i talked to several on the phone with general questions at the beginning stages of booking our 1st cruise. one day i had the good fortune of having my call answered by MY PVP. we clicked right away and she has been the only one i ever talk to at carnival now. i am a compulsive over planner/researcher so i am almost always the one making the call. you would not belive the trouble that we dealt with trying to book our 1sr cruise (cancelled cruise by carnival, death of a family member, cruise cancelled because of h1n1 flu, cruise rerouted because of h1n1) through all of this our pvp was patient and understanding. she dealt with one curve ball after another and never skipped a beat. i could tell it was important to her to solve our problems and get us on the cruise we wanted. i feel like i am talking to a friend when i call her. she knows who is calling as soon as she hears my voice. when we finally sailed on our 1st cruise last may she considered it a personal victory to have finally gotten us on the ship. her excellent customer service led us to recommend her to friends and we have now booked a friends cruise with 3 families may 2010 all through her. as you can imagine booking for 3 families (6 adults, 8 kids) has its own set of challanges and she has been there every step of the way. we all made our final payments this week and are ready to sail in may. she has a customer for life in me.

[vtsmike]

Aftrer reading the post here I scanned for tracking cookies with Norton and found 2 cookies that where then deleted. I then went to Carnival's website and signed in but didn't look at anything and signed out. I then searched for tracking cookies again and 2 where found. Proof that Carnival uses tracking cookies.

[madge57]

And the point of tracking Carnival cookies is??? It's their business to get you to book with them. If you don't want them to call then don't sign in to their website. Just browse through the site. It's something like a car dealer you know. You ask them to look for a car for you and when they find something to call you. You might not be ready to buy but you still want them to call so you know whats out there.:p And my PVP has never called me when I have been on Carnivals website. No one has called me. My PVP knows when I am ready to book and she also knows that I like to look at the website to see what changes there are.

[Crusin6]

Mine won't call me anymore thankfully...and she was one of the top tier PVP's...because I was able to beat her price by $1000 per cabin...plus a $200 OBC per cabin. 2 cabins total.

 

She said it would never be done...but viola...I got a better deck for the same cruise and still saved the bucks. But she said it couldn't be done:D

 

 

No problems at all with the cruise!!!

[Crusin6]

We have a pvp we've never booked with call and call and call. When it was time to book, I just called and booked with whomever answered cuz I was sick of the harrassment. He called me a few days later and asked why I didn't book with him, because he's been calling me. SOOOO rude! Everytime I get a good PVP, they don't stick around, so I gave up, I just ignore the calls, and book with whoever answers the phone.

I bet that PVP who called you after you booked fought with whoever it was that booked for you...for a piece of the commission...bet he got something too!

[rrraydon]

I don't have a peronal "PVP" . When I call Carnival to book, I just book with whoever answers the phone. How do you end up with the same PVP each time?

[TigerStar]

Mine called every 2 weeks from the time I initiated contact through the website to the day I booked with him (about 2 months). Since I booked I haven't heard from him. I make payments online, although he suggested I call him to make the payments so he could check for price drops. I can do that. I will call him for the final payment though, just in case he can find something (maybe a nice upgrade).

[mferris77]

Guys, just about every site uses cookies. THIS site uses cookies, I'm sure. It's the only way that you can stay 'logged in' on a website continuously. Otherwise you would have to log in again every time you opened your browser and visited the site.

 

Now, it's possible that you could click the 'Log me out' link and it would in fact log you out, but the cookie is still there, so they could conceivably know that you're still looking at the site after you have logged out.

 

What they probably do is have code on their servers that tracks your activity and associates it with your account on the website. If you're logged in (or were previously logged in, by way of that cookie still being there) - and you then do a search to see how much a southern caribbean 8 day cruise in January costs, something somewhere on their servers will update your carnival.com account with the 'new activity'. Then from there it's a matter of another program or process to send an automated email to your PVP (also associated with your carnival.com account) saying that you recently performed a search and haven't cruised in a while (or whatever various criteria they have in place that triggers the alert) - thus leading to a phonecall from your PVP... and if you've created a completely new account with no prior cruise history, you'll probably be assigned a PVP automatically and will get a call from them.

 

To really 'clear the trail' you'd have to both log out of their site AND delete all your cookies. But depending on how they want to track you they could also know what your IP Address is, which is a little more difficult to change if you're on a constant connection like DSL or cable. It's probably more of a hassle than just telling them "I'm not ready to book a cruise, I'll call YOU when I am." That should settle it, and if it doesn't you can tell them that if they call you again you will book through a different PVP next time. That should stop them. :-)

[PreciousCruiser]

I wondered how I just happened to get a call from Carnival one day. Now I know. The PVP that called me asked if she could email me some info. and I said sure. Then later down the road I got another call, and said I wasn't ready. Called one or two more times after that and it just happened to be right after I decided to book a cruise with CCL. Told her I'd have to check to make sure on ports and dates. She called back a couple of days later and I was ready to book. She was not pushy and so very helpful and nice. Everytime I call or email her I get a speedy/accurate response. She has been the best PVP ever. I like her so much I wish I could adopt her...LOL...!

 

And to think that I originally thought "why is she bothering me with these calls"! I don't mind her calls at all (so far anyway...LOL...)

[wthomp]

...

[masterbaker]

Is a PVP the person that takes your booking if you just call in to book? If so, we must have the worst PVP of all. I called in May 2009 and booked Dream for later this year, and haven't heard a word from him since. I even called him when we decided to upgrade, got his voicemail, left the message and STILL no call back. After a couple of days, I gave up waiting and called again and used whoever answered to upgrade.

 

I have to admit that we are kind of new to Carnival, our last cruise with them was many years ago, but IMHO, they really have dropped the ball with us as far as customer service. We really are less than impressed. Most of our cruises have been on Royal and Celebrity which don't have PVP's, they service every call as it comes in to the call center. I can't imagine why my voicemail message to Carnival that I wanted to buy an upgrade wasn't returned promptly while some of you sound like you are almost being stalked by your Carnival rep.

 

That said.... should Carnival be told about our non-service issue? Is it possible to get a different representative?

[Drew's Wife]

I received an email a couple of days ago from my PVP. Said he was thinking of us and to enjoy. He sent me the recipe for Carnival's Warm Chocolate Melting Cake!:)

[Texaslandshark]

If you have problems with one with the initials HS, run.

[winddawn]

I just sent an email to the one who seems to have been assigned to me. I haven't cruised Carnival in 10 years but have been looking at the Fantasy since it will be "local" to me soon. The consultant has called five times in fifteen days and spoken with me three of those. Every time I have told her we are no where near ready to book.

Does this seem excessive to anyone else or is it just me?

 

Thanks!

I was wondering why they even assign PVP's. Mine has never done anything for me. I can't even get the email specials that they are supposed to broadcast even though I've signed up for them. She seems disinterested, so I always call the Carnival toll free number to book. I can only imagine that someone that unconcerned wouldn't give good customer service.

[goofytoo]

I am not comfortable with our PVP. She did not seem interested in helping us that much when we booked our first cruise. But after reading some previous posts I decided to give her a call to book our B2B in the fall. She seemed to be just as disinterested. So when we actually decided exactly what we wanted I just talked to whoever answerred the phone.

 

So for those of you who were wondering, yes you can just deal with whoever answers the phone. I don't ask for a PVP I just ask my questions and modify my bookings with person that answers. They are usually much more helpful than my PVP.

[CruizinMom2c]

Well....we used to usea TA for all of our other cruises..but she never got back to us when we called her the other month..so we called Carnival. And after we booked, she hasnt called us..but we also havent had to contact her...so we will see how she is once she knows we will be frequent cruisers...

[CarolinaDoglover3]

We have used our PVP since 2001. We never get called after searching the Carnival website. We will always get a call when there is a great deal for any cruise she think we may like. We have never been pressured to book anything and when we need an answer about something she always calls back the same day no matter what time. I would never use a TA or any other web site to book our cruises with. We have checked other web sites and have never found any better pricing than the Carnival web site.