Why can't Celebrity fix their $&@&$ website?

[Boo2]

I've been trying for almost a month to add beverage packages to my reservation. After going through the entire process, I keep getting an error message. My DH called the help hotline and was told that the problem would be fixed by the next day. Well, that was two weeks ago and there is still no change. On top of that, the website is incredibly slow, taking ages to load each page.

 

I have better things to do with my time than waste it trying to do something that claims to "streamline" this process for me.

 

If Celebrity really has someone monitoring these boards ... FIX YOUR WEBSITE!!! (Sorry for yelling; you may have guessed I'm a bit frustrated.). :(

[cruisestitch]

See this thread.

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1497098

 

Sadly, I think it's easy to conclude that Celebrity just doesn't care.

 

Please, when you are on your cruise, be sure to put this information on your comment cards. Supposedly, they do read them and if enough of us tell them we hate their website, maybe it will make a difference.

 

I hope that by the end of your cruise, you will have had a wonderful time and this will all be a bad memory, but make a mental note to put it on the card!!

[mcrcruiser]

Here is a potential solution & to end frustrations. Pick up the phone call Celebrity & ask to speak to Dan Hanrahan ,CEO .You most likely will get Ingrid ,Dan's secretary .Tell her your frustration with the web site.Ingrid is very attentive to customer concerns especially when they reach her desk. She most likely will get you the person who can "Fix" your problem ;):).

[ghstudio]

Here is a potential solution & to end frustrations. Pick up the phone call Celebrity & ask to speak to Dan Hanrahan ,CEO .You most likely will get Ingrid ,Dan's secretary .Tell her your frustration with the web site.Ingrid is very attentive to customer concerns especially when they reach her desk. She most likely will get you the person who can "Fix" your problem ;):).

 

Oh, good luck on getting thru....you will more than likely get to customer relations who will tell you it will be fixed tomorrow. Celebrity continues to have one of the worst web sites with the slowest response of any I frequent (and that's lots of sites). I believe that the previous poster is correct "they don't care" or they have found some programmer in a tent in the middle of Somalia who is doing the programming for the price of a camel.

 

Someone should Force Dan Hanrahan to sit down and book tours, special restaurants and select dining reservations for a 10 night cruise....and he should also pre-register. That should take up about 1/2 his work day.....maybe then he'll understand.

[julia]

Do they not realize that the errors and slowness of their website is costing them precious REVENUE?? The drink packages STILL includes the 15% gratuity twice, and that may stop someone (who isn't aware of the problem) from completing the purchase!

 

In this day and age, it's incomprehensible that a company's website isn't top-notch. :eek::(

[Chirpbird]

Sorry you're having troubles, but so happy to read this. I thought I was forbidden for some reason to buy the beverage package. I wanted to add 3 to my reservation. I just assumed that until the reservation was completely paid for, they wouldn't let me add anything to it.

[bbappel]

My theory on website problems: I think X has hired programmers who barely passed programming, or is using an antiquated language. It shouldn't be this difficult. One issue that causes problems is if you use St. as your address in one place and Street in another. Another problem is if you use a middle initial in one place and don't in another.

I think Celebrity is more responsive than you realize, but limited by the people they hire to do this job. It isn't that they don't want to help, but they are good at doing cruise stuff, and they stink at doing computer programming.

So do try to get through to Customer Service - Captain's Club if you can - and then check that the details on your booking match the details on your CC registration etc.

Beth

[wwcruisers]

Perhaps sending a letter to Mr. Hanrahan at corporate hdqtrs in Miami would get better results. And, as my son works IT in the Navy, I can appreciate the techies on here who point out that it's not all that easy to "fix" a website. However, from a marketing prospective, if the folks who come to your website to spend their hard earned $$, end up feeling that they have wasted their precious time -- well, your competitors are standing by to eagerly take their orders! :rolleyes:

[ShawninFL]

I find Celebrity's website to unacceptably slow. There is no reason in this day for a multibillion dollar corporation to have a website perform as their's does. Royal Caribbean's website performs no better....which is to be expected since they are the same company. A few weeks after RC launched their new website I received an email from them asking me to take a survey on how the website worked. I thought, great, I let them know how slow it is and some of the problem quirks that I had already discovered. Unfortunately, it wasn't that type of survey. They had a link to a test version of the site and had you perform various functions on the website. This "test" version worked very fast and didn't have any of the quirks that I had already found. To this day, on RC, once you have done a cruise search and receive the results, if there are multiple result pages, when you hit the "next" button to go to page two, it always redisplays page number 1's results the first time you hit the button. You have to go through this step a second time to actually reach page 2. Back to Celebrity, I discovered the double gratuities on the Beverage packages back in August....still not fixed!!! Overall, I find Celebrity's website so slow it would be quicker to call customer service to do what I need.

[tuggers]

Oh, just call Captain's Club during their hours and let them do it for you. Most of them are very nice and it will save getting your blood pressure up to stroke level.:D

[margeg]

This is the worst site I ever used and the s l o w e s t!

I tried looking for shore excursions and it took. No exaggeration hours.

 

We will be on X next month and will definitely voice my complaint.

 

Princess web site leaves celeb in the dust.

[Christine Frances]

I'm sorry - I just can't figure out these issues people seem to be having. For me the website load quickly and is very easy to navigate now that I am used to the changes of the new site. After what the previous poster mentioned about shore excursions, I went on and checked out all the shore excursion options for the ports on our SA cruise and it worked perfectly. IT people out there - could this be a browser or other such issue? I know that on previous threads on this topic it was about 50/50 - some having no problems and some having lots of issues.

I do have to admit that I still have the "blue bar" on my iPad though.

[unixgeek]

The weird part of this is that I very rarely have any problem with their web site, and I just bought a drinks package the other day for our upcoming cruise on Silhouette.

 

There's a part of me that wonders if this is an issue with "desktop OS and browser choice" as it interacts with their web site. Because I've honestly never had any problems with either responsiveness or functionality when browsing their site at various points in time from either Safari, Chrome, or Firefox on my Mac.

[CathyCruises]

Ha! Two days ago (October 7) I got an email from Celebrity talking about the great drinks packages and telling me I should book before May 7, 2011 to take advantage of the reat pricing!!!!! I had to read it three times to be sure I was reading correctly. What a joke!

 

I sent a reply, no idea if they received it on those blast accounts, and about 3 hours later got the same email with the May 7 reference deleted. This makes me think they really have no idea what they are doing. SO unprofessional. Thank goodness the crew on the ships does a great job.

[reload]

Four months ago informed C Club of my new family name, to this day they still have not got it right. A total of 14 mails from me to head office Miami, 9 mails from my TA in Austria to Rccl in Germany, 3 mails from my TA in England to Rccl GB and a phone call. A phone call from my TA in USA. The TA's advised a visit to the C Club hostess whilst on board in Sept, she also had to admit defeat after mailing and recieving the same response we all got.

The problem being, my previous name on my login in account has not been removed making it impossible to use the site at all, as we know that names used for booking flights cruises entering foreign countries have to match the one in passport as well as reservation. C Club correspondence to me assures that my name is correctly stored in the background and not to worry and if I still have a problem please give them all the info which they have recieved over and over again. Head office have not let on why thy cant get it right, no apology, the TA's and myself have worked out that my name is too long to fit into the space provided, lopping off the last 3 letters. My new name doesnt correspond with my C Club number, so the last three cruises booked have been done through various agents assuring me it will all fall into place. Thousands of people change their names every day, whats the problem ? just get on with it.

[LeftcoastBC]

On a Mac and using FF. I have an add-on that makes the font bigger and it kinda screws up the webpages for X & RCL (not their fault but other cruise line sites work fine) BUT when I do click on something it always works.

 

I have because of the view on FF started to use Safari just for X and it works there great also and as I have no add ons I can read it properly all the time....

 

so what can I say..nothing else ....... just those three dread words I guess. So I will say nothing further :cool:

[ghstudio]

Four months ago informed C Club of my new family name, to this day they still have not got it right. A total of 14 mails from me to head office Miami, 9 mails from my TA in Austria to Rccl in Germany, 3 mails from my TA in England to Rccl GB and a phone call. A phone call from my TA in USA. The TA's advised a visit to the C Club hostess whilst on board in Sept, she also had to admit defeat after mailing and recieving the same response we all got.

The problem being, my previous name on my login in account has not been removed making it impossible to use the site at all, as we know that names used for booking flights cruises entering foreign countries have to match the one in passport as well as reservation. C Club correspondence to me assures that my name is correctly stored in the background and not to worry and if I still have a problem please give them all the info which they have recieved over and over again. Head office have not let on why thy cant get it right, no apology, the TA's and myself have worked out that my name is too long to fit into the space provided, lopping off the last 3 letters. My new name doesnt correspond with my C Club number, so the last three cruises booked have been done through various agents assuring me it will all fall into place. Thousands of people change their names every day, whats the problem ? just get on with it.

 

If you were in the US, I would suggest sending a certified letter to Dan Hanrahan because if your ticketed name does not match your passport, you may not be able to get on that ship to talk to anyone. You really need to get this resolved before you show up to get on the ship.

[FrankinPA]

If you were in the US, I would suggest sending a certified letter to Dan Hanrahan because if your ticketed name does not match your passport, you may not be able to get on that ship to talk to anyone. You really need to get this resolved before you show up to get on the ship.

 

I assume your passport has the new family name? Do you still have a driving license or some other photo id with your previous name? If so, I would bring it along just in case. If your name changed due to a marriage, you may also have a marriage certificate but I don't know if that is issued in Austria.

[margeg]

Ha! Two days ago (October 7) I got an email from Celebrity talking about the great drinks packages and telling me I should book before May 7, 2011 to take advantage of the reat pricing!!!!! I had to read it three times to be sure I was reading correctly. What a joke!

 

I sent a reply, no idea if they received it on those blast accounts, and about 3 hours later got the same email with the May 7 reference deleted. This makes me think they really have no idea what they are doing. SO unprofessional. Thank goodness the crew on the ships does a great job.

 

I had the same issue with the old date for the drink pkg. Also when I was trying to register for our cruise on line, I could not get my name to go in. Turned out they had me listed as Mr. and my dh listed as Mrs. TA had to call to straighten it out.

[SusieV]

Ha! Two days ago (October 7) I got an email from Celebrity talking about the great drinks packages and telling me I should book before May 7, 2011 to take advantage of the reat pricing!!!!! I had to read it three times to be sure I was reading correctly. What a joke!

 

I sent a reply, no idea if they received it on those blast accounts, and about 3 hours later got the same email with the May 7 reference deleted. This makes me think they really have no idea what they are doing. SO unprofessional. Thank goodness the crew on the ships does a great job.

 

Yup I got that one too!

 

I hate the X website. If I need anything done I just call them because I don't want to deal with the hassle. Which is annoying because I would much prefer to do it myself online.

[Boo2]

Thanks for the replies to my original post; it sounds like some people are having problems with the website and some aren't. I did try the website on my iPad and although each page loaded faster, after going through the entire process to buy soda packages, I still got the same error message regarding my credit card. (I tried several different credit cards so I'm sure it wasn't simply a problem with the card.)

 

I guess I'll have to call again and do it over the phone. :(

[jcrandle]

I normally use firefox, but when I have problems with a website, I try IE. This solves many problems.

[Boo2]

My DH just got off the phone with Celebrity trying to solve the problem with our inability to book beverage packages. The employee he spoke to was courteous but offered no apologies for the frustration we've been going through or suggestions about what the problem with the website might be.

 

She took down all the pertinent info and after all that, was still unable to complete the beverage packages for us! (We're going on a back to back cruise and she was able to get the package to go through for one cruise but not the other.) When asked why not, she offered several possible vague reasons for why it might not be working but didn't really seem to know for sure.

 

She said that we may have a "corrupt booking", whatever that is. She offered no real solutions until my DH specifically asked her what she was going to do to help us. Then, she said that she could try to call our travel agent and see if they could figure out what was wrong. She made no offer to contact us to let us know the status of the problem; when she was asked to do so, she said that she would send us a confirmation email if she got the second package to go through.

 

When my husband expressed his dissatisfaction with her lack of concern for our problem, and asked to speak to a supervisor, she said she was the supervisor!! :(

[cruiserhal]

I agree the web site is horrid. We tried to do the online check in and kept getting stupid maintenance messages in the middle of the afternoon eastern time. Finally, we did get to register yesterday but had to go back an reprint the doucments at the end. What a mess - had to go thru each screen to get to where I needed to be. It does not have to be this difficult.

 

Oh, and why is it so slow-w-w-w? Come on guys, get new web designers!!!

[fleckle]

Oh, and why is it so slow-w-w-w? Come on guys, get new web designers!!!

The design is horrible! The Celebrity site looks as though it was designed by someone staggering around under the influence of some strong substance, unable to think logically.

A sober high school student could have designed a more user-friendly site.

 

When looking for a Celebrity cruise, we find it necessary to use a third party web site in order to see all the cabin categories displayed together on the same screen in a format that makes it easy to compare prices and pick what we want.

 

When using Celebrity's own site, we need to keep flipping back and forth from one screen to another in order to accomplish the same task.

There is one screen for suite prices, then we need to click Change Category, then go load a different screen to see concierge class, then click Change Category again, then load yet another screen for veranda class, repeating the process again to see aqua class, and so on.

 

It is maddening to use, as though designed by a spy from a competitor :eek:, someone trying to make the Celebrity site as inconvenient and complicated as possible in hope of getting potential passengers to give up and forget about taking a Celebrity cruise. :mad: