What the heck is going on?!?!

[ckfred]

This is one reason why to find a good travel agent and book cruises through him or her.

[Fla Mike]

Sorry, hard to believe. Who calls up to make their final payment and cancels on the spur of the moment because they didn't like the way customer service was talking to them?

 

I would do it in a second if I got pi**ed off enough. I've done it with other things.

 

As a matter of fact, I did cancel a cruise though a large online TA last year as they had a problem getting my name correct, and it is a common name!

 

No excuse for bad service.

[Alyrica]

Sorry, hard to believe. Who calls up to make their final payment and cancels on the spur of the moment because they didn't like the way customer service was talking to them?

 

I would have most likely done the same if it were my first cruise and there was another company offering a similar product that would meet my needs. I can understand someone not wanting to spend a lot of money with a company when they get mistreated by those representing that company.

 

OP, I'm sorry about your experience and I hope you enjoy hour Carnival cruise!

[Familygoboston]

Sometimes it takes a problem to cause people to look for an outlet for their frustrations. The OP's problems are not new or unique. We are aware of it, but others outside of the CC circle are probably not. Let's face it, most large companies have efficient websites now days. In this regard RCI is horrendously outdated. New posters should be encouraged by our community to come back to find helpful solutions to their issues and go on to enjoy all the benefits CC has to offer.

 

Ditto! The mods have asked us to report anything suspicious, but otherwise treat peoples questions and concerns legitimately. I'm thinking about people who might be getting a tax refund right about now, people who may use that as their "forced" vacation savings. I am imagining someone just got a check for this relatively large amount of money and I imagine they might be calling to pay off their cruise before some other bill or expense comes along. Then they get a confusing message online and they call and are not getting satisfaction there. I can see a person saying, "forget it, I will save some of this money, and book with the line I am already comfortable with and trust."

 

Do I know for sure this scenario is true of the OP?...Of course not...I don't know that any more than someone knows for sure OP is a troll. SO I choose to do as the mods have asked us, and be helpful and welcoming:D

[mguimond1990]

Ditto! The mods have asked us to report anything suspicious, but otherwise treat peoples questions and concerns legitimately. I'm thinking about people who might be getting a tax refund right about now, people who may use that as their "forced" vacation savings. I am imagining someone just got a check for this relatively large amount of money and I imagine they might be calling to pay off their cruise before some other bill or expense comes along. Then they get a confusing message online and they call and are not getting satisfaction there. I can see a person saying, "forget it, I will save some of this money, and book with the line I am already comfortable with and trust."

 

Do I know for sure this scenario is true of the OP?...Of course not...I don't know that any more than someone knows for sure OP is a troll. SO I choose to do as the mods have asked us, and be helpful and welcoming:D

 

Well I can assure everyone that I am not a "troll"..Yes, I just joined CC today. I have never cruised before and have been told that this is a great site for all the info I would ever need about cruising. So I said "why not" and joined. Then I figured I would ask to see if anyone else was getting emails about cancelled courtesy holds. Could I have just read thru the other threads to find something similar? sure. Will I post a new thread again? probably not, its really quite ridiculous that you cant even ask a simple question without some people accusing you of being a "troll" or some sketchy human being who just wants to start trouble because GOD FORBID I try to pay off my september cruise in march. HOW ABSURD. So instead of dealing with this nonsense again, I will just figure out how to navigate these boards and find information that I think will help me with my carnival cruise in september.

Edited March 12, 2014 by mguimond1990

[LarryL]

So a little back story. I booked a short little cruise on the enchantment for September. It would have been my first cruise. I've heard nothing but good things about RCL and it was really cheap so we said why not. Well just the other day I went to go pay off my balance and the website is down. Is it slightly inconvenient? Sure, but was it a big deal? No, the website would be back and running soon. So the next day I go on and try again, well this time my reservation was there but there was a big red error message saying that only reservations made on RCL.com could be modified. Which obviously was strange because I booked thru their site.

 

I get your concern with the message. A couple weeks ago, I got on the site to make some onboard reservations for restaurants and it took me a second before I realized I could ignore the message. I always book on the site. My current cruise has been paid in full since last October.

 

I'm sorry your first time experience was as it was. Most customer service reps I have dealt with have been very courtious and helpfull. Hopefully, you will have a better experience the next time.:)

[LarryL]

For the record, I think most people wouldn't read your post and interpret it as being from a troll. Like any business, the RCL website has had it's issues which frustrated many loyal RCL cruisers.

[lovesthebeach2]

I explained the biggest points of my story. I really have no interest in arguing. If you don't believe me, that's fine. Everybody has their own opinions. My biggest reason for posting this topic was I wanted to know if anybody else was receiving weird emails about holds being cancelled even tho I didn't book anything else. Thats all. :)

 

I have been receiving emails almost daily for our upcoming cruise to add drink packages or other things, but if I'm not interested I just delete them since I know they are automatic emails. They are just reminders or suggestions ;)

[mom says]

Sorry, hard to believe. Who calls up to make their final payment and cancels on the spur of the moment because they didn't like the way customer service was talking to them?

 

I would and make no mistake about it. Why would I want to deal with a company who has such an abysmally undependable website and then forces me to spend a long time on hold on the phone, only to be faced with an unhelpful or rude representative? RCCL does not have a monopoly on cruises. Plenty of other cruise lines out there that provide better customer service.

 

I don't blame the OP one little bit for being fed up with what she encountered. One of the reasons that I always book with my long time TA. Let him deal with all of the hassles- that's what he's paid for.

 

OP, I'm sorry that you had to encounter a few of the posters who hallucinate trolls around every corner. I hope you'll stick around CC for the useful information that can be found here. Like my dear old dad used to say: Take the best and leave the rest.

[Familygoboston]

Well I can assure everyone that I am not a "troll"..Yes, I just joined CC today. I have never cruised before and have been told that this is a great site for all the info I would ever need about cruising. So I said "why not" and joined. Then I figured I would ask to see if anyone else was getting emails about cancelled courtesy holds. Could I have just read thru the other threads to find something similar? sure. Will I post a new thread again? probably not, its really quite ridiculous that you cant even ask a simple question without some people accusing you of being a "troll" or some sketchy human being who just wants to start trouble because GOD FORBID I try to pay off my september cruise in march. HOW ABSURD. So instead of dealing with this nonsense again, I will just figure out how to navigate these boards and find information that I think will help me with my carnival cruise in september.

OP, don't give up on CC...it will help you to understand stuff like Royal putting red warnings on their website that don't apply to the situation!!

 

I hope you realize I was supporting you and your right to post questions here (and pay for your cruise on your own schedule!) and hoping that others would not make assumptions and just be helpful, or don't comment.:D

[travelplus]

This is one reason why I book with a Travel Agent as they send in the payment to a special department within Royal Caribbean. You sometimes need to be persistent with their website.

For instance I booked a shore excursion and it got cancelled. Well when I went online I found out the same shore excursion was available with a different tour code. I called up the Shore Excursion department to see why they automatically cancelled my excursion as opposed to just transferring me to the new tour and send out an e-mail if one wanted to cancel with the terms and conditions.

 

So when i went online to rebook the excursion and a second one their system was down. This was in the early morning hours so I stayed up an additional 30 minutes and voila I was able to book the shore excursion.

 

For our SetSail pass we switched to a different room and had to fill out the SetSail pass information again. It only took 5 minutes to do. Frustrating yes but worth crying over spilled milk No.

 

My point is I expected there to be system down time during the weekends and glitches as reported here on Cruise Critic. But it would be nice if Royal would post a message about any website down time and the expected time the website would be back up. Its poor IT practices to just take a website down without posting an informational message with phone numbers to contact for service in the interim.

 

Royal needs to learn the basics of IT. For one they could have a second version of their website that they are using to update and copy it to another version and upload that. When I took Web Design classes the instructor told us to always have two additional copies of the page we're working on and to only update the website once we have the pages ready to go.

 

The saying my instructor used was "Downtime equals loss of profitability which equals loss of your current and potential customers" as evidenced in your case.

[LuvBNatC]

My biggest reason for posting this topic was I wanted to know if anybody else was receiving weird emails about holds being cancelled even tho I didn't book anything else. Thats all. :)

 

Last Friday night near midnight, I found my upcoming Grandeur cruise on the website and clicked the button to place a cabin on 24-hour complimentary hold because I needed to verify it with my traveling companion.

 

When I called RCI early the next morning, I was asked for the "hold number," which I didn't have because the site didn't give me one (I was logged in when I placed the hold, so I thought it just got linked to my account). And then I was told that no hold was recorded and I had to start the booking from scratch.

 

So if you actually managed to place a hold, you had more luck than I did. :D