Why such a long line at the front desk on the last night?

[dickinson]

Earlier this year on the Emerald I overheard a conversation in which the passenger was disputing a charge of about 2 dollars. It was an extremely long line, and I simply cannot imagine standing in line for a long time to dispute such an error.

 

I am also surprised at the number of people who have said that they save all receipts and compare them. I cannot imagine taking the time to do that. I do look at the statement every few days and between my wife and I we can usually identify most everything on there without too much difficulty.

 

We would stand in a long line to dispute $2 if it were not ours. Why should we pay for someone else? We wouldn't LIKE the long wait but it is not like we are taking time away from work :)

 

We too save all receipts and compare them. We really don't have very many receipts but even if we did my dh would be comparing them all. We realize that many people just look at bills and see if everything looks fine without comparing receipts but to us it is a "no brainer" to compare and make sure everything is correct. Really doesn't take much time.

[maz48]

The cruise we just disembarked from had a long line snaking round past a shop for the whole final day. From before 9am till I went to bed, constant. Worse than in the photo above. At one point 6 passenger service assistants were helping. I was so curious to know why it was so so busy. We had been onboard for 9 nights but most were only on for the second part of our B2B, a 4 night cruise.

Edited October 29, 2014 by maz48

[timetravler]

I have had things wrongly charged to my account before but I made a note of it, went home and then at my leisure called Princess. They always took off the false charge with no problem. No waiting, no lines and you can do it in your Jammies.

[san diego sue]

I bought a jacket in the "big sale". Hand written receipt and the guy forgot to give me elite discount. He said he would void it and wrote up new one. Well, next day I pulled my bill and saw I was charged twice for the jacket. Front desk person was proactive and while I waited made the proper calls and higher charge removed in minutes.Pulled my bill later and all was fine. I had the lower price for jacket on there.

Last night of cruise I pulled my bill. The jacket charge wasn't on there.I went to tell them (brought my receipt with the charge, I save all of them). Line was so long, got at end then finally gave up.

I figured it would be caught and later I would have the charge (final bill in morning) or on my credit card.

Never showed up. If there wasn't a huge line, Princess would have been richer by $25.00..

Sometimes people are standing in line argueing about disembarking times and tags for luggage. Princess now seems to have that resolved by giving assignments a day earlier and you have all day of last day to take care of problems.

[sherryf]

This is a big problem that must waste a lot of time, why if I buy a T-shirt doesn't mt bill say T-Shirt, or at least the shop name, why do I have to go through some sort of guessing game to work out what I'm being charged for.

 

Sometimes when you buy things at sale tables and such, the charges get rung up later and the charge shows as the location where they entered it. For example, this summer I bought a coffee card for myself and soda stickers for my kids at one of the tables they had set up. The charge showed up as Crooners (or one of the other atrium bars). I knew I hadn't actually bought anything at that bar on that day, but it was obvious from the amount that it was the coffee card and soda stickers. I don't drink nearly $200 in one sitting. :eek:

[Loonbeam]

Also at least on the royal they moved Disembarkation to the Excursions desk.

 

Sometimes people are standing in line argueing about disembarking times and tags for luggage. Princess now seems to have that resolved by giving assignments a day earlier and you have all day of last day to take care of problems.

[RetiredNTraveling]

Maybe it is because we usually have a fair amount of OBC and don't charge a huge amount, but I just do a reasonableness check every couple of days.

 

Sound advice from reasonable people. We do a cursory check every few days, but have never found anything I couldn't readily identify. ;)

 

We would stand in a long line to dispute $2 if it were not ours. Why should we pay for someone else? We wouldn't LIKE the long wait but it is not like we are taking time away from work :)

 

I'm on vacation and find it hard to justify my precious time (all time is precious when you are over 65) to complain about $2! :eek:

 

We too save all receipts and compare them. We really don't have very many receipts but even if we did my dh would be comparing them all. We realize that many people just look at bills and see if everything looks fine without comparing receipts but to us it is a "no brainer" to compare and make sure everything is correct. Really doesn't take much time.

 

As for financial scrutiny or comparison, well even though I am by no means well off, I can usually scan the statements and always able to understand, without laboriously getting out my magnifying glass and green visor, a dollar here or there. Sorry but that is just not me. (I do have a friend who quickly came to mind while reading this forum and it fits him to a tee!) :D

[geoherb]

I have had things wrongly charged to my account before but I made a note of it, went home and then at my leisure called Princess. They always took off the false charge with no problem. No waiting, no lines and you can do it in your Jammies.

I disagree with this idea. The best time to dispute a charge is when you're still on the ship. We had a bottle of wine charged on my account that should not have been on our last cruise. It did not show up until I received the statement on the last morning of our cruise. Fortunately I only waited a few minutes at the pursers desk before someone could help me--only she couldn't really do anything other than to make a note that we should not have been charged for it on the statement. I sent an email to customer relations and received a call from a rep who took care of it. Nevertheless, I was glad to have acknowledgment of the error in writing even though I never had to send a copy to Princess.

[taxatty]

It took a long time for me to wait in line and then have hundreds of paper receipts examined on our last CB cruise before a very nice PSD person could confirm that a large bar charge wasn't mine. I was surprised that somehow a charge came up as mine with someone else's card and signature, and that charges aren't yet made electronically. I would have thought by now that charges would be made on cruise ships using tablets or cell phones with built-in scanners like much of the rest of the world now uses instead of massive piles of duplicate paper slips.

[VaCruzers]

It is sometimes a need to request additional luggage tags or a different departure group ticket.

[piper28]

I've had a few mischarges over the years now, but for the most part, I've got a pretty good idea of what we've purchased, so can generally identify them pretty easily. Worst was a mixup with some artwork purchased (under the old PFA), and to make matters worse, it was during a december sale, so certain artwork was rung up at one price, then a discount was made, then another discount for shipping. I'm glad I caught that one earlier in the cruise, because it ended up taking a few days for them to work on fixing it, although it never ended up corrected completely correctly (when I looked at the final bill for the cruise, they'd actually removed too much from the bill, so we underpaid, but by that point it was really too late to do anything about it). Even then, trying to figure out if it was correct or not actually took a fair amount of work with a calculator trying to match numbers that didn't match properly up.

[catergirl]

even though I have a CC# onfile, if I have a good amount of US$ left after the cruise, I will use it to pay off or towards my bill instead of brining home the cash and paying a higher CC fee for US$ :D

that's why im in line...

[caribill]

 

I am also surprised at the number of people who have said that they save all receipts and compare them. I cannot imagine taking the time to do that. I do look at the statement every few days and between my wife and I we can usually identify most everything on there without too much difficulty.

 

This is no different than keeping credit card receipts on land and comparing them to your credit card bill when it arrives.

 

I assume you do not always trust a statement from a credit card company to always be 100% accurate.

[dorisis]

They could also be getting a cash refund. This happened to us when a port was cancelled so we had a credit balance on our shipboard account. I didn't catch it till we were almost ready to leave and had to stand in line to get my refund.

 

Until recently, many OBCs were refundable. The last night would have been the time to get the refunds.

[jak378]

This is no different than keeping credit card receipts on land and comparing them to your credit card bill when it arrives.

 

I assume you do not always trust a statement from a credit card company to always be 100% accurate.

 

We spend virtually no cash, and practically every dollar we spend is on a credit card, which is paid in full every month. I check it at least once a week online and seldom find discrepancies. I do not save credit card receipts, except maybe for a major purchase. I can recognize most charges easily enough and generally tell clerks in stores to simply throw my copy away.

 

To each his own, I guess.

[Wehwalt]

One time, I saw a woman at the PSD the last day going over every single line item of a 5-page folio, wanting to see a copy of every single charge slip. It seems that her teenage kids had been charging up a storm. She was there for two hours, tying up a purser from helping others. She was not very pleasant and seemed to blame Princess for allowing her kids to charge things. I don't think this is an isolated case. I know I've wondered what the heck a charge was because it was listed as something I didn't recognize when in fact it was a t-shirt or whatever I'd bought at one of the sale tables. I think mis-posts of charges are relatively few.

 

I check my bill regularly and twice have found items not mine. Both times I went to the customer service desk and asked for the paper backup, which was provided. Both times it proved to be from waitstaff misremembering folio numbers on drinks. I was told it would be removed by the night manager, and it was.

[BosoxI]

This is a big problem that must waste a lot of time, why if I buy a T-shirt doesn't mt bill say T-Shirt, or at least the shop name, why do I have to go through some sort of guessing game to work out what I'm being charged for.

 

You're right, it isn't always clear, but it isn't always clear on my credit card accounts either, when a charge made, for example, in a local restaurant shows up under the name of the parent corporation two thousand miles distant. The on board solution is to keep a copy of the charge slips. DW and I throw them in a drawer as we make a purchase, and it becomes quite easy to match them up with the statement, especially if it's done periodically during the cruise. It takes just a few minutes for us, longer, I'm sure, for big time spenders!

Edited October 30, 2014 by BosoxI

[Wehwalt]

You're right, it isn't always clear, but it isn't always clear on my credit card accounts either, when a charge made, for example, in a local restaurant shows up under the name of the parent corporation two thousand miles distant. The on board solution is to keep a copy of the charge slips. DW and I throw them in a drawer as we make a purchase, and it becomes quite easy to match them up with the statement, especially if it's done periodically during the cruise. It takes just a few minutes for us, longer, I'm sure, for big time spenders!

 

I suppose that they could get the self-printers to print the paper backup, assuming they are scanned. But given how casual people are at leaving those printouts lying around, there would be privacy issues. I don't really want people knowing that I regularly buy twelve bottles of--but I digress.

[Loonbeam]

It's different than credit cards at home because once you leave the ship, there is no easy way to deal with/identify issues, whereas you have very specific protections with credit cards.

[AE_Collector]

Don't be surprised, especially if those people come from a culture where tipping is not the norm.

 

I am not surprised BUT, anyone who books a cruise in an area where tipping IS the norm should also realize that the cruise itself was a bit lower priced because the staff would be tipped individually or by the auto tip at the end of the cruise. If these people are in line to remove the auto tip because it isn't normal for them to tip, they should also have added the equivilent amount of money onto their cruise cost, just like it is at home where tipping isn't required.

 

The pains some people go to to stiff crew members amazes me. We have always found the service so good that we auto tip and give envelopes inside Consumate Host cards with just a bit more cash. We rarely book a Balcony cabin and we dont drink much or gamble at all. But we reognize excellent service when we see it.

 

Terry

Edited October 31, 2014 by AE_Collector

[BosoxI]

I am not surprised BUT, anyone who books a cruise in an area where tipping IS the norm should also realize that the cruise itself was a bit lower priced because the staff would be tipped individually or by the auto tip at the end of the cruise. If these people are in line to remove the auto tip because it isn't normal for them to tip, they should also have added the equivilent amount of money onto their cruise cost, just like it is at home where tipping isn't required.

 

 

Terry

 

Terry, you have a wry sense of humor.;)