Taxes, Fees & Port Expenses have gone up?

[SmilesYourWay]

A couple days ago I wrote several cruises down that I may be interested in, in the future. The prices and the Taxes, Fees & Port Expenses. Now I got online and was looking again and see the (expenses) are higher. Some over $100.  If you book a cruise and it is not paid off and those "expenses"  go up, do you have to pay the extra, or once it's booked your price is locked in?  How often do these expenses increase? 

[fishywood]

It is in the Cruise Contract that they have the right to charge you the difference if Princess chooses to raise the amount.

However that would be a very poor practice customer-service wise.

 

What normally happens is what you are seeing now: sneaky increases until final payment date. Which they usually round up high enough that there is often a small credit for overpayment on your stateroom charge. 

 

I doubt there would ever be an adjustment (either up or down) in between final payment and the start of the cruise as the cost of billing would likely be prohibitive--even though technically Princess has the right to demand you make up for their underestimation on the spot.

[SmilesYourWay]

16 minutes ago, fishywood said:

It is in the Cruise Contract that they have the right to charge you the difference if Princess chooses to raise the amount.

However that would be a very poor practice customer-service wise.

 

What normally happens is what you are seeing now: sneaky increases until final payment date. Which they usually round up high enough that there is often a small credit for overpayment on your stateroom charge. 

 

I doubt there would ever be an adjustment (either up or down) in between final payment and the start of the cruise as the cost of billing would likely be prohibitive--even though technically Princess has the right to demand you make up for their underestimation on the spot.

Thank you

[DDG 41]

2 hours ago, fishywood said:

It is in the Cruise Contract that they have the right to charge you the difference if Princess chooses to raise the amount.

Princess don't chose to Raise the amount. It's the governments of the countries you visit that determine whether the price is raised.

[fishywood]

7 minutes ago, DDG 41 said:

Princess don't chose to Raise the amount. It's the governments of the countries you visit that determine whether the price is raised.

Yes and no. 

Yes any adjustment upwards could most likely be due to the above.

But it is up to Princess whether to pay any difference out of the cruise fare or increase the per-head GT&F.

While out of fairness under the current business model these expenses should be assigned to the individual equally and not taken as a portion of the stateroom cost (which varies many times over) Princess has fairly broad discretion in the matter. Just as lots of such expenses used to be borne by the cruise line under previous business models as simply the cost of doing business, now they are broken out into a separate charge from the cruise fare to inflate its profit margin.

[Steelers36]

On more than one occasion, Princess has posted a small credit to our on-board account at start of cruise as a rebate to port taxes collected when we paid for the cruise.  We would have no way of knowing whether we over-paid for port taxes and if anything was due to us.  The fact that Princess willingly did this made me think they were doing right by customers and made me respect them.  OTOH, if I was to see a small charge the other way (we owed a few dollars more instead), I could hardly complain since they had refunded me a difference in the past.  Just my thinking.

 

[voljeep]

on our upcoming cruise - the port fees, etc. is $ 84.01 - not $ 84.00 - and hasn't changed since I first started following the cruise ... and yes, we have frequently seen a small < $ 10 on our statement, sometimes even in our personalizer a couple of days pre-cruise