MSC's website... is it clunky or is it me?

[Twigalina]

I'm visiting friends in South Africa in January and I've been persuaded to take a 3-night mini-cruise from Cape Town to Durban on MSC Orchestra.  I made the booking using the MSC website and have been trying to make some special requests (twin beds instead of a double, reservation for the speciality restaurant on a specific date) via the Manage My Booking pages but I can find no way of doing so, and the only 'phone number on the web page is in Johannesburg.  My only previous cruise was with Silversea and their website is brilliant; by contrast MSC's seems to be really basic or am I just being thick?

Edited October 8, 2019 by Twigalina

[CruisingFox27]

The MSC website can be temperamental, you should be able to update your bed preference when completing the online checkin.

You can't book an individual meal for a set time and date in the SR restaurants online, so this isn't anything you're doing.

[eastoftheboston]

It's not you, their web site is famously horrible.

[morfred]

2 hours ago, eastoftheboston said:

It's not you, their web site is famously horrible.

Agree.  As a longtime Celebrity cruiser I wanted to try MSC but I am about to give up and go back.

[eastoftheboston]

I just call and speak to a live person. I know others haven't had great experiences talking to people on the phone, but it seems to work for me.

A week or two ago I saw that you could order pre-paid gratuities online (I wasn't able to do that with my previous MSC cruise) so with final payment approaching, I decided to go and add the gratuities, laundry, and internet and pay for everything. Gratuities mysteriously vanished from the set of options, and none of the other things I added to my online cart would stay in my cart, it kept resetting. So I just called and got it all taken care of in about two minutes with no additional hassle. 

Morfred, I can't speak for the non YC experiences, but I stayed in Aqua Class on my Celebrity cruise (and loved it), and I think if you like Celebrity you'll certainly enjoy MSC.

  

[mianmike]

Yes, their website is terrible.

 

Our Voyager numbers are not attached to our reservation despite the customer service rep assuring us they would be attached.  Tried to modify our reservation and add our Voyager numbers but keep getting invalid Voyager number.  Rather than try to call and talk to another rep I tried the contact us page.  I filled out the form, but kept getting errors stating our cruise date was invalid, so I removed the date and then I got errors saying our booking number is invalid.  I tried different browsers to no avail.  Very frustrating.  

 

MSC is painfully aware their IT is a disaster.  I guess they decided the fix is money they don't want to invest.  

[Fogfog]

Pax often complain how bad Celebrity IT is..and after being on MSC, NCL and Regent-- I am thinking that IT is not something Cruise companies do well and Celebrity's site is looking a LOT better than MSC, NCL and even Regent

 

 

[triplestar]

Hi, We are also doing a SA cruise Cape Town  /Walvis bay/Durban in April 2020 & I find the website impossible .  I thought that it was just me ,pleased its not . It may improve nearer the time  I do hope so.

[perakcruiser]

4 hours ago, triplestar said:

It may improve nearer the time  I do hope so.

Very optimistic, it did not improve in the nine years we are cruising with them too much. You will learn to cope with.

 

And at least I would be a little bit disappointed, if they really improve ☺️

Edited October 9, 2019 by perakcruiser