Cancelled Cruises Refund Tracker/Discussion (merged topics)

[hcat]

On 7/5/2020 at 2:31 PM, Tangiera said:

An update to my tale of woe: Celebrity contested my credit card dispute, just before their opportunity to do so expired. Instead of the thousands of dollars they owe us, in their documentation, they reverted to the minuscule FCC they incorrectly issued back in March, which included a "penalty". They claim to owe us nothing else, since our port taxes were refunded. Celebrity cancelled our cruise the week before sailing, not me. I thought that we had this straightened out in a phone call with Celebrity back on 4/1. Guess I should have suspected an April Fool. The disputed amount is back on my credit card. And I am supremely angry. Fortunately, I asked the rep with whom I spoke to email me documentation of my April call, stating we were to receive a full refund, as was requested. It's been sent to my CC company,  along with other proof, as I continue now to dispute their dispute of my dispute. Treating an Elite status customer like this is shameful.

Treating any customer like this is UNCONSCIONABLE!

What was the basis of Xs claim they did not owe you a refund?? 

Did they include details of why there was a penalty assessed and  only a  small fcc issued.  .,How can they assess any penalty if they cancelled!

Have you escalated with Celebrity through office of LLP?

 

Gives the rest of us something to consider in the event we have to deal with this... Seems  that once the Card dispute is filed, the Cruise lines capitulates,,,

[Tangiera]

The documentation X presented to my CC company consisted of screen shots showing that they had issued me a FCC which charged a penalty.  No reason for the penalty was given. I thought this was corrected through my phone call of 4/1, when the agent assured me that the small  initial amount was a "computer error". The screen shot had sections whited out (?), although it appeared that there were additional pages that were not included. I could see the 4/1 date at the bottom, but none of the information pertaining to my call. 

 

I spent over an hour on the phone with X yesterday. Their phone system is acting up, and the Resolutions agent I spoke with could not hear me, nor could I hear him, half of the time. He was perplexed at the entire situation ("I never heard of us reversing charges like that"), and escalated to his supervisor. The supervisor is supposed to call me back after speaking to the "Accounting Department", the mysterious entity that you cannot reach by any means. As of 10 AM this morning, no one has responded. The rebill is still on my credit card.

 

Hmmm. I am beginning to suspect this is an effort by X to hold on to as much cash as they can. My original refund request was "lost", FCC credit issued in the wrong amount, 4/1 phone call ignored, and, now, they have a phone issue that makes it incredibly difficult to communicate with them.

 

I have tried contacting LLP previously, and never received any response. If you know of any magical way to do this, please let us all know.

[Mr&MrsBee]

The previous comments sounds like our exprience with X. Keep getting the run around.  Everyone is polite promise to do something but nothing happens.  Celebrity One Touch is a joke.  All talk no action.

[WrittenOnYourHeart]

Well, the agent I spoke with on June 28 never did call me back, but the excursion and dining refunds she said she was going to manually

push through as they appeared stuck in processing did show up in my account today.

 

Still waiting on the taxes/fees and prepaid gratuities from the X-cancelled Summit 7/19 cruise - but I expect those are somewhere in process since I got the FCC (and OBC credit for purchases) already AND got an email showing that my select dining times were cancelled since the cruise had been.

[Condocat]

Perhaps my day dealing with Celebrity, might help others....

 

My cruise was cancelled in March.  I dealt directly with Celebrity for the refund even though I booked with a TA since reaching her was impossible.  The travel portion was refunded in mid-May, approx $11,000.   I received an email from Celebrity stating the taxes, insurance policy and trip excursions (approx $1,500) would be refunded in 30-60 days and appear as a credit on the my cards.   Nothing has shown.

 

I called today to be told all the money that was owed to me was paid and they couldn't discuss this matter with me any further as this booking was a "group" booking and they were powerless!   First of all, this was news to me that I was part of a group booking and had no idea it had any bearing on whether or not Celebrity could or could not talk to me about my reservation.  Most importantly,   there still is money on the table; my money and I have proof!

 

Next step, I called my TA.  She quit.  Her replacement, thankfully was fantastic and "found" my money, filed the forms with Celebrity, which she said are necessary when a booking is done as group in order to obtain a refund for the taxes, insurance and expeditions.  So perhaps for anyone waiting on similar items to be refunded, maybe your reservation was "grouped" and you need to contact your TA for help.   It appears the travel portion is not affected by this and that is why it was refunded without any problem.

 

Believe me, by the end of these phone calls my head was spinning!   I'll be thrilled when all this is all over and the money is back on  the cards. 

 

 

[Fouremco]

@Condocat, if you book with a TA, you always need to follow up with them, not with Celebrity. It can be frustrating reaching them sometimes, even more so if they quit, but you need to work through the proper channel of communications. Anyway, I'm happy to see that you have things going your way now and hopefully you will see your money back soon. Of course, "soon" is a relative term, and with Celebrity, it might be 90 days or so.

Edited July 7, 2020 by Fouremco

[Luvcrusn]

45 minutes ago, Fouremco said:

@Condocat, if you book with a TA, you always need to follow up with them, not with Celebrity. It can be frustrating reaching them sometimes, even more so if they quit, but you need to work through the proper channel of communications. Anyway, I'm happy to see that you have things going your way now and hopefully you will see your money back soon. Of course, "soon" is a relative term, and with Celebrity, it might be 90 days or so.

We booked with and made all arrangements and payments through our TA. Our cruise was cancelled in March while we were on board and returned to port. All refunds and FCC was issued directly from X and we dealt directly with X without contacting the TA at all. It did take quite a long time (refund not received until June), but the TA wasn't involved at all. Additionally, our booking was part of a group booking by the TA. That did hold up the refund, but we received the correct amount in one sum onto our CC.

Edited July 7, 2020 by Luvcrusn

[Fouremco]

2 minutes ago, Luvcrusn said:

We booked with and made all arrangements and payments through our TA. Our cruise was cancelled in March while we were on board and returned to port. All refunds and FCC was issued directly from X and we dealt directly with X without contacting the TA at all. It did take quite a long time (refund not received until June), but the TA wasn't involved at all.

OK, ya got me, there are always exceptions to the rule. As you were onboard when they cancelled, it made sense for Celebrity to be proactive.

 

@Condocat, make that "you almost always need to follow up" with your TA, not Celebrity. 

[ngaspar]

We got a full refund for our Aug 9 departure on Infinity...we canceled on June 23, refunded to credit card on June 30.

[Condocat]

Happy for everyone receiving their well deserved refunds...yeah!

 

Understand, I know to contact and work through my TA  however when she is unresponsive to my calls and emails during this unique time, I had to take bull by the horns and went to plan "B" and contacted Celebrity directly.    The rest is history.

Finally after learning she quit and doing some investigating on my own, I'm finally getting results.   Just trying to pass along what I have endured along the way to help others.

[Tangiera]

Well, I've wasted another hour of my precious youth (?) this morning on hold with X, since I never received the promised call back. Supposedly, a supervisor escalated my issue to the mysterious Accounting Department, and now a full refund is being processed, to be returned to my CC. But it might be another 30 days. REALLY? I'll believe it when I see it.  Fortunately, I have at least 30 days in the billing cycle before the rebill becomes due. If you feel the Earth shake around that time, the epicenter of the quake will be at my house in South Carolina.

 

I truly feel sorry for the people who answer the phones at X. I might not be as pleasant if I had to listen to the rants of disgruntled customers all day. Kudos to them for still being so nice. I'm sure they do as much as they can, but management does not empower them to do more. In my career, I've seen how companies in trouble can play cash games to stay afloat. (No pun intended) There probably is an amount determined weekly (or even daily) that is disbursed. If your situation is anything like mine, don't be afraid to ask for the Resolutions team or you'll stay at the end of the line. Good luck to all those still awaiting refunds.

[nikel]

Finally got a chunk of change today after 106 days.  All this has been paid out over 5 payments.  No clue what each one was for, but I'm getting close to my total refund.  There is only $200.02 left of $6814.00.  I think the $200. is my deposit as I booked this cruise on another sailing, but the .02 ???

[ChasingSunshine]

After seeing many months of refund problems, I thought I'd post my experience. 

 

I filled out my request for a refund on 6/23/20 on Celebrity's website.  I had booked my 8/27/20 cruise with an online TA, which was apparently a group rate.  I just checked my credit cards (I used 2 cards) and both had multiple refunds from Celebrity posted by 7/1/20.  After adding up the amounts, I have been refunded in full.  I do not know if I was refunded so fast because of the group rate.  

 

Good luck to anyone still waiting.  I hope it happens for you soon.

[Rodinglane]

We are a group of 10 that were going on a Baltic cruise in May.   As soon as Celebrity cancelled the cruise on April 16th we all applied for a refund.   Everybody received their refunds last week, although some are still waiting for shore excursions to be refunded.

 

We received absolutely no communication at all from Celebrity the 80 days or so we waited, and when we tried to call we were told to speak to our Travel Agent, who eventually did call on our behalf and found out that our refunds were being processed (this was about 3 weeks before we received them).

 

So I guess our experience wasn't so bad and fortunately we did not need the money right away.  We're relieved to get our money back, but it's left a bit of a sour taste in our mouths, and like others we're not sure how we feel about doing business with Celebrity again.

 

Sure, I understand that it was an extraordinary time for them, and it was really unfortunate so many people were laid off.   But what bothered me the most was the sheer lack of communication.   We never received a single email, other than the initial cancellation email, the entire time we waited.   And even when we filled out the refund request web page there was no follow-up email, leaving us to wonder if it had really worked. 

 

I used to work in IT and I know that it would not have been so difficult for Celebrity to send out periodic mass emails to their customers (they certainly know how to do that for sales marketing!).   In fact it shouldn't be that hard to put together a simple tracking system for customers to get an approximate idea of their refund status, especially since it sounds like Celebrity do have some idea of when things will be processed.   After all the IRS managed to do this for all of the stimulus payments for millions of people.  I can understand these features not being available at the beginning of this process, but they've had plenty of time now to build something like this.  It's not rocket science and good software development teams can easily create this sort of thing literally in just a few weeks.  I also think it's questionable whether the refund process has to be entirely manual, but that may depend on what kind of 3rd party software they are using (but even then there's usually a lot that can be at least semi-automated, and good IT departments are used to doing these kind of ad-hoc operations). 

 

I can only conclude that communicating with their customers has been and is not a priority for Celebrity.  Yet, a few well-timed and informative communications from Celebrity could have done a lot to quell people's anxieties about the refund process.   To me it seems that they simply just don't get it.      Future business matters to Celebrity more than ever now (their survival depends on it), so you would think they would do everything to provide timely communications to ease customer concerns.   But not so  - we got nothing, absolutely nothing.

 

And the FAQs on their web site still say that refunds would be processed in 30 days.  It would only take a person literally a few seconds to fix that, but again it's obvious customer communications are not a priority to them.  So I ask myself, is giving them my money a priority for me?

 

I hope we can go cruising again, maybe in 2022.  But I will think twice about booking with Celebrity given their cavalier attitude in how they've dealt with this whole process (although I suppose to be fair many of the other major cruise lines seem just as bad).   Or I hope by then there are better consumer protections in place, because corporations need to learn to behave more responsibly with our money.   But it could be worse - we are also waiting for Virgin Atlantic refunds and the latest on that is that it will be at least 4 months, that's assuming they don't go bankrupt in the meantime! 

 

Again, so much angst could have been avoided with proper communications.  Perhaps the issue was they laid-off their communications director, because it does rather appear they are operating without one...

 

 

 

Edited July 9, 2020 by Rodinglane

[Pennstatedj]

Rodinglane,

I agree with your post 100%. 

I do not understand why no communication. We have over 60 cruises with X and feel like you do. We were very loyal to X. I believe the buck stops with the Boss, Lisa. I am not impressed with here leadership. We that have been with X for a long time know their problems with their IT Department and now know that there are many manual systems throughout the company instead of highly auto systems. I do think that this is not the type of problem you have planned for but any top executive knows that communication of bad events can be handled with appropriate response by the CEO. I do not understand the silence especially to all those customers who have been affected. We had 4 cancelled by X and one with RCCL. It just does not make any sense. Not the way to do business in this industry. I hope it can recover from this pandemic. 

[harz99]

1 hour ago, Pennstatedj said:

Rodinglane,

I agree with your post 100%. 

I do not understand why no communication. We have over 60 cruises with X and feel like you do. We were very loyal to X. I believe the buck stops with the Boss, Lisa. I am not impressed with here leadership. We that have been with X for a long time know their problems with their IT Department and now know that there are many manual systems throughout the company instead of highly auto systems. I do think that this is not the type of problem you have planned for but any top executive knows that communication of bad events can be handled with appropriate response by the CEO. I do not understand the silence especially to all those customers who have been affected. We had 4 cancelled by X and one with RCCL. It just does not make any sense. Not the way to do business in this industry. I hope it can recover from this pandemic. 

 

I'm very sure that the majority of their problems would not have existed if they had held the funds for each booking in a secure holding account until the date of the cruise, instead it is patently obvious that any funds received from deposit onwards are distributed to the various cost centres asap to pay for the current and not future operations. In other words a giant form of Ponzi scheme. Then having got into a mess they don't communicate, which leads to thousands of extra phone calls and emails from customers that have to be dealt with, probably by the same staff who are processing refunds. A perfect storm.

Edited July 9, 2020 by harz99

[Fouremco]

9 hours ago, Rodinglane said:

I can only conclude that communicating with their customers has been and is not a priority for Celebrity.

I doubt that you'll get any argument here on that score. With very few exceptions, Celebrity communications are limited to marketing, not sharing information of concern to the customer. Countless mass e-mailings for Goop At Sea, but crickets when it comes to updates on refund times.

 

10 hours ago, Rodinglane said:

Perhaps the issue was they laid-off their communications director, because it does rather appear they are operating without one...

Maybe, but I think it more likely that LLP dictates and controls the communications strategy.

[yorky]

I think if you deal with Celebrity direct as we did it’s often down to who you get. We have a great rep who always replies promptly by email and had our lift  and shift completed in 48 hours with a price lower than the original. When Miami made a mistake on the original booking he dealt with it on our behalf  very quickly. We will be going through him for every booking from now on as long as he carries on working for a Celebrity.

Edited July 9, 2020 by yorky

[cjcruiser27]

If cruise and the air were purchased with Celebrity  and cruise was canceled, should I be charged with admin fees on the air? Thanks for any advice.

[suec12]

Celebrity cancelled our Sept. cruise and I was offered 125% FCC or refund. I requested refund - we had only paid our non-refundable deposit but I was under the impression because Celebrity cancelled we would indeed have our deposit refunded. Today I got notice of a FCC. So that is how it is working?😒I booked directly with X - should I try calling them?

 

And it wasn't even for 125%😒😒

Edited July 10, 2020 by suec12

[cjcruiser27]

1 minute ago, suec12 said:

Celebrity cancelled our Sept. cruise and I was offered 125% FCC or refund. I requested refund - we had only paid our non-refundable deposit but I was under the impression because Celebrity cancelled we would indeed have our deposit refunded. Today I got notice of a FCC. So that is how it is working?😒I booked directly with X - should I try calling them?

I had a non-refundable deposit and I received mine back

[Hexl2000]

Our planned cruise on 9. May 2020 has been canceled by Celebrity the last week in March. We are still waiting for our FCC. What a shame!

We did several cruises and Elite Member. That’s how they treat there loyal guests

 

[BoomerMan47]

I previously posted on June 24:

"I received word from Celebrity this morning that they are only cancelling sailings through September 15, 2020.  Unfortunately, that means your sailing has not been cancelled as of yet.  So if you would like, we can do the $700 refund and the $200 future travel certificate if you would like.  The only other option is to pay in full and then way to see if it cancels.  If that’s the case, then you could get 100% refund or a 125% future travel certificate."

Well, we didn't want to pay any more to Celebrity considering what is going on, so we opted for the FCC. The TA later "clarified" our option after talking to Celebrity and said that there would be NO REFUND since it was a non-refundable deposit, but that we would get our entire $900 deposit as a FCC (no mention of 125% FCC).

Does this action agree with what others have seen if their cruise has not yet been canceled?

[suec12]

It has been my understanding that if X cancelled, we would get our non-refundable deposit refunded. X did cancel our NE / Canada cruise for late Sept.as Canada closed ports so I'm hoping for $$$$ back - we'll see.

[harz99]

9 hours ago, BoomerMan47 said:

I previously posted on June 24:

"I received word from Celebrity this morning that they are only cancelling sailings through September 15, 2020.  Unfortunately, that means your sailing has not been cancelled as of yet.  So if you would like, we can do the $700 refund and the $200 future travel certificate if you would like.  The only other option is to pay in full and then way to see if it cancels.  If that’s the case, then you could get 100% refund or a 125% future travel certificate."

Well, we didn't want to pay any more to Celebrity considering what is going on, so we opted for the FCC. The TA later "clarified" our option after talking to Celebrity and said that there would be NO REFUND since it was a non-refundable deposit, but that we would get our entire $900 deposit as a FCC (no mention of 125% FCC).

Does this action agree with what others have seen if their cruise has not yet been canceled?

As you are cancelling and have a NRD normally you would lose it, full stop. We cancelled our Apex TA and received 100% FCC on our NRD which was correct as regards the UK offer, why would you expect a refund or 125% FCC if you are the one cancelling? In our circumstance something is better than nothing.