Non-refundable deposit

[txd]

What are the chances not to lose the non-refundable deposit of $900. We are not interested in future cruises. We did purchase a travel insurance. It"s really hard to understand the explanation on the travel insurance cite.

Please share any experience or recommendations.

[NantahalaCruiser]

16 minutes ago, txd said:

What are the chances not to lose the non-refundable deposit of $900. We are not interested in future cruises. We did purchase a travel insurance. It"s really hard to understand the explanation on the travel insurance cite.

Please share any experience or recommendations.

Would help if you gave us the sailing date of your cruise and the final payment date.  The earlier the cruise the more likely it will eventually be canceled by Celebrity.

 

Unless you have "cancel for any reason" insurance - which I doubt - your insurance will not cover the loss of your deposit if you decide to cancel it yourself.  If your sail date is before August 1, 2020, you can cancel and receive a future cruise credit.  Or you can wait and see if Celebrity eventually cancels the cruise.  If they were to do so, then you would receive a choice of cash or 125% in a FCC.

Edited April 17, 2020 by NantahalaCruiser

[39august]

You can only get FCC with non-refundable deposit, no refund at all.  At this time instead of keeping the $100 per person as a "change fee".  and crediting the remainder back as FCC, X is giving the full deposit amount as FCC.  At the time I booked with a NRD, I did not know that my "reduced deposit" of $100 per person would NOT be the only forfeit.  When I cancelled my NRD cruise, X collected the full "required" deposit of $250 pp from my fully paid cruises. But they did give me that amount as FCC. So anyone who has purchased an NRD of $25 or $50 per person on a special offer will still be charged back the regular "required" deposit upon cancellation. 

[wrk2cruise]

26 minutes ago, 39august said:

When I cancelled my NRD cruise, X collected the full "required" deposit of $250 pp from my fully paid cruises

 

You are the only one I've heard of in this situation.  I've heard many others who have just lost their reduced deposit.  I don't question that's what happened to you and have no personal experience (yet).  I do suspect that your cancellation was early in the CWC process where they were waiving  the $100 pp admin fee and offering FCC for the full deposit.

 

I've read other people (hcat) who used CWC program who were in the penalty phase who got the penalty in FCC but the remainder refunded.   They have subsequently changed CWC program where the entire amount is FCC.  It also states that if you want you can take the standard penalty and take the remaining refund (no FCC).

 

I'm pretty sure people with NRD before final payment can still take the loss of their entire reduced deposit and walk away.

[txd]

Is it correct that if you have travel insurance or not, it has the same result. It doesn’t cover non-refundable deposit. So, what is a purpose of buying on?

[39august]

The cruise to which I referred was cancelled on April 2 for a July b2b. My TA questioned the refund amount, but couldn't get X to budge on giving me the full $250 pp in FCC instead of just taking the $100 deposit back and giving us the remaining $150 in FCC. I was NOT happy about that. I hope you are correct that they will refrain from doing this on-going as I have another NRD with $100 pp in Sept. that will most likely I will have to cancel before final payment in June.  When I made these NRD's I reasoned that we definitely planned on going and anyway, losing $100 pp was no big deal. If I had known X would do this to us, I wouldn't have booked an NRD. 

[mauimary]

Yesterday we canceled an Ireland Cruise.  We had a different cruise in mind for June 2021.  Celebrity applied every cent of our non refundable deposit very graciously toward the new cruise.   We did loose our three perks that came with the deposit.  Prices are high for next year so we will keep an eye out for reductions. and have them reduce ours when we see them.  Now we at least have the stateroom that we wanted. 
😎

[MightyMike]

5 hours ago, txd said:

Is it correct that if you have travel insurance or not, it has the same result. It doesn’t cover non-refundable deposit. So, what is a purpose of buying on?

 

There are lots of reasons to purchase travel insurance other than for cancellation. Medical costs and trip delays are two that I can think of off hand. 

 

I don't think you posted your travel dates, but I suspect cruise lines will take a lot longer than the current cancellations to get back to "normal"--whatever that will be. I have a reservation next spring and personally think the chances are only 50/50 given how unpredictable things have been so far. I'm waiting things out.

[txd]

1 hour ago, MightyMike said:

 

There are lots of reasons to purchase travel insurance other than for cancellation. Medical costs and trip delays are two that I can think of off hand. 

 

I don't think you posted your travel dates, but I suspect cruise lines will take a lot longer than the current cancellations to get back to "normal"--whatever that will be. I have a reservation next spring and personally think the chances are only 50/50 given how unpredictable things have been so far. I'm waiting things out.

MightyMike,

we booked B2B. The first leg is refundable and second non- refundable. My travel dates are in Oc. 2020.

As of today, I don’t see how the cruises can happen, considering that all cruises are stopped thru mid of June- July. The ships are not even in Europe. 

 

 

[MightyMike]

I agree. I don't see any cruises until they have some way to mitigate the risk of just one person coming on board spreading it to the whole ship. We're not there with testing, treatment or vaccine yet. I don't believe we will be there by October.

 

My concern is that Celebrity is not giving 90 days notice of cancelled cruises. My hope would be that they would start giving at least 100-day visibility so that customers aren't obliged to make final payments only to have to wade through refund options just a few weeks later. That would be a customer-friendly thing to do.

Edited April 18, 2020 by MightyMike

[Banjo]

I cancelled my October Apex trans-Atlantic last week and I have not seen anything yet. It's only a week. In the past when I cancelled I see my Celebrity deposit show up on my credit card in a day or two.

[MarLieb]

I stupidly placed an NRD on a December 2020 Summit cruise.  We've done this cruise the same week for the past two years and knew we enjoyed it, so I thought it would be a good idea to just to the NRD and "save" $2,000 over the refundable-deposit price.  This was back in late December 2019 when I had not yet heard the terms "corona virus" and "covid-19".  I'm kicking myself now because if I had done the refundable deposit as I had the past two years, I would have canceled this cruise weeks ago.  My choices are now PIF and praying they cancel so I can get all of my money back, changing sail dates way into 2021 and losing part of my deposit or seeing if the extend an offer for me to transfer 100% of my deposit.  At the end of the day, I really don't want to sail until there is a vaccine, more testing/tracing, or some sort of therapeutic drugs available.  I have a feeling, at the end of the day, we will be out our $1500 deposit.

[acctgtogo]

9 hours ago, 39august said:

My TA questioned the refund amount, but couldn't get X to budge on giving me the full $250 pp in FCC instead of just taking the $100 deposit back and giving us the remaining $150 in FCC. 

We booked a cruise on board with a reduced deposit of $100pp instead of $250pp for three people (refundable).  In January we removed the third person and got upgraded perks but had to agree to a nonrefundable deposit which we did.  We cancelled the cruise mid March and were told that $750 was being put towards FCC as we agreed to a nonrefundable deposit and there were originally three on the reservation.  The rest would be refunded.  Didn't like it but what choice did we have as they had our money?  We did receive some of our refund but are still owed over $500 (they refund in pieces and did confirm that we are still owed over $500).  We have not yet received notification of our FCC.