POM cancellations - share your experiences here - ours was awful

[Dvrgrl38]

I wanted to share our unbelievable experience with NCL and their “Peace of Mind Credit”.  To summarize, it is fairly impossible to use.  
We had to cancel our cruise that was due to leave on Jan 23, 2022 due to one of our party testing positive for Covid (though asymptomatic).   
Here are the loopholes with using the Credit given from the “Peace of Mind” Policy.

 

1) The credit is divided up amongst the passengers based upon the deal when you booked.  Since the deals are changed, the payments for a new cruise would be different for each person than the credits given.

 

2) you cannot transfer a partial amount of the credit.  Only all. So my daughter has a 500 credit, but her cost if booked on a new ship is $300.  We lose that $200.  
 

3) Credit cannot be used for on board credit, meal packages etc, only fare, taxes, gratuity, some pre-purchased excursions.  That is it.

 

4) You can’t have them book airfare (to use some of that credit) unless you want to sail 90 days or more out, putting us in a completely different season in which our family is unable to take time off.

 

5) It takes up to 14 business days to get the credit.  So you cannot use it to rebook for about 3 weeks.

 

6) ncl will not do a courtesy hold on a trip while you wait for that credit to come, they will do one for 2 days over and over again, so that holds the room, but not the price if it changes after two days.

 

So now we are stuck.  We are only able to cruise until the third week of March, but the FCC expires by Dec 2022.  We cannot book for another 2 weeks because the fcc will not be deposited until then, so we cannot buy airfare until then.  By then, air far will be triple.  
 

This has been an eye opening experience and we are going to cancel all you’re bookings we had scheduled and let everyone know how awful our experience has been.

 

All we are asking is a courtesy hold for 2 weeks until our fcc comes in so we can book flights now.  Since our cruise we want to book is in early March, we can’t just out done an deposit to hold it, the full amount would be due.  
 

[Funky Fusion FoodsJ]

You are unfortunately one of those that the program just doesn't work.  Your best option is to find someone to sell your FFC's to and transfer them.  Another would be to hold on to them for a little while in order to see if there is as an extension to the 12/31/2022 sail-by date for these FCC's. 

 

Unfortunately no program is perfect and doesn't work for everyone, but if they make exceptions for one, where do they draw the line?

[kuku77254]

On your #2 point, if you are all staying in the same cabin, you can add it all up and apply to the cabin. So, each person doesn't pay for their own, if one has more FCC it can go to the whole. Hopefully, they say two weeks but credit it faster.

[Krazy Kat]

OP - you ask in your title for other experiences with Peace of Mind.  Unlike your experience, mine worked out very well.

 

1.  I was booked on two cruises (B2B) with an embarkation of Jan 9 and Jan 16 of 2022.  Because the omicron situation was flaring up, I decided to cancel 48 hours in advance using POM.

2.  I received FCC for each cruise (exact to the penny) 7 days (5 business days) later.

3.  Within 2 days I rebooked my first cruise to the Mexican Riviera for the end of February, and booked Alaska in April.  

4.  My two original cruises were balconies, but I rebooked in OV planning/hoping to upgrade to balconies at less than the cost there were selling at booking.

5.  I rebooked before January 18th and retained all FAS with no changes.

6.  I still have left over FCC to cover any upgrade or additional excursions.

 

The experience was quick, easy, and guest services were trained to handle my requests efficiently.  No complaints.

[bigrednole]

There is a POM FCC to cash refund going on right now. You have to submit for it. I would do that as quickly as possible. As for FCC expiring, they get to make that decision unfortunately. Their house, their rules. The FCCs have always been divided by passenger regardless of who paid for it. There is suppose to be a form that allows you to transfer the FCC. I am not sure FCC can be used for room upgrades. Someone else needs to chime in on that one. The other rule is you have to "book" a cruise by the end of the year, not take it by the end of the year. At the end of the day, they are being very lenient on the FCC. They could switch to the normal cancelation policies because it is no fault of theirs that you cannot cruise. I think you need to reassess the overall situation, be thankful you got the FCC as is, and figure out what you can do with it on your schedule. If the FCC the other cruise only uses $300 of the FCC, think of it as +$200 vs the cancelation rules. I would just find a way to use all of it the best you can. Then, what ever isn't forget about it. Not worth worrying about.

[CarolinaMamma]

Did you have travel insurance? If so, it probably covers needing to cancel because someone in your party was sick. You’ll just need a letter from their doctor saying they couldn’t travel. That may be a better deal than taking the FCC. Think about it. Even in pre-Covid times, someone in your party could have gotten the flu, you’d have had to cancel, and the cruise line would not have given you an FCC. 

[Cruise Gopher]

4 hours ago, bigrednole said:

There is a POM FCC to cash refund going on right now. You have to submit for it. I would do that as quickly as possible. As for FCC expiring, they get to make that decision unfortunately. Their house, their rules. The FCCs have always been divided by passenger regardless of who paid for it. There is suppose to be a form that allows you to transfer the FCC. I am not sure FCC can be used for room upgrades. Someone else needs to chime in on that one. The other rule is you have to "book" a cruise by the end of the year, not take it by the end of the year. At the end of the day, they are being very lenient on the FCC. They could switch to the normal cancelation policies because it is no fault of theirs that you cannot cruise. I think you need to reassess the overall situation, be thankful you got the FCC as is, and figure out what you can do with it on your schedule. If the FCC the other cruise only uses $300 of the FCC, think of it as +$200 vs the cancelation rules. I would just find a way to use all of it the best you can. Then, what ever isn't forget about it. Not worth worrying about.

You cannot convert POM FCC to a refund, unless you did a POM and then NCL subsequently canceled the sailing you were going to be on. 

[vadersprincess12]

We are dealing with a cruise that was scheduled in 2019 for March 2020!  I had to initially cancel and reschedule because I had been hospitalized and was in recovery.  No problem there.

 

When Covid hit, NCL canceled and said we could only get a FCC but they did give us a 25% FCC in addition ~ great!  But when I went to reschedule suddenly the costs changed and it was going to cost MORE out of pocket 🙄. 

 

Then NCL canceled again saying they were moving ships around.  Rescheduled again ~ MORE out of pocket!!!!  Very frustrating.

 

We were supposed to sail January 2 but I called to cancel on Dec. 30 due to the Omicron variant hitting so hard and I am high risk.  I was told (and I have notes) by the NCL agent that we would be eligible for a refund since NCL canceled us twice and she even sent me the form.  I was also told that the credits would be in my account in two weeks.  At this point, it had been such a mess with the constant cancellations and rescheduling I was going to do just that and cancel.

 

Then my husband said maybe just go ahead and schedule a cruise this fall to Canada/New England so we wouldn't be losing anything.  I have been checking our accounts for the credits for days and days and nothing is showing.  Again, I was ready to just request a refund because I'm getting so frustrated with the runaround.  I called two days ago and then that NCL agent says that currently the POM policy won't allow a refund!!!

 

The story keeps changing.  When the credits get posted I will schedule the Canada/New England sailing but after that I will NEVER sail with NCL again.

 

I get that Covid has caused a lot of issues and frustration for everyone, but the fact that they keep changing their policies just sucks.

[MadeInDetroit]

We had a pretty smooth and successful experience. Called my PCC on 1/18 to do a POM cancel for our 1/29 cruise. At the same time, put a new booking on hold for the same cruise for 4/2. Received a cancellation confirmation email from NCL two days later, on 1/20. (PCC extended our hold once, to 1/26.) Five days later, on 1/25, received our FCC confirmations from NCL in the correct amounts. Called our PCC, who applied the coupons to our held cruise and made it active. So, one calendar week from cancellation to new paid-up cruise. Quite pleased. Of course, we were a simple case, just 2 pax in one room. 

[ChiefMateJRK]

15 hours ago, vadersprincess12 said:

When the credits get posted I will schedule the Canada/New England sailing but after that I will NEVER sail with NCL again.

Can't you book it and pay a refundable deposit now, and then apply the FCC when it is available in your account?

[Dvrgrl38]

23 hours ago, kuku77254 said:

On your #2 point, if you are all staying in the same cabin, you can add it all up and apply to the cabin. So, each person doesn't pay for their own, if one has more FCC it can go to the whole. Hopefully, they say two weeks but credit it faster.

This is incorrect.  We are all staying in the same cabin.  The credit is divided up amongst the 4 of us and cannot be used for the whole.  It is attached to each guest within the cabin based upon the deal when we booked (buy one guest another dials free vs but 1 the other is 70% off now).  We can transfer full credit to eachother but it can only be used by the one with the credit.  No transferring of partial credits.  This is one of the most frustrating parts.  

[Dvrgrl38]

On 1/26/2022 at 10:11 AM, Funky Fusion FoodsJ said:

You are unfortunately one of those that the program just doesn't work.  Your best option is to find someone to sell your FFC's to and transfer them.  Another would be to hold on to them for a little while in order to see if there is as an extension to the 12/31/2022 sail-by date for these FCC's. 

 

Unfortunately no program is perfect and doesn't work for everyone, but if they make exceptions for one, where do they draw the line?

I’m not asking for an exception, I’m just letting people know how restrictive using the credits is.  This will work fine if there are just one or two people cruising with wide open schedules, but not for anyone else.  
All we would like that could be considered an exception would be a 2 week max hold on an upcoming cruise until the credits come in.  IMO this is a simple customer service courtesy.  The ships are not sold out, by any means.  The fact that they can’t even do this has made us cancel all future bookings and we will try another company in the future.  Customer service goes a long way.

[Dvrgrl38]

21 hours ago, bigrednole said:

There is a POM FCC to cash refund going on right now. You have to submit for it. I would do that as quickly as possible. As for FCC expiring, they get to make that decision unfortunately. Their house, their rules. The FCCs have always been divided by passenger regardless of who paid for it. There is suppose to be a form that allows you to transfer the FCC. I am not sure FCC can be used for room upgrades. Someone else needs to chime in on that one. The other rule is you have to "book" a cruise by the end of the year, not take it by the end of the year. At the end of the day, they are being very lenient on the FCC. They could switch to the normal cancelation policies because it is no fault of theirs that you cannot cruise. I think you need to reassess the overall situation, be thankful you got the FCC as is, and figure out what you can do with it on your schedule. If the FCC the other cruise only uses $300 of the FCC, think of it as +$200 vs the cancelation rules. I would just find a way to use all of it the best you can. Then, what ever isn't forget about it. Not worth worrying about.

Unfortunately you are wrong on several points. There is not a POM to refund form, that is only applicable to the cruises that were cancelled by Norwegian.  I have read the fine print.

 

Additionally, the cruise DOES have to sail before Jan 1, 2023, not be booked.  We have another cruise scheduled for Jan 28ish 2023 and we cannot use the FCC on it.  

[Dvrgrl38]

17 hours ago, CarolinaMamma said:

Did you have travel insurance? If so, it probably covers needing to cancel because someone in your party was sick. You’ll just need a letter from their doctor saying they couldn’t travel. That may be a better deal than taking the FCC. Think about it. Even in pre-Covid times, someone in your party could have gotten the flu, you’d have had to cancel, and the cruise line would not have given you an FCC. 

We have travel insurance from the credit card we used to purchase the cruise.  We will get a refund for the credit that expires without being used, but not until it expires at the new year.  
I didn’t put this information in the original post because though we are lucky to have this from this credit card I don’t think most people will have this option.  And waiting a year to get the refund makes it hard for most people to be able to afford an alternate vacation that year.  
just to be clear, we are very thankful that we will have this option after the year is over, but that is attributed to our good chase sapphire credit card, not Norwegians policies.

[Dvrgrl38]

To be clear, I am happy to have fcc.  I am not happy that we can’t use them to sail for a cruise in the same season (whether this season or 1 year from now).  There is $1000ish credit that was used to book airfare, it can’t be used to book less than 90 days out.  So if we want to sail in the next 90 days we are out that money (or find another way to use them on the ship) and use our own to book flights.  
So we found flights that will make it about $1000 so we can sail in early March, will use the credit on the room, but the rooms on the cruise we can get flights to costs half as much.  
ok, we will use it for on board credit or meals, oh wait, can’t do that either.  
Also, we have a transferred cruise first credit, oh wait, it can’t be used to book a cruise less than 120 days out…

not to mention we get credit on gratuity and port fees, though we never used services or visited ports.

There isn’t much Peace of Mind in using this program.  It may work fine for you if you have 2 or less passengers and like to/are able to cruise all year round.  

Edited January 27, 2022 by Dvrgrl38

[Spannymammy]

I booked through a TA and although the constant cancellations have been a nightmare my OH and 14yr old granddaughter are looking forward to the trip. We also sail on the Epic, a European Cruise in July. Fcc and balance paid. I'm sailing with my sister in April

 Epic again , a totally new booking. Admittedly it has been stressful but I feel for the TA must have been loads of clients in the same boat excuse the pun. Just hoping there are some teens on board for granddaughter. She lost her mum my daughter 2 yrs ago and her Dad to Covid 2 months ago.  Want her to have some kids her own age. It's her first Cruise been trying to go since she was 11 yrs old 😢 we so need this vacation.  😍 

 

 

[kuku77254]

1 hour ago, Dvrgrl38 said:

This is incorrect.  We are all staying in the same cabin.  The credit is divided up amongst the 4 of us and cannot be used for the whole.  It is attached to each guest within the cabin based upon the deal when we booked (buy one guest another dials free vs but 1 the other is 70% off now).  We can transfer full credit to eachother but it can only be used by the one with the credit.  No transferring of partial credits.  This is one of the most frustrating parts.  

I booked a cabin. I had a lot of FCC, more than I needed to cover my fare. My son had FCC but not enough to cover his fare. Since it was for the same cabin, my extra FCC covered the his the rest of his fare. There was no transfer of the FCC, it was just applied immediately and my leftover FCC remained in my account. 

[Dvrgrl38]

44 minutes ago, kuku77254 said:

I booked a cabin. I had a lot of FCC, more than I needed to cover my fare. My son had FCC but not enough to cover his fare. Since it was for the same cabin, my extra FCC covered the his the rest of his fare. There was no transfer of the FCC, it was just applied immediately and my leftover FCC remained in my account. 

I will be shocked if this happens for us, though I hope you are right!  Our NCL made a point to tell us that we can’t apply credit to purchase fare for other guests staying in our he same cabin as us.  I don’t understand the difference, but I will know as soon as the credit comes to our account.

[wampuscat7]

3 hours ago, kuku77254 said:

I booked a cabin. I had a lot of FCC, more than I needed to cover my fare. My son had FCC but not enough to cover his fare. Since it was for the same cabin, my extra FCC covered the his the rest of his fare. There was no transfer of the FCC, it was just applied immediately and my leftover FCC remained in my account. 

This is what I did as well. (Though my FCC was not from POM.) Once booked, I just made payments on line in the amount of the total FCC. It was fine.

[leithbones]

On 1/26/2022 at 3:26 PM, bigrednole said:

 The other rule is you have to "book" a cruise by the end of the year, not take it by the end of the year. At the end of the day, they are being very lenient on the FCC. 

How long do I have to redeem my POM future cruise credit (FCC)?

POM FCCs must be redeemed by December 31, 2022, for sailings departing on or before December 31, 2022.

[vadersprincess12]

On 1/27/2022 at 12:45 PM, ChiefMateJRK said:

Can't you book it and pay a refundable deposit now, and then apply the FCC when it is available in your account?

That's just money out of our pocket that's not needed.  If they would just put back what we are owed in our account, it would cover everything.  I'm not giving NCL another dollar out of pocket.

[ChiefMateJRK]

3 hours ago, vadersprincess12 said:

That's just money out of our pocket that's not needed.  If they would just put back what we are owed in our account, it would cover everything.  I'm not giving NCL another dollar out of pocket.

Aren't we just talking about $250 fully refundable???

[DwayneG]

We found that POM worked fine for us.  We had to cancel our Jan 16 because we got Covid.  We immediately rebooked for late April, had to pay the new deposit out-of-pocket because we wanted to insure that we got a specific cabin.  The discounts we had earned for previous cruises that were cancelled showed up in our account in a day or so and we had our PCC apply those, reducing the new cruise by a bunch.  Our shorex was refunded to our credit card, also in a couple days.  Then in about 9 days the FCC for our POM showed up. Total matched what we expected and was allocated per guest, but since the same folks are on the new cruise we had no problem just applying the FCC for passengers 1 and 2 across all 4 of us for the new cruise, paying fare, taxes and DSC and since we had some extra we upgraded WiFi.  Our PCC helped and it was a breeze.  We still have FCC for passengers 3 and 4, which we'll transfer to the wife and I for another future cruise.

Overall we're pretty pleased with the whole process, though YMMV.

[mertziek]

On 1/26/2022 at 8:02 PM, vadersprincess12 said:

We are dealing with a cruise that was scheduled in 2019 for March 2020!  I had to initially cancel and reschedule because I had been hospitalized and was in recovery.  No problem there.

 

When Covid hit, NCL canceled and said we could only get a FCC but they did give us a 25% FCC in addition ~ great!  But when I went to reschedule suddenly the costs changed and it was going to cost MORE out of pocket 🙄. 

 

Then NCL canceled again saying they were moving ships around.  Rescheduled again ~ MORE out of pocket!!!!  Very frustrating.

 

We were supposed to sail January 2 but I called to cancel on Dec. 30 due to the Omicron variant hitting so hard and I am high risk.  I was told (and I have notes) by the NCL agent that we would be eligible for a refund since NCL canceled us twice and she even sent me the form.  I was also told that the credits would be in my account in two weeks.  At this point, it had been such a mess with the constant cancellations and rescheduling I was going to do just that and cancel.

 

Then my husband said maybe just go ahead and schedule a cruise this fall to Canada/New England so we wouldn't be losing anything.  I have been checking our accounts for the credits for days and days and nothing is showing.  Again, I was ready to just request a refund because I'm getting so frustrated with the runaround.  I called two days ago and then that NCL agent says that currently the POM policy won't allow a refund!!!

 

The story keeps changing.  When the credits get posted I will schedule the Canada/New England sailing but after that I will NEVER sail with NCL again.

 

I get that Covid has caused a lot of issues and frustration for everyone, but the fact that they keep changing their policies just sucks.

Too hard to decipher this type face and color.

[Ryesguy]

We are not having a good experience with POM credits. My family of 5 was booked on the Escape for the 1/8/22 cruise and cancelled using POM. My mother was separately on the same cruise. We all cancelled on January 4. My mother got her POM credits 2 weeks ago. We all want to re-book using our POM credits for a March cruise on the Getaway. We also have a 10% discount that expires 1/31 (Monday). Our credit has not yet shown up. It has been nearly 4 weeks since we cancelled. We are now afraid that we will not get credits before we have to book on Monday to take advantage of the 10% off (we do not want to put down more cash because we have enough credits to pay for the cruise).  We have called NCL (always a different person) multiple times and explained the situation and urgency of now getting the credits, but have gotten the true run-around. Everyone (usually nice and an apparent smile) says that NCL is busy and working on it and the credits should be in our account in the next few days. Then those next few days pass. Calling the main line is obviously not the answer here. Any suggestions on how to deal with this?