My Issue with Princess

[AF-1]

19 minutes ago, 2Long2NxtCrz said:

As I'm new to Princess, I'm trying to get up to speed on "how things are done here" and I've already had a few minor issues that I'm trying to shrug off. First was when they booted us out of our larger balcony cabin, D425 on Discovery Princess, and I'm still not clear on the reasoning? COVID? Our cruise is on October 29th?

 

And then I wanted to start looking at excursions and what is available and now our cruise is no longer attached to my Princess ID. I know I'm not imagining that it was before. I have sent an email asking for that to get fixed, but I might have to get my TA involved.

 

And then I noticed that all of the included benefits are "gifts from my TA". I didn't really think about that until reading this. No. My TA gave me OBC that I know will show up on my shipboard account the first or second day of the cruise as it has done on all the other cruises I've been on. The rest should already be there. Or they are with Royal and Celebrity. I have always used the included-in-the-fare OBC to pre-book dining or excursions or whatever.

 

So I get the frustration and I very much appreciate the OPs dedication. My husband is as dogged so he's the one I make deal with insurance companies, etc. I, like most people, get worn down and give up. Which is what the companies want. If we all accept $10 here, $5 there, $100 here, they make massive amounts of profit just by not providing the service we pay for.

 

And not to start a rant, but I'm sure most of the people on this board remember when ATMs first became a thing. They were free because it saved banks a load of tellers. Remember that? And then they laid off tellers and started charging for the privilege of using the ATM. Customer service stinks in every company and every industry because companies refuse to hire enough people to provide decent service. That's the first issue and that's the one that causes people to be on hold for hours, which should be utterly unacceptable. The second is that those poor front line CSRs are never given the ability to actually help the customer. Even in this case, wouldn't having the ability of giving out additional OBC be a good customer relations move?

 

I don't know about anyone else, but I am very, very tired of having to fight every single company just to have them do the job we paid them to do. /rant

It's not just the cruise lines cutting back.  Hotels no longer clean rooms if you stay two or three days.  They will bring towels.  So you are paying for this service and it's not being delivered.  This is the new way of taking vacations

[ChutChut]

On 3/23/2022 at 6:50 PM, Bruin Steve said:

My friends,

So many of you miss the point.  It is NOT the $58.  It is the way that Princess handles its Customer Relations.  It is the operation of the Medallion App.  They have some major issues.  They don't handle it well.  It could be me and $58 this time...It could be YOU and $10,000 next time.  But, really, it is tens of thousands of customers...

 

...and, unfortunately, there are a lot of you who just "let it go"...

 

Letting it go allows them to continue to have poorly trained phone representatives...It allows them to say anything in order to expediently turn away problems...It allows them to LIE.

 

So, why am I so "obsessive" over this?  Because I am trying to help EVERYONE here...even if it costs me way too much time...and there is very little I can get out of this in the end.

 

I would like Princess to be a BETTER cruise line.  I want them to solve their problems and provide better service to all of us.  Because I plan to cruise a whole lot more and I'd like to minimize these unfortunate issues in the future.  And I'd like all of YOU not to run into these issues on a regular basis.  I want to get through on phone lines that aren't jammed with people who can't get their app to work.  I want to book cruises, handle the easy details, pack and go...

 

Princess CAN do better...but only if their customers demand better.

Completely understand where you're coming from. It's not about the money, it's about the horrible customer service. I hate it when a purported manager, etc. says, "I promise to call you back today with some information/answer/guess, etc.," and then doesn't call. This happened to me with a well-known retailer of cookware, home furnishings, appliances,, etc. I stayed on then until they fixed the issue, apologized for the lack of follow up, and made me happy with gift cards (I didn't ask for these). It's all about how a company recovers from an issue. That's what separates good companies from not-so-good companies. 

[2Long2NxtCrz]

1 hour ago, AF-1 said:

It's not just the cruise lines cutting back.  Hotels no longer clean rooms if you stay two or three days.  They will bring towels.  So you are paying for this service and it's not being delivered.  This is the new way of taking vacations

Oh! I forgot about that!

 

I mean, I'm actually okay with them not doing a full cleaning, though I do like clean towels and more soap and my trash emptied. I can toss the comforter over the pillows to "make" the bed. That's not important to me. It's just aggravating that the amount we pay for the hotel room did not decrease one red cent, yet we get less for the same money.

 

Again, it's about having fewer employees. Companies hire fewer people to do the same work and the experience for everyone suffers.