4 hours of being put on hold to resolve missing $50 referral obc ($25 for each person)

[xiaoqb]

This is the first time I called Princess customer support.  I referred my friend who never sailed Princess via princess website, she received the invitation and accepted the link on 5/4 and created her princess account.  Then we asked our cruise agent to book our 7/20 Emerald Princess cruise on 5/10 (separate cabins and separate booking).  When booking, my agent noticed the $25 referral bonus obc didn't show up in neither of our accounts and told us she would check with her Princess contact.  After two different calls, my agent told me her Princess contact could not help and I will have to contact customer support myself.   I waited two months to see if the credits would appear and they still haven't.  Today I called customer support and I was able to reach to a customer rep in 20 mins. She was very nice but she didn't see any referral history in the system nor our bookings.  She told me she had to consult her manager and the manager asked couple questions mainly to make sure our cruise booking was AFTER my friend accepted the link.   I told them I have emails to prove that my friend booked the cruise AFTER she accepted the link and created the princess account.  After few rounds of back and forth, the rep told me she would have to talk to Promotion team to figure out what's going on and need to put me on a brief hold.  The brief hold turned out to be almost 4 hours.  The rep did come back every 30-45 mins to apologize and to let me know there's a long queue in front of her before she can reach another rep from Promo Team/Dept.  I was given two options - Keep waiting or call back tomorrow.  She did tell me since I called before 4pm CT, my call/issue was supposed to be answered by today so i decided to keep waiting.  However after 4 hours, the rep came back and told me the queue was not moving at all and it's about time for her to get off work.  She will leave the internal chat window open so the Promo team will get to it today.  She left a detailed note for the team and she will email me if the issue is solved by tomorrow morning.  She was very shocked about the long wait and said this is first time for her to experience that.  Well..this is definitely first time for me.  Even airlines offer online chat or call back option so I never had to be put on hold for that long.  About 15 mins ago(4 hours after I hung up the call), I figured I would check my account to see if $25 appears and it did.  Instead of referral bonus, it's listed "Customer Goodwill".  When my coworker referred me 15 yrs ago, I saw the $25 immediately in my account after I accepted and reserved the  booking. I surely didn't anticipate going through such painful wait to get $25 obc this time.   

[Steelers36]

So sad.  The rep should have got your info and called YOU back instead of asking you to call again.

[SiliconCruiser]

Um ... after 4 hours, did you think that they had no intentions of answering your call?

 

[phillipahain]

Spent a total of 10 hours on hold in last 7 days after 3 hours one is automatically cut off 

 

Still no furthur forward in resolving large refundable OBC from Transatlantic 12th March 

 

Is it any wonder people are cancelling future bookings with Princess 

[SiliconCruiser]

Many of these posts here and other social media forums (along with market indicators,) leads me to believe that Carnival Cruise Lines (CCL) may be heading to the road of a company closure even though they are the largest cruise ship company in the world.

 

[caribill]

The "best Internet at sea" is surpassed only by the best customer service on land.

[Lucky TGO]

If I had to wait 4 hrs. on hold I definitely would be changing cruise lines. That’s awful customer service!!

I don’t care what they have for a excuse that is just wrong. 
Tony

[SiliconCruiser]

Overall, having dealt with several companies that were in a similar situation, I would be inclined to guess that Carnival Cruise Lines may be on a downward spiral towards closure.

[cr8tiv1]

Everyone should be talking to Cal.  He said that no one should be on hold for 4 hours and that they were (in the process) of fixing that.  Webinar back in June.  

[Thrak]

2 hours ago, xiaoqb said:

 Today I called customer support and I was able to reach to a customer rep in 20 mins.  The brief hold turned out to be almost 4 hours.  The rep did come back every 30-45 mins to apologize and to let me know there's a long queue in front of her before she can reach another rep from Promo Team/Dept.  I was given two options - Keep waiting or call back tomorrow.    However after 4 hours, the rep came back and told me the queue was not moving at all and it's about time for her to get off work.  She will leave the internal chat window open so the Promo team will get to it today.  She was very shocked about the long wait and said this is first time for her to experience that. (That part is in Yellow because Yellow is very hard to read and I found that agent's statement very hard to swallow.)

 

Sorry, this whole thing just really peeved me. Sorry you had to deal with this.

[phillipahain]

Who is Cal ? 

 

Its all very well but trying to contact Princess USA from the UK is not at all funny 

[dickinson]

@xiaoqb Sorry you went through all that.  Did your friend get the $25 too?

[ontheweb]

5 hours ago, caribill said:

The "best Internet at sea" is surpassed only by the best customer service on land.

But at least they have the Medallion, and it has not problems. 🤦‍♂️

[xiaoqb]

51 minutes ago, dickinson said:

@xiaoqb Sorry you went through all that.  Did your friend get the $25 too?

Yes she did, and I noticed there was No email available for me to file complaint.  I definitely don't want to call back and wait another 4 hours to complain about the whole thing. 

[caribill]

6 hours ago, cr8tiv1 said:

Everyone should be talking to Cal.  He said that no one should be on hold for 4 hours and that they were (in the process) of fixing that.  Webinar back in June.  

 

I think he was referring to the initial contact with a customer service rep, not if you (or the rep) had to talk with another part of the company.

 

The OP said they reached the initial rep in 20 minutes which is a lot less than 4 hours, but still at least 15 minutes too long.

 

But even the rep could not talk to someone else within the company without waiting for hours. That is inexcusable and needs to be corrected ASAP.

 

Also to be noted is that many of the calls to Princess (and thus contributing to long wait times) are the result of other parts of the company not functioning properly. Among these are:

o All the calls to get help with the Medallion App pre-cruise.

o All the calls about where is my FCC that people have been waiting for for months.

o All the calls about screwed up EZAir arrangement.

o All the calls about onboard reservations that the web site is not handling correctly.

 

Fix these (and other) internal SNAFUs and the number of phone calls to Princess would drop to levels that the current staff might be able to handle in a reasonable amount of time and thus eliminate long waits on hold.

 

And Cal also said they were working on an automated call back feature so one would not have to stay on the phone until someone becomes available. That will be a vast improvement, but one still should not have to wait for hours for such a call back.

[billco]

Doesn't surprise me there are long hold times when so many people are willing to be on hold for hours to deal with such menial issues.

[tetleytea]

I've pretty much written off Princess customer service.  Even after the long hold time, the chances of you actually getting anything done beyond the "We apologize for your inconvenience.  I can understand your frustration" lip-service is about 50%.

 

Edited July 8, 2022 by tetleytea

[13cheermom]

So I spent about 3 1/2 hours one time, then another 1 1/2 hours a second time, and finally right at 4 hours on hold to just get a cabin assignment from a changed ship itinerary as well as my husbands FCD $50/OBC reinstated yesterday.  My husband laughed when I added up all the time spent just to accomplish 2 things.  He said I wasn't getting paid enough 😂.  I realize there are a lot of change-ups lately with ships, however Princess is the one making these changes, so it falls on them.  I finally got my issues resolved, but thankfully I work from home and could just leave my cellphone sit on my desk beside me playing that terrible music over and over again.  Not everyone has the time to do that.  Whoever is making these decisions to change these ship assignments needs to be on the receiving end of these customer service calls and have to deal with the aftermath.  I'm done with my rant for now, hope everyone has a great day!