Be Aware of Payments to P&O

[oceanlad]

You would still need to load £2,000.00 to that card for every £1,000.00 that you spent onboard though.

 

Sorry to labour this point but P&O can collect payments for your onboard purchases at point of sale, without creating a duplicate authorisation here. 

 

The problem is that they are putting needless financial barriers in the way of people, which in a cost of living crisis has the potential to be extremely damaging.

Edited April 10 by oceanlad

[Palaceman]

After more than 15 cruises with P&O I have never been charged twice for anything I have purchased. My average daily onboard spend is approx. £60. I always ensure the credit card I use has a nil balance before I board the ship. I check my total onboard spend daily and also the final account before I leave the ship. The final amount spent appears on my next credit card statement and I pay it off in full before the due date. Simple! I've never had funds withheld or financial barriers put in my way. It simply comes down to managing my finances.

[Megabear2]

19 minutes ago, oceanlad said:

You would still need to load £2,000.00 to that card for every £1,000.00 that you spent onboard though.

 

Sorry to labour this point but P&O can collect payments for your onboard purchases at point of sale, without creating a duplicate authorisation here. 

 

The problem is that they are putting needless financial barriers in the way of people, which in a cost of living crisis has the potential to be extremely damaging.

I notice you state you work for a bank so I assume you are fully conversant on the actual rules about holding funds on credit and debit cards.

 

There have been countless threads on this topic over the years here and I for one have searched everywhere I can think of for a copy of the regulations and rules to no avail.  I have found the Visa regulations for the US which were pretty clear that after settlement had been made any pre authorisation should by their regulations be removed in 48 hours.  So my question to you is where can the customer of Visa, Mastercard etc actually find the rules applicable to merchants/banks for UK issued cards?  Unless we can actually see these for ourselves we are pretty much having to accept the batch processing method the cruise lines use as gospel and this is why very few replying to you will accept your position - incidentally as a former lawyer I do!

[crompton21]

32 minutes ago, oceanlad said:

You would still need to load £2,000.00 to that card for every £1,000.00 that you spent onboard though.

 

Sorry to labour this point but P&O can collect payments for your onboard purchases at point of sale, without creating a duplicate authorisation here. 

 

The problem is that they are putting needless financial barriers in the way of people, which in a cost of living crisis has the potential to be extremely damaging.

I understand that you are making a fair and valid point, however I do smile at the irony of discussing spending a thousand pounds on alcohol and food and linking that to a cost of living crisis.

[kalos]

1 minute ago, Palaceman said:

After more than 15 cruises with P&O I have never been charged twice for anything I have purchased. My average daily onboard spend is approx. £60. I always ensure the credit card I use has a nil balance before I board the ship. I check my total onboard spend daily and also the final account before I leave the ship. The final amount spent appears on my next credit card statement and I pay it off in full before the due date. Simple! I've never had funds withheld or financial barriers put in my way. It simply comes down to managing my finances.

 

Exactly ,nor have I been charged twice. Our daily spend is lower than yours and on 

one of our last cruises we had just over £700 OBC and on the last night onboard 

having a meal ,we actually spent £3 .??   of our own money .At no time did P&O

take 1K  to cover that cost .The card balance was £3.?? added .

[Megabear2]

7 minutes ago, Palaceman said:

After more than 15 cruises with P&O I have never been charged twice for anything I have purchased. My average daily onboard spend is approx. £60. I always ensure the credit card I use has a nil balance before I board the ship. I check my total onboard spend daily and also the final account before I leave the ship. The final amount spent appears on my next credit card statement and I pay it off in full before the due date. Simple! I've never had funds withheld or financial barriers put in my way. It simply comes down to managing my finances.

Do you check your credit card account daily alongside checking your P&O account?  Certainly if I check mine the daily amount is withheld from my credit limit every day and shows as a pending amount.  This is Amex.  I have a five figure credit limit and a zero balance at commencement of my cruise so until I had the cruise nightmare with Princess in 2022 I never even thought to look.

[Megabear2]

3 minutes ago, crompton21 said:

I understand that you are making a fair and valid point, however I do smile at the irony of discussing spending a thousand pounds on alcohol and food and linking that to a cost of living crisis.

I recall the very upset MIL who posted she had treated her son in law to a P&O cruise, that he budgeted perfectly within his preset and then found himself overdrawn at the bank for a month because P&O didn't release the hold for 30 days.  She was upset because her treat had turned into a bit of a disaster for him.  Yes, may not be typical but oceanlad is correct that not everyone can have their funds locked for no good reason.

[Palaceman]

7 minutes ago, Megabear2 said:

Do you check your credit card account daily alongside checking your P&O account?  Certainly if I check mine the daily amount is withheld from my credit limit every day and shows as a pending amount.  This is Amex.  I have a five figure credit limit and a zero balance at commencement of my cruise so until I had the cruise nightmare with Princess in 2022 I never even thought to look.

I too have a 5 figure credit card limit. Before I start spending on board I know my credit card balance is nil and therefore anything I spend on board will be the balance on my credit card. I am not able to check card balance whilst onboard as never do online banking away from home. 

[Megabear2]

3 minutes ago, Palaceman said:

I too have a 5 figure credit card limit. Before I start spending on board I know my credit card balance is nil and therefore anything I spend on board will be the balance on my credit card. I am not able to check card balance whilst onboard as never do online banking away from home. 

The point oceanlad is making is that the cruise line will be holding your £60 or whatever daily spend and placing a pending charge.  Unless you are actively looking to see you aren't going to know or bother about it because you have no need, particularly with a high limit.  The amount of available credit is reduced daily and when you receive your statement you just see what you expect.

 

In my case Princess took nearly £4,000 from my credit card to hold for my aunt's onboard medical bill which was not my liability and I was unaware of until 48 hours later I flew back to Italy and was required to start paying hospital costs to facilitate my aunt's treatment.

 

It took a huge fight of over 18 months to sort all that so I now check every day my credit and debit card pending transactions.  Unfortunately the five figure limit doesn't go far in a major health situation these days.

[zap99]

4 hours ago, Harryjacobs said:

145 years....blimey, I bet you are in a special loyalty tier for that!

Serpentine. 🤣

[zap99]

1 hour ago, kalos said:

 

Same here Josy and we even have a Fair FX card that we use for when we are 

off the ship or on other holidays abroad .

We only have one cc each. We use it abroad .if I buy a couple of coffees, we may pay cash, or with a card. If it costs an extra 1%, we it's not like we spend a fortune on it. If there's a hold on P&O's bill I have never noticed. A few years ago I phoned the card Company to tell them we were going on a cruise and would be visiting several companies, they didn't have my correct phone number  so updated it. Next month I got a text. This month you have earned £7.32 on your cash back credit card. I didn't know I had one, so I recon any foreign transaction charges get offset. Lots of important stuff to worry about, so an extra 27p on 2 coffees gets pretty much ignored.

[waddle]

There is a difference between the ‘available balance’ and ‘actual balance’, the former including any pre authorisation which depending on the merchant/card scheme can last for 30 days

 

Best practice with a credit card is to have enough headway/limit to cover 2 x monthly spend, particularly if you intend to use the card shortly after leaving a cruise

 

Similarly if a debit card is used which is linked to a bank balance, that account needs sufficient balance/overdraft limit to cover any expenditure once back onshore

 

In my experience cruise companies usually clear the pre authorisation with 5-7 days 

[david63]

Isn't the situation with cruise ships (or at least with Carnival brands) somewhat unique in that they pre-authorise on a daily basis and collect payment several days later whereas other merchants pre-authorise a single transaction?

 

I have no idea how the banking system works nor do I have any idea how Carnival's accounting system works but knowing what I do about computer systems I would hazard a guess that the problem that Carnival have is with matching a number of pre-authorisations with the final payment which is compounded when payment is taken after segments of longer cruises or that pre-authorisations may not always reflect the correct amount.

[Palaceman]

57 minutes ago, Megabear2 said:

The point oceanlad is making is that the cruise line will be holding your £60 or whatever daily spend and placing a pending charge.  Unless you are actively looking to see you aren't going to know or bother about it because you have no need, particularly with a high limit.  The amount of available credit is reduced daily and when you receive your statement you just see what you expect.

 

In my case Princess took nearly £4,000 from my credit card to hold for my aunt's onboard medical bill which was not my liability and I was unaware of until 48 hours later I flew back to Italy and was required to start paying hospital costs to facilitate my aunt's treatment.

 

It took a huge fight of over 18 months to sort all that so I now check every day my credit and debit card pending transactions.  Unfortunately the five figure limit doesn't go far in a major health situation these days.

What happened to you with Princess was very unfortunate and I fully understand the stress that caused you. And I agree that I have no need to worry about my balance at any given time. As I said before it us all about how you manage your finances

[Megabear2]

4 minutes ago, Palaceman said:

As I said before it us all about how you manage your finances

Whilst that is true for those of us lucky to not have to worry too much it is becoming rather more obvious from posts on these boards across all the lines that many newer cruisers do not understand the way it works.  Also P&O in particular are trying to bring younger people onboard using tempting low cost deals and these people may not have access to long lines of credit but rely on the money they've saved in their current account covering their expenditure. Cruising is no longer the preserve of the more affluent of society but a mainstream holiday.  A lot of these people only holiday on a pay as you go basis, running an account isn't something they do often.

 

It remains that a lot of these people do budget, set an amount they can afford and then find despite doing all this they fall foul.  The issue we have isn't people being profligate and over spending more the way the system works being unclear and making their budget worthless.  

 

I objected to being forced by Barclays many many years ago to have a Barclaycard when they issued them as support for cheques rather than debit cards.  

[majortom10]

Always use a credit card for all cruise lines we have cruised on and never had an issue. Would never register a debit card. The only issue we have ever had is with Princess we paid balance for a cruise and then a fortnight later took it again. Luckily we were still in the limits of our credit card and was quickly refunded and as a sorry Princess gave us a free drinks package for the cruise. P&O had same issue and offered some £50 OBC as compensation. We met one couple on our cruise and we mentioned the double payment and the free drinks package as compo and they said the same thing happened to them but the didn't get a free drinks package. Oops!!!

 

[cruising.mark.uk]

27 minutes ago, Megabear2 said:

Whilst that is true for those of us lucky to not have to worry too much it is becoming rather more obvious from posts on these boards across all the lines that many newer cruisers do not understand the way it works.  Also P&O in particular are trying to bring younger people onboard using tempting low cost deals and these people may not have access to long lines of credit but rely on the money they've saved in their current account covering their expenditure. Cruising is no longer the preserve of the more affluent of society but a mainstream holiday.  A lot of these people only holiday on a pay as you go basis, running an account isn't something they do often.

 

It remains that a lot of these people do budget, set an amount they can afford and then find despite doing all this they fall foul.  The issue we have isn't people being profligate and over spending more the way the system works being unclear and making their budget worthless.  

 

I objected to being forced by Barclays many many years ago to have a Barclaycard when they issued them as support for cheques rather than debit cards.  

I have to call you out on the completely unevidenced generalisations in this post.  The implication of what you post is that people who are not 'affluent' can't run a bank account and either can't read or are less intelligent than people who are affluent because they can't understand how pre-authorisation of charges on cards work and they don't know that cruise lines do that (despite it being in their passenger contracts).  

Unless you class everyone who posts on here as 'affluent', I hope no-one feels insulted or condescended to by those generalisations.  I guess, with hindsight, you might have given more thought to what you were writing than you did.

[oceanlad]

16 minutes ago, cruising.mark.uk said:

I have to call you out on the completely unevidenced generalisations in this post.  The implication of what you post is that people who are not 'affluent' can't run a bank account and either can't read or are less intelligent than people who are affluent because they can't understand how pre-authorisation of charges on cards work and they don't know that cruise lines do that (despite it being in their passenger contracts).  

Unless you class everyone who posts on here as 'affluent', I hope no-one feels insulted or condescended to by those generalisations.  I guess, with hindsight, you might have given more thought to what you were writing than you did.

 

Personally I think the responses to the tune of 'budget better', 'credit cards', and 'well I've never had a problem' are more offensive. As Megabear noted, the cruise providers are not clear about the practice even if it is buried in their terms and conditions somewhere, which leads to people who do budget having issues. Also, as I've repeatedly noted, one pre-authorisation is fine, two is the issue.

 

A family with £1000.00 could budget £500.00 on a ship with £500.00 when they get home for bills, groceries, only to find P&O have pre-authorised it for no good reason. It's not a big problem for me personally but I find it an appalling practice and it's simply not acceptable or reasonable.

 

 

@Megabear2 I'll see if I can find anything although I obviously won't be able to share any internal documents.

 

Just to clarify the banks do set the length of the withholding internally. For instance, I have worked at organisations which set the withheld balance at 5 working days. Others will set it longer. This is down to the banks risk appetite, as the merchant can redeem an approved payment from an account for 6 months regardless of whether the funds are present. So this could send an account overdrawn if the bank removes the withholding early, and the customer then spends the funds, which is why some hold for upto 30 days. 

 

This would of course not matter if P&O just collected the payments daily, as they can. Instead of completing full authorisation twice, which is apparently unique to the cruise industry.

 

Perhaps some people are just enjoying talking publicly about how this would never impact them rather than actually engaging with the issue in good faith though...

Edited April 10 by oceanlad

[david63]

13 minutes ago, oceanlad said:

This would of course not matter if P&O just collected the payments daily

Which would have the affect on a credit balance as a pre-authorisation so I would agree not a problem for the passenger - unless, of course, there was an error and then the possibility of a refund which can take longer to appear on the card.

 

The other side of doing that would, if my understanding is correct, mean that the cruise line would be processing many more charges to credit/debit cards which in themselves would incur more charges to Carnival.

[waddle]

2 minutes ago, david63 said:

The other side of doing that would, if my understanding is correct, mean that the cruise line would be processing many more charges to credit/debit cards which in themselves would incur more charges to Carnival.

Good point

 

If you consider a World Cruise with different time zones, international passengers with cards issued in different currencies, I suspect from a processing/accounting perspective bulking up transactions at the end of a cruise is much more cost and time efficient for the cruise line

[terrierjohn]

41 minutes ago, cruising.mark.uk said:

I have to call you out on the completely unevidenced generalisations in this post.  The implication of what you post is that people who are not 'affluent' can't run a bank account and either can't read or are less intelligent than people who are affluent because they can't understand how pre-authorisation of charges on cards work and they don't know that cruise lines do that (despite it being in their passenger contracts).  

Unless you class everyone who posts on here as 'affluent', I hope no-one feels insulted or condescended to by those generalisations.  I guess, with hindsight, you might have given more thought to what you were writing than you did.

That's a rather unnecessary post, my reading of MBs post was that newer cruises will possibly be unaware of the way that cruise lines place these holds, and the difference this can have when using a  debit card or a credit card, and since the newer cruisers are likely to be younger families then they are more likely to need to budget carefully with holiday spending money.

[happy v]

54 minutes ago, cruising.mark.uk said:

I have to call you out on the completely unevidenced generalisations in this post.  The implication of what you post is that people who are not 'affluent' can't run a bank account and either can't read or are less intelligent than people who are affluent because they can't understand how pre-authorisation of charges on cards work and they don't know that cruise lines do that (despite it being in their passenger contracts).  

Unless you class everyone who posts on here as 'affluent', I hope no-one feels insulted or condescended to by those generalisations.  I guess, with hindsight, you might have given more thought to what you were writing than you did.

I don't think that's fair either 

I think it came across as explaining how some people could have problems with the system 

[Bazrat]

The best thing any cruise line should do is refuse to accept debit cards at point of booking, if the person still insists on using one they must accept the consequences, before people say some people cannot get credit cards, there are multiple companies that supply them to those with poor credit issues, and I know the interest rate is higher but you would not be using it for general expenses.

 

[david63]

8 minutes ago, Bazrat said:

The best thing any cruise line should do is refuse to accept debit cards

The best thing that cruise could do would be to go all inclusive then the daily charge goes away - other things such as spa would then be charged at point of sale.

[zap99]

1 hour ago, cruising.mark.uk said:

I have to call you out on the completely unevidenced generalisations in this post.  The implication of what you post is that people who are not 'affluent' can't run a bank account and either can't read or are less intelligent than people who are affluent because they can't understand how pre-authorisation of charges on cards work and they don't know that cruise lines do that (despite it being in their passenger contracts).  

Unless you class everyone who posts on here as 'affluent', I hope no-one feels insulted or condescended to by those generalisations.  I guess, with hindsight, you might have given more thought to what you were writing than you did.

I'm still worried about Vegans driving poor little piggies to near extinction.