Be Aware of Payments to P&O

[Megabear2]

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.

Back when I first stated I wanted to go on a cruise - on a school trip to Southampton in 1968 - I was laughed at all the way home.  I was told in no uncertain terms that cruising was not for someone like me from an Essex council estate but was for the affluent and this is what I refer to not that anyone posting here is affluent or not.  I do however feel that every time this topic opens up very few sympathise with the poor individual who finds themselves caught out and simply offer that's the way it is as the answer and I make no apologies for saying so.

 

Back when I first asked for help on understanding some points in 2013 when I first signed up to CC I felt very unwelcome and intimidated albeit not on this particular forum but that of another line.  I have never forgotten this and therefore try to offer sympathy and help to newer people asking what may seem questions they should know the answer to but didn't think to consider before leaping in. And no I am not suggesting they can't run a bank account or are less intelligent.  I'm suggesting that in some cases they didn't understand or expect a big corporation to effectively block off chunks of their money when they have already paid their bill as in every day life very few circumstances arise where that happens.  Ironically reading the few posts from those caught, they are often the most sensible who set themselves a budget for their spend.

 

Back in 2022 when this thread opened this issue was a hot potato with quite a few people posting about it.  It remains so apparently so if it's all so clear cut and obvious the message is clearly not getting through to everyone.

 

 

 

 

[Megabear2]

4 hours ago, zap99 said:

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

Extinction? Unfortunately a lot of naive people think that Daisy, Piglet and Babe will live happily in the wild and enjoy boundless days in the uplands munching on grass and happily proliferating for years to come ...

[yorkshirephil]

4 minutes ago, Megabear2 said:

Extinction? Unfortunately a lot of naive people think that Daisy, Piglet and Babe will live happily in the wild and enjoy boundless days in the uplands munching on grass and happily proliferating for years to come ...

[zap99]

16 minutes ago, Megabear2 said:

Extinction? Unfortunately a lot of naive people think that Daisy, Piglet and Babe will live happily in the wild and enjoy boundless days in the uplands munching on grass and happily proliferating for years to come ...

I hope they do. If you get wild boar, why not wild piglet.

[Megabear2]

21 minutes ago, zap99 said:

I hope they do. If you get wild boar, why not wild piglet.

If we ate tigers there would be millions of them! Actually thinking about it there were around 950 million heads of cattle, 784 million pigs and 1.26 billion sheep at the last count compared to 8.1 billion people it won't take them long to take over.

[Andy24v]

On 8/2/2022 at 9:33 PM, david63 said:

This is a well known issue and it is not of P&O's making it is the way in which some credit card companies operate.

 

 

It's entirely P&O's making. They choose to charge your account on a daily basis, then instead of claiming the daily charges,  they recharge the whole amount again.

We spent £790 on board Arvia, and ended up with over £1500 pending on the credit card shortly after we got back.

Went on Marella, no such issues. They just collecting the payment once at the end.

[david63]

41 minutes ago, Andy24v said:

It's entirely P&O's making. They choose to charge your account on a daily basis, then instead of claiming the daily charges,  they recharge the whole amount again.

We spent £790 on board Arvia, and ended up with over £1500 pending on the credit card shortly after we got back.

Went on Marella, no such issues. They just collecting the payment once at the end.

But you have to look at the reasons why Carnival have adopted this policy - it was not done this way back in the day.

 

The reason is that there were too many not having enough credit available on their card by the end of the cruise which resulted in Carnival having to chase these people for the money. It is the old story of the few spoiling it for the many.

 

Even now there are some who have problems with their credit cards accepting the pre-authorisation - I have lost count of the number of passengers who are on the phone at reception trying to sort out their credit cards during the cruise.

[Megabear2]

I'm probably being stupid, but surely if the computer/staff reserve the day's spend, let's say £60 using the poster above's figures, why can't it be a claim hst sum rather than a reservation of funds, ie you are paying at 2.00am for your previous day's spend. 

 

I assume that there is some formula being used rather than 5,000 separate payments and this is assumedly why the system rather lazily reserves the full balance every time rather than just taking the payment.  Surely that way, even if it was every third day rather than daily the cruise line would have the money and non payment would not be an issue?

 

As I say I've no idea how it works or whether daily or 48 hour collections are even possible on a cruise ship but I have experienced this way of paying in a lot of US resort style hotels.

[carlanthony24]

We used Virgin and Amex last year Balance showed then disappeared a day of two later with another balance showing next day then disappearing again.

[S1971]

1 hour ago, Andy24v said:

Went on Marella, no such issues. They just collecting the payment once at the end.

 

Not the case with me, Marella do exactly as P&O and in my experience have done for quite a while.

 

Account taken and cleared within hours, yet didn't release holding account for 2 weeks, but as I understand it does vary with Marella on how long they hold funds for.

Edited April 10 by S1971

[Andy24v]

57 minutes ago, david63 said:

But you have to look at the reasons why Carnival have adopted this policy - it was not done this way back in the day.

 

The reason is that there were too many not having enough credit available on their card by the end of the cruise which resulted in Carnival having to chase these people for the money. It is the old story of the few spoiling it for the many.

 

Even now there are some who have problems with their credit cards accepting the pre-authorisation - I have lost count of the number of passengers who are on the phone at reception trying to sort out their credit cards during the cruise.

Surely if someone spends more than their credit limit,  it makes no difference whether the charge per day or at the end?

[Palaceman]

2 hours ago, Andy24v said:

It's entirely P&O's making. They choose to charge your account on a daily basis, then instead of claiming the daily charges,  they recharge the whole amount again.

We spent £790 on board Arvia, and ended up with over £1500 pending on the credit card shortly after we got back.

Went on Marella, no such issues. They just collecting the payment once at the end.

That must be down to the credit card company as that has never happened to me.

[david63]

2 hours ago, Andy24v said:

Surely if someone spends more than their credit limit,  it makes no difference whether the charge per day or at the end?

The point is that if a credit limit is exceeded then the cruise line know about it sooner rather than later.

 

Say that you exceeded your credit limit on day 2 of your cruise then the cruise line has the ability to stop you charging any more to your onboard account for the rest of the cruise or until there is some other line of credit, or cash deposit. If this was left until the end of the cruise then there would be a large amount that is unpaid and the difficulty of recovering it.

 

Anecdotal stories are that some passengers at one time would deliberately provide a card with little credit and spend like there was no tomorrow.

[terrierjohn]

2 hours ago, Andy24v said:

Surely if someone spends more than their credit limit,  it makes no difference whether the charge per day or at the end?

No but the daily hold does enable the cruise line to know if  someone is likely to default, and their cruise cards can be identified and they can be denied disembarkation until they do arrange payment.

[carlanthony24]

2 hours ago, terrierjohn said:

No but the daily hold does enable the cruise line to know if  someone is likely to default, and their cruise cards can be identified and they can be denied disembarkation until they do arrange payment.

Message would be left on the system to attend reception and usually if they had a problem even though they may say they have the funds available for instance but because the merchant thinks when the money taken since it flags up it was taken in Dubai for instance they may have blocked the card to stop fraudulent activity. Use to happen quite a bit even though the card each day was a pre auth the final night it would deny the transaction. In hindsight we just took some details made sure they signed, they had a copy and we sent a copy to head office so it can be chased up when home then they were allowed to leave.  

Edited April 11 by carlanthony24

[Megabear2]

4 hours ago, carlanthony24 said:

Message would be left on the system to attend reception and usually if they had a problem even though they may say they have the funds available for instance but because the merchant thinks when the money taken since it flags up it was taken in Dubai for instance they may have blocked the card to stop fraudulent activity. Use to happen quite a bit even though the card each day was a pre auth the final night it would deny the transaction. In hindsight we just took some details made sure they signed, they had a copy and we sent a copy to head office so it can be chased up when home then they were allowed to leave.  

Who makes the pre authorisation, you as the human or does the computer automatically do it and notify yourselves if it's rejected?  I'm struggling to understand why it has to be a pre authorisation rather than collecting the outstanding amount for 'X' days spend.  I assume it is a cost issue, ie the cruise line avoiding bank charges.

[Andy24v]

9 hours ago, terrierjohn said:

No but the daily hold does enable the cruise line to know if  someone is likely to default, and their cruise cards can be identified and they can be denied disembarkation until they do arrange payment.

I've no problem with the daily charges. What I don't understand, is why they don't just take the daily charges as payment? Why do they take the whole lot again at the end?

[Andy24v]

Actually, I think I've worked it out. P&O will no doubt be charged a fee for each transaction, so charging at the end cost them less than charging each day.

Probably saves them a few pence per passenger per week.

[Megabear2]

5 minutes ago, Andy24v said:

Actually, I think I've worked it out. P&O will no doubt be charged a fee for each transaction, so charging at the end cost them less than charging each day.

Probably saves them a few pence per passenger per week.

I understand they complete "batch" transactions as that was what I was told by my mother's bank when we asked for charges from Cunard on her debit card to be removed. She had paid cash but registered her debit card on the last day to capture any odd purchases. Her bank account was subsequently debited with her entire 14 night spend when the batch transaction went through.  It took three weeks of arguing with Cunard and the bank to get it back.

[Snow Hill]

The length of time the preauthorisation lasts is determined by the Merchant Category Code assigned to Merchants by the financial sector. Codes are then classified on risk, cruise lines are in the high risk category which may result in higher fees being charged to them.

 

https://www.merchantsavvy.co.uk/knowledge-hub/mcc/

[Megabear2]

18 minutes ago, Snow Hill said:

The length of time the preauthorisation lasts is determined by the Merchant Category Code assigned to Merchants by the financial sector. Codes are then classified on risk, cruise lines are in the high risk category which may result in higher fees being charged to them.

 

https://www.merchantsavvy.co.uk/knowledge-hub/mcc/

Very interesting.  This obviously refers to pre authorisations and goes some way to explaining the length some cruise lines go to.  However I also see travel agents and train companies in this category and I cannot recall any of these pre authorising amounts more than once, if at all.

 

Reading this document, surely it points even more to why don't the cruise lines just collect the outstanding amounts rather than "reserve" them.  It isn't something they can't do - an example above refers to segments on WC and longer voyages where they do collect rather than authorise. 

 

Hopefully the mystery UK document on rules/law for reserving and holding funds that is the equivalent of the US version I have in my possession may be found by someone and shine some light on things from the consumer point of view rather than the companies.

[terrierjohn]

2 hours ago, Andy24v said:

I've no problem with the daily charges. What I don't understand, is why they don't just take the daily charges as payment? Why do they take the whole lot again at the end?

I guess that would be more costly for the cruise line.

[david63]

2 hours ago, Andy24v said:

I've no problem with the daily charges. What I don't understand, is why they don't just take the daily charges as payment? Why do they take the whole lot again at the end?

They don't take it "again" they only take the money once - the pre-authorisation just ring-fences the money so that they know that it is available.

[Andy24v]

7 minutes ago, david63 said:

They don't take it "again" they only take the money once - the pre-authorisation just ring-fences the money so that they know that it is available.

I appreciate they take the money once, but for someone who's paid by debit card, they may as well have taken the whole amount twice, until the hold expires. 

 

[zap99]

18 hours ago, Megabear2 said:

Extinction? Unfortunately a lot of naive people think that Daisy, Piglet and Babe will live happily in the wild and enjoy boundless days in the uplands munching on grass and happily proliferating for years to come ...

Problem with wild pigs is that they eat all the truffles and Acorns.