Warning - check your onboard account daily -

[roxievegas]

We boarded the Caribbean on Aug 31st - NYC to Quebec City.

 

My Iphone is too old to have the medallion app.  My husband is okay.  Yesterday I checked our onboard charges and he had two drink charges that we did not order.  One in the Wheelhouse and one in the Island Restaurant (we had not eated in any restaurants yet)

 

I went to the guest services and asked for a printout.  My account has 3 more charges - all Island Restaurant.  Told them not our charges and they are going to check into it.

 

This is a total of $100 of drink charges we did not order - we don't have a drink package.  We are on a Casino VIP cruise and any alcohol drinks we want are free in the casino.   Which we might get one drink a day.  So we know it is not us.

 

now I will check our account every morning to see the charges.

[Steelers36]

Anyone with cruise experience knows this advice is valid - at least every couple of days if on a longer voyage and then more often at the end.  Mistakes happen. 

[reedprincess]

Of course, always keep an eye on your on-board account.. mistakes happen. 

And get a printout on the last night/morning or screenshot your bill from app/TV  on last morning as there's no longer a hard copy of the bill given at the end..  

 

[mtnesterz]

Personally, I would request two new Medallions for the rest of your cruise.

[Pstcrik]

You have to wonder how many people do not check their bills and just pay what shows up.  It happens to us on every cruise.  One thing that never has happened so far as I know where Princess do not charge you for drinks or meals that you actually had.  This makes you wonder when these are all one sided.

[ghstudio]

You should celebrate that your phone was too old to run the Medallion app.  Most of us have spent 1/2 our cruise trying to get that app to work...

 

After your first cruise, one learns to always check the online account.  On our just completed Sky Princess cruise, there were multiple errors...all easily fixed....eg. no my wife did not order wine at dinner, she medically can't drink.

[4x4bob]

I totally agree with OP on checking our account.

 

Pre Covid we went to the Pub Lunch and placed our order.

 

The waitress delivered what I ordered and brought the wrong order to my wife. Then delivered the two beers that we had ordered and returned with the correct order for my wife.

 

About 5 minutes later the waitress came back and started to set down 7 more drinks.

 

Um, pardon me, but we did not order those drinks and she took them away.

 

Next day we checked our account and was not surprised to find that we had been charged for those 7 drinks.  😬

 

It took 3 trips to the passenger service desk to get those drinks erased from our account. 1st day at desk.  We will have to check on this. 2nd day. Checked account still there. Back to desk.  We are still checking. 3rd day. Checked account. Back to desk.  Who do I have to talk to? I want this resolved now.  The charges were removed.

 

If that had been a short cruise or we had not checked the account we would have come home with them charged to us.  As others have said, it was not the cost but the principle of  the matter. 

 

Bob

[roxievegas]

we are onboard until the 20th, so we lots of time, but I will give them 24 hrs to remove the items.  If new charges show up, I will then ask for my account to be closed and open a new one (if their system can handle that).

This is the first cruise in a long time that we did not have the princess plus package.  I am wondering if we have had other drinks charged to us, but because we had the drink package there was no money charge.

[Thrak]

The first day of our cruise last May we were charged for 2 drinks in Churchill's. We had Princess Plus so shouldn't have been charged anyway but it was especially weird as we never set foot in the cigar bar. I always check my folio daily. On one cruise where we had the drink package as a perk I was charged every time I ordered a drink in the theater - if I was sitting in the lower portion or near the lower portion. When I sat up higher they got my drinks from Wheelhouse and I wasn't charged. If I sat lower down they got my drinks from the Casino Bar and I was charged every time. I got tired of having to go to the PS desk to have the charges removed.

[NownZen]

We also got charged for drinks on our last cruise embarkation day. After a number of trips to customer service with promises to remove the charge but no action, I ran into the hotel manager who looked up the situation and told me the problem. Our drinks were at 11:54 but the Plus package was not activated until 12:22.  Since there is a big flow to the bars starting at 11:00, it would seem that a rational time to activate the packages would be before that.

[geoherb]

I was on the cruise before yours. I noticed some of the bar servers would ask for a cabin number instead of scanning the medallion. I'm betting that's the source of some mistakes. 

[voljeep]

if you get charged for a drink(s) that you didn't have (not mischarged because of the package) does that mean that someone who actually ordered that drink(s) didn't get charged? - and who knows what goes on 'behind the scenes' with the PLUS packages???  People getting to know the bartenders (wink, wink) and leaving a generous tip for a "free" drink charged to someone else ( maybe with the PLUS package )

 

cue the music..

[Steelers36]

3 hours ago, roxievegas said:

This is the first cruise in a long time that we did not have the princess plus package.  I am wondering if we have had other drinks charged to us, but because we had the drink package there was no money charge.

I wish that kind of system bug could happen to me - free drink courtesy another guest who is on the PLUS package.  😁

[Thrak]

55 minutes ago, Steelers36 said:

I wish that kind of system bug could happen to me - free drink courtesy another guest who is on the PLUS package.  😁

 

Since your folio doesn't show drinks ordered under the package it would be very easy for a bartender to give out free drinks. Some folks may only use 2 - 4 of their alcoholic drinks per day. A bartender who knows this is the case could easily charge "extra" drinks to that person's folio.

[SantaFeFan]

1 hour ago, Thrak said:

 

Since your folio doesn't show drinks ordered under the package it would be very easy for a bartender to give out free drinks. Some folks may only use 2 - 4 of their alcoholic drinks per day. A bartender who knows this is the case could easily charge "extra" drinks to that person's folio.

 

Yeah, you have convinced me that every crew member on the ship is dishonest and we must always suspect they are cheating us at every opportunity. SMH. 

 

 

[2 cruises a year]

7 hours ago, Pstcrik said:

You have to wonder how many people do not check their bills and just pay what shows up.  It happens to us on every cruise.  One thing that never has happened so far as I know where Princess do not charge you for drinks or meals that you actually had.  This makes you wonder when these are all one sided.

AND, it is always drinks or wine.  Never a specialty restaurant, shore excursion, spa or ship's store etc. overcharge.

[symui]

I use crew chat on the app (when it works) for just about any issues that come up during the cruise. 

 

Two cruises ago I used crew chat for a Crown Grill billing issue.  It was taken care of in less time than it takes to walk down to Customer service. Very efficient for the crew and customer.

 

And yes, I check my account everyday and take a picture of the folio on the final evening or morning before leaving.  Very important. 

 

 

[PescadoAmarillo]

We learned the valuable lesson this way:

 

Ten years ago, first night of back to back Alaska cruises, my husband stopped by the PSD (as it was then called) to get a copy of our statement to see if our OBCs had posted yet. I ran into a crew member I knew and stopped to chat. We ended up boarding the same elevator going up to our cabin. DH asked if I had enjoyed that $180 bottle of champagne Is ordered for sail away. Apparently I had, so much so that I didn’t recall ordering it. 😉 It took half of that 7-night cruise to get that charge removed from our account. 
 

F&B was not one bit happy that they had to write off that bottle of champagne because someone wrote the folio number down incorrectly. 

[Steelers36]

1 minute ago, PescadoAmarillo said:

We learned the valuable lesson this way:

 

Ten years ago, first night of back to back Alaska cruises, my husband stopped by the PSD (as it was then called) to get a copy of our statement to see if our OBCs had posted yet. I ran into a crew member I knew and stopped to chat. We ended up boarding the same elevator going up to our cabin. DH asked if I had enjoyed that $180 bottle of champagne Is ordered for sail away. Apparently I had, so much so that I didn’t recall ordering it. 😉 It took half of that 7-night cruise to get that charge removed from our account. 
 

F&B was not one bit happy that they had to write off that bottle of champagne because someone wrote the folio number down incorrectly. 

It should be leas error-prone now with the Medaliions, but far from perfect as they seem to pick up nearby Medallions at times.

[AF-1]

I've used crew chat also.  when you txt them you are getting one of the guest services rep at the front desk.  They are quick and efficient to handle any problems, and saves you a trip down there 

Edited September 5, 2022 by AF-1

[DallasGuy75219]

13 hours ago, mtnesterz said:

Personally, I would request two new Medallions for the rest of your cruise.

That won't fix the problem when a server misunderstands or mistypes someone's cabin number to look up their folio number and charges your folio number instead.  See post below.

9 hours ago, geoherb said:

I was on the cruise before yours. I noticed some of the bar servers would ask for a cabin number instead of scanning the medallion. I'm betting that's the source of some mistakes. 

For the life of me I can't understand why some servers do this when they all carry a tablet/modified smartphone/whatever you want to call it.  Seems like less work to scan a medallion for the folio number vs. looking up your cabin number to get your folio number.

[caribill]

3 hours ago, DallasGuy75219 said:

For the life of me I can't understand why some servers do this when they all carry a tablet/modified smartphone/whatever you want to call it.  Seems like less work to scan a medallion for the folio number vs. looking up your cabin number to get your folio number.

 

Just like a number of passengers have a problem making the App work during a cruise, there have been posts saying that the crew's tablets also do not always work and it takes less time to get the necessary info from a passenger than to fight the tablet.

[MissP22]

1 hour ago, caribill said:

 

Just like a number of passengers have a problem making the App work during a cruise, there have been posts saying that the crew's tablets also do not always work and it takes less time to get the necessary info from a passenger than to fight the tablet.

That's correct, and also the medallion system is much to slow for the bartenders to input every transaction at the very time the order was served.

Consequently they accumulate a pile of paper tickets during a busy time and later enter them into the system during a slow period.  If there was an error in charging the drink to the wrong pension there's no way to verify it at that point, so errors can and do occur. 

It's not that hard to check you account daily and get it corrected as soon as you discover the error.

 

 

[dreaminofcruisin]

5 hours ago, DallasGuy75219 said:

That won't fix the problem when a server misunderstands or mistypes someone's cabin number to look up their folio number and charges your folio number instead.  See post below.

For the life of me I can't understand why some servers do this when they all carry a tablet/modified smartphone/whatever you want to call it.  Seems like less work to scan a medallion for the folio number vs. looking up your cabin number to get your folio number.

 

Recently off the Emerald and I think sometimes the crew is as resistant to using the medallions as some people are. Some of them wouldn't even ask or try scanning your medallion. They would look at their tablet and say "got you" and others always just asked for your room number without looking at their tablet or their register. DH got so tired of people asking for his room number, he made a card and put it in his front pocket and just pulled it out and showed it to them. That way he didn't have to repeat it a couple of times if they didn't hear him. It also seemed like if you are always shouting your room number when you have the package, it would be pretty easy for someone to hear it and use that number if they weren't really checking pictures. 🤷‍♀️

 

Edited September 5, 2022 by dreaminofcruisin

[DrSea]

22 hours ago, ghstudio said:

You should celebrate that your phone was too old to run the Medallion app.  Most of us have spent 1/2 our cruise trying to get that app to work...

 

After your first cruise, one learns to always check the online account.  On our just completed Sky Princess cruise, there were multiple errors...all easily fixed....eg. no my wife did not order wine at dinner, she medically can't drink.

All of this is solid advice.