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Celebrity Making It Easier to Book ?

DaKahuna

By DaKahuna,
in Celebrity Cruises

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DaKahuna Great Review Rare

DaKahuna

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Just received this in an email from Celebrity -- 

 

"Good news! We’re making it even easier to book your next vacation. Starting July 1, the cruise fares you see when you shop will now include all your taxes and mandatory fees. So, you can put your calculator away, because what you see is what you pay. It’s that simple."

 

Not sure how it makes it easier to book but does make it easier to understand the pricing. 

 

 

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DaKahuna Great Review Rare

DaKahuna

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6 minutes ago, ColoradoExceptInWinter said:

I believe most cruise lines are doing this as of July 1st due to a change in the law in California. 

 

That makes sense.  Thanks.  Not living in CA I had not paid much attention to that law but guess it would be difficult for any company to have a separate pricing structure for one state vs all the rest. 

 

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Liao

Liao

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1 hour ago, DaKahuna said:

Just received this in an email from Celebrity -- 

 

"Good news! We’re making it even easier to book your next vacation. Starting July 1, the cruise fares you see when you shop will now include all your taxes and mandatory fees. So, you can put your calculator away, because what you see is what you pay. It’s that simple."

 

Not sure how it makes it easier to book but does make it easier to understand the pricing. 

 

 

Virgin already does this.  Their booking process is far superior to Celebrity.

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Salt Lifer "Live from...." Rare

Salt Lifer

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Celebrity certainly isn't making their booking process any easier based on what I experienced yesterday.  

 

Back in April, while on the Ascent, I put down a deposit for a future cruise with six months to decide on what cruise we wanted.  You all know the drill - doing so gives you OBC and a reduced deposit.  When we did the deposit the salesperson on board said we only had to pay the $100 for one person in order to lock in the deals. Sounds good!

 

Fast forward to yesterday.  We decide to pull the trigger on our next cruise and my travel agent is trying to input the new cruise using the booking number Celebrity gave me when I made the deposit.  She gets an error message when she tries to add the second guest that we have exceeded the allowed number of guests!  No big deal (she thought)... she would just call Celebrity and have them add it in correctly.

 

Guy at Celebrity tells her that the pricing she had for me had discounts that were allegedly not eligible with the deposit I made.  It order to use my deposit and get the OBC I would have to pay $250 more. WTH!

 

At this point I am pissed and my agent is also not too happy.  My travel agent tried to escalate it up the food chain. The next level after the first guy was no help at all. Meanwhile, I went to the Celebrity website and did a mock booking with the same room type and same discounts that my travel agent ran and got the same price.  There was no special voodoo - everything I was getting was the standard, posted pricing.  I took screen shots and gave them to my agent.  My logic - if those were the posted rates, they needed to accept them with my pre-paid deposit just as if it had been a new booking (as this was always my experience in the past).  My agent got ahold of someone else at Celebrity that agreed with my logic and was able to get my cruise processed correctly (with the correct pricing and all the perks I had already paid for).  She also "found" an extra $75 OBC, which I suspect was to try to smooth things over.  

 

All's well that ends well, but the entire process literally took over 6 hours and a lot of extra work to get resolved.  Very frustrating.  So no, Celebrity, you have NOT made the booking process easier in my opinion.  

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LMHSRN

LMHSRN

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1 hour ago, Salt Lifer said:

Celebrity certainly isn't making their booking process any easier based on what I experienced yesterday.  

 

Back in April, while on the Ascent, I put down a deposit for a future cruise with six months to decide on what cruise we wanted.  You all know the drill - doing so gives you OBC and a reduced deposit.  When we did the deposit the salesperson on board said we only had to pay the $100 for one person in order to lock in the deals. Sounds good!

 

Fast forward to yesterday.  We decide to pull the trigger on our next cruise and my travel agent is trying to input the new cruise using the booking number Celebrity gave me when I made the deposit.  She gets an error message when she tries to add the second guest that we have exceeded the allowed number of guests!  No big deal (she thought)... she would just call Celebrity and have them add it in correctly.

 

Guy at Celebrity tells her that the pricing she had for me had discounts that were allegedly not eligible with the deposit I made.  It order to use my deposit and get the OBC I would have to pay $250 more. WTH!

 

At this point I am pissed and my agent is also not too happy.  My travel agent tried to escalate it up the food chain. The next level after the first guy was no help at all. Meanwhile, I went to the Celebrity website and did a mock booking with the same room type and same discounts that my travel agent ran and got the same price.  There was no special voodoo - everything I was getting was the standard, posted pricing.  I took screen shots and gave them to my agent.  My logic - if those were the posted rates, they needed to accept them with my pre-paid deposit just as if it had been a new booking (as this was always my experience in the past).  My agent got ahold of someone else at Celebrity that agreed with my logic and was able to get my cruise processed correctly (with the correct pricing and all the perks I had already paid for).  She also "found" an extra $75 OBC, which I suspect was to try to smooth things over.  

 

All's well that ends well, but the entire process literally took over 6 hours and a lot of extra work to get resolved.  Very frustrating.  So no, Celebrity, you have NOT made the booking process easier in my opinion.  

What part of starting July 1st didn't you understand?

 

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DaKahuna Great Review Rare

DaKahuna

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2 hours ago, CHEZMARYLOU said:

Smoke and mirrors, or Kabuki. Take your pick. 

Guess they will be happy when we all live there.

 

 

 I know Colorado, Texas and a few other western states would be happier as they are complaining about all the former CA residents that have moved to their states. 

 

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NMTraveller Holiday Sharing Rare

NMTraveller

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7 hours ago, MandL said:

California legislators can take the credit.
 

 Effective July 1, 2024, California Senate Bill 478 (SB 478) will ban hidden fees charged for goods and services 

Not hidden fees.  But California is stuck in reverse.

 

They are saving a couple of clicks at what cost?  Have your cruise fares gone up?  Us consumers pay the cost for regulation.

 

 

Edited by NMTraveller
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the penguins

the penguins

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2 hours ago, NMTraveller said:

I felt a bit confused with the UK airline fees and options…

Fees are always included in flight prices.

The only options are things that you don't have to pay e.g. baggage costs as you can choose to fly without any baggage.

Totally different to the US system where items that are compulsory e.g. sales tax or, in the case of cruises, port taxes are/were charged as extras. 

The only other time taxes can be added as extra are in business to business sales never in business to consumer sales - all of Europe has the same rules.

Hopefully this will be the start of the US adopting the same system for all sales as it will make things much easier for the millions of tourists who visit. It will also save delays at tills as, when we paying in cash,  we search to find the extra bills we need to complete our purchases.

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NMTraveller Holiday Sharing Rare

NMTraveller

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9 hours ago, the penguins said:

The only options are things that you don't have to pay e.g. baggage costs as you can choose to fly without any baggage.

 

That is the option that was different from what I am used to seeing.  We are used to having one bag included at a minimum except for the discount airlines...  

 

Do people travel without luggage?

Edited by NMTraveller
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