Anyone else charged for towels?

[PokrChick]

When we got our seapass account printout on the morning of debarkation, I noticed a charge for $40, which I am assuming is for two towels. I know that we kept good track of the towels and did not lose any. Sometimes they messed things up because we had two cabins and they weren't always checking them back in to the correct cabin. I thought I had that all straighted out Apparently NOT! Any suggestions for getting the charges credited?

[cb at sea]

You should call, then follow up with a letter stating that you did NOT lose their towels, and you would like those charges refunded. You can have your credit card company dispute those charges, as well. But, you need to do it in writing! (First, find out what the charge is for--could be Chops!)

[isujim]

Your post says you are "assuming" they are for towels??? Does the invoice specify what the charges are?? I would make darn sure what they are and what for, before doing anything.

[lady_cruiser]

The above posters are correct. On my second cruise I had a charge for over 40 in a bar I knew I wasn't in. After several phone calls and a letter I was wishing I had kept better track of my purchases because the charge was for two soda cards. It would have saved me time and energy if I had written every thing down in my journal like I should have.

[CalGal777]

Thats why you should check your account every day or 2....better to take care of a problem before the last day if possible, and save all your receipts. I had a charge for a tattoo on my last cruise,it wasn't me, at my age I have better places to spend my $. It was taken care of right away, well after they spent time doing some checking.

[mohavemommy]

Could the charge have been for a robe? I think they are $40.

[JJ2sail]

I believe robes are $50 now. There was a little card delivered with our robes, saying you would be charged if you did not leave them. (Maybe 49.95).

[Havana Daydreamin]

Thats why you should check your account every day or 2....better to take care of a problem before the last day if possible, and save all your receipts. I had a charge for a tattoo on my last cruise,it wasn't me, at my age I have better places to spend my $. It was taken care of right away, well after they spent time doing some checking.

 

Great advice. About midway through the cruise I check my account and check off the receipts for charges....I keep them all....kinda anal that way, I guess. And again the last day of the cruise, I do that again. It is very easy to adjust the onboard account when there are discrepancies.

 

$40 could be for a variety of items that have already been mentioned. Out of curiosity, where did the printout indicate where the charge originated from?

 

That is always helpful for me to reconcile my account on board.

 

Best Regards

[Fury1995]

We save every single receipt from the cruise and keep them in a top drawer in the cabin. We always add them up the day before the cruise ends to make sure our SeaPass accounts match the total. Much easier for us to have a care free cruise to do this on the last full day onboard.

[Aubiecruiser]

I usually just check the balance every day or so, but to keep up with all those little charges (ok, bar slips) wouldn't work for me.

I'd be spending half the cruise balancing the account. If something strange comes up, I will call but that has only happened once as I recall.

Aubie

[crusinmama06]

Just dispute it with them and can't you dispute it with your credit card company?

 

On our last RCCL cruise there were charges for the mini bar. We actually went on shore and brought cans of Mountain Dew on...RCCL does not carry Pepsi products. On the last day, we were charged for cans of soda out of our mini bar. Funny because they were OUR cans of soda. :rolleyes: AND we had a soda card...so we didn't need to drink the room soda.

 

We disputed it and they took the charges off.

[PokrChick]

Thanks for the comments. I'm at work and, of course, the bill is at home so I can't give you the line description - but it was something generic. The charge was for exactly $40 and it was the very last item on the bill with the date of debarkation so there was no way to know about it prior to leaving.

 

A few days before the end of the cruise, I double checked the towel count for both rooms and they told me I had two towels out. I didn't. I had handed them in about two minutes prior. The woman had credited them to the wrong room and chastised me for handing her the wrong seapass card (my lanyard had a key to both rooms on it). She told me she corrected it.

[lady_cruiser]

PokrChick let us know what happens.

[Sue (mom of 3 boys!)]

Thanks for the comments. I'm at work and, of course, the bill is at home so I can't give you the line description - but it was something generic. The charge was for exactly $40 and it was the very last item on the bill with the date of debarkation so there was no way to know about it prior to leaving.

 

A few days before the end of the cruise, I double checked the towel count for both rooms and they told me I had two towels out. I didn't. I had handed them in about two minutes prior. The woman had credited them to the wrong room and chastised me for handing her the wrong seapass card (my lanyard had a key to both rooms on it). She told me she corrected it.

:confused: :confused: OK, I feel like I have been living in a cave, but you have to check out towels now???? Shower towels or pool towels? And how do they keep track of them? Do they not have the take one/leave one bin by the pool anymore? How does this all work?:rolleyes:

[cb at sea]

On our last cruise, there was a pool towel per person in the room. We could SIGN OUT extra towels at the pool, but had to sign them back in when we returned them. We made sure the original number of towels that were in the room when we arrived, were there when we left. No problems. I'm betting that charge on his bill is NOT for towels!

[manuelstar]

:confused: :confused: OK, I feel like I have been living in a cave, but you have to check out towels now???? Shower towels or pool towels? And how do they keep track of them? Do they not have the take one/leave one bin by the pool anymore? How does this all work?:rolleyes:

 

On my last cruise on the Independence, you really had to check out pool towels. No pool towels were placed in your cabin, there was a station right by the pool, where they provided towels. If you wanted one, you had to show your sea pass card and it was charged. They only removed the charge when you brought back the towel to this station. If you went back to your cabin with the towel, the charge was still on your account.

[PokrChick]

Here's the update:

 

The charge was definitely for towels and were listed on my bill as "AMENITIES." The full amount is being credited back to my account. The customer service rep couldn't have been nicer. She asked if I thought I had left the towels by the pool. I explained what I thought had happened (credited back to the wrong room) and she immediately said she would issue a credit. No problem what so ever. Maybe she just saw the total of my seapass account and decided to take pity on me!! :eek:

[Bargeo]

On our last cruise in January, I was so careful to keep track of the beach towels, fearing we would be charged if we lost one. Our room steward said they have never charged anyone for towels, and I should not worry about it. So, I doubt very much that this charge is for towels.

[vickiw0318]

Yes, the beach towels are checked out now on the Liberty and do have to be officially returned on the last day. You can do any number of exchanges during the week, but you do need to return the exact number of towels you checked out on the final day. There is a $20 charge for any towel that isn't returned.

 

I looked at this as another inconvience that I now have to put up with because of the conduct of a few.

[Havana Daydreamin]

Here's the update:

 

The charge was definitely for towels and were listed on my bill as "AMENITIES." The full amount is being credited back to my account. The customer service rep couldn't have been nicer. She asked if I thought I had left the towels by the pool. I explained what I thought had happened (credited back to the wrong room) and she immediately said she would issue a credit. No problem what so ever. Maybe she just saw the total of my seapass account and decided to take pity on me!! :eek:

 

Isn't that great....the few times there have been wrong charges on my account (about 1 per cruise actually) the RCI folks have always been more than kind to take care of it and deduct. Of course, having my whole fist full of receipts (mostly from my lush alter self) it helps.

 

Kind approaches to the Customer Service folks definitely paid off for you!

 

:D

[wolfcathorse]

I sailed solo on Empress in January. When I arrived, there were 2 pool towels in the room. On Day 2 I used 1 and the steward never replaced it since I still had 1 clean one. I was charged the $20 for the towel after I got home. Oh well, I will be more careful the next time I cruise solo.

[Tucker in Texas]

I was on the Voyager of the Seas and we did not have towels in our cabin, I found this out when I told the stewardess that we had never gotten our pool towels in the cabin and I didn't want to be charged for them. She informed me that I had to check them out at the pool. When I went to check them out, the pool boy never asked to see my Sea Pass card, just asked my cabin number. This made me VERY nervous, needless to say. I made sure he wrote down the right cabin number when I returned them. You can be sure I checked my account every day, thereafter, to make sure that a passenger didn't make a "mistake" giving my cabin number when checking out towels.

 

We were on the Carnival Spirit shortly after they went to the towel charge. We had been hassling with the Purser's desk for four days over a charge that was not legitimate on our bill. Every day it appeared, every day, husband went down to the Purser's desk to be told it was going to be removed. It got down to disembarkation and it was still there. So my husband went down to the Purser's desk and basically told them we had a 3:30 flight and he was not leaving until he was printed out a correct statement removing the charge so that if it turned up after we left, he could dispute it with our credit card company and if it took until 2:00 p.m., o.k. by him, he had nothing else to do with his time. Of course, the personnel disappeared for long lengths of time "checking it out" with various people. The line was very long with other people disputing their bills or paying them off. He said that a good 50% percent of the complaints he was hearing from the other "stations" were people saying they were charged for towels they never had or had had taken up by the cabin steward the last night. He said the wait was not "wasted" time because he was entertained listening to all kinds of other "complaints" like a tip from the speciality restaurant being raised from $10 to $40, people charged for dining there that didn't even know where it was, much less eat there, but the very best one was a very elderly lady pushing a walker being charged for an excursion that required a two mile hike over rough terrain.

 

So, from that point on, whenever we cruise besides checking our statement daily, I personally give the cabin steward my "$20 towels" the night before we disembark along with his tip envelope "jokingly" telling him to make note he got those $20 towels back.

 

Carnival went to the bottom of our cruise choice list only to be replaced by NCL after our trans-Atlantic in April of 2007 (lol).

 

Tucker in Texas

[HollandA]

Just dispute it with them and can't you dispute it with your credit card company?

 

On our last RCCL cruise there were charges for the mini bar. We actually went on shore and brought cans of Mountain Dew on...RCCL does not carry Pepsi products. On the last day, we were charged for cans of soda out of our mini bar. Funny because they were OUR cans of soda. :rolleyes: AND we had a soda card...so we didn't need to drink the room soda.

 

We disputed it and they took the charges off.

 

What I did on our Princess cruise to avoid this situation was I asked our cabin steward to please empty the mini-fridge, and that we wouldn't be using any of the stuff that was already in there. He kindly obliged, and I was able to put the 12-pack of Cokes we brought on board with us in the fridge. Just a tip for the future. :)

[gaileeh]

:confused: :confused: OK, I feel like I have been living in a cave, but you have to check out towels now???? Shower towels or pool towels? And how do they keep track of them? Do they not have the take one/leave one bin by the pool anymore? How does this all work?:rolleyes:

 

I too am amazed. We sailed onboard the Jewel last September and not once did anyone ask to see my sea pass card or make a charge on it for pool towels. You could take 2 or three at a time. No problems or hassles. :confused:

[kaisatsu]

I too am amazed. We sailed onboard the Jewel last September and not once did anyone ask to see my sea pass card or make a charge on it for pool towels. You could take 2 or three at a time. No problems or hassles. :confused:

 

Ditto for us on Voyager last November. But I used the system to my advantage.

 

We'd never sailed on a check-out-towels kind of cruise before, and we were with a big group of friends from our last cruise. There wasn't much pool activity, since it was in the 60s-70s, but we were using the hot tub and I volunteered to go grab towels for the six of us. I was surprised that they asked for my cabin number, but they did let me check out all six. Unfortunately, it meant I had to hound my friends to make sure I got all the towels back to them. They told me it was because people had been leaving them around the pool (what kind of service is it when they can't even get someone to go around the pool deck picking up towels?).

 

I was really worried about this coming back to bite me if we missed a towel. My solution? Since they weren't checking SeaPass cards, I just picked out one of the cabins that doesn't exist (according to the numbering scheme, it would have gone where one of the elevator banks was) and used that. The next time we went up to use the spa, I gave them the non-existant cabin and got our towels. Sure enough, we stayed out so late that the towel-guy wasn't there when we left. If our friends had taken the towels we checked out back to their cabin, there's no way we would have gotten the towel credit sorted out. :rolleyes: