Wiggums

6 hours ago, Aulanis said:

So what percentage did you get?   It is calculated on the base cruise fare without port fees & taxes or anything else paid for up front.

If you were travelling with someone else their FCC will be in  a separate account?

I believe you are correct.  I was expecting it to all be in my account but now looking at my wifes Captains Circle and she has the same FCC amount.  It's not 25% of the fare (more like 18%) but in reality it must be the FCC.

Thanks for pointing out...

2 hours ago, LDVinNC said:

 

I think you are due 100% of your money back and a 25% cruise credit - not 125% credit - so is that June 1st FCC 25% of your fare?

 

We got our 25% FCC several weeks before our refund came through.

I stand corrected and I now believe the FCC is somewhat accurate if aggregated across each cruiser.  Thanks for pointing this out.

Original refund request date: 03/27/2020

Original cruise date: 04/12/2020 - Eastern Caribbean 7-day

YES - Received refund from Princess (back to original CC used) last week 06/22/2020.

NO - Did not (have not as of 06/29) received the 125% future cruise credit.

NOTE1: I did receive some kind of FCC called "Used For Goodwill Fccs" back on 6/1 but I don't believe this is related to the cancelled cruise as the amount nowhere near what the FCC for the cancelled cruise (125%) should be.

NOTE2: While I was waiting (March to June) for the refund, I did receive two unsolicited e-mails from Princess stating that refunds were taking longer than expected.  Oddly... (probably more the norm) I did *NOT* receive any e-mails or communications of any kind when I actually got the refund.  I only saw the credit to my monthly statement.

MedallionNet just went live yesterday 7/20 on the Emerald Princess while we were docked in Barcelona.  The ships WiFi changed and went from showing up as emerald-princess to MedallionNet overnight.  We also received new invitations with the Princess Patter offering discounts of 25% if you purchased the unlimited plan within the first 24 hours of sailing.

I am currently typing this message from somewhere between Barcelona and Gibraltar and the new speeds are definitely better than what they were last week when it comes to DNS resolution of websites and basic load times of things like CNN/CruiseCritic, etc.  Ping times to Google DNS servers (8.8.8.8) are still slow (around 600ms - 800ms) but the packets are not dropping as frequently as they did last week when the ping times were (700ms - 1000+) with many dropped packets.  Currently I am seeing about 4% - 5% packet loss where last week I was seeing 25% packet loss. I couldn't load any CNN/Youtube videos previously and today I can open them after a wait of a minute or so.  Not bad for being in the middle of the ocean and not having to pay per MB or per minute.  My next test will be a VPN app to see if I can stay connected (last week I could not).  Let me know if anyone is interested in more testing/technical stats.

Below is a screenshot from speedtest but I think it's pretty inaccurate as it appears there may be some proxying going on as some sites appear cached as well as the speedtest results.

I did the test at 9:15 am local time (it's an at sea day) to try and gauge when many people would be waking and doing their morning Internet routines to see how things are working.

The onboard price is $59 / Unlimited access for 1 device if your Platinum/Elite or $109 (4 devices) for 7 day cruise.  I think the regular price is about 25% more for non Plat/Elite.

I spoke with some crew and they state that their connections are much better with the new system (albeit more expensive for them) than the previous offerings.

Almost forgot, we also just received a note under the door that they will be enabling the 4K video in our cabins throughout the cruise.  I can see a CAT5 cable on the back of the TV that's disconnected so I assume someone will be coming into the cabin and hooking things up (yay!).  Currently still on the old crappy analog style channels playing the same movies over and over from the previous week...

Latest update as of 6/29/2019:

It appears this ordeal is over as of Thursday 6/27 and we have been told that all flights/seats are confirmed and fixed.  It's not reassuring though as the princess website still shows an error message when you attempt to click into the Airline reservation section for some of our family members.  Princess has assured us that even though their computer system gives an error message and we cannot actually see the tickets for one of the teenagers in our party, they are actually there.

We have the official Airline confirmation numbers that show the correct flights/seats for everyone and when I called the airline they stated that everything is ticketed and the seats have been assigned.

Here's the timeline for anyone that experiences something similar.

September 2018

I locked in our EZ-Air flights via the Princess website.

October 2018

Called Princess to ask about the availability of other cabins or the family suite.

1. Original problem was a Princess agent mistakenly cancelled our air tickets when we asked about additional cabin availability and which party members are in which cabins.

2. Princess could not recover the original two booked airline confirmation numbers for our two cabins.  Instead, they (Princess) had to re-book our airfare on 4 confirmation numbers for our party of 7.  They split up the party into (3, 2, 1, 1) so we now have four airline confirmation numbers.

3. Princess could not recover the original travel dates and we had to extend the trip by a day.

4. We wrote to Princess about our displeasure and after negotiations related to the extended stay (i.e. hotel for the night) we received an acceptable on-board credit as a "sorry" for each cabin.

January 2019

5. We made full payment for the cruise + airfare.

June 2019

6. I noticed that we were 30 days out and our flights had still not been booked with the airline.  I called Princess and they said they should have been booked by now as we were paid in full, etc.  The agent noticed an error in the system and attempted to  ticket our flights correctly.

7. The agent attempted to fix the error but instead cancelled the flights for one of the four confirmation numbers (by mistake) leaving 3 travelers without a flight.

8. The previous issue (#7) was fixed but now the 3 travelers on that confirmation number had no seats.

9. Princess fixed the seats for the three travelers but somehow deleted one of the confirmation numbers assigned to a single traveler who now has no ticket.

10. A supervisor took over the issue (Laura) who was very helpful.  She promised us that even though our tickets had disappeared from the Princess site, they are indeed there and will be fixed.

11. As of Monday 6/24 all of our flights reappeared but we were still missing our seats.

12. As of Thursday 6/27 we had all of our flights back and the seating issues are resolved to our satisfaction (not original seats, but close enough that we have no issues).

@Globehoppers

I take offense (not much) to you thinking this is self inflicted as we just called Princess to ask a question and in doing so had our airline tickets cancelled.  Was my original post a diatribe... Yes... I was frustrated and I wanted to vent and I disagree to your assertion that this was self inflicted but hey, it's the Internet and you get your opinion and I get to disagree with you.

All the best and I hope this ordeal is useful for anyone that has to suffer through anything similar.

Latest update as of 6/17/2019.

So things are still broken albeit they are now a different type of broken.  Princess has fixed the original problem with our three tickets that completely disappeared (they are now back) and one of the other tickets has completely disappeared.  The new issue is similar to the original one where we had tickets and now we don't (but only 1 person, not 3).  So now three of us are back on the flight but one of our minor daughters ticket was removed.  Supposedly (according to Princess) they are fixing that today and it should be reflected (soon).  I am checking twice a day (morning/night).

When I go on the airline site where we used to have seats, now it says "Unassigned".  I am going to wait until everyone is fixed with E-Tickets and Flight Confirmation numbers before I try and get the seat issue fixed...

(I am so glad this cruise has the Sip-n-sail... I will need it!)

14 hours ago, Sea Day Cruiser said:

Wow! What was the outcome of this? 

The issue is still ongoing as today 6/15/2019. Here's the latest:

Princess EZ-Air representative called my wife at 8:00 a.m. yesterday to request more information from us and stated that they are actively working with the airline to fix the issues. Per the rep, the issue should be resolved by early next week as the specific portion of the airline that they need to work with (according to them) is not open on the weekend.

On a side note, I do have my original confirmation number (not the e-ticket) for when we booked the original routes/seats/dates.  I am hoping that Princess is somehow to just reactivate it in their system since it still seems (fingers crossed) active on the airline website (even though it's disappeared on the princess site).

All,

I just wanted to vent about my frustration with EZ-Air for our upcoming cruise.  My group consists of 7 cruisers (3 adults and 4 teenagers) and we are booked on the upcoming July 13, 2019 14 day Athens > Rome cruise on the Emerald Princess.  We decided to try EZ-Air and it's been nothing but a nightmare dealing with Princess.

Back on a Friday in September 2018 we called our travel agent about switching cabins.  She called Princess and was put on hold for quite a while.  She said they could do the switch, but since the cabins were also linked to EZ Air, that would have to be changed to.  I IMMEDIATELY said STOP, DO NOT DO ANY AIRLINE CHANGES (as the cabin change was not that important) and we will keep our cabins as-is.  She said OK, but was still on hold with Princess.  Well... the Princess agent went ahead and did the change, and lost one of our kids business class seats on the airline in the process.  She put our daughter in economy for the return leg of the trip.  Our travel agent said the Princess agent apologized and said it was her fault.  I said that it was unacceptable and would like to speak to a Princess Cruise Supervisor.

Again, after a wait I had a 3 way conversation with our travel agent and and the princess agent who apologized for the mix-up and also agreed it was Princess’s error.  She said she tried to re-book our daughter, but the Air office was closed and wouldn’t open until Monday, September 10, 2018.  The Princess Agent said she would call them first thing Monday morning and get back to me.  I was on the phone from 2:20 to 4:45, and had no resolution and got to spend the rest of the weekend worried about our air.

The Princess agent did call me Monday about noon.  She said she was sorry, but all the Business class seats were sold out.  I pointed out to her that looking on-line you could see there were a lot of open Business seats still available (including the seat we had originally booked).  My suggestion was that Princess pay the difference from EZ Fare Economy ticket to whatever the business class ticket was to get her back on.  The Princess Agent said unfortunately that wasn’t an option for them.  I asked her to check for any other non-stop direct flights from Rome to LAX on any dates within a few days of the end of the cruise.  She found the same flight on 7/29/19 was available with Business class seats.  I told her to book that.  We went over seat preferences, and have the same seats on the 29th that we have on the 7/9/19 flight from LAX.  We also went from a single confirmation number with the airline to four new confirmation numbers (One # for 3 people, another for 2 people, and one each for our youngest teenagers...sigh).

I thanked her for her help, but said this was a major mess up and very upsetting to all of us.  I felt we should have some sort of compensation.  Princess offered us $100 per cabin on board credit or dinner for the family at the Steak House.  I told her neither were really adequate, but she gave us the $100 per cabin credit.  I asked her who else I could speak/write to.

Fast forward to last Saturday 6/8/2019.  We had already paid for all of the cruise and airfare in full (almost 3 months ago).  I noticed that we were within the 45 day window and the E-tickets had not been issued yet.  I called princess and explained that we were paid in full and our e-tickets had not been issued.

The agent told me there would be a long wait to talk with the airfare people and she put me on hold for 2 1/2 hours (after which the princess system hung up on me without anyone ever coming back on the line).

When I checked our account on Monday I noticed that of the 4 confirmation numbers we had, 3 had been tickets (4 of our 7 travelers now had tickets).  So I called Princess again and this time they said I should wait a few more days (give it to the 13th they said) before checking to see if our final confirmation number has received it's e-tickets.

I checked early this morning and nothing so I called Princess this afternoon.  After talking to someone to explain that we still don't have our e-tickets, they put me on hold and after 1 1/2 hours the princess system hung up on me again.

I just logged into the Princess Website and as of 7:00 p.m. the airfare and confirmation number for my final 3 people in our group of 7 has been DELETED from the princess site.  My airfare is gone and I am on the phone with Princess now trying... TRYING not to lose my S*** at how horrible of an experience this has been with their air travel.

We are now a month away from the cruise and I can only pray that they can fix this... Hopefully customer service/marketing folks from Princess read this forum to understand the pain that is EZ-Air and make it better for others.

So regarding the original issue, I did snail-mail princess a formal letter of displeasure and after some negotiations we did receive a reasonable OBC for the cruise.  It's really a wash since we needed to spend an extra night in Rome (at our expense) to all be on the same flight.  I am really hoping this new fiasco does not screw all of the current reservations up as we are now only a month away and there's no way I am going to get new hotels, etc.

Please princess, if you are reading this... JUST FIX IT! I don't want more OBC, I just want to go on a cruise and relax.  😞 

Not sure about the Ruby but we did Alaska on Emereld in C526/C530 which are considered Premium Balcony rooms.

We had 7 people in our party and split 4 / 3 in the two cabins. !!!NEVER!!! again will we do the balcony cabins with 4 people. Once the beds are down you lose the entire cabin to the beds. You can't watch TV, or even sit on the beds comfortably. In the cabin with 3 people it was not as bad but you still lose a lot of space. Even getting into the top bunks is a pain.

We are sailing Emerald again next summer but this time we are doing two Mini-Suites E725/E727 with the same group. The bed setup is different and we are looking forward to having some extra space.

I was checking on the deck plans for Emerald today ( https://www.princess.com/deckPlans.do?shipCode=EP ) and I noticed a message (which I believe has a typo for the year). I don't remember seeing this message anytime in the past few months.

I clicked through the plans but could not see anything different so I am unsure what's up...

In order to present the correct deck plan,

please tell us when you plan to sail:

Sailing between now and March 30, 2018Sailing after March 30, 2018

If I buy an internet access package for my iPad, can I use the iPad as a hotspot and tether other iDevices to the iPad and thereby share the data plan amongst my devices?

I travel with four teenage daughters who all wish to be connected 24/7. My normal go-to hotspot device is the HooToo TripMate as it allows us to share most WiFi anywhere (Hotels, planes, etc.)

Unfortunately Princess has gotten keen to this concept and now blocks many of the more popular hotspot devices from connecting to their network. I was on the Emerald Princess Aug 2017 in Alaska and was unable to use the hotspot with the ships Internet as they now block known devices via MAC addresses.

Some new Samsung phones (i.e. Galaxy S7 or newer) allow the phone to act as a WiFi Repeater/Extender where you can connect the phone to the WiFi and then make it a hotspot allowing other devices to connect to it as the phone becomes the hotspot connected to the Princess Internet.