barrykel

4 hours ago, Capt Krunch said:

I just read in the Princess Circle Mag that the Mastermind behind the Medallion is John Padgett who is now the new President of Princess.  How long before they replace him for screwing up ROYALLY?

It's not at all clear what Padgett's role was in awarding or supervising the Accenture contract. The original announcement on Accenture's website (here) was from 2017, and quotes Michael Jungen, then a Carnival SVP and no longer with the company. The later announcement (here) from 2019 does quote Padgett, but it wasn't at all clear at that time how bad a job Accenture was doing on the app; even now, it does seem like the onboard medallion functionality is working reasonably well. The other thing we don't know is Padgett's position on crippling the personalizer and relying exclusively on the app; the fact that they announced web-based Ocean Ready at about the same time they announced his promotion does mean that he is at least willing to admit that the app is a problem. We sail in 10 days; I'll try and see if I can coax the answers to these questions from any officers (or maybe the Internet Cafe manager) once we're onboard.

On 11/27/2021 at 2:14 PM, barrykel said:

We're sailing 12/11, and I just got my medallion, but not DW's. I called the number in the eMail that reported mine had shipped, and actually got through to someone who, of course, was totally unable to help. She just said to wait, since I had ordered them separately. When I asked how long I might have to wait, she just gave the standard answer that if it didn't get delivered, we could pick hers up at the pier.

OMG!! She was right!!! DW's medallion just arrived today! Yep, time to start packing!

6 hours ago, Happy2cruise said:

When are you sailing?  We are sailing on 12/13 and have not received our medallions....just wondering how far in advance of your sailing you received yours.....thanks!

We're sailing 12/11, and I just got my medallion, but not DW's. I called the number in the eMail that reported mine had shipped, and actually got through to someone who, of course, was totally unable to help. She just said to wait, since I had ordered them separately. When I asked how long I might have to wait, she just gave the standard answer that if it didn't get delivered, we could pick hers up at the pier.

7 hours ago, voljeep said:

XXXXXXX customers know this all too well. The coffee chain has been struggling in the past year with a number of operational issues, many of which are directly related to difficulties with its mobile app. Glitches in the XXXXXXX app and incomplete integration of the technology into the chain's day-to-day business have left customers complaining of inaccurate orders, delays in order fulfillment, and difficulties with refunds.

 

yep, it happens ☕

Not to mention the poor Tesla owners who were actually locked out of their cars, thanks to a problem with their app. At least with Princess, noone (that I've seen reported here) has been denied boarding because of the app problems.

1 hour ago, cltnccruisers said:

Kind of like a company I worked for in the '90s.  "Perception is reality" was their sales motto.  Then we had to try to make their ridiculous perception into a workable reality.  

That sort of business practice is, sadly, pretty common - you know what they say "A consultant is someone who borrows your watch to tell you what time it is"

1 hour ago, cltnccruisers said:

I'd bet dollars to donuts it was outsourced. 

There have been several reports here that Accenture wrote it. A colleague of mine has worked with them in the past, and he was not at all surprised that they it was so buggy - apparently they like to send their senior personnel with the salesmen to clinch the deal, and then they assign their most junior and least competent developers to actually work on the project.

10 minutes ago, PacnGoNow said:

 I did not see my cabin number pop up on the display.

Based on an old promo video I had seen, I thought they had a feature where you could display the route to your cabin on the public display. Hopefully they just dropped the feature when they realized how serious a vulnerability it introduced. We sail in 3 weeks; ask me again when we're onboard.

2 hours ago, PacnGoNow said:

and your picture pops up.  They can identify who you are.  This is for security. That’s  why, if you lose it, doesn’t matter 

The danger isn't from them using your card in the gift shop, casino, or bar. The danger is that they can get into your cabin after the system conveniently shows them where it is on one of the big public displays. Use the safe.

Has anyone tried a speed test?

3 hours ago, Ombud said:

 1st thing is they wouldn't have disable Personalizer until it ran side by side successfully 

You can't really blame the developers for the decision to cripple the Personalizer; that's an executive-level decision, almost definitely pushed by the beancounters. The actual developers probably weren't even around at the time the decision was made - they work for another company (reported to be Accenture) that was contracted to do the app. The real questions are which Princess/Carnival exec made the decision to hire them, which one was responsible for monitoring their project plans and status, and which one finally convinced the beancounters that they needed to spend the extra $ to restore the Personalizer. 

3 minutes ago, Steelers36 said:

That it could be delayed until JAN doesn't surprise me.  

Personally, I'll be totally surprised if they actually do make the January date.

9 minutes ago, PRNole47 said:

 there have been many more and recent upgrades of the app solely for the Android users, whereas the latest IOS version (v3.4.1) is still from July 31, 

Hmmm - the version of the app on my Android phone (OnePlus 9 running Android 11, just got it a couple of weeks ago) is 3.0.96303, released June 7th. It's actually working OK for me - even let me pick arrival groups for a 12/11 cruise - so I'm not willing to risk trying to upgrade it.

21 minutes ago, MissP22 said:

I'm glad to hear that. It didn't work at the end of 2019 and still doesn't work for me today.

What gets me is that they had all this time to work out the bugs & it still doesn't work properly.

Pretty obvious that the company they contracted with to do the app really doesn't understand software testing - it looks like they didn't bother to test many of the possible error conditions, and only tested what we call the 'happy path'. The interesting question is which Princess IT executive made the vendor selection decision, and what part Padgett (the new President) played in it. I'll try and see if I can coax that information out of any officers and/or the Internet Cafe manager once I'm onboard.

2 hours ago, caribill said:

Waiting on the phone for an hour or more to speak with a rep who can help with pre-cruise app problems is an indication more than a few people are having problems.

The fact that they've reversed the decision to rely exclusively on the app, and are spending the $ to develop the web-based version is an even stronger indication that the app is a total disaster for them. 

1 hour ago, lx200gps said:

I thought the fundamental difference between the Medallion and an RFID cruise card was the use of the on board TV screens around the ship. You can access the "system" with a Medallion, but can you  also use a cruise card on those screens as well?

Not sure, but IIRC (from a Princess video) the screens have a reader next to which you have to hold your medallion. No reason that reader couldn't also accept a tap from a card. I'll ask if it actually does that when I'm onboard. The one thing a card probably can't support is ordering from anywhere onboard. Could someone who's actually requested a card instead of a medallion kindly comment?

9 minutes ago, Drews_Cruise said:

Not sure, But they don’t give bartenders the info on you like a medallion does.  When you walk up to a bar and the bartender says hello to you by name it’s because he sees your picture and name on his screen.  I could care less what they track when I’m on their cruise ship.  It’s to be expected.  

The medallion doesn't give the bartender the information - the ship's computer does. There's no reason it couldn't bring up the same info based on the ID on the card, which wouldn't even require RFID - it could just look it up when he scans the card. (I'm not sure if they're actually doing this, but I'll definitely ask the first bartender I see when I board on 12/11).

32 minutes ago, Slyfox16 said:

How do you transfer the data from the Medallion app to the physical medallion?

You don't. None of your actual data is ever on the medallion or the app - when you enter data via the app it goes into a central Princess database, from which it gets copied to a database on the ship's computer right before sailaway. The medallion just has a unique ID that the ship's computer uses to lookup your data in its database.

3 hours ago, Rick&Jeannie said:

Why does anybody feel that this is going to solve all of our issues?  It's likely to just be a "port" from one set of bad code to a web platform.

It's not going to solve all the problems, but I would say there is good reason to hope it will be far less buggy than the app. It's not going to be a port of the mobile app - mobile development and web development are two fairly distinct skills, and the company that was contracted for the app would have been chosen for their mobile skills, and would not be the ones developing the web-based Ocean Ready site (I also suspect the person who chose them is no longer a decision maker at Princess). Voljeep's suggestion to restore from the backup is probably closer to the actual strategy - while they can't just use the old code as-is (too many other changes since then, and they need new code to talk to the new Medallion database), there is probably a lot of working code they can just migrate over. We'll see. 

On 10/22/2021 at 8:35 AM, Daniel A said:

Does anyone know where to find the box to select the ability for friends and family to locate you?  I saw it once before and now I cannot seem to locate it so I can activate the ability to be seen.

Scroll down to the Journey View grouping, and click on 'Travel Companions'. That will bring up the 'Travel Party' screen - click on 'Add Guests' and enter their booking number (or they can add your booking to their Travel Party).

1 hour ago, ontheweb said:

Did anyone really expect it to be up and working by the date they indicated?

Doubtful that they'll meet the exact date, but I am now actually hopeful that they can come pretty close. The fact that they're doing the web version at all indicates that there has been a complete 180 degree reversal of their corporate policy, undoubtedly made against the violent objections of the beancounters. They've also hired an entire group of what they're calling 'Medallion Class Brand Ambassadors'; one cruiser reported that she spoke to two of them onboard, and they went through in detail the problems she was having with the app and promised to address them. It does appear that they now realize how disastrous the original app-only decision was, and are willing to spend a fairly significant amount of $ to deal with the problems it created. There's certainly no guarantee they'll be able to solve them, but at least they're trying. We'll have to see if they can succeed - ask me again after the web version is actually released.  

8 minutes ago, Daniel A said:

 They are interviewing people who have successfully navigated the app in order to get on board in the first place.  They aren't getting the feedback from all of the people who aren't able to get the d*** thing to work in the first place and aren't onboard a ship because the app wouldn't let them check in.

I haven't seen any reports of people being denied boarding because they couldn't get the app to work. Just the opposite - lots of folks report that they just showed up at the pier with their docs and boarded successfully. So onboard is most definitely the best place to meet cruisers face-to-face. Again, if the web-based Ocean Ready site works well when it's released, I'll be willing to give them credit for acknowledging their mistake and fixing it.

1 hour ago, dreams_of_travel said:

 Sometime developers need to be out where the app is being used.  There is more to this app than just getting onto a ship.  Real time usage is hard to replicate in a vacuum.  Being on site is an important step with any new software/app rollout.

...

They were Princess corporate. Titled as Princess Ocean Medallion Brand Ambassadors.  They were fully in charge of the medallion app.  They facilitate all training, assist with development, and implementation of the app.

With that sort of title, they wouldn't have been developers or development managers (who are what I would consider in charge of the app project); rather, they appear to have been specifically tasked with talking directly to users in order to fully understand the problems people are having (after 52 years as a developer, I'm more than aware of how difficult it can be to repro a user problem based on just a written description of the symptoms). So on a ship was indeed exactly where they should have been.  
This is a Very Good Thing, It means that Princess is taking things quite seriously, and we have reason to hope that they will get things working reasonably well before too long. We should know soon after they release web-based Ocean Ready - if that's working well, I can forgive any remaining bugs in the app and will reconsider Princess for a future cruise. 

26 minutes ago, brisalta said:

Sounds like he is being set up as the fall guy.

Wouldn't surprise me. We should know when they release web-based Ocean Ready. 

4 minutes ago, 2 cruises a year said:

Many of you know John as the mastermind behind our Princess MedallionClass experience."

I've heard (maybe from one of Steeler's posts?) that he was mainly promoting the Medallion itself and the onboard experience, rather than the app specifically. 
I'm also reminded that the old adage that 'history is written by the winners' applies to corporate political battles as well as military ones.

On 10/20/2021 at 2:20 PM, 2 cruises a year said:

I guess you missed the news.  The man in charge was promoted.  He is now the head of Princess Cruises.  You can't make this up.

In all fairness, we don't know what role Padgett played in the decision. He was the 'Chief Experience and Innovation Officer', not the CIO - there were two CIOs (one Carnival corporate, one HA Group) who would have outranked him, one of whom left the company a year ago. The fact that they're now working on the web-based Ocean Ready website means that someone at Princess is on the right track; the critical factors going forward are that person's competence, and Padgett's relationship with them in the corporate political alignments.