barrykel

7 minutes ago, leck57 said:

 

Enjoying your posts mate.

In addition to programming errors there seems to be basic omissions as well. For example, as far as I am aware, no one outside of the US can get their Medallion mailed to them. Yet when I go to the Medallion section on the App I get a choice of inputting a US address ( I live in Australia) and the other option Pickup at Port is greyed out so I cannot activate that option. It also says next to Pickup at Port the words "not available". This just seems a basic schoolboy error in setting it up.

Aarrgghhh - that's a nasty one. Have you tried calling their support line, or don't they have one down under?  

26 minutes ago, Daniel A said:

DW uses the same e-mail address as me.  I was able to log into her profile by entering the booking number and then her full name and d.o.b.  Maybe if you logged in that way, you would be able to change her e-mail log in ID.

Nope. If I try to change it from the app it just whines that the login ID is already in use; the app knows her login ID, and lets us login with it - it appears there is another field in the DB that's just used by the website, and it won't let me change that, either from the app or the website. At least the app now appears to be working right, and I can get into my profile on the website using my second eMail address, so I'll just wait til I hear back from the dev team. Their DBA will, I'm sure, be able to easily fix things once they've got time to work on it.

14 minutes ago, Daniel A said:

Success!  I just opened the app on my new Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite!!  I called the number for support on Monday to get them to recognize my booking number and when I checked today, it took my booking number and DW's personal info.  I was able to get my new passport in and now DW & I are in the 'Green Lane' for the first three categories.  The last two aren't available to me yet as the cruise is in 2022.

Yep, pretty much the same here. They still haven't solved my original problem (DW's account having my eMail as the login ID), but at least all our data is available in the app.

15 minutes ago, Daniel A said:

I can't get Holland America's Navigator App to open.  Maybe the same geniuses working on Princess' app.

It's the same top management team - Holland America, like Princess, is part of Carnival, and Jan Swartz is President of the Holland America Group, which also includes Seaborn and P&O Australia as well as Princess and HA.

BTW, HA's Android app is rated 2.8 in the PlayStore - not quite as bad as MedallionClass, but still pretty pathetic. 

1 hour ago, Tedferg said:

On the other hand, if it is known data corruption they might be doing a system wide fix - yes? no ?

From what I've heard here, it seems like different users are seeing different types of data corruption; and even if the same field were corrupt for all, I suspect the correct data for the field would be different for each user. Most likely, the best that a system-wide fix could do would be to ensure the problems don't recur. It sounds like they're manually updating the database record for each user reporting a problem, and that task has got the dev team totally overwhelmed. I doubt if they've got the bandwidth at this point to even think about the long-term fix.

2 hours ago, Snaxmuppet said:

It is the modern way of software development though.

Actually, I'd say it's the old way of software development. There are modern development methodologies such as Test Driven Development that are proven to generate mostly bug-free software, but they tend to be a little slower and somewhat more expensive initially. The payback is, of course, in the long run - it costs around 10x as much to fix a bug found in testing vs finding it in code/debug, and 10x that if it's found by a customer after release. Of course that requires a long-term outlook that is foreign to most large corporations' finance groups and executives, who generally can't see any further out than the next fiscal quarter. And it can be difficult to introduce the newer technologies to existing IT management, who have been doing thing their way for some time, and are typically quite resistant to change.

2 hours ago, Wendymewendy said:

Hi,

After 11 unanswered emails and over 5 hours on the phone I have given up on the app.

Our staycation is in a couple of weeks now and I will have to just turn up with printed docs and let them sort it all out.

I have cancelled our October cruise as I am so fed up with the whole thing.

Princess is no longer on my list.

Which eMail address did you send your report to? After a similar amount of time on the phone, and with whatever the support reps had done actually making the problem worse, I sent an eMail to the AskOceanMedallion@carnival.com address yesterday, with a detailed description of my problem, and got the following response this morning:

Good day, Barry.

Thank you for your email and the detailed information you provided.

We apologize for the challenge you've been experiencing and are eager to help you get OceanReady.

Your info has been passed along to our team who will take a closer look to identify what might be causing this issue.

Please note that we are prioritizing support based on sail date. Not to worry… we’ll have you ready to sail in plenty of time ahead of your voyage. We appreciate your patience while we investigate.

Kind regards,

MedallionClass Support Team

So (reading between the lines) it looks like their dev team is basically overwhelmed with the large number of problems people are having. Incidentally, while other cruise lines have smartphone apps, they don't appear to be anywhere near this buggy - While MedallionClass is rated 1.4 in the Android PlayStore, Royal's app is rated 3.8 and NCLs is 4.5. Like you, I'm removing Princess from my list.

1 hour ago, Amoorhouse said:

Princess sent me an email and upgraded booking.  When they did this it corrected problem with app.  Maybe the problem is with the way princess reps put in data?

It definitely looks like most of the problems people are having are due to data corruption, possibly from bad data entered by users, support reps, or TAs, or possibly from data being garbled by the software. The root cause is the fact that they don't properly validate the data before it's entered in the database, possibly coupled with a bad database schema design.

28 minutes ago, Tedferg said:

So I have to ask you. How do they go from a full set of line items to just three line items. I can understand that my data might be lost but how does the screen that presents data change. I am down to three items. 

One possibility would be if there's some data corruption in the fourth object that causes the database query or the middle tier data mapping layer to terminate in error, it would only return the first 3 objects, and that would be all the app shows. Or it could be something totally different. Probably wouldn't be that hard to fix for a reasonably skilled developer. 

8 hours ago, Roberto256 said:

If only ... they had a year of downtime to polish the app.

 

Oh wait.  They did.

This app needs a lot more than polish - it needs an extensive beta test, which is now being done by the customers. Doing the test during downtime would have required setting up a series of test cruises and then letting a few dozen testers loose to try and signup for them, which would have required a competent test group and a not-insignificant amount of cash. Either that was more than the beancounters were willing to spend, or the company they hired to develop the app really didn't understand how to test software.

18 minutes ago, barrykel said:

Awfully inconsiderate - if they'd just provided testing at the terminal it would have been a lot less inconvenient.

They _are_ still doing testing onboard just before disembarkation, right?

26 minutes ago, pris993 said:

Princess is not providing test at terminal in USA... so that means passengers need to get this done in advance within 72 hours, just another problem for travelers.

Awfully inconsiderate - if they'd just provided testing at the terminal it would have been a lot less inconvenient.

9 minutes ago, Steelers36 said:

Presumably it is the same for Android. 

Nope. Don't forget how many Android phone manufacturers there are - each one gets to set their own update policy, and they vary widely. AFAIK Samsung is 4 years, Google and OnePlus are 3 years, and Moto is 2 years, just to name a few.

8 minutes ago, AF-1 said:

 Something makes me think you still have a bad cluster somewhere in the app;  and maybe clearing out cache on phone and reboot will clean it all up.  One can only hope

No, it's pretty obvious the problem is still that first DW account in the DB with my eMail as the login ID. If I had the connection string I could fix it myself, I'll probably have to eMail their DBA to get it fixed.

45 minutes ago, AF-1 said:

barrykel,  you are right; Apple is the big Kahuna.  Getting back to your app issue.  You mentioned creating a new account using a different email.  Can you also do that for your wife's account?  Hope you can.  I own apple and Microsoft products.  Good luck

Well, I was able to create a new account for DW, and it made things a lot worse. Now when I login to her old account, it brings up the new account (with her new login ID), and my old login now brings up her new account. And the app has lost all of my data, and shows a 'Compass is Currently Unavailable' error when I try and reenter it (tho it shows DW's data fine when I login with her account). 

4 hours ago, AF-1 said:

kitty2264;  that does not surprise me.  Apple has three times the number of apps available than Androids do.  So, it makes sense the developers keep the apple apps updated more frequently.  Plus, apple inspects all the apps used on their devices.  They want to make sure they work properly without slowing the iphone/ipad down when using the app.  Good luck and thanks for your feedback. 

Also the fact that Apple controls the entire environment makes things a lot easier. There are over a dozen Android phone manufacturers, with different hardware architectures and highly varying policies wrt OS updates for older phones.

4 hours ago, AF-1 said:

Barrykel,  have you tried resetting your password?  I know you can't change your user Id or your email;  but you can change passwords.  Open the app then at bottom of page it says forgot email or pssword.  From there you can reset password.   

As I suspected, that had absolutely no effect - signing in with my eMail still brings up DW's account. What actually (sort of) worked was creating a new account with another one of my eMail addresses; that actually brings up all my existing profile information and cruise info. However, it didn't fix the basic problem in that DW's profile still listed my first eMail address as the login ID. I was able to get through to a support rep on the medallion support line, who claimed to fix the issue but indicated that it might take a few hours to propagate. Unfortunately, it's been almost 24 hours and the issue is still there. They may actually be working on it - initially, the app was totally broken after the call, with all our data gone and giving an error message if I attempted to reenter it; that's now working. I'll wait another day or so, then call them again if it's still broken. 

2 hours ago, HBCcruiser said:

You MUST use the Royal App to do your health screening the day prior to sailing though. It also speeds up your boarding process. Once onboard the App is used to book all entertainment and or change dining reservations. 

What about those who don't have smartphones? Also note that the Royal app (at least the Android version) is somewhat more tolerant of older OS's - it only requires Android 7, while MedallionClass requires Android 8.

8 hours ago, Thrak said:

Okay... I admit I have picked on the Princess IT Team. Of course this is not the first issue I have had with the team. There have been multiple times where I felt the IT Team was lacking.

 

Flash forward to the issues with this app... I have to say that I don't believe the entire issue is with the IT Team. It's my belief that the Marketing Group kind of hamstrung the IT folks. The Marketing folks promised the sun, the moon, the stars, the universe, the infinite... and then left the IT folks to implement their promises.  Oh, wait... That's what the Marketing People always do. They kind of "make up" what they think would happen in their "perfect marketing world" and promise that stuff and then expect the IT people to "make it happen" even though the Marketing people have zero real world experience and live in some sort of fantasy world.

 

Yes, I have been critical of the IT folks but I am even more critical of the Marketing folks who hung the IT folks out to dry. In my experience (granted it is not the greatest experience out there but it is my real world experience) the Marketing people are the biggest problem.

And don't forget the beancounters, who I'm sure told the IT Team that they couldn't spend any money updating the personalizer website since the app was going to do everything. Of course, that's what beancounters always say, tho you would have thought the IT Team would have known what percentage of cruisers don't have smartphones (my guess is somewhere between a third and half; the IT team should have known the exact number or done a survey to find out) and explained that to the beancounters and top management.

7 minutes ago, Steelers36 said:

 

Programmer 1 to Team Lead 1:  It's going pretty well.  I have a couple of bugs to fix.  And some guest data is the real stickler.  You should talk to the data conversion team.

 

Programmer 2 to Team Lead 2:  It's a challenge getting the data conversion right with all of the bugs we keep hitting.  You should talk to development team.  

 

Team Leads to IT Mgr:  Project is proceeding pretty much as expected.  The team is on top of it.  (But we need help from the Data Conversion Team.  But we need help from the Development Team.)  We will solve the issues soon and be able to start on the next set of enhancements.

 

IT Mgr to CIO:  Everyone is working hard for the success of this project.  We are doing well considering the timeframe.  I think we can be back on track within a couple of weeks.

 

CIO to PCL Pres:  I think we're in a good place.  We have made good progress on the critical items with a few minor issues.  The teams will be into next enhancements in about a week from now.

 

PCL Pres to Jan Swartz:  It's all good.  Going to be a marvelous new system.  Nothing other than a couple of guests who have weird data issues.

LOL! Nailed it!

5 minutes ago, Waynetor said:

One comment that struck me was her lack of awareness of how bad the issues with the app roll-out was.  I would have assumed this issue would have worked its way up the management ladder to meetings re opening up the return to sailing, especially when she noted Princess is fully aware of CC and its followings.  

That would assume the IT management team is competent. But of course if the IT management team were competent, anyone having problems with the app (or the third to half of the customer base that can't use the app at all) could just use the personalizer website for everything.

16 minutes ago, kywildcatfanone said:

I spent 2 hours 12 minutes on the phone with them this afternoon.  Still not resolved.  Got transferred twice, but the last lady was at least helpful and is going to call me back tomorrow.

I expect it's a simple fix for an IT person who can connect to their user profile DB, but they won't let you talk to one.

When is your next cruise? Unless it's within the next few weeks it will probably take a week or so for them to even look at your issue - I've been having my own problems with the website (very different from yours - mine appear to have involved the interaction between the legacy profile DB used by the website and the new one used by the app), and I also spent around 2 hours on the phone - my agent also tried to be helpful, but her actions appear to have introduced a far more serious issue with the app. She escalated it to the support team, but said that they probably won't get to it for a week because they're totally swamped dealing with the problems of those who are sailing soon.

42 minutes ago, ukwizard said:

So,  if it is not working for you and your cruise is a few weeks or more away it might be best just to uninstall,   give it a week and then try it again,  that might just do the trick.

They just did an update on 7/24, so 8/1 or even 8/31 seems too soon. Plus, I do think that Steeler36 is right that the issue is data corruption rather than an app bug. I just got off the phone with a support rep, and she was able to see the issues with my account and file a report, but she said it might take over a week to fix, since we're not sailing until 12/11 and the team is apparently busy fixing issues for folks who are sailing in the next few weeks. It's probably a good idea to call the support line (844-525-0942) and report your issue, but don't hold your breath waiting for a fix.

13 minutes ago, 2 cruises a year said:

Hopefully you can correct it there.  

Nope, it won't let you edit the login ID, which is what's causing the problem. I was finally able to get through to medallion support (844-525-0942), and she confirmed the bad login ID and claimed to enter a fix for it; she said it might take 24 hours to take effect, which is not unreasonable. The bad news is that the app is now broken - all the data is gone, and when I try and reenter it, it says Compass is unavailable. She noticed the problem, but she says it might take over a week to fix - we don't sail 'til 12/11, and apparently the team is busy dealing with the problems of folks who' are sailing in the next few weeks. Sadly, it appears the app has now reached what I call 'Whack-a-mole' status (fix one bug and a half dozen other bugs pop up).

25 minutes ago, AF-1 said:

I do not think one spouse needs to log out for the other to sign in.  When I open the app under my username and password I can then navigate thru the app.  If I tap on personal info and documents, it shows both my wife and my pictures with all green checkmarks.  Same holds true for health status.  It showed both my wife and me and we answered the questions.  Under the medallion device it lists both my wife and me.  That being said; I believe you can access both people under one account.  Now when it gets time to board the ship; we will both need QR codes so we may have to each sign into the app.  Also, I used the medallion app back in 2019 on Caribbean Princess, which was first ship to have it.  The app worked very well.  It opened cabin easily, ordered drinks and food around the ship, bought gifts in the onboard store, and tracked my spouse on the ship.  I cannot speak to all the issues people are having in the UK.  I would hope the app works the same no matter what country you're trying to use it in; however, seems like that is not the case.  

From the videos, it looks like you just need the medallion to board. And lots of us in the US are having problems with the app - my latest challenge is that while the app appears to be working fine, the website is now broken - when I login with my eMail, it brings up DW's profile info!! And when I login with her eMail, it also brings up her profile - interestingly, it shows my eMail as the login ID; I strongly suspect that's the problem. I called the support line, got no help, and I'm now holding to escalate to Customer Relations. Not real hopeful.