yorkyred

Hi there,

 

Can you please send us an email to concerns@celebrity.com so we can look into this and assist?

Sadly I did that two days ago.

Just a thought: Have you spoken to Celebrity's Accounts Department? They are easy to get through to: just select the option "do you want to make a payment" and check you have the accounts department. They should be able to tell you if anyone has requested a refund to you and, if they have, if there is a reason for the delay.

 

I have always found the accounts department very efficient but they have to work with an antiquated system. I am not suggesting that you do not escalate the issue but it would help to know if the problem is before or after the accounts department.

Cheers I could give that a try, the problem is Celebrity are not even stating there is an issue as they have just ignored all correspondence.

Was your refund through your credit card company?

 

Celiberity's always done the refunds to our card in a timely manner, but different cards post the returns at their own pace. However, I am in the USA and service may differ.

 

If it is through a card, have you called your card company to ask if the refund was made but not yet posted?

It's not been refunded, my wife works for the bank involved.

Would anyone know where you make a formal complaint with Celebrity ? They have ignored all contact and still owe me nearly £1400 despite stating it would be refunded with 7/10 working days. I'm at the point of thinking about now stepping things up given the confirmation of cancellation was the 30th June.

I judge all wait times against the wait for Customer Services at my Energy provider, Cooperative Energy - typically 1 hour plus till you're either cut off or put through to a triage team who say they can't help and i'll have to ring....Customer Services. Been like this for 5 months.

 

Celebrity by comparison (5 min waits max) is a dream

It's not 5 minutes max, I was 45 minutes and still never got through and unless it's very early morning I doubt you ever get through in 5 minutes in the UK.

I am finding Celebrity's Customer Service getting worse every year.

 

In the past when I contacted Celebrity Customer Service, I would be contacted in a reasonable amount of time. Now I have to send letters, emails and post comments on Cruise Critic and then when I do get a response I am lead to believe I am speaking with someone on the executive team, which I thought were in Miami, but the phone call is coming from Kansas.

 

You can try this e-mail: CelebrityOneTouch@celebrity.com

 

Good luck.

You know as an example. Shortly after emailing Celebrity with the contact given in this thread I needed to contact American Express after an online registration was suspended. Firstly an automated reply stating I did not need to use the pay per minute phone number and redial their new freephone number. Phone answered in 20 seconds and sorted out within another minute. She then waited while I checked my online account again to make sure all was well before asked how my new card experience was going. She then gave tips and details of a brand new promotion on how to gain more avios points. That's how customer service should be, take NOTE Celebrity.

Yet again terrible non existent customer service from Celebrity in the UK

I contacted them asking for a call back..no call received, I e mailed their customer service team, and no reply,

 

This isn't the first time I have had terrible customer service by UK Celebrity.

Last year we had exactly the same problem of being unable to get anyone to talk to us, except by ringing and holding for hours.

 

They are quick enough to take our money though, no delay in contact then

 

Does anyone have any advice or perhaps a senior managers e mail address I could try.

I've just tried the email given above after being ignored for the last three weeks including two emails and a £5 phone bill for being left on the line before giving up, still owed £1370 by Celebrity. Their customer service makes Ryair look good, for a so called premium line it's absolutely disgraceful.

The British summer, four seasons in one week.

Yorkyred,

 

Have you tried sending an email with your concerns to Ms Lutoff-Perlo, President and CEO, at the following address: celebrityonetouch@celebrity.com

 

Good luck!

Cheers I will give it a few more days then escalate the issue. Very dissapointing though, I would not have expected customer service on a level with Ryanair. I mean email confirmation with a promise to reply within 28 days, come on.!!!

It's not going to change because the cruise lines along with just about every hotel in the world don't want to get into confrontations with guests. Honestly we're about at the point of just playing along and getting up early and sticking towels on chairs. I've moved things before and been mildly assaulted by a female passenger and I just don't go on holiday to be subject to abuse, it's just not worth the hassle. So yes I'm going to be honest and state we are probably going to join the chair hogging set for the first time in November.

I sent an e-mail to that address on July 13th and no response at all not even an automated one.

 

In was in reference to a letter I mailed (the old fashioned way) on June 10 and still have not received a response from that either. I wanted to confirm they received it, so I e-mailed a copy of it.

 

In the past my letters and e-mails I've sent were responded to much quicker than this. I don't know what this new President is doing, but so far I don't really like any of it.

 

Project Runway, BBB, the Grass is Greener Picnic Baskets, not responding to Customer's mail or e-mails? Really, what is going on with this company?

My experience at this point. We cancelled our November cruise booked directly with Celebrity and re booked the same cruise with a TA on the 30th June We received a confirmation email confirming this and stating we would receive a refund of £1179.22, this in itself was incorrect as they stated the lost deposit was £300 when in fact we only paid a £100 deposit. Strangly the rep on the phone actually said the confirmation would be incorrect but we would still only lose the £ 100 deposit, so a refund of £1379.22 within 7/10 working days. When we did not receive a refund within this time scale I sent an email to UK customer services which was not replied to. I then phoned Celebrity two day age but after being transferred waited 45 minutes with no response and had to give up with £5 phone charge to add insult to injury. Sent off another email with again no response. So that's where I stand at this point 19 days later, no contact and still owed nearly £1400, I'm pretty sure Celebrity would be chasing me if I owed them that amount. I just feel for a brand that markets itself as upscale it's incredibly poor customer service before we even step on the ship in November.

How do I go about finding a good U.S. TA to use? Where can I find names/recommendations?

Not allowed to mention any on here I'm afraid, Do a Google search using popular keywords and you will see some of the bigger ones pop up along with a few other sites that may be useful.

We have our November cruise booked with a US travel agent with a UK presence. It's more UK terms and conditions with none refundable deposit. However Celebrity website price £3258

TA price £2770.

I think they are pretty poor on the admin side that's for sure. I cancelled a cruise and re booked through a TA. Confirmation email stated the wrong amount of refund, short by £200. It's now past the latest date for my money to be refunded and a further email has still not been replied to. I've actually used emails this time rather than phoning and as such avoiding their charge per minute but I guess it's back to that later today. So yes not fraud but they really need to look at the pre booking service we receive.

And 45 minutes on the phone today sitting in a queue and never getting connected which probably cost around another £5 on the phone bill, so another email fired off with an auto response. I wonder how patient Celebrity would be if I owed them £1370 ?

A phone that's actually turned off can't build up any charges, it's not receiving a signal to be able to charge you anything.

Thanks. Hard to compare different lines, but certainly some "Food" for thought. We are big foodies, so we will certainly consider your experiences in the past....Let me know what you find in November; we aren't sailing until June 2016.

I will certainly be posting a review on our return. To be honest I feel the MDR on most lines are pretty similar, on top of Cunard we have cruised RC, Princess, and Thomson. We enjoy meeting other people so tend to pick larger tables in the MDR but we do feel standards have dropped across the board. For us the speciality restaurants often take you back to the standards of food and service from cruising 20 years ago and we're more than happy to pay the supplement given cruise prices are down in real terms from when we first cruised.

I guess he has this all planned out in advance. He perceives that Celebrity won't deliver great service, and will dispute it! What a negative way to live...

I think we all know what's going on here but if you state anything your post is removed.

I will base my opinion based on Cunard as we are not cruising on Celebrity until November. Our experience of the MDR on Cunard was average food, understaffing, mistakes, and very noisy. At times you felt they could not wait to get you back out. So we moved to Todd English and in our view better food. But that's not what made it for us. You are given time to actually enjoy your meal in a far nicer atmosphere with attentive staff. For us it made a huge difference and we will be dining in every speciality restaurant in November unless the MDR is fantastic, but I'm not holding my breath.

Have to disagree, if you choose Select you have to pay it when you set up your dining option and this was through Celebrity, not a TA.

It's at final payment, we just cancelled pre final payment and were only charged the deposit

Sometimes they over promise and under deliver. I'm now into my 8th phone call to resolve something, promised 5 times to do something and didn't, eventually they did and offered me 100obc. Now 6weeks later I've still not received it, had 2 people promise to reissue an invoice and haven't so now spending time and money trying to get them to give me the compensation offered for messing up the first time.

I think they are pretty poor on the admin side that's for sure. I cancelled a cruise and re booked through a TA. Confirmation email stated the wrong amount of refund, short by £200. It's now past the latest date for my money to be refunded and a further email has still not been replied to. I've actually used emails this time rather than phoning and as such avoiding their charge per minute but I guess it's back to that later today. So yes not fraud but they really need to look at the pre booking service we receive.

Am surprised after reading this thread that so many participants feel the OP was out of line and should expect mistakes happen, gratiuities should be paid and don't we all know of Celebrity's IT errors so we just need to deal with it?

 

How complacent have we got that we assume the OP knew of such IT issues, and even more worrying is that the feedback seems to be we should just shut up and put up. Sorry but when a multi million dollar company cannot fix an issue that results in financial discrepancies and we, the customer should just deal with it...well I,m a little flabbergasted.

 

I have had it happen to me and read of many other similar scenarios occurring with their internal accounting system and it's simply not acceptable in any capacity.

 

Would you be just as accepting if you went to your local bank and withdrew $50 from your account only to see it go onto overdraft by $25..... Even though you knew you had $100 in there. Would you walk away thinking oh well, they'll fix it, they've been having a few system issues lately?.

 

What if it was your TA. Instead of praising a good TA would you be posting of their incompetence? Would you just put up with it?

 

I didn't think so.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

The point was more it's an error and not some level of intentional fraud.

We have done several inside and we love it. Dark and cozy at night and we sleep great. We are never in our cabin during the day. We always take a small night light and clock. We have had balcony cabins many times and sometimes realized we never used the balcony. We prefer to be on the pool deck during the day.

We are pretty much the same. The one thing we did like was ordering breakfast from room service and having that on our balcony while looking over a Carribbean Island. But not worth an extra few hundred pounds for us just for breakfast.

Hello All,

 

We cruised in style last time on an Aft cabin -CC. We don't have the $$ to do that this time and want your opinions on an inside cabin. We are looking at a good price on the Alaska cruise in Sept 2016 on Infinity. Are inside cabins horrible? I would prefer to have a window at least, but if it means I can't afford to go - I am willing to take the less expensive inside cabin if it isn't too claustrophobic.

 

Any advice on inside cabins? I know I don't want to be under the pool deck. :)

 

Thanks!

 

Julie

Vast majority of our cruises have been insides, we use only use them to sleep in and love the fact we get to use the rest of the ship the same as everyone else and pay half what many of those in Balcony cabins have paid. We have just cancelled our inside and booked a balcony but only because it worked out cheaper than the inside when taking into account the drinks package. Honestly at full price I don't think balcony's are worth the money just for a tiny outside area but that's just us as many cruisers use them far more than we do. I'm more than happy sitting down one side of a ship listening to music and not bothered about having light or natural air in our room.

I don't seem to be able to open the link on my iPad but as the upgrade to premium is the equivalent of one premium cocktail or craft beer surely it's a no brainer for a lot of cruisers given you also get better quality wine ?

Easy answer is just start charging everyone in advance, we all pay it anyway regardless.