twinklles

On 2/6/2022 at 11:17 AM, cruisemom42 said:

Why not wait until last minute to book when you have a fairly clear picture of whether or not the sailing will occur and what the restrictions -- if any -- might be?

 

 

I will give you the straight forward answer to this question.  We are the people who rent the big suite.  They sell out early.  We wouldn't enjoy a cruise in a room without a living room and a dining room.

On 2/6/2022 at 3:39 PM, cruizergal70 said:

What "service" do you believe should be delivered?

 

 

A cruise.

We had five cruises cancelled over the past two years.  Took as long as six months to get a refund.  Never got a refund without first disputing the charge with Amex.  And now Crystal is defunct.  In all candor, I do not understand why they are not all bankrupt.  We miss cruising.  We want to go cruising.  But I am mighty leary of handing over 10s of thousands of dollars months in advance, for a service that recent experience tells me will never be delivered.

In all sincerity, we are trying to decide what the cruise lines are going to need to do, to give us the confidence to hand over that credit card number again.  Do you have any thoughts?

With the demise of Crystal, it might be awhile before I am ready to handover 10s of Thousands of Dollars to a cruise line.  I got lucky and never lost any money.  But I have a good friend who had paid for a 24 day cruise on Crystal.  He booked the cheap seats, but still, I have to assume that was at least $40,000.  He is not that affluent, so it was probably the so-called trip of a lifetime.  I haven't called him because I don't want to embarrass him.

6 hours ago, navybankerteacher said:

I admire your can-do spirit ---- but have to ask:  are you still planning to continue booking cruises in the current environment?   

We haven't booked any other cruise since the last cancellation on January 4.  After the last cancellation, we booked a trip to New York (Bizzare, I agree, but I have always wanted to go to one of Thomas Keller's restaurants) and then to Miami and Jacksonville, and then we are heading to Key West.  Since we were vaccinated, we managed to travel 117 days.  Hit four continents, seven countries, seven states, and lots of cities (and one cruise--Galapagos on Silversea).  After all of that, the best place to go has been FLORIDA.  So having been so repeatedly disappointed, we are going where life is normal:  FLORIDA.

However, that being said, I am seriously thinking about booking Antarctica in November.  But that one is particularly pricy and like you say I don't want to be caught holding the bag, when Crystal Cruises disappears.

Cancelled so far:

Regent is attempting to change the terms of your contract and raise the price of your cruise without your consent.  I am not consenting to this price increase.  I wanted to draw this attempt to your attention.  I am reporting this to consumer protection agencies.

If you are under contract to go on a Regent Cruise, your contract included the following promise by Regent:

“I also understand that I must consent to receive a COVID-19 antigen test, which will be administered and paid for by the cruise line, with a negative result prior to embarkation.”

Yesterday I received an email from Regent attempting to change this contract and impose a charge of $99 per passenger for the cruise line to perform the promised COVID test:

“Regent will have on-site testing available at the pier for a fee of $99 per test.”

This is effectively a $198 increased charge for this cruise. 

If you want to find Regent’s promise in your contract to pay for the Covid test, here is where you will find it:

Go to https://www.rssc.com/

Click on “MY ACCOUNT” in the upper right-hand corner

Sign-in and click on “MY ACCOUNT” again

Click on “MANAGE THIS BOOKING”

On the right-hand side, under the column “MY TO-DO LIST” click on “Guest Registration, Health Attestation & Ticket Contract”

Click on “Health and Safety Attestation/Ticket Contract”

Under the heading “HEALTH AND SAFETY ATTESTATION” you will find Regent’s promise to pay for your COVID test.

Having practiced Consumer Protection Law for my career, perhaps we need to start looking for class-action counsel.

Seabourn took 78 days to refund $25,000,

Crystal is still holding $8000 (fortunately we hadn't paid the balance yet).  They hope to make the refund in 100 days.

Silversea was also similarly bad (we didn't have a Silversea booking but have sailed with them several times--we had friends who relayed their experience with Silversea refunds).

Oh, they made excuses about how busy they are.  Somehow, Delta has been able to refund a total of $16,500 for several flights with no delay at all.  I am guessing that Delta is pretty busy also.

I am just not feeling like handing over 10s of Thousands of dollars months in advance to outfits that treat their customers in this manner.  My only conclusion is that you just can't trust the cruise lines.

17 hours ago, Essiesmom said:

There are multiple threads about this on all of the cruise line boards here.  EM

Odd, since I didn't get one single response to my question.

Refunds for cancelled cruises are routinely taking taking 60+ days (mine took 68 days).

I have realized that the amount paid for a cruise is at risk in the event of the Cruise Line's bankruptcy.  But rationalized that was unlikely and worth the risk.  But the slow refunds (and current obvious risk of bankruptcy) has heightened my concern.  It is now going to be hard for me to handover 10s of thousands of dollars for service that is months away.  My concern will be tested on July 22, 2020 when my final payment is due for an October cruise.  And that is on top of my reticence from the situation.

Are others having this heightened concern about the security of the advance payments we make to go on a cruise?

15 minutes ago, JPH814 said:

As stated initially and several times since, this thread exists to gather and share data. There are many other places for complaints and rants. If my response seems rude, so be it. 

Does that standard only apply to others?  I gather it does not apply to you.  What do your call your nasty sarcastic comment, since it was evidently not a complaint or a rant (it was merely ignorant).

7 minutes ago, JPH814 said:

Oh the horror of that "utterly incompetent" clerk!  Imagine that useless clerk, working with all the technology that his kitchen table can hold, has NO IDEA that the credit card company actually posted the credits 6 days sooner than expected.  Why didn't the clerk have access to the credit card company's system? The least the clerk could have done was call the credit card company each day since May 18 to check on when they were posted.  

 

I am sure other cruise lines can meet this very reasonable standard you set.  Enjoy them!

Oh, JPH814, how I do appreciate the sarcasm. You wield the language as a warrior wields a sword, although, your reading comprehension skills appear to be lacking.  Let's explore where your comprehension skills let you down.

Let's parse what I wrote in detail:

"let me tell you how utterly incompetent Seabourn is."  Well that sentence seems to refer to a commercial organization that apparently is not well organized.  It establishes the subject of the paragraph.  No clerk is mentioned.

"they had actually already issued the credits they simply had not shown up on our statement, but the clerk did not know that."  The pronoun "they" refers to an organization, not an individual.  If we were referring to an individual, the pronoun would have been "he."  Moreover, the phrase "the clerk did not know that," is not critical of the clerk.  It was a criticism of the lack of knowledge that was available to the clerk.  In the context of the incompetence of Seabourn, the subject of the paragraph, it refers to the customer service system that Seabourn had supplied the clerk so that the clerk would know how to respond to customer inquiries. 

Let's also explore for just a minute the underlying cause of Seabourn's atrocious customer service.  Seabourn attempted to excuse their incompetence by saying they were manually processing our refunds.  Have you yet discovered what that means?  Here is what it means.  Seabourn was forcing its customers to wait for Seabourn to do its accounting before they were issuing the refunds.  "Processing" is the allocation of the refund to taxes, air fare, cruise fare and the like.  That is Seabourn's accounting.  It has nothing to do with paying us.  A classy organization would have issued the refunds on a timely basis, and did their accounting on their own time.  We should not be waiting for Seabourn to do its internal accounting.

Champaign tonight.

Our credits appeared today.  But let me tell you how utterly incompetent Seabourn is.  We called them yesterday (Friday May 22, 2020).  They would only say that our credits would appear sometime after June 1, 2020.  Well the credits on the statement are dated May 18 and May 19.  So when we called, they had actually already issued the credits they simply had not shown up on our statement, but the clerk did not know that.
 

So long Seabourn, wasn't nice meeting you.  (This was to be our first Seabourn cruise.  We had done five Silversea cruises over that past two years and decided that we needed to branch out and try the other three.)

2 hours ago, JPH814 said:

So I was looking at our spreadsheet.  The three people who have had their cruise fares refunded were the three earliest cruise dates (March 14, 22 and 22).  It would be interesting if we could hear from Cruzluvers, Sunburned Tongue, TV24 , Twinkles or JKWestlake.  These 5 had the next earliest cruises (between March 22 and March 31.)  I do not know if they have not gotten refunds or if they just did not come back here to update us.  If any of them read this, please give us an update

 

Interesting that all the people we were tracking for Excursion refunds have received their refunds.  

We must have been typing at the same time.  My update is immediately above your post.

1 hour ago, rallydave said:

Sounds an awful much like my story.

 

 

After a promise by the end of the week on April 27 which would be, May 1 on May 1 promised by today, May 22 60 days after cancellation.  Filed disputes on my credit cards immediately as this was the latest of 3 or 4 different promises.  Got the refund tentatively on my credit card and today was able to have a check sent to me but, will take at least two weeks but, does show on line and a check promised.

 

New promise today is by the end of the month of May or next Friday.  Confident this will be missed along with all of the other lies.  This and the lack of ANY contact by Seabourn spells the end of my sailing with them or any of the others who are ripping people off with the same horrid non-service.

 

As I said earlier and will repeat, the cruise lines have made their bed and now they will have to sleep in them.  Based on watching several different CC boards, people will have long memories about how they were mistreated during the bad time and will find other ways to spend their vacation dollars.  While a very few gluttons for punishment will book, believe we will see major cruise line bankruptcies in mid to late 2021.  Remember they only have one time to make a first impression.  

 

 

Seabourn is permanently off of our list.  I am amazed by my fellow cruisers who will go with Seabourn again.  In fact, cruising might be off our list entirely, because I understand that they are all engaging in the same unethical games with their customers.  Moreover, I have never liked handing over tens of thousands of dollars and being at risk of their bankruptcy for several months.  Land trips do have some major advantages over cruising...restaurants in particular.

Just called Seabourn, because credit was promised for today and it hasn't been made.  Here is our summary of broken promises:

March 15, 2020 filled out online form requesting refund.

April 15, 2020 called Seabourn and were promised refund by May 14, 2020

May 15, 2020 called Seabourn and were promised refund by May 22, 2020

May 22, 2020 called Seabourn and they would no longer commit to a date by which we could expect refund.

May 22, 2020 initiated dispute with American Express

4 minutes ago, Covepointcruiser said:

Before you go with another cruise line, you may want to check their boards and look at the refund complaints on those boards.   You would be better off chartering a private 
yacht in the future so you would have complete control of your sailing.   

You make a good point in your first sentence, and friends have had horrible experiences on Silversea.  But other friends who were on Regent were promptly refunded.  Haven't heard anything about Crystal, but I may be testing Crystal in July when my final payment is due for an October cruise.  I will not ignore your insulting sarcasm, but I will not try to respond substantively, because I do not understand your point, other than you are just a nasty....

23 hours ago, Paulchili said:

Not to be argumentative because I agree with you, but.....

You are just barely over 1 month - I am on day 84 with Seabourn and waiting.

How can you "alter" how you do business with them in the future? They will want their deposit and final payment when they say so or else. They won't wait 60 business days for either one.

Paulchili, I don't know how Wire plans to alter his business with Seabourn in the future.  I know how I am going to alter my business with Seabourn.  I am going to call Crystal, Regent, or Silversea.  (We are currently still booked on Crystal in October--time will tell.)

cruise scheduled for March 28, 2020

Seabourn cancelled cruise on March 13, 2020

requested refund March 15, 2020 (first day allowed)

no refunds as of today (May 21).  67 days and counting.

Was told refund would be made on May 14, 2020 (60 days).  Called on May 15, and was told refund would be issued on May 21, 2020.  Just today, I discussed whether we should give up the ghost and dispute this charge with Amex.  $25,477.64.  I guess at this point, we are fools if we don't.

We never do formal night.  You can go to any Michelin 3* without a tie (and most without even a jacket).  Why do I want to put on a costume that is uncomfortable.  I do bring a jacket and wear it most nights.

This picture of our entire luggage for an 11 night cruise and 5 day post cruise might help to clarify why we don't like formal night.  (Would be the same amount of luggage if it was a 100 night cruise.)