Why Can't IT Dept. Maintain My Capt Club #?

[OceanCruise]

It is very frustrating. We are Elite with our last Celebrity cruise just a few months ago. We recently booked a B2B with a Celebrity Vacation Planner and, as usual, gave them our Captain's Club numbers. However, for the past few years, every time we either do the online check-in or initially add the new cruise to My Celebrity, I can never submit all the info because it either says my name and Captain's Club number don't match or my name and passport number don't match. With the 2 B2B cruises I just booked, one has my Captain's Club number but I can't submit the same Captain's Club number to my other reservation. Half the time Celebrity mixes up my number and DH's number so I usually have to correct that when booking a phone reservation. I always have to call and get my number corrected but then the next time I book a cruise I always have to call again because it is wrong again! Celebrity--why can't you keep my info correct in your system!!

[jer_l]

Our numbers have been confused for years. Our current cruise has the numbers right but the Celebrity Website lists my wife's number as mine. There have been past cruises when I have given the numbers to a TA durectly off the Captain's Club cards and then they get reversed during the booking process because Celebrity has told the TA they were wrong.

 

Fortunately, it hasn't affected any cruise, but they still cannot get our cruise history straight. Since we're already Elite I guess that won't matter unless they introduce a higher level.

[BruceMuzz]

Celebrity has the same problem all the other mass market lines have, for the same reason - money.

 

The cruise lines all realised - too late - that we made the same mistake the airlines made before us.

Frequent Flyer / Cruiser programs do not really work very well.

Yes, they do encourage people to come back - but generally it is the wrong people who return.

 

Frequent cruisers spend far less money onboard, have much higher expectations every time they come back, and complain far more often than first-time cruisers.

The cruise lines continue to encourage this, because frequent cruisers are the "low hanging fruit". It costs us next to nothing to get you back, even though we make very little profit from you.

 

In order to make this as cost effective as possible, the cruise lines cut and cut their frequent cruiser programs to the bare bone. We will not invest any money into programs that return very little money or profit to us.

Typically there is a single PC in the head office that contains all the frequent cruiser information. Most major cruise lines now have millions of frequent cruisers to track.

We hire comebody who was not qualified to cook french fries at McDonalds, who is now in charge of this program. Little wonder that you are having problems with the program. I am surprised that it works at all.

[seasearider]

Brucemazz, what ever does your response have to do with an annoying IT problem with X?

[brightonbuoy]

My partners passport name differs to his known name. The website won't accept either as the correct name for the captains club number! Always ring to add on. They always say they've corrected the issue. No idea how we get it sorted out...and that's with 26 cruise points.

[Fixit2010]

As an authority in IT and IT Service Management (ITSM). With 25 years under my belt, I can honestly say from an expert point of view that I would be embarrassed if I was head of Celebrity UK's IT.

 

The website is shockingly bad, inconsistent with the US site, spelling mistakes, database errors, data loss. All this stems from poor leadership at the top, filtering down to staff that have no attention to detail, incorrect processes and no pride.

 

If I ran that department, the site would be awesome and more importantly it would work.

[florisdekort]

For me the problem is that my last name consists of two words: De Kort. At the Captain's Club, I'm registered as such. However, the website doesn't allow a space in the last name field. So it forces me to key in Dekort... triggering the error "name and Captain's Club number don't match". I then take out the Captain's Club number in order to be able to complete the reservation, call Celebrity (or Azamara, they have the exact same issue), and have someone adjust my last name and re-add my Captain's Club number. I've raised this countless times during the past 3 years, but to no avail.

 

Floris

[shoreham01]

Our name is hyphenated and that is not acceptable to Celebrity either.

[cruzeluver]

Brucemazz, what ever does your response have to do with an annoying IT problem with X?

 

I think (and I could be wrong, I was once ;) ) Bruce is saying that fixing the issues specific to Captains Club are not a high priority for X for the reasons Bruce stated.