Help navigating the hot mess that is Carnival Customer Service, so over it!

[Ontario_Cruiser]

Sorry that you experienced this, but I echo what the others have said.

 

Any time you are dealing with customer service you NEED to take all emotions out. Stick to the facts, be objective, and be reasonable with your expectations for restitution.

 

Asking for a 100% refund of your cruise fare, or a refund for your bottle of cologne because the ship shuddered, or declining another cabin on a lower deck because you have "Titanic Syndrome", are all not, IMHO, not reasonable. In fact, declining the other cabin undermines how serious your problem with this cabin was.

 

Once again, stick to the facts, keep it short and simple, and leave all emotions out. You may get better results with that. Once again, sorry that your cruise wasn't the best.

 

I agree with this 100%. However, Carnival staff still should treat each customer courteously and with respect, regardless of how emotional they are. This is where I see that they may have failed.

 

As for the address to mail the refund check, I would think that it would go to whoever is listed as the primary cabin holder. When I fill out the online check-in process, I list myself first, and then my kids. Was the OP the first listed on the cabin?

[Chmie]

OP - you may realize from the responses by now that few will sympathize with your complaints. It gets as ridiculous as comparing your complaints to some kid in Africa getting water :confused: However, you paid for a cabin with a/c and I suggest that is what you should expect so Carnival should provide some compensation. As for the noise from the gym and your broken bottle of cologne - chalk that up to experience. Good luck.

[cruizinisthebest]

They offered to move you to another cabin, so why didn't you move? That would have been better. I'm not going to slam you for not examining the deck plan with a fine tooth comb like....I do, lol! You picked a cabin you thought would be good. There was no way to know everything about it that you had an issue with anyway, like the heat.

 

You can't go through the entire cruise then try and dispute every charge at the end. You had a right to say the heck with it and get off totally on Carnival's dime.

 

I do feel for you regarding the expensive cologne, but perhaps a letter or email to guest solutions will yield you some type of refund.

 

Blasting off on Facebook....wasn't helpful. And as for this refund check, your friend should call and ask for a check #. That should confirm whether one was sent or not. If he can't or won't do that, dude has the money.

 

Customer Service can be a pain sometimes, with any company. Hope you get some kind of resolve - it may be just not worrying yourself over any of this anymore. Book another cruise...with somebody....in a different part of the ship of course! ;)

[xitappers2bx]

so... a few things here. this is why having a travel agent is key. when a collection of workout videos (225$) went missing out of my room, my travel agent was able to fill out all the paper work and help me follow up and within two weeks i had a check for the entire cost of the videos, plus shipping so i could re-order them.

 

second... when you booked the room, you should have checked to see where the room was... and when you realized that the stateroom was UNDER the gym you should have booked a different room. because come on, they're not going to reimburse you for a room that YOU picked, and they're also not going to tell their employees not to use the equipment they're ALLOWED to use after closing hours. All because you didn't check the deck plans. I just booked a cruise last week for March, and before i booked it, i looked at what was above and below me so that i know i don't have that potential for obnoxious noises. i am a little nervous about being so close to the elevator, but i am accepting that risk, and if the people keep me up, i'm certainly not going to go crying to Carnival about me booking that room and expect a refund.

 

next up... carnival doesn't care how/who paid for the cruise... if someone in the stateroom called and did what you were unable to do, you can't expect them to be like, oh wait, hold up, Mr. XYZ paid so we have to talk to him. You said yourself your that the two other people paid you for their portion and then you made final payment... so they're as entitled to that 1/3 of the "refund" you didn't deserve in the first place.

 

Next, it sounds like you were on a 4 night cruise (you said 3 out of the 4 nights) so you paid about 750 for 3 people for 4 nights, that works out to about 250 per person, so thats barely $60 a night... you're not ever going to do that well with a decent hotel, all the food you can eat, and everything else you get on a cruise...

 

You then said that the ship made some some big movement and thats when your YSL cologne broke? It's a vessel in water, sometimes they shake, sometimes they shutter, sometimes they tilt. You should have kept it in a place where it couldn't be damaged (like in the bathroom behind a rail, in one of the drawers, so forth and so on). That's not their problem.

 

You should be grateful Carnival offered to refund you anything... they did nothing to owe you anything. I went to Carnival and wrote a very civil e-mail and letter regarding our experience in a suite and the people below and next to us being chain smokers, rendering our very expensive balcony useless giving us a very overpriced oceanview room, I asked them to review their policy and in return they sent my daughter a cute plush of FunShip Freddy and a fairly significant (unasked for, and unexpected) credit to be used on board our next cruise. This credit I shared with the person that I travel with, because half of it belonged to her. While I'm sad your friend didn't share the refund with you and the other fellow, that's more of a testament to the type of friends you have, not a problem Carnival has.

[cruiseclues]

At least we got the information that Cabin 1002 has these various problems. Air conditioning problems, rude customer service, and the way everything was handled by Carnival would have upset us...especially since Carnival has been good for us to deal with so far.

 

I can say that on over 30 plus cruises we have not experienced anything falling from shelves, desk, etc., though we have experienced fairly rough seas...30+ foot waves for example. However, I've seen videos where a fair amount of of movement occurred...including all the furniture in rooms moving back and forth as the ship rolled...with passengers standing behind poles alternating from one side of the pole to the other as the furniture moved...though, I'm not sure I would find it reasonable to expect any of these events.

Edited February 4, 2014 by cruiseclues

[tree.critter]

Sorry you didn't get to enjoy your cruise.

 

That being said I'm not going to say you are right or wrong to complain but I do want to point out that CS of any corporation knows that you can't please all of the people all of the time even when trying their best.

 

I do know that cruise lines will blacklist passengers that they feel are impossible to please no matter how hard they try. I doubt you'll be cruising on Carnival again with how upset you are so that probably won't matter to you, but just saying.

[mykiddiewinks]

First thing I ever do when calling to make a complaint is note the date, time and get the name of who I am speaking too, only ever had one issue with a company stating they had no record of us calling as soon as we told then details of the time/date etc all of a sudden they were able to retrieve our details.

 

You are on a ship they move and vibrate, no one can foresee what is going to happen that is why we keep any breakables in a drawer. The only time we have ever had anything fall of the a shelf was when the ship we were on had to make an emergency turn around to disembark a passenger that had suffered a heart attack.

 

Good luck sailing on RCI in the future just an FYI their ships move too and they also have customer service staff who also have bad days, I know this speaking from experience. If you were unhappy with what you were told why did you not ask to speak to someone more senior whilst on board?

[5000]

I am glad I didn't get that cabin after you. Some of the perfume slicks on formal night make me queasy....:eek:

[graphicguy]

Not judging....but why didn't you tell Customer Service the first night that you were invoking their "satisfaction guarantee policy"? That way you would have received a full refund. Regarding your cologne, ships rock on the seas. Lesson learned. Never bring glass objects that can break. Unfortunately, it was an expensive lesson.

 

But, weather can get rough and shake a ship pretty strongly, causing things to fall off counters. That's why most everything is bolted down on a ship.

 

Good luck!

[CruzCrazy]

I can sympathize with the fact that your cruise didn't go as well as you had hoped. I think sometimes people who get to cruise/vacation frequently forget what it's like when you plan on a vacation that's long overdue and the anticipation that accompanies that feeling. I'm sorry the reality wasn't up to par with the expectation. Hopefully, there were things about the cruise that you enjoyed, and I noticed you said your friends made the experience better.

 

All of that being said, I've been in a forward-facing cabin on the Glory (on lido deck). On that ship, on deck 9 only, they've transformed those cabins to 6J and 6K, and those cabins are very large with beautiful sweeping views out of floor-to-ceiling windows. This was our first time in a cabin in that location (have always had balcony cabins before), and I was worried that it would be too warm. I'm kind of cold natured, by DH is not, and we all know who would catch his wrath first if the cabin was unbearably hot. Fortunately for us, the cabin seemed no warmer than any other we've had. I only mention this because I had thought of it beforehand, and I do my due diligence when researching cabins prior to booking. The other reason I mention it is that we had a lot of shaking/shuddering in that cabin, more than any other we've been in, and one night I swear it almost knocked me out of bed. I think the bow of a ship hitting the waves at 20 knots is a little more "violent" (I use that term loosely) than what I had anticipated. This happened a few times during the 7-day cruise, but was most noticeable when we were closer to Florida, coming and going. I know absolutely nothing about maritime navigation, so what the currents are, etc., I couldn't say, but I know that if I'd had a bottle of anything near the edge of a counter, it might well have hit the floor. No noise from above us in that cabin, and I would choose that cabin again, this time well aware of some of the idiosyncrasies.

 

As it comes to making problems known with a cabin while onboard, we've had a little experience there. On the Victory, our air was less than adequate. We made a call to guest services, who notified engineering, and it was fixed within an hour. It must have been something simple, and they must not have been very busy. All we know is that they came, they worked on it for a little while, and then the AC was working much better. Later in that same cruise, our toilet wouldn't flush. Again, same process. Again, we were lucky, and all was well within a couple of hours, and they brought around a plate of chocolate goodies for our trouble. Each time, we were calm and polite and stated the problem clearly and asked that it be handled ASAP, and it was.

 

As others have stated, if there was not another cabin to be moved to, what would you have had them do? Cruise lines don't sail with empty cabins as a rule. They don't keep an open room on hand just in case. You seem genuinely surprised that you weren't upgraded or at least given another cabin in the same category. If I had been in your situation, I would have taken the other cabin that was available and then asked for compensation in the amount of the difference.

 

I'm not sure where they got the amount of refund they stated, but since they have stated it, I wouldn't quit now until I received it. Either they haven't sent it, it's lost in the mail, or your friend has it. Stay calm, document every conversation/e-mail, and hopefully you will receive it soon. Good luck with this and better luck next time when cruising.