Come On Celebrity--It Can't Be That Difficult

[cruisead]

It's been months, and you've had long enough to fix your website. This should be an embarrassment to your entire company, but it doesn't seem to faze anyone in the upper echelons of your company, because if it did, the website would have been fixed long ago. How difficult can it be to find and hire a web administrator who knows what they're doing? If RCI's website works, why can't yours?

 

Do you realize how frustrating it is to try and find your booking, only to be rebuffed by a broken site? Do you realize how much money you're losing when passengers can't book excursions online? Do you have any idea how many bookings you're losing because your site, in a word, sucks?

 

Come on, Celebrity. Get your act together and fix your website, once and for all. And please, don't come on here and say "We're working on it.", because you've been saying that for at least a year!!!!!

[Shir Hayam]

Amen!

[jszpira]

Just sent Celebrity an email about the website. It's so annoying that the information about excursions, drink packages, specialty dining menus, etc. isn't listed on the website. I'm so thankful for these forums!!

 

 

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[cpj]

I dont know if there ever going to fix the problems. I think they just dont care.

[whataboutport]

Here here!

 

I have an upcoming 11 night. I WAS going to book all the ports that are new to me thru Celebrity, but now I only booked one. And I was lucky that I got that one to go thru. Out of 6 ports, only one is booked thru X.

[wallie5446]

I don't guys, somehow they are getting 20,000+ each and every week on their ships.

[tonyrocks922]

"Fixing" a problematic customer -facing website isn't always as simple as it seems. The front-end we use has to interact with various back-end databases and systems, which likely (assuming X is like most hospitality companies) have not had a major overhaul in 5-10 years.

 

The web admins might be incompetent, as some suggest, but it's much more likely that there is a major overhaul scheduled for sometime in the future that will fix a lot of both customer-facing and internal flaws in the system.

 

Writing software fixes, quality assurance, code review, UAT, etc can take years for a complex environment.

[ladylemondrop]

Its really not great, was pricing (well trying) to price Sky Suite S1 and the cabins shown as available in that category were not sky suites at all, this kind of error has been happening for weeks, someone else mentioned when they try to price for 3 adults, the system kept only providing quotes for 2 adults etc etc...

 

But worse! When you call them up over the phone, they keep you on hold for hours and then still dont get it right!!

 

Love Celebrity but am feeling really tired of these issues, it takes the shine off the booking process which is meant to be the exciting bit!

[hulamoon]

It's true! There was a recent study that much of your vacation satisfaction is in the planning. Maybe we should all just plan and never actually go! Haha

 

Seriously, I am amazed that the company has done so much to try increase the bottom line yet leaves money on the table by making booking tours etc so difficult.

 

Three out of the five I have booked are still not even showing up. To me that is a minor issue compared to others.

[Commodore]

 

You're right. Yesterday a friend of mine who has never travelled with Celebrity called me to say he just received by mail a package from Celebrity with my cruise documents and luggage tags he lives 200 miles from my town.I called Celebrity and was told that this the adress that they have. I have never put that adress in my profile with Celebrity.

[cruisead]

"Fixing" a problematic customer -facing website isn't always as simple as it seems. The front-end we use has to interact with various back-end databases and systems, which likely (assuming X is like most hospitality companies) have not had a major overhaul in 5-10 years.

 

The web admins might be incompetent, as some suggest, but it's much more likely that there is a major overhaul scheduled for sometime in the future that will fix a lot of both customer-facing and internal flaws in the system.

 

Writing software fixes, quality assurance, code review, UAT, etc can take years for a complex environment.

 

Do you have any idea how long this site has been broken? At least two years, so they've had that long to fix their internal flaws. Should it take more than 2 years to write software fixes?

[PinotBlanc]

Does Celebrity skip the threads about the website?

 

 

Penny

[cruzeluver]

We are coming back to X after an absence of two years, and their site is just as crappy as it was then. They may offer our favorite on board experience, but pretty much all the other guys have more user-friendly sites.

[jzad]

Both of our bookings now say 'ON HOLD, 24 hours'. Don't ask me what that means. We just got them back from the other issues we were having!!

 

 

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[RickT]

"Fixing" a problematic customer -facing website isn't always as simple as it seems. The front-end we use has to interact with various back-end databases and systems, which likely (assuming X is like most hospitality companies) have not had a major overhaul in 5-10 years.

 

The web admins might be incompetent, as some suggest, but it's much more likely that there is a major overhaul scheduled for sometime in the future that will fix a lot of both customer-facing and internal flaws in the system.

 

Writing software fixes, quality assurance, code review, UAT, etc can take years for a complex environment.

 

I totally agree. With multiple systems/databases/infrastructure it's possible their best course of action will be to develop (hopefully) a brand new system/website to deal with this rather than the patch work approach we seem to be seeing.

[hammo]

Our reservations are now ON HOLD - and WILL EXPIRE IN 24 HRS !!!!

What the ?

I thought the website issues were resolved but obviously not . So , its back to being :mad: again.

[Eddie's Girl]

Does Celebrity skip the threads about the website?

 

 

 

 

 

Penny

 

 

I'm pretty sure they don't. I started a DEAR CELEBRITy thread that caught someone's attention. They made a couple of reply posts but they were pretty lame. They were even upset enough with me that they were able to get CC to remove 2 of my posts. I think they're watching but just aren't able to fix things.

[hammo]

Hey Eddies Girl

 

I thought the website issues were a thing of the past after all those weeks trying to get Celebritys attention on all those threads . Yesterday and again this morning I have one reservation that seems OK , booked here with an Aussie TA and one cruise booked with a US TA that now shows OnHold and will expire in 24hrs. Go Figure. The TA reckons the deposit is paid so :confused:

Here we go again:eek:

[Eddie's Girl]

I had that same message for my last X cruise. That "on hold for 24 hours" lasted for at least 2 weeks. Finally got my TA involved; he got that taken care of. Right now everything is working ok for me but there is no doubt that X has a very "unfriendly" website.

Edited October 4, 2014 by Eddie's Girl

[Cathy Maneri]

I have never cruised Princess, but I do check their site on occasion.

 

I'm so impressed with their website, it's all there and very simple to navigate.

 

Even Royal Caribbean has a better site and they are under the same corporate umbrella.

 

Why can't Celebrity find a good web designer. These companies are both out of South Florida, so why not just hire who Princess hired (if they contract it out).

 

When I book my cruises I call the Loyalty number and book through them (I'm Elite and Diamond). I do all my research first, itin, cabin choices, etc. and just let them book it for me. I've had very professional, courteous reps.

 

If Celebrity wants to sell their products, they had better make it easy for all of us to understand. Good thing we have Cruise Critic and the wonderful posters. I was trying to find out what was in the Classic Beverage Package and someone on CC was nice enough to post it.

[tonyrocks922]

Do you have any idea how long this site has been broken? At least two years, so they've had that long to fix their internal flaws. Should it take more than 2 years to write software fixes?

 

I'm not on here for the purpose of defending celebrity. I haven't even cruised with them yet. I'm just trying to share from experience that fixing problems in a complex environment aren't as simple as it may seem.

 

I've been on projects where completely replacing the database and other infrastructure (including customer-facing websites) has taken 4-6 years.

[tonyrocks922]

You're right. Yesterday a friend of mine who has never travelled with Celebrity called me to say he just received by mail a package from Celebrity with my cruise documents and luggage tags he lives 200 miles from my town.I called Celebrity and was told that this the adress that they have. I have never put that adress in my profile with Celebrity.

 

This is literally impossible. There is no way they got the address out of no where and associated it with your profile. You or someone with access to your account would have had to provide the address at some point for some reason.

 

You think they just sent your documents to a random address and it just happened to be that of someone you know?

[Eddie's Girl]

This is literally impossible. There is no way they got the address out of no where and associated it with your profile. You or someone with access to your account would have had to provide the address at some point for some reason.

 

 

 

You think they just sent your documents to a random address and it just happened to be that of someone you know?

 

 

Maybe Commodore used the recipient of the luggage tags and docs name as a contact for "in case of emergency"?

[Lsimon]

Does Celebrity skip the threads about the website?

 

 

Penny

 

I think they read these and the messages get through but for some unexplained reason they just don't seem to get very far in correcting their systems. Things actually worked pretty well 3 or 4 years ago, but they did some web updating and changes and since then it's been one problem after another. It seems like as soon as they fix one problem something else stops working.

 

In April last year (2013) they responded to all the complaints here on Cruise Critic by having the VP in charge of their web site do an Q&A section on their web site. Unfortunately, it seems that most of the responses didn't really address the issues and from most standpoints it didn't look like it did much good - either PR wise or for web site improvements. Here is a link to those threads: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=869

Edited October 5, 2014 by Lsimon

[Christine Frances]

I still don't understand why some people have problems and others (like myself) never do:confused: