Just back - more and more issues on cruise

[Thoie]

Sorry you had to go through all that.

 

My Allure trip this year was vaguely similarly beset with problems before and during that involved multiple calls in advance to straighten things out, and repeated trips to Guest Services until I finally found my "Adriana" (who, funnily enough, may also have been called Adriana). Mine wasn't as bad as yours though.

 

I know it's tiring and you want to just forget about it, but do mail them outlining the full sequence of events (including all the pre-sailing stuff as well), and make a reasonable suggestion as to what they could do to makes things right for you. Even it's just future OBC (which you may actually get this time), I think they need to make things up to you if you'll ever sail with them again!

[Paul65]

I totally understand how you feel about cruising now -- definitely left a bad taste for you. But your story is not usually the norm, for what its worth!

 

I definitely agree with that. I've been on eight cruises with Royal Caribbean over the last 20 or so years, and the only time I can remember needing to go to Guest Services was when I lost my Seapass card and needed them to deactivate it and make a new one for me. It was a problem that was totally my fault, and they handled it quickly and sent me on my way.

Edited July 29, 2015 by Paul65

[Baby_Bear]

I'm so sorry to hear about all your problems, none of which you had any control over. You really have the patience of a saint! I am amazed that RCL could not figure out that the specialty dining reservations were for the person who had the cabin booked before you - this happens all the time that people upgrade and change cabin categories. I hope that didn't mean that all the other people on the cruise who had changed cabins had similar problems! The attitude at Guest Services also sounds very disappointing. After hearing your story, I will be diligently checking our account balances during the cruise to make sure we don't get charged for things we didn't order. And if there are problems I hope GS will be more competent at sorting it out - if they are not, I will have no problem making myself heard.

 

Really sorry that your first cruise was so problematic. I've done six cruises so far and it really is such a fun way to travel. I hope you will give cruising a chance in the future. Maybe try another cruise line!

[Mauriesmileco]

I feel so upset for you reading this I would have had steam coming out my ears. Mistakes can happen but there is no excuse for incompetence. Hopefully you will have another trip which will be more successful [emoji4]

[beachnative]

Think the fact that you are Pinnacle might have something to do with the response you get?

 

My point is that NOBODY, it does not matter if it is their first cruise or 100th cruise, should have to deal with incompetence.

 

We have never had a problem with Guest Relations, Corporate, Resolutions, on our cruises.

 

You missed MY point that not all crew are at the same point on the learning curve. Just like on land, you might encounter a worker that is fresh out of training and has limited or no approval to remove charges from an account or another who has years of on the job practical wisdom and massive authorization. The OP had a cabin that created a glitch in the system and it took Adriana to figure out the glitch.

 

I have yet to encounter "incompetence" on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship and that covers a lot of cruises.

 

I hesitated to post what I did because being Pinnacle I knew someone would discount what I said.

 

Actually, over the years we have been told that our pleasant attitude made it easy to quickly resolve problems for us (not saying that the OP isn't positive). I base my statements on a long history of cruising...not just Pinnacle cruises.

Edited July 29, 2015 by beachnative

[Ocean Boy]

Thanks for posting....your episode can be a learning tool for all of us cruisers.

I'm sorry for your frustrations both pre cruise health and on ship mix ups.

 

Had you not been in a cabin previously assigned to someone else you might have had a smooth sailing. Unfortunately our computer age lifestyle bites us as it did you on the ship.

 

We have been through similar mix ups when upgraded but because we cruise so often we were able to take it in stride and had insight into why the computer was messing with us.

 

At the Front Desk there are a variety of skill levels from new to old hands...some do not have the same authority as others. I'm glad that you found Adriana. Again, due to our background we know to seek the Adrianas first and thus have stress free cruises and have a very positive opinion of Royal Caribbean's Guest Relations.

 

Your Tuscan villa sounds wonderful and wish you could tell us more of it even though this is a cruise site.

 

Wishing for you good health and a wonderful cruise next time.

 

The episode should be a learning tool for RCI not for us. The OP simply should not have had to endure that. And employees representing RCI rolling their eyes at guests' problems shows some real class.

[griffy116]

We were on FOS in June and had a great trip except for Guest Services. As a gift to my Grandson, we paid for a cabin for him and a friend. We also decided to pay their gratuities. They are both 21 and wanted to each use their own credit cards for on board charges. I explained this to at check-in and they said to go to Guest Services as soon as we boarded and they could take care of putting the gratuities on my credit card, which is what I did. They said to come back Friday night as they couldn't do it before then. No problem. I returned Friday night as was told it would be taken care of but couldn't be done until after midnight. Saturday morning, I checked and the charges hadn't been added to my account so I returned to Guest Services. Once again, I explained the situation and was told it would be taken care manually since the charges were being auto-added to their individual accounts. By Saturday night, it still hadn't been taken care of. Once again, I returned to Guest Services to be told it would be done as soon as the person came on duty at midnight. Since it was the last night of the cruise, I was up past midnight and at 1 am, it still wasn't on my SeaPass account. I was awake at 5:30 am, so I decided to avoid the line I knew would be forming at Guest Services and go back to Guest Services to speak to someone since I called ahead and was told the person that does this had left already. She was there from sometime after midnight and left before 5:30 am??? Now I was wide awake and my patience was gone. I went to Guest Services ready to ask to speak to a Supervisor. Believe it or not, there was actually a line at that time of the morning. Each time I had gone to Guest services, through luck of the draw, I got a different person. I figured at some point, I was bound by odds alone to get someone that could fix this. On each trip, I was pleasant hoping that by being nice, it would be fixed or I would at least get a good explanation other than "the person who does this isn't on duty right now." FINALLY spoke to someone that not only fixed it, but printed out the SeaPass accounts for me, along with my Grandson and his friend's account to show that it had been deducted from their account and added to mine. It took less than five minutes for him to correct it. You can make an appointment to book a future cruise, which we also did while onboard. It makes no sense that you can't do something like this for a problem with Guest Services. I will add that we are all Diamond and were able to get in the Priority line which made my wait less, and at least no one rolled their eyes at me. I felt bad to use the priority line and didn't use it the first two times I went to get this fixed, but after 2 tries with no success, I did at least use the shorter line because my patience was beginning to wear thin. It shouldn't take ANYONE this many tries to get something fixed.

[Ocean Boy]

Royal Caribbean is getting ridiculous with their customer service - I would have flipped with everything you had to deal with. We experienced the same type of thing on our last cruise: "come back in the morning, can't help now" over and over, couldn't get issues resolved. Issue after issue, nothing huge, but just constant annoyances every way you turned. It was insane. We/ve decided to take a bit of a break from cruising...

 

Hi Stacy, good to see you.

 

The OP comes across as being quite credible too. I usually take these threads with a grain of salt but I believe she actually endured this mess.:(

[LibertyCruiser]

Were you denied entry into MTD because the time you were there conflicted with the specialty dining reservation?

 

Or if you make a specialty dining reservation are you not allowed to attend MTD at all that day? I could see attending MTD for an appetizer, a desert, or anything else you might want.

 

We upgraded from an inside to an OV once. Caused absolute havoc with our MTD reservations as they did not follow the reservation.

 

Luggage tags also printed with the old cabin number.

[fragilek]

Were you denied entry into MTD because the time you were there conflicted with the specialty dining reservation?

 

Or if you make a specialty dining reservation are you not allowed to attend MTD at all that day? I could see attending MTD for an appetizer, a desert, or anything else you might want.

 

We upgraded from an inside to an OV once. Caused absolute havoc with our MTD reservations as they did not follow the reservation.

 

Luggage tags also printed with the old cabin number.

 

I have no idea if it was because of the times being the same or if it was for the whole night as I didn't ask, we were tired as we had been traveling since Friday night with an o/n stop and a havoc run round Rome (well as much as a teen on crutches and a mum using a stick could run lol). So we just left thinking it would be a one off mistake. We had just faced much bigger issues (due to health problems) than missing a meal so we went with the flow.

[aloha43]

We were booked in a different cabin but we were moved from it (all part of the before traveling issues we had) We then got a cabin I didn't want so up graded to 2 different cabins this last move was done in on the 6 April.

 

Summary of before cruise issues

1.bumped from cabin- no reason ever given

2. bad new cabin so we upgraded and split into 2 cabins got - new invoice - went to pay balance 1month later and they wanted a £200 more per cabin than on invoice - 2 hrs of call to sort- had to email someone high up (thanks for the email address I found on here who sorted it.

3. then they lost my OBC $900 that I had bought while booked in the 1st cabin and tried to say I hadn't any!! I had to get bank statements and email copies to get my OBC back

 

 

 

All this took hrs of calls to the UK Guatemala call center at great expense to sort out this was to be covered by the OBC compensation of $150 of which I only got $50 (that doesn't even cover the call costs)

 

You poor thing....:eek:

[nbsjcruiser]

Oh man, that reads like a horror story. You sure had the patience of Job. Had that been me I would never step foot on an RCI ship again. I'm glad you had a good week after the cruise.

[Ceelestia]

I think, since they put so much paper in your room, if you book reservations ahead of the cruise they should put a card in your room the night before reminding you that you are reserved in a specialty restaurant. They invite you to art actions, jewelry sales, bingo, shopping talks, and other special things. Why not a little reminder card? That way you could more easily remember your reservation or contest it if you didn't make it.

 

They'd likely only need this for reservations that were made before the cruise. It's more likely that you'd remember it if you made the reservation while on the cruise and less likely that it would get made by accident like in your case.

 

I can almost understand the frustration of the customer service persons. I can't understand them being condescending or rude to you. That is never OK.

 

Tom

I agree. One thing I am always confused about is how you get so many emails pre-cruise to tell you that you should make reservations for dining, excursions, etc. etc. and after you go through the trouble of booking everything on the not so great website, you don't even get one piece of paper in your stateroom summarizing out all the reservations you have already made. I feel like this simple gesture would make EVERYONE happier.. knowing with a piece of mind that everything is set with their reservations. I understand there is a cut-off on reservations and people constantly change but they can simply print the summary list at the cut-off date and indicate it on the paper.

 

I am intrigued on why you were turned away from MDR... are we no longer able to eat at the MDR even if we have a specialty dining reservation? we pay for MDR dinner and we pay extra for specialty dining.. so why cant we have the best of both worlds? ;)

 

and so sorry to hear about ALL your other issues. you have such patience! I would not have been so easy tempered....

[LuckiStac13*Majesty*]

Hi Stacy, good to see you.

 

The OP comes across as being quite credible too. I usually take these threads with a grain of salt but I believe she actually endured this mess.:(

 

Good to see you too! Hope you and your family are doing well and enjoying the summer.

 

I know what you mean about complaints - I usually am leary as well, but on my last few cruises, experienced things like the OP was illustrating in their post. I think it's gotten ridiculous and most definitely, the "right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing" most of the time. I can roll with some inconveniences - that's part of life - and traveling -but I know the amount of precious vacation time is spent trying to undo them on the ship. To have a member of Guest Services roll their eyes at you; and/or dismiss a guest and tell them to "come back tomorrow" is unacceptable. That's definitely not the kind of service that got them to where they are.

 

Still a lot of great crew and staff on RCI, don't get me wrong. But it's just different now, IMO.

[dani negreanu]

You sure had the patience of Job.

 

That was exactly my reaction too.

 

So sorry you went through all this bad experience.

 

Wishing you the best of health, and happy travels.

[cincicruisers]

It was painful to read your story. You showed a lot of restraint dealing with guest services. I think my head would have exploded. Hopefully next vacation will be better.

[CVU]

It was Rhapsody of the Seas 12 july sailing.

 

What made everything worse was the week before the cruise my younger daughter injured her knee and was in hospital for 5 days (things had snowballed as while in e&a they had detected a potential heart issue so she was put into the cardiac ward as a result thankfully all heart tests came back fine but she will still need to be monitored annually from now on), we didn't get the go ahead to travel until Thursday and we were flying to Rome on the Friday night so we had had a manic time getting packed to go.

 

And I was already really stressed out with the potential heart issues - this probably added to me not being able to handle all the on ship problems. By the time Adriana got involved I was almost standing in tears at the customer service desk.

Oh, what an ordeal after all the medical scares! You Needed a stress

free cruise to unwind.......

 

I think a letter to the Head office would be in order-- listing from the beginning what you had to deal with.

If nothing comes of it but an apology it is a learning tool for them to do much Better next time!! But I feel they should be informed in a nice way in a letter by email.

There are addresses on the CC page you can find, for who to mail it to.

 

Even C&A has a Post Cruise comment section on their web site but may not be big enough for the info you need to tell them about.

 

All this was posted awhile ago as an address to use, I just copied it--- Good Luck

 

Aurora "Laly" Yera-Rodriguez

Director, Guest Relations & Shared Services

Azamara Club Cruises, Celebrity Cruises, & Royal Caribbean International

954-628-9313

ext. 19313

ayera-rodriguez@rccl.com

 

This is the contact given to me for any issues with RCI and/or RCCL and is the desk where your e-mails to Michael Bayley or Adam Goldstein will go for consideration and reply.

[reallyitsmema]

We were booked in a different cabin but we were moved from it (all part of the before traveling issues we had) We then got a cabin I didn't want so up graded to 2 different cabins this last move was done in on the 6 April.

 

Summary of before cruise issues

1.bumped from cabin- no reason ever given

2. bad new cabin so we upgraded and split into 2 cabins got - new invoice - went to pay balance 1month later and they wanted a £200 more per cabin than on invoice - 2 hrs of call to sort- had to email someone high up (thanks for the email address I found on here who sorted it.

3. then they lost my OBC $900 that I had bought while booked in the 1st cabin and tried to say I hadn't any!! I had to get bank statements and email copies to get my OBC back

 

 

 

All this took hrs of calls to the UK Guatemala call center at great expense to sort out this was to be covered by the OBC compensation of $150 of which I only got $50 (that doesn't even cover the call costs)

 

I thought from previous threads you had booked a guaranty and then tried to change to a different cabin after you got your cabin assignment but weren't allowed to due to UK booking rules? I know you had posted about going back and forth with the cruise line trying to get an accessible cabin but then you ended up changing your booking to two cabins but chose not to go accessible.

[pgold128]

Moral of this tory..

Pick a cabin and stay with it...

I changed my upgrade options.. to Don't do it!!

sorry to hear this happen to you..

And on the other hand Thank you for the post..

[SportsFanatic]

The truly sad part in all this is that RCCL apparently doesn't give a rat's err...south end when heading due north...about retaining customers. They are focused on new customers. Any repeat business is just gravy.

 

 

 

If they really cared, they would actually fix the web site...hire train and inform quality customer service people in every area...empower the onboard staff with the authority to resolve problems (and the tools necessary) and actually do something for a customer when RCCL is completely responsible for the problems experience.

 

 

 

Just my opinion...

 

 

. We had friends on our last cruise that were long time Carnival cruisers.,first time on RCCL and had all kinds of issues. Half the cruise spent at customers service. Really upsetting is how they were treated. No apologies, no nothing. They acted like they could care less. Needless to say, my friends will not be back.

[fragilek]

I thought from previous threads you had booked a guaranty and then tried to change to a different cabin after you got your cabin assignment but weren't allowed to due to UK booking rules? I know you had posted about going back and forth with the cruise line trying to get an accessible cabin but then you ended up changing your booking to two cabins but chose not to go accessible.

 

Yip that was sort of how it all started. The inital mistake was ours we didn't realise the rules in the uk were different to those in the US.

 

So we then debated on here what was best to do by the time we made our mind up to upgrade no disabled ones where left so we chose the large PV one instead - we then got bumped from that one (email sent ) to the same type but one but right next to lifts so not happy we upgraded again to the 2 cabins (we were a bit reluctant to do this as eldest is diabetic and heat can cause her problems with blood sugars through the night- as it was the 2 cabins worked out well and we decided it was just me being a paranoid mother and I was over worrying lol). It was that change caused the chaos that resulted in hrs of call to the call center (we also request shower seat to help - guess what it never arrived.)

As well as the things I previously mentioned - they changed our names - used my eldest middle name instead of her first and missed letters out of mine- tried to say we must have filled them in wrong so I had to send then a copy of our original invoice showing the names were correct at that point to avoid a fee to change.

 

But as well as the issue I mentioned earlier in this thread another big mistake was that they didn't transfer the deposit over so after final payment I got an email say the holiday may be canceled due to non payment of balance- I had already contacted customer services by email due to the other issues and they had already agreed compensation by this point so I at least had a contact to help me at that stage. He was very helpful and he could see on his screen all the mistakes that had been made- the reason he gave was that the computer systems were new and that all the Guatemala call center was just being trained up but he agreed that in this case the booking was a fiasco (he had no idea why Guatemala could not see the same info on their screen as he could and he planned to look into that ie invoice prices names OBC ect)

 

Yesterday I phoned and left a voice mail with this contact in the UK re all the onboard stuff and the fact I did not get the compensation promised so hopefully they will return my call soon. I will then post an update. I am not looking for anything other than the compensation I was promised as we will not be cruising with Royal again. We have cruised twice before with carnival with no issues at all and if we choose to cruise again we will stay with that parent company and if just my husband and myself we may try princess out.

Edited July 30, 2015 by fragilek

[conte]

OP, you should be commended for your patience. Shameful treatment from all RC. If I were treated as you were, RC would never again see me on a cruise.

 

Good luck on your future voyages.

[dorisis]

I would write directly to the CEO of Royal Caribbean and explain in detail what happened and let then know what you expect in compensation. You experience was inexcusable.

[MaiseyM]

Wow. I hope you can get the resolution you are looking for. I agree. You have been more than patient.

[gerif]

The concierge can make various reservations for full suite guests without prior payment.

 

But if OP had concierge service, that person could have sorted out this whole mess for them as well. Apparently they did not. OP showed much more restraint than I would have under the circumstances.