Five Things Celebrity Doesn't Want You to Know...

[CaroleSS]

 

2) They actually will hold tables in select dining or blu if you have a party of six or more...see the dining folks when you board and set up a reservation...if you set it up, you can just walk in, bypassing the line completely. We had our own table for 8 set up and ready for us at 6:30 every night...no wait, no line.

 

We have had mixed experiences with this.

 

We travel win 6-8 and eat in Blu. We eat early and on the first night speak with the person at the desk, saying that we will be dining at 6-6:30 every night and could they please seat us at the same table each night. Every time we have been flatly told "we don't make reservations".

 

Most of the time we DO get the same table, only because we dine early and we request "that" table upon arrival (plus there are a limited number of 8-tops)........BUT there have been times when someone has already been seated at the table we had been seated previously.

 

I doubt our experience would be the same if we asked for a reservation for 6-8 at 7 or 8pm.

[Bo1953]

I've seen many complaints about the Celebrity website so I guess there must be issues but I have never found a problem with it

 

Have booked and paid for crusies , shore tours beverage and dining packages and dining reservations all without issue

 

Sadly also had to cancel our next cruise after having booked and prepaid shore tours. Only slight irritation was having to cancel one by one but no big deal as that was how I booked them. Full refund back to credit card in under a week

 

Just a different view for a change :)

 

d5 - similar to yourself, I have yet to be able to reproduce the issues many have cited and will continue to cite.

 

My thoughts always are, if one always has a challenge with a website, they can always call to order what they think is needed... If the sailing is more than five (5) months out, even less of an issue IMO... then again, only mine.

 

Sorry you had to cancel and everything went fine accordingly....

 

bon voyage

[oneputt18]

I've seen many complaints about the Celebrity website so I guess there must be issues but I have never found a problem with it

 

Just a different view for a change :)

 

I agree 100%, never a problem on their website. I guess we are the lucky ones.

[akowilm]

Really wanted to use the website last night for some final planning, it would NOT let me log in.

 

I get plenty of emails, daily, but they are addressed to Lisa, Heather, Mike......my name is Angie.:confused:

[ChucktownSteve]

Really wanted to use the website last night for some final planning, it would NOT let me log in.

 

I get plenty of emails, daily, but they are addressed to Lisa, Heather, Mike......my name is Angie.:confused:

 

It wouldn't let me log in yesterday as well. Kept re-diverting to a log in page every time.

[richsea]

I agree 100%, never a problem on their website. I guess we are the lucky ones.

 

I have found that MOST of the time the website works, though it is clunky. Where their site really falls short is at check in. Checking in to a Celebrity cruise consistently takes much longer than when checking in to Princess, NCL, or Royal Caribbean. Those sites store your history & offer auto fill options for the 2nd guest. And don't even talk about making reservations for select dining. Gave that up after one cruise.

[lisiamc]

Really wanted to use the website last night for some final planning, it would NOT let me log in.

 

I get plenty of emails, daily, but they are addressed to Lisa, Heather, Mike......my name is Angie.:confused:

 

So that's where my emails are going! :D. I'm a Lisa, and I never get any emails.

[Davidc5412]

Doesn't cancelling a cruise automatically cancel any shore excursions and automatically refund the money paid for those excursions?

 

Probably and that's what they told me when i rang to see if there was any way i could avoid losing the deposit

 

I just decided i'd rather cancel the shore tours first and get the refund and leave cancelling cruise to last minute in case circumstances changed and we could still go on the cruise

[caribill]

 

I get plenty of emails, daily, but they are addressed to Lisa, Heather, Mike......my name is Angie.:confused:

 

Angie is your name in your current life.

 

Lisa, Heather and Mike were your names in past lives.

[bertrande]

I have found that MOST of the time the website works, though it is clunky. Where their site really falls short is at check in. Checking in to a Celebrity cruise consistently takes much longer than when checking in to Princess, NCL, or Royal Caribbean. Those sites store your history & offer auto fill options for the 2nd guest. And don't even talk about making reservations for select dining. Gave that up after one cruise.

 

 

I just grumbled about this on another thread!! I have been trying to check in since two days ago. We are a group of 7 across two suites and I have encountered the following:

 

1) none of our Captains Club numbers have been able to be included. I get an error message with all 5 adults saying the number does not match the name. The CC rep on the phone says it does, and said allow 24 hours for it to work but that in any case it doesn't matter since it will be "on the system". It's been 72 hours and still it does not work. I am hoping her assurance that it will be "on the system" comes through and we get our reciprocal C&A benefits and our CC points at the end of the cruise.

 

2) can't seem to check my children in. One is in my stateroom and the other is with my inlaws. We have duly added her in and DH has checked their cruise documentation on their behalf. Still we are told that a parent and guardian has to check the cruise documentation on their behalf (!) and so they remain at 80% checked in.

 

I tried calling CC yesterday but they were very busy and I had to go to bed so gave up after 40 mins waiting. Will try again today. But yes I do agree that RCL's check in procedure was seriously pain free, fuss free and so much quicker in comparison!

 

 

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[02143]

7. Why you can't tab the 'back' arrow and get back to the page you were previously on. Instead it takes you back to some random starting point.

 

Ha, this is a common problem with web sites and actually hard to do well. Back navigation within a web site and back navigation at the level of the browser often don't match up and trying to "fix" this can break many other things on the site we count on to work. The back button works much better at taking you from one web site to another than taking you to different pages within a website. I don't blame Celebrity!

Edited December 22, 2016 by 02143

[luv2cruisecats]

Several months ago Celebrity announce they hired a company to completely revamp their web site. I suppose it will be available in ten years. Please be patient.

 

Maybe they went on the strong reference of the federal government to use the same outfit that the feds hired to prepare the first Obamacare website (you know the outfit that was run by a relative of someone in the government)...after 2 years they gave up on their choice I believe.

[Oceangoer2]

I work for a SaaS business automation company that includes email delivery as one of their services (we deliver a few billion emails a year from our little company). If I were to consider whether to believe Comcast or Celebrity in this matter I would take Celebrity hands down. Their promotional emails have the proper information in the header and my Google Suite / Gmail accounts receive them fine, even the ones that come through my mail account on my own hosting server (where I have SpamAssassin set up pretty aggressively).

I agree with your comments. Some servers will reject emails with too many links, recognized as spam; and could redirect to delete file or permanently delete depending on how your browser or device is set up to allow sites to open. I receive all (I think) emails from Celebrity after I lifted a block on their site. Just a thought as to where the problem may lie in some cases.

Edited December 22, 2016 by oceangoer2

[Oceangoer2]

I'm somewhat familiar with building a website. When I developed mine corporately it was 'under construction' and not available in that manner to the viewer. Our users would only be able to view what was working at that time; the other pages were released as they were tested as bete files. I'm sure Celebrity developers would do this and more. Sometimes the kinks show up after release date with browsers and servers having their own set of 'rules' allowing the user to open. I've only had a problem with the major inconveniences experienced by many of us over the past few years, which they freely acknowledged as something they were working on and couldn't pull back. The 'fix' was happening behind the scenes and taking much longer than they thought. It seems so easy to the user but systems development depends on so many factors and works on a long range plan with short term time to do it in.

Edited December 22, 2016 by oceangoer2

[RodPat]

Be careful what you wish for on the e-mail front. For a long time, I got nothing. Now I get at least one a day. They are currently urging me to book Celebrity Air and shore excursions for a cruise in November 2018. Really? My guess is that neither is available yet. Not to mention that I have 3 other cruises before that one. They seem to have lost interest in bugging me about those.

 

 

Linda,

Have not got any emails on the Nov. 2018 cruise but today I did get one that was telling me all the new ports of call. Unfortunately it said Hi Elaine. Unfortunate because my name is Pat. Just have to laugh.

 

Pat

[TravelKnitter]

How about this....

I have 2 cruises booked and when I go to my reservations it shows no bookings. Yes, I added them months ago. And they were there at one point.

I tried adding them again and nothing happens.

The only way to get to them is to try check in. Then they show up.

 

We had our last cruise, and the associated points, disappear AFTER we took the cruise!

[Cruise Raider]

So that's where my emails are going! :D. I'm a Lisa, and I never get any emails.

 

Hahaha .... I'm Lisa and get all my emails addressed to Andrew.

[Cruise Raider]

1. How to work their web site.

 

2. How they determine who gets emails and who doesn't.

 

3. Why their site tells you there are no cabins available when there are plenty.

 

4. Why some Celebrity Reps can't answer your questions and others can.

 

5. Why your particular cruise was just canceled and you find out two weeks later.

 

Yet, we still sail with them and love the product!

 

 

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I also love the product and will continue to sail on them until their service onboard suffers from a complete and total collapse ... and I would say, I see no sign of that happening in the near future.

However, I, too, have been very frustrated with their website. Even when you call and finally get through to them after quite some time of being on hold, your request may or may not be satisfied. Examples of this are below:

- I called once to make sure that our friends and us were linked for our dinner reservation for one of the specialty restaurants in the package. The website would not let us link them together even though an icon existed to do just that. On the phone, they confirmed we both had reservations for evening #2 at the Tuscan. Upon boarding, there was no reservation for either of us on evening #2. :confused:

- I booked a guarantee cabin once and learned I could change it to another cabin within that category is one if available. I called and the representative at Celebrity and agreed to the change but then never followed through on this. :confused:

- I received an e-mail from Celebrity reminding me of my final payment that was due. I paid off the balance in full online but then received a notification that I still owed $200 and if not paid, my cruise would be canceled. So, I called Celebrity and after being on hold for nearly an hour, I got a newbie. She said I still owed the $200 ... per the system ... and that yes, my cruise would be canceled if I didn't submit another $200. I told her that the email I had received did not align with that new total. Her answer to this was, Celebrity reserves the right to charge any price they see fit up until final payment is made, regardless of the pricing of the cruise at the time of the initial booking. I asked her to please put someone on the phone that has worked for Celebrity for more than a couple of days (it was obvious she had not) ... but did say please. I had to actually forward the e-mail that Celebrity sent to me that listed the total balance due and this new agent said it was a computer glitch. :confused:

- Even though the website allows you to order luggage tags, whether we receive them via the mail is running at about 50-50. :confused:

 

As in a previous post, I do get emails from Celebrity but they are all addressed to Andrew. I don't even know anybody named Andrew. This has been going on for years and I suspect that somewhere down the line, they had a mismatch in their database that must have skipped a line or two on the email addresses. Funny thing is, I haven't received all that many emails from RCCL until recently and those are now also addressed to Andrew.

 

And lastly, I, too had a booking on a cruise that was chartered. Luckily, my roll call members were way on top of this. We knew it was going to be canceled about 2 months before Celebrity informed us of the cancellation. When the person in charge of notifying passengers of the switch called, she was unwilling to tell me of my options. I could switch from a 14 night Alaska itinerary to a 9 night Pacific Coastal itinerary and I only had 2 weeks in which to decided ... but even after two weeks, she had no ability to make the switch in the system. OK ... so, huh??? Well, when they finally released those cabins for booking, they were asking for the same price after reducing my cruise by 5 days?? Made no sense to me. I ended up going on the 9 night itinerary, got a great price and had a fantastic cruise ... but they really put the onus on me to figure out how to rebook this sailing that they canceled. Very frustrating indeed!!

 

But ... like I said, once I get onboard, all is forgotten and I always have such an awesome time. And, will continue to sail on Celebrity for the great product they offer. I do wish they would fix their website and do some intensive training of those reps that answer our calls, though. But, as soon as I step onboard, all is usually a thing of the past. Time to enjoy my cruise!! :)

[Lastdance]

The frustration is quite an issue, but the onboard experience does make up for all the hoops we do have to jump through to ensure our cruises will run smoothly. Being resilient and knowing that things can go wrong does help; however, breathing and refocusing on something else for a while is also good. Personally, when I don't get an answer that makes sense, I just call again and again! Sooner or later it all works out for the good and I forget the past and just enjoy the cruising life?‼

 

 

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[LabGuy64]

Pointless thread

 

 

 

 

1. How to work their web site.

 

2. How they determine who gets emails and who doesn't.

 

3. Why their site tells you there are no cabins available when there are plenty.

 

4. Why some celebrity reps can't answer your questions and others can.

 

5. Why your particular cruise was just canceled and you find out two weeks later.

 

Yet, we still sail with them and love the product!

 

 

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