Million Dollar Baby Needing Help Getting In Touch With NCL Executives

[toyotaford]

I have a wonderful PCC but she has been unable to help me in a recent situation. She has gone as far as she can and has apologized but told me she understands if I decide to try another cruise line after the way NCL has refused to help me in this situation. According to NCL's records I have spent $940,000 with them in 7 years (and that did not include the last 10,000 I spent) and I would like someone in the executive office to hear my story before I jump ship. I show I've spent over $1,000,000 but am not going to argue over $50,000 at this point. I am not one to yell and scream and feel that may be one reason I haven't gotten further but just want to have a calm conversation with someone in upper management.

 

I called a number I found online and asked for the executive offices and the lady who answered asked what it was concerning and when I told her said there was nothing that could be done. So basically the receptionist is as far as I got.

 

I am not feeling the love from NCL right now.

 

Does anyone have an idea of how to get in contact with someone in upper management in NCL?

[Two Wheels Only]

Is this about getting Ambassador Latitudes status?

 

Without knowing what you're asking for, it's a bit difficult for us to help.

[toyotaford]

Is this about getting Ambassador Latitudes status?

 

Without knowing what you're asking for, it's a bit difficult for us to help.

 

No. I am Platinum Plus and that is plenty good enough for me. I was wanting to put in an all or nothing offer for upgrades on 7 rooms. The difference in what I paid for my original rooms and the asking rate for the rooms I was wanting was $21,000. I was just wanting a price they would take for the 7 rooms.

 

I have a group of 10 room and 3 or in the Haven and 7 not. I was trying to go from balconies and mini suites to Haven.

 

The only thing I could do was have each room bid individually and some may get them and some not or pay the $21,000 and guarantee I get what I want. Having 6 or 7 in our group in the Haven won't really be any different than having 3.

 

My PCC has been working on this for a week. This morning there were still 20 rooms in the Haven still available for the cruise leaving this Sunday.

 

I guess the thing that bothered me the most was that they wouldn't even give me a figure. Not $15,000, not 18,000, not anything. There was just no deviating from their system.

 

It's not the end of the world. We are in the car business and everybody just likes to feel like they got a little something off. I paid "sticker" for all my rooms originally.

[txagfan]

Try this with American Airlines, let us know how it goes.

 

You want more than they allow under current program, if you desire an upgraded stateroom then pay for it upfront. Part of why they have the upgrade program is it allows them to quickly/easily/efficiently book more expensive rooms that may otherwise go unused, it's not to allow people to make a lot of requests for special circumstances.

 

 

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[hawkeyetlse]

So bid the sticker price minus $100 or $200 for each room. You'll win them all (I'm pretty sure) and get a little something off the $21,000.

[Moby0215]

Not sure why you think it matters how much you have spent with NCL. I'm guessing you are expecting special treatment and deviation from their booking system. Having a group of 10 rooms wouldn't you have already received a discount from "sticker" price?

 

 

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[toyotaford]

So bid the sticker price minus $100 or $200 for each room. You'll win them all (I'm pretty sure) and get a little something off the $21,000.

I ask them about that and they said there was not guarantee of that. I ask if a bid of 85% or 90% of asking price was a sure win and they said there was no way of knowing.

 

I guess one of the things that frustrates me so is that we are business owners and we know that we have customers that have been loyal to us over the years and we do make exceptions for them at times. We know sometimes it is easier and cheaper to keep a customer than to get a new customer. I was not asking for them to give me upgrades. I was asking them to give me a price that they would be happy selling the rooms for less than 2 weeks before selling date.

 

I know you used to be able to make offers and NCL would come back with an offer if it wasn't high enough once the cruise was close. That's changed and that's ok.

 

I also know that we own 2 car dealerships and when a customer has a problem they can talk to us. Our name is on the building but we will sit with you if none of our managers have satisfied your needs. We may not give you what you want but we will hear you out. And we will let you yell at us if that's what you want to do. Now I know NCL has a lot more customers than we have but it has just been very frustrating not to be able to feel that anyone but my PCC has felt my frustration. She said sometimes the only ones who get things they want are the ones who scream and yell and that's just not me.

 

Maybe I'm being stupid but I would just like someone other than my PCC to say I'm sorry we've disappointed you and we hope you will continue to sail with us.

[toyotaford]

Not sure why you think it matters how much you have spent with NCL. I'm guessing you are expecting special treatment and deviation from their booking system. Having a group of 10 rooms wouldn't you have already received a discount from "sticker" price?

 

 

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In years past rooms were discounted for a group. (At times quite heavily) We have taken employees on cruises for many years and it was originally much less expensive than other trips we could take them on but in recent years that has not been the case. Cruises have increased in price more than land based trips. With NCL there are 3 plans you can choose from when booking 7 rooms or more. For example with this group I believe the plan I chose was 1 free cruiser and the amount is determined by the cabin you have the most rooms booked in. In this case if it was balconies I would have gotten $1000 back so you are correct, I did not pay "sticker" for one of my rooms. You do pay port fees and taxes for the passenger. One of the plans you get 2 free guest but you have to give up all perks. I can't remember what the 3rd one is.

[Cyclops32]

I ask them about that and they said there was not guarantee of that. I ask if a bid of 85% or 90% of asking price was a sure win and they said there was no way of knowing.

 

I guess one of the things that frustrates me so is that we are business owners and we know that we have customers that have been loyal to us over the years and we do make exceptions for them at times. We know sometimes it is easier and cheaper to keep a customer than to get a new customer. I was not asking for them to give me upgrades. I was asking them to give me a price that they would be happy selling the rooms for less than 2 weeks before selling date.

 

I know you used to be able to make offers and NCL would come back with an offer if it wasn't high enough once the cruise was close. That's changed and that's ok.

 

I also know that we own 2 car dealerships and when a customer has a problem they can talk to us. Our name is on the building but we will sit with you if none of our managers have satisfied your needs. We may not give you what you want but we will hear you out. And we will let you yell at us if that's what you want to do. Now I know NCL has a lot more customers than we have but it has just been very frustrating not to be able to feel that anyone but my PCC has felt my frustration. She said sometimes the only ones who get things they want are the ones who scream and yell and that's just not me.

 

Maybe I'm being stupid but I would just like someone other than my PCC to say I'm sorry we've disappointed you and we hope you will continue to sail with us.

Larger the company the harder it is to get things approved that are outside of policy. I have worked with huge companies in sales and even on $50 or $100 million dollar deals still had to follow procedure. It becomes too hard to run a company at size. Plus customers can talk and many do. They hear company x did something for customer y and now customer z wants the same or better deal. All of a sudden you lost the policy all together and a way of controlling your product s margin.

 

With he number of customers they are dealing with they need to limit access to management or management will never get anything done.

 

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[hawkeyetlse]

I ask them about that and they said there was not guarantee of that. I ask if a bid of 85% or 90% of asking price was a sure win and they said there was no way of knowing.

Well, they're right, because there's no telling what everyone else is going to bid on any given sailing. I guess they know what bids have already been sent in for your sailing, but those bidders would be pretty furious to learn that you put pressure on NCL to reveal their bids. Which I know is not exactly what you're doing, but you are saying that the bidding system that they've set up for everyone else isn't good enough for you. At the same time, you don't want to pay full price. You want to bid, just without the pesky risk of losing to a higher bidder.

[toyotaford]

Not sure why you think it matters how much you have spent with NCL. I'm guessing you are expecting special treatment and deviation from their booking system. Having a group of 10 rooms wouldn't you have already received a discount from "sticker" price?

 

 

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Larger the company the harder it is to get things approved that are outside of policy. I have worked with huge companies in sales and even on $50 or $100 million dollar deals still had to follow procedure. It becomes too hard to run a company at size. Plus customers can talk and many do. They hear company x did something for customer y and now customer z wants the same or better deal. All of a sudden you lost the policy all together and a way of controlling your product s margin.

 

With he number of customers they are dealing with they need to limit access to management or management will never get anything done.

 

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And I know that. I'm just not feeling the love. And by tomorrow I'll be fine and I'll gather my group of employees up and we will have a great cruise next week.

 

Last week was just my first cruise with employees where I didn't have a room I could have them in and entertain them in and spoil them and I missed it.

 

We will have them back on the Jewel in June and all will be well.

[Loonbeam]

Something to be aware of. The bidding system is automated. There's literally no mechanism now for manual entry of bids and non-operational upgrades. Besides being a violation of the new rules, there's not much they can do (if there were no bids on the cabin inventory, they could pull it from inventory for upgrades and sell it at rack rate. But if there is a bid, they would have to cancel those bids to give it to you, which, I am sorry, would be unfair to the other bidders, regardless of your spend level or latitudes level.

 

One of the advantages of the new system is that it is fair to all passengers, not just those who spend more or know someone.

[hawkeyetlse]

As of now, those cabins are available inventory. Even if people have started bidding for upgrades, the rules of the bidding program don't promise that anyone will actually win anything, do they?

 

NCL is free to sell available cabins to whoever they want, at whatever price they want. I don't think it's unreasonable for someone who is looking to buy/upgrade to 7 suites to ask NCL to cut them a deal. But it's NCL's right to refuse, too, and that's apparently what they have decided to do here.

[xriva]

Why didn't you just get all Haven cabins in the first place? You're obviously not afraid to spend money on cruises.

 

I also think you will find in an industry the size of the cruise industry, getting new customers is not as much of an issue as with a mom and pop business. Considering how many people have stated on here that they are never sailing on Norwegian again, the ship's still seem crowded.

 

 

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[toyotaford]

Not sure why you think it matters how much you have spent with NCL. I'm guessing you are expecting special treatment and deviation from their booking system. Having a group of 10 rooms wouldn't you have already received a discount from "sticker" price?

 

 

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I'm not sure I addressed the first part of your question. As a business owner I am asked quite often for donations. A tool I have available is to see how much someone has spent with my company. So if Sue Smith comes in asking me to sponsor her daughter in a beauty pageant for $50 and I type in Sue's name and it comes up that she has spent $10,000 with me over the last 5 years it's a no brainer - I'm going to sponsor the child. If she's spent $50 or $0 then I have to decide if it's worth $50 to try to develop a relationship with Sue. Now usually the donations I am ask for are much more than $50 but this is just an example of a tool I have available. We have been in the car business for 20 years and there are names that I can type in there and the amount that comes up will be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. And when that customer needs a sponsor for his grandsons ball team or his high school needs new computers for a classroom there is no hesitation in writing that check. These are things we might or might not do anyway if someone else ask. But because we have the ability to do them and they mean something to someone who has been loyal to us down through the years it's a no brainer to us. So to us loyalty does have it's benefits.

[asubaru]

I would email Andy Stuart, NCL President at astuart@ncl.com.

Time is not on your side, but it's worth a shot.

 

I understand your dilemma and feel your frustration. If you do get some sort of resolution, I wouldn't post the details here.

 

Good Luck!

 

 

 

I have a wonderful PCC but she has been unable to help me in a recent situation. She has gone as far as she can and has apologized but told me she understands if I decide to try another cruise line after the way NCL has refused to help me in this situation. According to NCL's records I have spent $940,000 with them in 7 years (and that did not include the last 10,000 I spent) and I would like someone in the executive office to hear my story before I jump ship. I show I've spent over $1,000,000 but am not going to argue over $50,000 at this point. I am not one to yell and scream and feel that may be one reason I haven't gotten further but just want to have a calm conversation with someone in upper management.

 

I called a number I found online and asked for the executive offices and the lady who answered asked what it was concerning and when I told her said there was nothing that could be done. So basically the receptionist is as far as I got.

 

I am not feeling the love from NCL right now.

 

Does anyone have an idea of how to get in contact with someone in upper management in NCL?

[toyotaford]

Why didn't you just get all Haven cabins in the first place? You're obviously not afraid to spend money on cruises.

 

I also think you will find in an industry the size of the cruise industry, getting new customers is not as much of an issue as with a mom and pop business. Considering how many people have stated on here that they are never sailing on Norwegian again, the ship's still seem crowded.

 

 

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I didn't get all Haven cabins in the first place because this is the first time I have booked the Away class ships for a company trip. Always before I have booked a ship that has a Garden Villa and I have booked one or both of those and we have had plenty of room to be together and enjoy each others company without looking for a place to sit. We took our first group last month and had 30 in the Haven and 17 not and I realized it was an issue not having the room.

 

So being a "mom and pop" business my budget this year for cruises was $200,000 and I'm at that but I called my PCC and asked her to see what it would cost to upgrade the other 7 rooms. I had done the math taking what I had paid for the cabins originally and upgrading them to the cheapest Havens available and that's where I came up with the $21,000. Someone on my roll call for the upcoming cruise had posted that they had called and gotten upgraded from and interior to a midship balcony for $35 a person so my assumption was the upsell number was still working.

 

That's a long explanation but I hope it answers your question as to why I didn't book all Havens originally. And I told my PCC I know now not to book an Away class ship again for a company trip. If I had not already had the second one booked I wouldn't have been trying to do this.

 

Our next one is on the Jewel in June and we have both Garden Villa's so we will have plenty of room for visiting and playing cards and laughing. We are all more like family than co-workers so hanging out is something we like to do.

[toyotaford]

I would email Andy Stuart, NCL President at astuart@ncl.com.

Time is not on your side, but it's worth a shot.

 

I understand your dilemma and feel your frustration. If you do get some sort of resolution, I wouldn't post the details here.

 

Good Luck!

Thank you. Finally an email address. That was all I was asking for.

[brikee]

Good luck! Please let us know if you are able to make any progress. Also I would encourage you to call the upsell number directly if your travel agent can only get so far.

[Son of a son of a ...]

You need a new PCC.

[toyotaford]

Good luck! Please let us know if you are able to make any progress. Also I would encourage you to call the upsell number directly if your travel agent can only get so far.

I've called them twice and both times they said they no longer do upsells. That everything is now handled by the bidding process. Here again maybe if I would yell and scream I would get different results but just not my style. This time my style may have not worked for me.

[Zeta3]

So trying to understand the logic here. I will be sailing with a group of 16 friends and family. We do this every year. Should I expect a break on moving is all into the haven?

 

We each paid for our cabins separately. If we pool our money together and pay for our cabins from one account would that make us "special" enough to get a break on haven pricing or guaranteed upgrade below what others may bid?

 

If I am following what you are saying the answer is "yes" somebody paying for a block of cabins should get preferential pricing.

 

See the top of that slippery slope there?

 

If you booked 10 cabins why aren't you working with he groups department rather than a pcc to begin with?

 

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[toyotaford]

You need a new PCC.

I have worked with this PCC for years and she is wonderful. There is only so much a PCC can do. The decisions I needed made had to be made by someone in the revenue department. She had to bring the request to her supervisor, who had to bring it to their supervisor who had to bring it to the revenue department if I understand the chain correctly.

[sanger727]

IMO, you are approaching this the wrong way. It's 100% plausible to me that your PCC can't make any of these decisions, and you would need to escalate to someone higher. Simply put, of the cabins are in an inventory for blind bidding, of course they can't tell you what the winning bid amount is. They don't know. They know what the average winning bid amount is, whether or not they'll tell you, but on this particular sailing the winning bid amount is whatever the top 20 bids r.... yes, could they go to you after the fact and say (hey, we'll do it for $100 more than the top 7 bids)? Sure. But then they are only benefitting their relationship with you instead of 7 separate customers. And that's even assuming they have the ability to manually override the automatic bidding process.

 

What would need to happen for this to be successful would be for you to convince them to take 7 cabins out of the bidding inventory and let you upsell because they will get more from you than from the bidding process. So the person with the ability to do that is the person you need to talk to. And it's most likely not your PCC.

 

 

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[Bra_BE2014]

I am a bit confused when you expect things you ofter at your car dealership to be also applicable to NCL .

I mean no disrespect but as a millionaire you obviously have the money, why are you upset about a discount?

Anyway, i hope you get it sorted, happy cruising!

 

 

 

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