Am I Violating the Jones Act?

[JaneStarr]

1 hour ago, gerelmx said:

 

It's fixed, Just receive a phone call from Celebrity.  They apologized for the mistake made and they tell me not to worry that everything will be taken away that they are talking to the Mexico office and to the Eclipse so that they can give me all the necessary help, that I will not have to disembark in Vancouver, They also asked to speak with my wife. In summary I am very happy that this had a happy ending.

So happy that sanity FINALLY prevailed! How embarrassing for Celebrity that their reps doubled-down on a factually incorrect position.

 

Please make sure to let Celebrity One Touch rep know if you incurred any non-refundable expenses due to their error. Hopefully your hotel and anything else pre-booked is fully refundable.  If not, I’m sure Celebrity can be encouraged to reimburse you. You may just need to ask.

 

Enjoy your cruise!

Jane

[gatour]

Great news.

 

I would suggest you get a new TA as they should have been dealing with Celebrity in regards to this.

[wrk2cruise]

3 hours ago, gerelmx said:

 

I already stored in my phone-book

 

I hope you had a discussion with them as to why it took almost 2 weeks and escalation to the CEO to get a response.  I had a similar experience when dealing with some stupidity around a canceled cruise.  In my case as well once someone with some authority engaged things got straightened out swiftly to our complete satisfaction.  In my case it was an email to the CEO after CelebrityOneTouch, someone on the executive staff handled it.

 

[chengkp75]

11 hours ago, mitz18 said:

Cruise Junky - please remember that passengers are "Cargo" to the cruise line and indeed the Jones Act applies.  It is an (antiquated) rule to protect US Flagged shipping companies, and many countries have the same rules for their vessels flag.   I'm just glad that  the company finally realized that rule does not apply in the case of a Vancouver to LA trip.

No, the Jones Act does not apply to passenger vessels, the PVSA (Passenger Vessel Services Act, a much older Act than the Jones Act) applies.  It is not an antiquated law, despite Wiki's statements to the contrary, and provides hundreds of thousands of US jobs, and millions of dollars to the US economy, in addition to safeguarding our waterways.

[NanaChar]

Amazing, 9 pages to clarify an act.  Do we all need to be maritime lawyers to take B2B cruises?

[WestLakeGirl]

Certain ones are PVSA affected, but not all!  It should be up to Celebrity to do this correctly. It’s their job but someone seems to have programmed their system incorrectly, flagging the wrong itineraries

[JaneStarr]

16 minutes ago, NanaChar said:

Amazing, 9 pages to clarify an act.  Do we all need to be maritime lawyers to take B2B cruises?

Honestly, many of us knew this was not a violation of the PVSA (and certainly not the Jones Act) from the very beginning. The second response to OP was right on the money. ChengKP75 also gave very clear and accurate explanations about this, as is his custom.

 

The problem is a training “opportunity” for Celebrity’s low level customer service and the travel agent.

I hope that Ms. Lutoff-Perlo’s mention of “the Jones Act” in her reply was just an attempt to simplify the matter, but it would’ve been better not to repeat it w/o any clarification.

 

This reinforces the value of either having a really proactive travel agent who is willing to escalate matters for you — or just handling the booking yourself so that the resolutions department will speak directly to you.

 

Had this happened to us, our amazing longtime cruise agent would’ve promptly placed a 3-way call to the resolutions department with me on the line. I’m confident it would’ve been resolved (after extended hold time). We have successfully used this approach with other issues.

 

Jane

 

 

[Cruise Junky]

Keep in mind though the OP is from Mexico, dealing with a Mexican Travel Agent (I assume)  They may not have the same information channels that many US agents do. 

[JaneStarr]

1 minute ago, Cruise Junky said:

Keep in mind though the OP is from Mexico, dealing with a Mexican Travel Agent (I assume)  They may not have the same information channels that many US agents do. 

That’s a very fair point. Let’s hope things go smoothly from here and that OP has a most amazing cruise.

Jane

[npcl]

5 hours ago, WestLakeGirl said:

Certain ones are PVSA affected, but not all!  It should be up to Celebrity to do this correctly. It’s their job but someone seems to have programmed their system incorrectly, flagging the wrong itineraries

I suspect that their program anaylzes b2b bookings, but really does not analyze more complex b2b2b.  Instead of analyzing from start to finish it looked at each pair and then kicked out a red flag on the second pair.  Most customer service organizations are trained to go by whatever their computer says.  Easy to see how they could make the error.  Easy correction would be to either upgrade their program to handle more complex situations (probably expensive) or to add a note for customer service that if the booking is more than a simple back to back (i.e. more than 2 cruises) that it requires manual action by the appropriate department.  

[JaneStarr]

Doesn’t explain why it took from December 2017 booking date to trigger warning nor does it forgive Celebrity rep doubling down on erroneous conclusion rather than confirming with resolution department 

[AmazedByCruising]

1 hour ago, npcl said:

I suspect that their program anaylzes b2b bookings, but really does not analyze more complex b2b2b.  Instead of analyzing from start to finish it looked at each pair and then kicked out a red flag on the second pair.

 

Why all the trouble? PVSA doesn't care about selling a cruise as a B2B so the program shouldn't care either. Much simpler is just looking at start and end port for whatever cruise combination, and if they are both in the US, make sure there's a far port somewhere. 

[npcl]

3 minutes ago, AmazedByCruising said:

 

Why all the trouble? PVSA doesn't care about selling a cruise as a B2B so the program shouldn't care either. Much simpler is just looking at start and end port for whatever cruise combination, and if they are both in the US, make sure there's a far port somewhere. 

I suspect their program analyzes b2b combinations because 

 

1. That is exactly how they addressed the issue in responses to the OP.  They specifically said that the B2B violated PVSA.  Even the comment from the executive team indicated that the B2B violated it, and the additional first cruise made it legal.  That implies that somewhere in their system it is checking b2b combinations, not first cruise to last cruise.

 

2. Most failures would be B2B combinations. I suspect that the number of B2B2B or more cruises that where one B2B fails but the larger set passes is relatively small, compared to the number of B2B violations.  As such it is easy to see how the system might miss a fairly uncommon event.

 

Programs only care about what their programming says.  A program checking B2B combinations is pretty easy to program.  One that needs to check for any number of possible B2B2B2B2B ... combinations, is a bit more complex.  From the cruise line point of view I would expect that the number of B2B going beyond 2 is probably an order of magnitude or greater less then the number of B2B cruises so why program for a very uncommon event.

 

Coupled with if they trust the routine then they train their people to follow what the system says. Do not know if Celebrity has metrics for their customer service that will ding a rep if they go outside of the system.

[varoo]

1 hour ago, JaneStarr said:

Doesn’t explain why it took from December 2017 booking date to trigger warning nor does it forgive Celebrity rep doubling down on erroneous conclusion rather than confirming with resolution department 

 

The way it was explained to us when we encountered a similar situation, the reason for the delay is that the cruise line is not notified of PVSA violations  until they submit the first copy of the passenger manifest, which occurs close to the sailing date.

 

The TA could have and should have easily resolved a simple oversight like this by contacting Celebrity's Resolutions department about it on day one.

 

However, the TA failed to recognize that there was no PVSA violation, and just kept on exacerbating the problem by  giving the client dreadful advice.

                                        

Edited August 13, 2019 by varoo

[AmazedByCruising]

59 minutes ago, npcl said:

I suspect their program analyzes b2b combinations because 

 

1. That is exactly how they addressed the issue in responses to the OP.  They specifically said that the B2B violated PVSA.  Even the comment from the executive team indicated that the B2B violated it, and the additional first cruise made it legal.  That implies that somewhere in their system it is checking b2b combinations, not first cruise to last cruise.

 

I think you're right. They told the programmer to check for invalid B2Bs, and that's what he did.  

 

59 minutes ago, npcl said:

2. Most failures would be B2B combinations. I suspect that the number of B2B2B or more cruises that where one B2B fails but the larger set passes is relatively small, compared to the number of B2B violations.  As such it is easy to see how the system might miss a fairly uncommon event.

 

Most World Cruises can be bought in segments, so B2B2B2B2.... is very well possible, although they won't be sold as such. Also, the two or three people who call the ship their home have endless lists of B2B combinations. It does happen.

 

59 minutes ago, npcl said:

One that needs to check for any number of possible B2B2B2B2B ... combinations, is a bit more complex. 

 

The concept of a B2B is unneeded, and complicates everything. The entire algorithm for the PVSA in semi-code, even including the fact that cruises to nowhere are now forbidden:

 

HasPVSAProblem = ports(0).IsUSPort and ports(ports.length-1).IsUSPort and not ports.Contains(DistantPorts)

 

 

Even if there are only a few difficult cases per day, each leading to two emails, three phone calls, long threads on CC about the quality of the people working for the line, cancelled cruises and once in a while the interference of a CEO who even then keeps talking about the wrong act, I think it's wise to ask the programmer to spend an hour to fix the program. 

 

Then again, I still live in the fantasy world where computers would lead to less work 

 

Edited August 13, 2019 by AmazedByCruising