I wouldn't have believed it....

[Russell21]

.... if it hadn't happened to me, so please bear with me while I explain.

Those of us that book directly with Princess are familiar with the Booking Confirmation form that is emailed to you when you make the final payment for the cruise. In the top left hand corner of the printout is the name and address for the first person given at the time of booking, this occurs whether it's a married couple or two singles. Now I do the booking for our group of 6 people, 2 married couples and 2 singles, and when I do the booking I allocate, as requested by Princess, a security code number so that only I can make changes etc. to the booking. In this instance I have had to substitute one of the single passengers due to serious ill health, this was done without any problems simply by quoting the security number. BUT, and there is always a but, after I paid all the final payments for the group last Friday, the booking confirmation for the single pair came through with the correct names, but in the top left hand corner the name of the person who was ill had been removed and replaced with the name of the other original passenger BUT still had the address of the ill passenger.

 

So knowing how fussy the powers that be are about mistakes on paperwork, and not wanting any posted brochures etc going to the wrong place, I contacted Princess to correct this matter, and this is where the it started. Despite the fact that I had made the bookings, had accessed the account and substituted a passenger as well as paying her deposit, and had personally paid the final payments, I was not allowed to get Princess to correct their own mistake on the paperwork. Both the people I spoke to, and yes after a frustrating 15 minutes I insisted on speaking to a Supervisor, would not correct their own mistake due to their own privacy rules. Regardless of the fact that I was allowed to do the previously described actions I wasn't allowed to correct their own address mistake. The claim was that I was not authorised to change a persons address even though their computer had put in the incorrect one. Eventually she contacted her superior, which was exactly the next person I was going to request speaking to, and the matter was cleared up after wasting nearly an hour. I mean FFS.

[lyndarra]

Does Princess recruit their staff ready trained from the Public Service?

[Gnomey]

😅😆 I was just thinking, this story is starting to sound like an episode of "Yes Minister".

 

In jest, Steve.

Former Public Servant! (a long time ago)

[The_Big_M]

Actually, what they said makes sense. From what it sounds like, the new substituted passenger had been given the same address as the previous passenger when they were created for this booking.

 

The address detail is not linked to a booking, but to the customer. Say I had 3 bookings, one with you and two of my own. In this situation, you wanted to change my address. It wouldn't be right for you to change my address when the address the passenger uses is their business, not yours. Even though in this case as it sounds, there is only one booking for this passenger and they're new to Princess, you're still updating their address details as a customer in the system. You have the rights to manage the booking but not to change customer's own personal details.

[Porky55]

Perhaps next time it would be easier for each couple and the singles to do their own booking, even though your intentions were only the best?

Save the hassle 🤔😉

[Kiwi Kruzer]

Sounds to me like the staff were only doing their job. If authority to change personal information was available  to everyone , you would only need one person with a snitch to upset the apple cart and cause real chaos .

[Russell21]

8 hours ago, The_Big_M said:

Actually, what they said makes sense. From what it sounds like, the new substituted passenger had been given the same address as the previous passenger when they were created for this booking.

 

The address detail is not linked to a booking, but to the customer. Say I had 3 bookings, one with you and two of my own. In this situation, you wanted to change my address. It wouldn't be right for you to change my address when the address the passenger uses is their business, not yours. Even though in this case as it sounds, there is only one booking for this passenger and they're new to Princess, you're still updating their address details as a customer in the system. You have the rights to manage the booking but not to change customer's own personal details.

No it does not make any sense, you overlooked the part where I said that the name they inserted is the name of the original second passenger who has had a Carnival account and number, which is where all passenger information is stored, so it was not a matter of them allocating the address to the new passenger who by the way has her own account number, which was supplied, with all her details.

[Russell21]

2 hours ago, Porky55 said:

Perhaps next time it would be easier for each couple and the singles to do their own booking, even though your intentions were only the best?

Save the hassle 🤔😉

Great suggestion, particularly when the people concerned are all over 65 and are not computer literate to say nothing of the fact that they don't own computers. 

[Russell21]

56 minutes ago, Kiwi Kruzer said:

Sounds to me like the staff were only doing their job. If authority to change personal information was available  to everyone , you would only need one person with a snitch to upset the apple cart and cause real chaos .

Did you not read correctly? Particularly the part about security codes and who made the mistake. It had nothing to do with changing a person's address, it was all about correcting a mistake that either the Princess computer had made, and don't tell me about computer reliability when the fault is obviously in the programing, or the mistake of a princess employee.

[Russell21]

I'll make it simple. The original booking layout. Customer A on the left and customer B on the right. Name and address of customer A in the top left hand corner. Customer A is too sick to cruise so customer C is inserted.

 

New layout. Customer B on the left with customer C on the right. In the top left hand corner is the name of customer B with the address of customer A who has been removed from the booking.

 

No change of anyone's address involved, merely getting the correct address with the correct name.

 

Not to put too fine a point on things but this was vitally important to get correct as I attended customer A's funeral last Friday, she was the sister of my sister in law.

[Aus Traveller]

This would have been very frustrating and upsetting for you, particularly at a time when your family suffered a loss. I am trying to think of something else to say, but there is nothing I can say or do to help. 🙂

[Russell21]

Thanks AT.

[OzKiwiJJ]

I'm sorry to hear of your loss, Russell21.

 

Sometimes it can be the luck of the draw with Princess phone reps. I seem to get decent ones when I phone them in tbe mornings than in afternoons or evenings. 

[GUT2407]

Often they seem to have a script for each eventuality, the good reps know when they can vary it, the also ranks stick like glue.

[The_Big_M]

4 hours ago, Russell21 said:

No it does not make any sense, you overlooked the part where I said that the name they inserted is the name of the original second passenger who has had a Carnival account and number, which is where all passenger information is stored, so it was not a matter of them allocating the address to the new passenger who by the way has her own account number, which was supplied, with all her details.

 

It was a bit hard to follow whose details were where, but it doesn't matter who you're talking about, but that it was someone else. You wrote the purpose was:

"not wanting any posted brochures etc going to the wrong place"

 

So you're trying to change someone else's address. The same issue remains regardless of who it is that's not you. It's standard practice to ensure that the actual customer is the one changing their details, not someone with access to one of the bookings they're involved with. And honestly that makes sense as the alternative is very easy to be used maliciously.

 

[The_Big_M]

3 hours ago, Russell21 said:

I'll make it simple. The original booking layout. Customer A on the left and customer B on the right. Name and address of customer A in the top left hand corner. Customer A is too sick to cruise so customer C is inserted.

 

New layout. Customer B on the left with customer C on the right. In the top left hand corner is the name of customer B with the address of customer A who has been removed from the booking.

 

No change of anyone's address involved, merely getting the correct address with the correct name.

 

Not to put too fine a point on things but this was vitally important to get correct as I attended customer A's funeral last Friday, she was the sister of my sister in law.

 

I'm sorry to hear of the situation, of course the mistake in setting up the transfer doesn't help things.

 

However, you've still described a change of address issue. The booking confirmation shows the address for the customers booked. If the wrong address is under someone else's name then that customer profile has the wrong address. Basically customer B now has customer A's address in your description so they need to change the address for customer B.

[Russell21]

1 hour ago, The_Big_M said:

 

I'm sorry to hear of the situation, of course the mistake in setting up the transfer doesn't help things.

 

However, you've still described a change of address issue. The booking confirmation shows the address for the customers booked. If the wrong address is under someone else's name then that customer profile has the wrong address. Basically customer B now has customer A's address in your description so they need to change the address for customer B.

No it is a computer programing problem, and it is not a change of address. The compute program failed to allocate the correct address when the booking was changed. The customer profile for all concerned is and always has been correct, I have access to all of them. The final person the supervisor called saw the problem and it only took minutes for her to correct it, but it took nearly an hour to work it's way to someone able to correctly read the problem. Which seems to be a problem some people are having.

Edited August 20, 2019 by Russell21
spelling

[The_Big_M]

9 hours ago, Russell21 said:

No it is a computer programing problem, and it is not a change of address. The compute program failed to allocate the correct address when the booking was changed. The customer profile for all concerned is and always has been correct, I have access to all of them. The final person the supervisor called saw the problem and it only took minutes for her to correct it, but it took nearly an hour to work it's way to someone able to correctly read the problem. Which seems to be a problem some people are having.

Of course it only takes a few minutes to change an address.

 

How can it be a computer programming problem. Computers don't randomly "allocate" addresses. It's showing the address for the customer - which was obviously incorrect. 

 

Anyway, you have your view and I have mine. Though the fact you were told to begin with that you couldn't update the address by Princess for privacy reasons should tell you where the truth lies...

[Russell21]

Well BigM I'll leave it as it is, you obviously don't understand writing computer programs.

[OzKiwiJJ]

Actually, given the mess the Princess software seems to be it, it wouldn't surprise me if it was a software error. It just tried to charge me over $700 for excursion bookings worth just over $500! I will wait until we board to book those excursions.

 

However it does seem a very strange sort of error - moving the name of one guest but not the associated details. If, indeed, the software actually does that, which I doubt. My pick is that it was human error, and I'm saying that after 30+ years of software development experience.

[The_Big_M]

5 hours ago, Russell21 said:

Well BigM I'll leave it as it is, you obviously don't understand writing computer programs.

 

Thanks for ending on a laugh!