Refund Status for canceled cruises: Retitled after merges

[smithmlmx]

Anyone received a CC refund for March 28 Sky?

[suzyed]

6 minutes ago, cltnccruisers said:

Good.  We were April 12 and are expecting ours about the end of May.

Ha ha! Our March 5th cruise was paused on March 12th. We are due FCCs for the last 18 days of that 32 day sailing which was to end on April 6th. 
We have gotten absolutely nothing yet!!

We haven’t even gotten a refund to our credit card for overcharges on our folio!

So based on this... when do you think I should expect ours?

[Coral]

1 minute ago, suzyed said:

Ha ha! Our March 5th cruise was paused on March 12th. We are due FCCs for the last 18 days of that 32 day sailing which was to end on April 6th. 
We have gotten absolutely nothing yet!!

We haven’t even gotten a refund to our credit card for overcharges on our folio!

So based on this... when do you think I should expect ours?

You guys should have been dealt with first.

[Andrew J. Cat]

Got our refund just now.  Credited to our Amex.  May 2 cruise date.  We submitted the form on March 19.  Option 2.  No FCCs yet.

[cruzsnooze]

Are  there time frames based on these pauses 1-3 and what are they?

[cltnccruisers]

5 minutes ago, suzyed said:

Ha ha! Our March 5th cruise was paused on March 12th. We are due FCCs for the last 18 days of that 32 day sailing which was to end on April 6th. 
We have gotten absolutely nothing yet!!

We haven’t even gotten a refund to our credit card for overcharges on our folio!

So based on this... when do you think I should expect ours?

You are what Princess is calling an in-transit case.  Ours was simple and pretty straightforward.  From an IT perspective, when dealing with potentially hundreds of thousands of disparate transactions it makes sense to process the greater bulk first and deal with exceptions later.  I know that doesn't give you any comfort but it is likely the reality.  Personally, I would divert the exceptions to a special handling bucket and not to the end of the process.

[cherylandtk]

13 minutes ago, cruzsnooze said:

Are  there time frames based on these pauses 1-3 and what are they?

IMO there is no timeframe of any kind. People on our cruise (May 19) were refunded 2 weeks ago; we cancelled four days before they did and Princess tells us our refund has not yet begun the process, nor can they tell us when it will. 🤷‍♀️

[suzyed]

5 minutes ago, cltnccruisers said:

You are what Princess is calling an in-transit case.  Ours was simple and pretty straightforward.  From an IT perspective, when dealing with potentially hundreds of thousands of disparate transactions it makes sense to process the greater bulk first and deal with exceptions later.  I know that doesn't give you any comfort but it is likely the reality.  Personally, I would divert the exceptions to a special handling bucket and not to the end of the process.

Not one rep/customer service person has referred to us as “in transit”. I know what “in transit” typically means but how does it apply in this case?  The calculations are not complicated.

And then how do we explain that my credit card charges have not been corrected for overcharges totally unrelated to the “pause”?

[suzyed]

3 minutes ago, cherylandtk said:

IMO there is no timeframe of any kind. People on our cruise (May 19) were refunded 2 weeks ago; we cancelled four days before they did and Princess tells us our refund has not yet begun the process, nor can they tell us when it will. 🤷‍♀️

Welcome to my world!

[Marbel87]

I was booked for Sky Princess sailing out on 3/21/20. Still no credit back to my card or future cruise credit on my account. I'm now filing a dispute with my credit card to get my money back, it's been over 60 days from the date of sailing.

 

It would have been nice to get the 100% future cruise credit they promised, & I hope I still do. Since Princess can't process a refund in a timely manner, I hope my credit card will. If I don't get my future cruise credit, I think I'll boycott Carnival. I'm upset with them handling this so slowly. There are articles online suggesting Carnival is running a ponzi scheme, using future bookings to pay back the refunds owed to us. I think it may be true since Carnival just keeps delaying the refunds.

 

Good luck to the rest of you.

 

 

 

 

[cltnccruisers]

26 minutes ago, suzyed said:

Not one rep/customer service person has referred to us as “in transit”. I know what “in transit” typically means but how does it apply in this case?  The calculations are not complicated.

And then how do we explain that my credit card charges have not been corrected for overcharges totally unrelated to the “pause”?

The term came up in a post earlier this week based on a Princess webinar.  I called yesterday about the status of our refund just out of curiosity and asked the rep what "in transit" meant.  As you'd expect, the response was general and not specific to the current situation.  For overcharges, at this point I wouldn't wait on Princess to resolve them but instead go to the CC company.  But it's not your first dance so you've probably done that already.

[CruisinCouple2010]

We received our refund today. Our cruise was scheduled for April 04 Caribbean Princess. We chose option 2 on March 12. 
 

FCC received end of April

Our future cruise deposit was put back into our account last week and

full remaining balance received on credit card today. 
 

We hope everyone else receives there refunds soon.

 

[Geoffa30]

On 5/18/2020 at 6:40 AM, Geoffa30 said:

Hurrah! Some positive news. Checked my credit card this morning and our refund has arrived.

 

Our cruise was on Sky Princess on 28 March. We chose option two on 12 March so refund took 68 days from submission. Now to wait for the 50% bonus FCC to show up in my account. We had had the FCDs that were used to book the cruise around three or four weeks ago.

Update - we have now received our 50% bonus FCC into our account so everything sorted for us now. Hurrah!

 

Hope everyone receives their refunds in due course. 

[Cruise Raider]

On 5/21/2020 at 7:54 AM, lhsail said:

It is not. We are still waiting on 3/23 and some have received from our 4/8 sailing. 

 

We just received a portion of a refund today for an April 4th sailing.  Two different credit cards were used and although my TA mentioned that it would go back on the credit card on file, that is not what we are seeing ... well, hopefully not anyway.  I believe the banks have different processing times on posting these credits ... hopefully, the other one with the larger amount on it is just a day or so behind.  

[mthomp5]

Well...I broke down and called Princess to find out the status. I gave the rep my booking number and she just gave me the general spiel about since May 15 Princess has refunded millions of dollars and they are working as fast as they can and are now able to process more quickly now.  I asked her to confirm if they had my form in the system.  I didn’t feel very comfortable when she asked me what I had selected and I said Option 2.  Heard some typing and then she said, yes, option 2 is reflected on your account.  I would have felt more at ease if she had been able to tell me which Option was reflected in my record instead of her asking me which option I selected and then saying, yeah, option two is reflected in your account.  She couldn’t tell me where in the process I am.  I’m sure I’ve slipped through the cracks.

[azbirdmom]

11 hours ago, mthomp5 said:

Gosh...how crazy they didn’t have record of your form.  It seemed like an automated process but now really sounding very manual.  

 

I’m hoping they received my Option 2 form which I submitted on 3/14.  On 5/5, I received an email that said something to the effect of they were aware I cancelled my cruise amid the COVID 19 pandemic and that I’m waiting for my refund.  It also re-solicited their offer for higher FCC instead of the refund and said that I could take the FCC offer up until 5/31.  It made me think that I wouldn’t receive anything until 5/31 had passed because they want to give me the chance to change my mind.  At least 5/31 is only 10 more days from now.  I’m sure will have to wait past that date too since someone will have to manually handle the transaction.  I didn’t want to resubmit for Option 2 in case it put me to the back of the line.

 

We also received the email on May 5th and decided to resubmit the form for the refund anyway even if it put us at the back of the line.  We already received roughly 80% of what we paid in refund within days (we cancelled our May 9th cruise on March 10th, two days before they announced the pause).  The amount that we received already covered 90% of the cruise fare, all of the port fees, part of our EZair, and none of the Princess Vacation Protection.  Still we considered ourselves fortunate to have gotten a majority back when so many others have $0.

 

This morning our TA sent us a cancellation notice generated today by Princess that shows $0 in cancellation fees which indicates that they're going to send us the 10% deposit that they initially withheld back (we had paid using an FCD but their system must assign the 10% based on where we were in the cancellation schedule).  Oddly the notice was missing airfare and listed the PVP paid as $0.01 for each of us but it's my understanding that they process each of these items separately so I'm not going to be concerned about that part yet.

 

It was great to see movement on our reservation even though it's not complete.  I do wonder if sending that form in a second time triggered quicker action.  By the way, we still do not have the 25% "Goodwill" FCC yet oddly and I may have to call again if I do not see that before too long.

 

Just curious - are you still communicating with Customer Relations or is your contact now gone?

[suzyed]

57 minutes ago, cltnccruisers said:

The term came up in a post earlier this week based on a Princess webinar.  I called yesterday about the status of our refund just out of curiosity and asked the rep what "in transit" meant.  As you'd expect, the response was general and not specific to the current situation.  For overcharges, at this point I wouldn't wait on Princess to resolve them but instead go to the CC company.  But it's not your first dance so you've probably done that already.

What is this webinar and how do we know when and where they are?

[latserrof]

15 hours ago, nho9504 said:

 

 

Frankly the biggest issue I have with Princess is its opaque handling of the whole process.   It acts as if we are all idiots who would believe anything they say. 

It completely changes our opinion on the company, even though we have had over 35 cruises with them,  2/3 of all the cruises we have taken.  Going forward we dont even know if we would cruise again because we value our lives more than the pleasure from cruising!  If we cruise again,  Princess certainly would not be our first or second or even third choice. 

I'm on hold with princess right now, getting the usual runaround. Nineteen cruises with Princess (70 total), and agree with you.

[latserrof]

15 hours ago, nho9504 said:

 

 

 

 

Edited May 22, 2020 by latserrof

[suzyed]

14 minutes ago, mthomp5 said:

Well...I broke down and called Princess to find out the status. I gave the rep my booking number and she just gave me the general spiel about since May 15 Princess has refunded millions of dollars and they are working as fast as they can and are now able to process more quickly now.  I asked her to confirm if they had my form in the system.  I didn’t feel very comfortable when she asked me what I had selected and I said Option 2.  Heard some typing and then she said, yes, option 2 is reflected on your account.  I would have felt more at ease if she had been able to tell me which Option was reflected in my record instead of her asking me which option I selected and then saying, yeah, option two is reflected in your account.  She couldn’t tell me where in the process I am.  I’m sure I’ve slipped through the cracks.

Ditto for us on our many phone calls although first they said they couldn’t see it and then when I talked to the “post cruise specialist” she said , “ yes, I see you chose option 2... um, no. We chose option 1.

Slip through the crack? More like we are in the abyss!

[cltnccruisers]

9 minutes ago, mthomp5 said:

Well...I broke down and called Princess to find out the status. I gave the rep my booking number and she just gave me the general spiel about since May 15 Princess has refunded millions of dollars and they are working as fast as they can and are now able to process more quickly now.  I asked her to confirm if they had my form in the system.  I didn’t feel very comfortable when she asked me what I had selected and I said Option 2.  Heard some typing and then she said, yes, option 2 is reflected on your account.  I would have felt more at ease if she had been able to tell me which Option was reflected in my record instead of her asking me which option I selected and then saying, yeah, option two is reflected in your account.  She couldn’t tell me where in the process I am.  I’m sure I’ve slipped through the cracks.

No surprise that data entry would be an issue with this.   Hopefully this didn't reset your process to the beginning.

[travelhound]

56 minutes ago, CruisinCouple2010 said:

We received our refund today. Our cruise was scheduled for April 04 Caribbean Princess. We chose option 2 on March 12. 
 

FCC received end of April

Our future cruise deposit was put back into our account last week and

full remaining balance received on credit card today. 
 

We hope everyone else receives there refunds soon.

 

That's good news.  The refunds keep coming.

[remydiva]

The delays in receiving compensation has resulted in a lot of conjecture and assumptions and 'I know about IT and accounting' so not going to argue that...pointless.

But here is what we DO know to be 'factual' based on posts.

1. The refunds/FCC/FCD are NOT being processed in any order. Not by cruse date. Not by Option 1 or Option 2. Not by cancellation date. Not by which country you live in.

2. There 'appears' to be different categories of cruise compensation according to those who have spoken with Princess Reps. They are

•  'in transit' for those whose cruise was interrupted midway through. Some have been told THESE ones, perhaps the most inconvenienced of any, are at the BACK of the refund line up! The rationale is likely because these ones are very complicated. Yes, but that doesn't justify not having some very skilled agents deal with them in some order; not last.
• 'Compassionate consideration' for those who cancelled BEFORE the Mar 12 mass cancellation of Phase 1. These are also back of the refund line up, standing just in front of the 'in transit' cruisers. Again, a mixed bag of % refunded already, insurance claims maybe. Deal with it.
• Others. This salad bowl category is everyone else be it multiple cabins, EZ air or not, prepaid gratuities or not, shore excursion or not, gift cards used.

3. It makes no difference if you picked Option 1 or Option 2. One isn't being handled before the other.

4. Some got their 'refunds' back in the mail via cheques/checks.

5.. Others got their monies owed back to their credit card.

6.. Some got their FCD back and reinstated as a FCD (I did) but others got cash back or...nothing at all.

7.. Some got their FCC back first, then about two weeks later got the Princess cash owed back.

8.. Some got their bonus FCC; others did not.

9.. Some got their account squared away on Day 60 or close to. Others, are way WAY past Day 60.

10.. Your Cruise 'status' has no bearing whatsoever on how quickly or not your claim is being dealt with' nor should it.

11.. We are all in this together and it kinda sucks.

THAT much I know to be true. 🙂

[Coral]

23 minutes ago, mthomp5 said:

Well...I broke down and called Princess to find out the status. I gave the rep my booking number and she just gave me the general spiel about since May 15 Princess has refunded millions of dollars and they are working as fast as they can and are now able to process more quickly now.  I asked her to confirm if they had my form in the system.  I didn’t feel very comfortable when she asked me what I had selected and I said Option 2.  Heard some typing and then she said, yes, option 2 is reflected on your account.  I would have felt more at ease if she had been able to tell me which Option was reflected in my record instead of her asking me which option I selected and then saying, yeah, option two is reflected in your account.  She couldn’t tell me where in the process I am.  I’m sure I’ve slipped through the cracks.

I filled out the form 3x and told a Customer Relations person Option 2 - I wonder if that is enough? I don't know if the Customer Relations person still has her job or not....

 

First time, the form receipt came through with out my booking number or sailing info. So I filled it out a 2nd time and someone along the way suggested a 3rd time.

 

It would help if they could tell you where you are. I think that is the frustrating part. Just being told "we are working hard, wait your turn".

Edited May 22, 2020 by Coral

[latserrof]

After 47 minutes on and off hold w/ Princess, getting no answers, the call was mysteriously cut off.