Cruise Credit Refund

[Guest]

Has anyone had their credit posted to your Mariner number yet? I was told would get an e mail when posted.I would like to rebook as soon as it appears.They said it could take up to 4 weeks.Anybody else? Thanks.

[USN59-79]

Even though they post the credit to your Mariner number, you cannot just go to their website, look up your Mariner information and see your future cruise credit.  In other words, as a 5-star Mariner with three cancelled cruises and numerous emails from HAL saying I will receive FCC for them, there is no way I can see if that has happened or not.  I sent them an email last week asking about it, but they have not yet found it convenient to reply.

[Hlitner]

The quick answer to the OP's question is yes and no.  We were booked on an April sailing of the Westy which was cancelled by HAL back in late Feb.  We got the cancellation e-mail on a Thursday and had a complete refund credited to our credit card in 3 days.  About 2 weeks later we booked another cruise and our FCC was immediately deducted from the cruise price after we entered our Mariner number on the system.  But that credit amount never actually showed-up anywhere when we looked at our HAL account....but it was there when we did a booking.  I should mention that we DO NOT book through HAL's web site but use a high volume cruise agency site when we input bookings.

 

Hank

[SilvertoGold]

I just asked HAL and they said April 11 is as early as any FCC will be posted to your Mariner number.

Otherwise, they say 60 days from the sail date for refunds to credit cards.

 

Anyone have their refund or FCC yet?

 

I wonder how much business HAL thinks they are losing.  I know a couple who want to book right now with their FCC but, of course, can't access it.

[HALrunner]

3 hours ago, SilvertoGold said:

I just asked HAL and they said April 11 is as early as any FCC will be posted to your Mariner number.

Otherwise, they say 60 days from the sail date for refunds to credit cards.

 

Anyone have their refund or FCC yet?

 

I wonder how much business HAL thinks they are losing.  I know a couple who want to book right now with their FCC but, of course, can't access it.

Wow, 60 days for the refund to hit credit cards?!?

HAL is holding a big chunk of our change for our 48 day cruise they cancelled with less than 48 hours notice! 

[TriumphGuy]

4 hours ago, SilvertoGold said:

I just asked HAL and they said April 11 is as early as any FCC will be posted to your Mariner number.

Otherwise, they say 60 days from the sail date for refunds to credit cards.

 

Anyone have their refund or FCC yet?

 

I wonder how much business HAL thinks they are losing.  I know a couple who want to book right now with their FCC but, of course, can't access it.

Same thing my wife was told when did an online chat with HAL, 60 days for CC refund, 4-6 weeks for FCC to "build" to the Mariner account.
They are holding on to a lot of cash.

[SilvertoGold]

1 hour ago, HALrunner said:

Wow, 60 days for the refund to hit credit cards?!?

HAL is holding a big chunk of our change for our 48 day cruise they cancelled with less than 48 hours notice! 

 

Please post when you get your FCC and refund as we'll be right alongside you in this boat.  I'm not too happy: we must have been one of the first regular cruises HAL cancelled.  They did very well with the Westerdam cancellations, but that seems to be not the way it works now.

[DeeniEncinitas]

2 hours ago, TriumphGuy said:

Same thing my wife was told when did an online chat with HAL, 60 days for CC refund, 4-6 weeks for FCC to "build" to the Mariner account.
They are holding on to a lot of cash.

That is absolutely right. Our PCC Risa spoke to me as well as emailed me that our complete 100% monies refund from our Rotterdam cruise that we were on 3/11 and off in Puerto Vallarta 3/15 they are so back logged said it will be refunded back on my cc 60 days and our FCC with the Rotterdam will be the same. She said she sees it on our account.

Denise😊

[rim140]

Our cancelled cruise was 2/15/20-3/14/20 on Westerdam. We recieved a refund on our credit card while back (for cruise fares), but have not yet received a reimbursement check for our cancelled flight expense. 

Has anyone received a reimbursement check for flight/hotel expenses yet? We received email on 2/25/20 from HAL stating that our reimbursement request was approved for our flight cost, and a refund check will be issued within 4-5 weeks from a third-party vendor. We haven't seen a check yet.

Edited April 3, 2020 by rim140

[BobbiSox]

I was scheduled for the April 6th sailing on Rotterdam. On March 13th, HAL called and offered me an upgrade to a Neptune Suite for $2058.00, which I gladly excepted and paid for by credit card. The debit appeared the next day, as did HAL's cancellation notification. I am trying to understand how HAL could have made me the offer and collected my payment hours before they canceled. I find it difficult to believe they didn't know what was happening only hours before it happened. This trip would have put me in the 5-star Mariner category. The premium insurance, which I bought through HAL, told me I am NOT covered for this type of cancelation; the insurance pays ONLY if I cancel, and not if HAL cancels. After spending 20 years traveling with HAL, I am horrified to be treated in this manner. There is no recourse other than to wait for the 'refund' and hope they are not buying time until they can file bankruptcy. I am too old to start building up my 'loyalty' with another line. 

Edited April 21, 2020 by BobbiSox
I left out the word "March" in my sentence.

[Ichiban Nekko]

We were booked on the Eurodam, scheduled to depart April 15 on a Circle Hawaii itinerary. It was cancelled and we opted for the FCC & OBC option. When talking with our PCC yesterday, she confirmed that she could see the FCC in their system. We are hoping some kind of 'normal' will return and have booked a B2B on the Nieuw Amsterdam for December 2020. The FCC will cover most of the cost; we did pay a reduced deposit and received prepaid HSC on the booking.

 

Our PCC said it is incredibly busy with people asking about their refund(s) and/or FCC, explaining the details, responding to enquiries about upcoming travel and making new bookings. I think you have to be a special person right now, in any industry, to do Customer Service work.

 

Hoping everyone gets their issues resolved soon. We like having a cruise to look forward to!

[BobbiSox]

On 3/25/2020 at 9:02 PM, HALrunner said:

Wow, 60 days for the refund to hit credit cards?!?

HAL is holding a big chunk of our change for our 48 day cruise they cancelled with less than 48 hours notice! 

There are people who are sympathetic to HAL and seem to be worried about the financial state of the company, which of course is Carnival Corporation, not exactly a mom-and-pop operation. I have no sympathy for them. They took my money and they haven't given it back and in all likelihood, they will NOT give it back. Surely they have prepared in advance for a financial setback, regardless of the cause. Surely they have a plan of action, which apparently has no provision for those of us who make it possible for them to operate at all. I have sailed with HAL for over 20 years. My canceled cruise would have moved me into the 5*Mariner category. I suppose my $10,000.00 cruise is peanuts compared to those who had booked a world voyage at ten times that amount. I have never been so disappointed in my life.

Edited April 23, 2020 by BobbiSox
typo

[Guest]

There is hope.Got my credit yesterday.Took 7 weeks.

[Crazy For Cats]

1 minute ago, garsny said:

There is hope.Got my credit yesterday.Took 7 weeks.

Glad to hear this news.  Gives me some hope.

[TN Fem]

2 hours ago, garsny said:

There is hope.Got my credit yesterday.Took 7 weeks.

when did you cancel and when were you to sail? 

 

We are still waiting for our 3/13 cancellation of our 3/14 cruise. 

[Guest]

Was for 3/8.Cancelled 3/5.New Amsterdam.

[BobbiSox]

I would be interested to know how they can so quickly issue a credit, which is not tangible, but they can't offer a refund,  only the  'promise'  of a refund. It would be interesting to be an 'insider' and be privy to their financial decisions. 

[Crazy For Cats]

2 minutes ago, BobbiSox said:

I would be interested to know how they can so quickly issue a credit, which is not tangible, but they can't offer a refund,  only the  'promise'  of a refund. It would be interesting to be an 'insider' and be privy to their financial decisions. 

I wouldn’t say FCC are coming quickly.  It’s now six weeks since HAL cancelled our cruise.  No FCC and no refunds for excursions.

[kazu]

To put the wait for refunds into perspective, I reached Lufthansa last night and asked for a refund for my flight that they cancelled instead of the credit.

 

Lufthanza agreed to refund and advised me that it would take 2 - 3 months to be processed.

 

So, it’s not just HAL.  Many of these companies are overwhelmed and can only do so many refunds at a time.

[iancal]

They are very busy.

 

In spite of this my guess is that if you were to book a cruise today, or make a final payment on one,  the transaction would not take 60 plus days to show up on your credit card account.  More like 48 hours.

 

I suspect this has more to do with cash flow management than it does anything else.

Edited April 24, 2020 by iancal

[mrmoviezombie]

Most likely it's because they have no motivation to send out the money quickly.

 

However, refunds like this are likely the sort of thing that require a manual review and signoff for each transaction.

Usually by a limited number of people with the right financial authority. Outbound payments like this are a huge source of fraud in corporations. At any large corp there is always some employee trying to game the system with fake invoices/refunds/payments.

 

Ballpark numbers

3 months of cruises to cancel, average 7 day cruises, 15 ships, 1000 cabins

12*15*1000=180,000 refunds to process

 

To do that in 60 days. aka 8 weeks or 40 8 hour work days. 19200 minutes.

That's mean you have to average 9 minutes per transaction sustained for months.

60 days seem reasonable for a small team, given the amount of cross checking needed.

 

Don't forget the actual calculation of the refund is non-trivial, lots of special cases around what is refunded vs what is FCC, confirming what has been paid, not already refunded, transferred to new cruise etc. The computers help but updating the systems to handle all of that automatically is hard. And we know HAL's computer department is not it's strong suit.

 

[BobbiSox]

59 minutes ago, kazu said:

To put the wait for refunds into perspective, I reached Lufthansa last night and asked for a refund for my flight that they cancelled instead of the credit.

 

Lufthanza agreed to refund and advised me that it would take 2 - 3 months to be processed.

 

So, it’s not just HAL.  Many of these companies are overwhelmed and can only do so many refunds at a time.

I refer to HAL specifically because that is the company holding my money. I have no doubt that other companies are 'in the same boat'. I would suspect bad management to be at the root of the problem; if in fact they are 'overwhelmed' , it suggests to me that   they have not had the good sense to prepare for an emergency of this magnitude. Maybe they would be wise to consider hiring  future staff who have a better  perspective. It isn't my job to figure out why they can't refund my money as promptly as they accepted it. They never seemed to be 'overwhelmed' when they were accepting multi-millions of dollars in bookings which are paid in advance (and not sixty days later).   I may not understand the intricacies  of high finance, but I do understand the feeling that I'm being screwed.  I'm not okay with their explanations.

 

Edited April 24, 2020 by BobbiSox
typo

[kazu]

17 minutes ago, BobbiSox said:

I refer to HAL specifically because that is the company holding my money. I have no doubt that other companies are 'in the same boat'. I would suspect bad management to be at the root of the problem; if in fact they are 'overwhelmed' , it suggests to me that   they have not had the good sense to prepare for an emergency of this magnitude. Maybe they would be wise to consider hiring  future staff who have a better  perspective. It isn't my job to figure out why they can't refund my money as promptly as they accepted it. They never seemed to be 'overwhelmed' when they were accepting multi-millions of dollars in bookings which are paid in advance (and not sixty days later).   I may not understand the intricacies  of high finance, but I do understand the feeling that I'm being screwed.  I'm not okay with their explanations.

 

 

It’s not just a matter of staffing, it’s a matter of how much the servers (computers) can handle.  For example, I was warned that I would not receive my trip cancellation insurance forms for nearly a week.  I was speaking to a supervisor at the time and she informed me that their email crashed when they sent out more than x number of emails per day so they were doing them in batches.

 

I’m not cheerleading or sticking up for anyone by any means.  All the companies wasted no time taking my money.  Getting it back is going to take much longer 😞 and no, I don’t think it is fair but I do understand that there is only so much that a server can handle in a day.

 

In all honesty, I don’t think anyone was prepared for this in the touring industry - whether it be the cruise lines, air lines, hotels, tour guides, etc.

[Crazy For Cats]

My experience with Jet Blue was great.  I cancelled our non-refundable fare and had our money back in a few days.  Surprisingly it took a little longer to restore the points used to my account.  

[Cruising-along]

2 hours ago, kazu said:

To put the wait for refunds into perspective, I reached Lufthansa last night and asked for a refund for my flight that they cancelled instead of the credit.

 

Lufthanza agreed to refund and advised me that it would take 2 - 3 months to be processed.

 

So, it’s not just HAL.  Many of these companies are overwhelmed and can only do so many refunds at a time.

Exactly.  We usually buy a yearly travel policy with Allianz.  For our (canceled) cruise we bought insurance just for that trip because the cost of the cruise couldn't be added to our yearly policy.  We contacted Allianz as soon as our cruise was canceled, and we were told we would get a complete refund of money paid for the policy because the trip wouldn't happen.  This was mid March.  After much back and forth, yesterday we were told it would be at least 60 days. It's over $3000 for that alone. I'm not holding my breath, everything has been slow from the whole travel industry with good reason.