Just canceled with Celebrity

[onespots]

Hello Everyone

Our sailing for May 29th 2020 on the Millennium has been canceled. We called Celebrity directly & booked a new trip for June 4th 2021. They explained to us how their credits work. We were given 125% credit on this current sailing & shore excursions. Our out of pocket expense to re-create this trip is about $400. ( mostly due to the increased rates for next year's sailing )

We were given a credit on our account for the shore excursions to be decided at a later date. We paid a $500 deposit to confirm this reservation & received a reservation number shortly after the phone call.

The  agent at Celebrity was very nice.

Our new booking is for June 4th 2021. 

We had to cancel with all the hotels & vendors in Alaska for our pre-trip ( DIY ) adventure that was planned. All of these people were very understanding & pleasant. They refunded our deposits or total payments within a few days after the phone call. The Alaska Railroad also refunded our entire payment for the trip from Anchorage to Seward.

 

Our next next challenge is with Alaska Airlines. We have non-refundable multi-city tickets. The airlines has stated they will work with us. However nothing can be decided until later this year. Airlines generally do not book flights out any further than 330 days. So we our on hold until this July. Should be interesting to see how they respond to this situation. 

 

Happy Travels,  John

[jimdalva]

Our May RCCL cruise has also been canceled, We told our TA to rebook us for the same time next year and if the 125% is not enough then cancel and take the 100% refund and look elsewhere

 

[Italy52]

Were you given any options with Celebrity --- get money back or was it just future cruise credit?

[MellyBell]

    We were also canceled with Celebrity they have canceled all Alaska cruises thru July 1st.  This is our understanding:

     If they cancel your cruise you have the option to take 100% cash back or 125% towards a cruise sailing up until December 31, 2021.  If you take no action they automatically give you the 125% future cruise credit.  If you choose to keep the 125% Future Cruise Credit you also have until December 2021 to change your mind and choose to take it as 100% cash.  
     As for the shore excursion, internet, dining, photo, etc. 100% will automatically be refunded back to your credit card unless you fill out an application requesting for them to give you 125% for OBC.  You have until April 8th to decide.  
     If you choose to cancel the cruise using the 48 hour cruise with confidence you get 100% future cruise credit. 
 

 

[Italy52]

58 minutes ago, MellyBell said:

    We were also canceled with Celebrity they have canceled all Alaska cruises thru July 1st.  This is our understanding:

     If they cancel your cruise you have the option to take 100% cash back or 125% towards a cruise sailing up until December 31, 2021.  If you take no action they automatically give you the 125% future cruise credit.  If you choose to keep the 125% Future Cruise Credit you also have until December 2021 to change your mind and choose to take it as 100% cash.  
     As for the shore excursion, internet, dining, photo, etc. 100% will automatically be refunded back to your credit card unless you fill out an application requesting for them to give you 125% for OBC.  You have until April 8th to decide.  
     If you choose to cancel the cruise using the 48 hour cruise with confidence you get 100% future cruise credit. 
 

 

Interesting, thank you for the information.  We are past Celebrity cruisers but not using them for this season.  We are currently holding reservations with Princess for a May 20, 2020 B2B to Alaska and an  August 16, 2020 round trip cruise to Alaska.  We know the May cancellation is coming as it sails out of Vancouver.  We are awaiting word that Princess will be cancelling our cruise to see what our options will be.

[MellyBell]

Good Luck!!

[donaldsc]

16 hours ago, onespots said:

Hello Everyone

Our sailing for May 29th 2020 on the Millennium has been canceled. We called Celebrity directly & booked a new trip for June 4th 2021. They explained to us how their credits work. We were given 125% credit on this current sailing & shore excursions. Our out of pocket expense to re-create this trip is about $400. ( mostly due to the increased rates for next year's sailing )

We were given a credit on our account for the shore excursions to be decided at a later date. We paid a $500 deposit to confirm this reservation & received a reservation number shortly after the phone call.

The  agent at Celebrity was very nice.

Our new booking is for June 4th 2021. 

We had to cancel with all the hotels & vendors in Alaska for our pre-trip ( DIY ) adventure that was planned. All of these people were very understanding & pleasant. They refunded our deposits or total payments within a few days after the phone call. The Alaska Railroad also refunded our entire payment for the trip from Anchorage to Seward.

 

Our next next challenge is with Alaska Airlines. We have non-refundable multi-city tickets. The airlines has stated they will work with us. However nothing can be decided until later this year. Airlines generally do not book flights out any further than 330 days. So we our on hold until this July. Should be interesting to see how they respond to this situation. 

 

Happy Travels,  John

 

This is sort of relevant.  I had to cancel Alaska Airline tickets due to a medical reason.  They would not refund my money but they gave me vouchers for the cost of the tickets that I had to use within either 1 year or 1 1/2 years.

 

DON

[Italy52]

8 hours ago, donaldsc said:

 

This is sort of relevant.  I had to cancel Alaska Airline tickets due to a medical reason.  They would not refund my money but they gave me vouchers for the cost of the tickets that I had to use within either 1 year or 1 1/2 years.

 

DON

Don, did Alaska Airlines charge you a fee for talking with an agent and having them handle your cancellation?

[Italy52]

donaldsc----no need to reply, I found my answer. 

[bhague]

On 3/28/2020 at 2:31 AM, donaldsc said:

 

This is sort of relevant.  I had to cancel Alaska Airline tickets due to a medical reason.  They would not refund my money but they gave me vouchers for the cost of the tickets that I had to use within either 1 year or 1 1/2 years.

 

DON

Hi Don,

 

Just wanted to put your mind at ease regarding the survey I posted elsewhere on the boards. Yes, it was only my fourth post. I have a full-time job and don't have much time to spend hanging out on message boards, and the times I've posted, it was to ask a question that I couldn't find out through my own research. My wife and I aren't into doing meet-ups and the like when we cruise. For the record, we have done more than 20 cruises in the last 19 years, including two trans-oceanic cruises, so please don't take my limited post count as an indication of my cruise experience - I'd just rather be cruising than hanging out on a message board chatting about it.

 

I don't work for a market research firm. I'm a risk management consultant in the credit union industry, and credit unions don't care about cruise demand, and wouldn't pay for research related to it. Many years ago I was Chief Economist for a $50bn financial institution, and I just looked at general macroeconomic trends. I haven't gotten paid for economic research since, though I've done it extensively and have blogged about it frequently - for free, to help people understand the economic world around them. (Okay, I made some money shorting the market after I saw the housing crash coming in 2007, but I put my own money at risk).

 

Nobody pays me for what I do - I spend my own time doing it, so it's a money-losing proposition compared to using that time on a side gig. As a former economist, I have a natural curiosity about all things economic, and am a data geek.

 

For the record, the hypothesis that I was testing was whether cruise ship demand would come back after this pandemic. (I was hoping to use that to try and calm some of the hysteria floating around out there through my economics blog.) Someone I know challenged that, and opined that only hard-core loyal cruisers would cruise again, but there would be no more first-timers. That's why I included the fourth question related to number of cruisers. It was a data filter to capture anyone who answered with "0" as a newbie. I believe cruise demand will return to where it was, fwiw.

 

I also didn't ask anyone for PII (Personal Identifiable Information). I have no way of finding out people's real names or where they live (there are a lot of posts on here in which people disclose that, and they don't get deleted, which is a legitimate security risk). The number of cruises they've been on tells me nothing but that, and would have helped me to filter the newbies from the repeat cruisers. Whether they're willing to cruise again or not would only have told me whether the pandemic would scare them away from cruising, or if they had some other reason to not want to. The age cohort question was to stratify responses by age: is the at-risk age population more afraid? Are young people more willing to cruise for the first time? I didn't ask for anyone's specific age, and I certainly didn't ask for DOB. I also didn't ask whether anyone had a cruise booked already, or how many days they had cruised - I didn't want or need that data; some respondents volunteered it.

 

(FYI, I'm in my early 60s, and my wife and I just completed our last cruise the last week of January. We've already booked our next one.)

 

In the business I'm in now, I'm very aware of data scams, identity theft, etc. I could tell you some horror stories that would likely shock you. Nothing in my survey could have led anyone to provide any PII or financial information, unless they just chose to put it out there, in which case I would have immediately requested that it be deleted. My job is to protect people and institutions from fraud, not to permit or encourage it.

 

The good news is, the responses that were provided before my post was deleted confirmed that people are indeed still willing to cruise, even in the at-risk age population. The industry we love and support will be fine. And I don't fault your suspicion, I just wish I'd had a chance to reply in that thread before it was reported and deleted. I was in fact typing a nice reply, and when I hit Submit, the whole thread was already gone. This will probably be my last time on these boards, given this experience.

 

I hope you stay well and safe, and enjoy all your future cruises.

 

Brian