APRIL 6 REFUND THREAD: Have you received your refund?

[jneaves]

3 hours ago, JustJosephine23 said:

That’s awesome you were able to receive a refund! When did you request it??

As soon as the cruise was cancelled so several days before but I cannot remember the exact date

[oceanneil]

I know when you book with an agency that refunds go back to the agency normally - does anyone know because we could cancel direct with carnival by using the online form, whether we will receive our monies directly back from carnival or do we have to wait for carnival to send the t/a the money and then the t/a to refund us?

[travelhound]

2 hours ago, NightOne said:

 

I've been told by and employee that the accounting department is working from home and are processing refunds but I'm not sure either of us has a way to actually proof it one way or another.

I was told that everyone was working from home and this is one of the reasons that everything has slowed down.

[ceilidh1]

1 hour ago, oceanneil said:

I know when you book with an agency that refunds go back to the agency normally - does anyone know because we could cancel direct with carnival by using the online form, whether we will receive our monies directly back from carnival or do we have to wait for carnival to send the t/a the money and then the t/a to refund us?

I'm not sure it the process is the same for all agencies/TAs but for me, when a client pays with their credit card, that payment goes directly to the cruise line. It doesn't come to the agency. Same is true for refunds - clients are being directly refunded from the cruise line. As I said, this may be different for different agencies/TAs.

[BeachNBooks]

I put in for a full refund as soon as we got the email on it. Like everyone else, no email confirmation. When I got a call from a Carnival Cruise Planner, he left a message saying I could get a refund or future cruise credit. But when I called him, he seemed annoyed that I wanted a refund. He said I'd get an email before the end of the day with confirmation of the refund. Never got the email. If they don't give people their refunds in order to stay in business... Just who do they think will be booking cruises in the future? Certainly not any of us who have apparently just set thousands of dollars on fire (in my case nearly $4K).

[oceanneil]

2 minutes ago, BeachNBooks said:

I put in for a full refund as soon as we got the email on it. Like everyone else, no email confirmation. When I got a call from a Carnival Cruise Planner, he left a message saying I could get a refund or future cruise credit. But when I called him, he seemed annoyed that I wanted a refund. He said I'd get an email before the end of the day with confirmation of the refund. Never got the email. If they don't give people their refunds in order to stay in business... Just who do they think will be booking cruises in the future? Certainly not any of us who have apparently just set thousands of dollars on fire (in my case nearly $4K).

Who says that they are keeping the money to stay in business? That is pure gossip and speculation. The fact is Carnival managed to raise billions last week and has enough cash to survive so the idea that they need to keep your 4k just to stay afloat doesn't match the reality and the facts.

 

I get it is frustrating but what do you want them to do? They have hundreds of thousands of people to get to and everyone has their own booking so it isn't going to be possible when offices are closed and there is a virus getting people sick to be able to personally and individually stop everything just to do your own personal booking. There simply isn't enough hours in the day to give everyone their refund all in 1 go and it isn't like they can hire extra staff right now with the offices closed as those staff would need training up properly.

[oceanneil]

25 minutes ago, travelhound said:

I was told that everyone was working from home and this is one of the reasons that everything has slowed down.

Which makes sense, add in sickness and people having to care for relatives and it is no wonder it is slow.

[bury me at sea]

3 hours ago, shof515 said:

most likely customer service and pvp is working from home.. the booking system is all online and depending on their phone system, they can make calls directly from their website so it appears like the call is from carnival on your caller id

 

My PVP told me Monday she was working from home. I didn't ask her how long she had been doing so or questions about any other departments.

 

For this round of cancellations I am waiting for a refund of only $90.  For that I can afford to be patient.  My income category is such that I totally understand the worry people have who are waiting for a full refund.

[travelhound]

3 hours ago, oceanneil said:

Which makes sense, add in sickness and people having to care for relatives and it is no wonder it is slow.

Yup, their headquarters is in Miami, which is on total lockdown right now.

[Cmx3d]

I received a letter (email) yesterday although only for one of our bookings for a cruise leaving today and two rooms. The letter states I’m being charged a penalty for canceling despite having chosen the option on both bookings for 100% refund. Hopefully just a mistake and get the full refund so I don’t have to call and wait forever to have it resolved.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[shof515]

Just now, Cmx3d said:

I received a letter (email) yesterday although only for one of our bookings for a cruise leaving today and two rooms. The letter states I’m being charged a penalty for canceling despite having chosen the option on both bookings for 100% refund. Hopefully just a mistake and get the full refund so I don’t have to call and wait forever to have it resolved.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

 

that email is automatically generated when the cruise is canceled. it is normal..carnival accounting department will waive the penalty cost and give you a full refund

[sparks1093]

14 hours ago, BeachNBooks said:

I put in for a full refund as soon as we got the email on it. Like everyone else, no email confirmation. When I got a call from a Carnival Cruise Planner, he left a message saying I could get a refund or future cruise credit. But when I called him, he seemed annoyed that I wanted a refund. He said I'd get an email before the end of the day with confirmation of the refund. Never got the email. If they don't give people their refunds in order to stay in business... Just who do they think will be booking cruises in the future? Certainly not any of us who have apparently just set thousands of dollars on fire (in my case nearly $4K).

As I understand it (from something that I read in a thread on here) there are regulations covering this and cruise lines are required to have the cash on hand to handle customer refunds. Of course it is an open question how compliant Carnival is in this regard but I still strongly suspect that the number of the refunds (unprecedented in itself) plus the reduced staffing and the reduced productivity that can come from working at home (I worked from home long before this pandemic hit and my systems aren't running as fast as they were because of the number of people using the internet) is what is slowing everything down. A lot also depends on whether or not they have an automated process for this or if every refund needs to be processed manually. I doubt that their process is automated.

[Essiesmom]

When I received the notification of the cancellation of our June 3 cruise on Legend, I immediately went to the Carnival site and requested 100% refund.  I don't recall getting any acknowledgement of it.  However, today I went back and see that the cruise is still in my cruise planner.  When I experimentally tried to request the refund again, I got the message 'we have already received a selection for this booking'.  So it is in the long pipeline.  I have a Celebrity cruise that was cancelled two days before the cruise and I am still waiting on refund for that.  That went through a TA.  EM

[Bigcatmd]

I don't trust them... I disputed the charges with my credit card and got the money back on statement the next day.

[sparks1093]

I'll ask the question here because the mods might move it here anyway- how do they handle refunds if you've used more than one card for making the payments? I tried to use the same one but I might have used another one somewhere along the line. (I typically pay $100 or so every couple of weeks so the cruise is paid off by final payment date, a practice I will most likely discontinue after this.)

[sparks1093]

17 hours ago, Bigcatmd said:

I don't trust them... I disputed the charges with my credit card and got the money back on statement the next day.

Seems like a misuse of the process to me but glad it worked for you.

[rico]

On 4/9/2020 at 12:31 PM, Bigcatmd said:

I don't trust them... I disputed the charges with my credit card and got the money back on statement the next day.

Credit card companies place the credit back on your card temporarily/provisionally while they contact the seller and investigate. If they determine the seller is at fault, the credit to your card stays and becomes permanent. If they determine the seller is not at fault, the credit is removed and the original charge stands. Don’t take the credit as meaning your situation is resolved. 
 

That being said, I hope it works in your favor. I love cruising and I’m pretty tolerant with cruise lines. But a refund is a simple electronic transaction. We’ve all had them with other companies. It takes a matter of days to refund back to a credit card. This 90 day thing is not necessary and a deliberate decision Carnival has made.  It is not necessary and I’m none too pleased about it. 

Edited April 11, 2020 by rico

[sparks1093]

34 minutes ago, rico said:

Credit card companies place the credit back on your card temporarily/provisionally while they contact the seller and investigate. If they determine the seller is at fault, the credit to your card stays and becomes permanent. If they determine the seller is not at fault, the credit is removed and the original charge stands. Don’t take the credit as meaning your situation is resolved. 
 

That being said, I hope it works in your favor. I love cruising and I’m pretty tolerant with cruise lines. But a refund is a simple electronic transaction. We’ve all had them with other companies. It takes a matter of days to refund back to a credit card. This 90 day thing is not necessary and a deliberate decision Carnival has made.  It is not necessary and I’m none too pleased about it. 

If it were just Carnival I would agree, but other cruise lines are also facing delays because of the large number of refunds required. Carnival is looking at 10's of thousands of refunds that need to be processed manually with reduced staffing or reduced efficiency in the process (or both).

[160july]

I called yesterday. We only need refunds on port fees, tips, excursions etc. We took a future cruise credit. We booked for next March. We booked our excursions right away for the new cruise.  We had one of our five rooms decide they didn't want an excursion we had just paid  for the new cruise. I immediately canceled it. 

  Upon calling I wanted to know why I didn't see my $600 plus  dollars in onboard credit for my room on the reservation. Why I didn't see $440 an onboard credit for the second room. Why I did see credits on rooms, 3 4 and 5 which were new and should have the big credits.  I asked the agent where my refunds were when I was told it would be 7 to 10 days and that was over a month ago. She told me flat out to expect the refund to take 90 days or LONGER. If I had known they were going to be dishonest about the 7 to 10 days I wouldn't have went and rebooked the excursions for all five rooms on my credit card without having refunds for the first excursions for the cruise they canceled during the shutdown.  I also had cruise cash and pixels credits.

Edited April 11, 2020 by 160july

[hdrdr]

Here is our refund dilemma.  We had two cruises cancelled, March and June (Radiance, due to renovation delays).  We have four cruises scheduled, one of which is in July.  Final payment is coming up on that cruise.  Yet I have received neither my refund from Radiance cancellation nor FCC applied to June 2021 cruise from March cancellation.  We have to decide, do we want to give Carnival more money when they are slow to return our money and apply credits?

[logan25]

45 minutes ago, hdrdr said:

Here is our refund dilemma.  We had two cruises cancelled, March and June (Radiance, due to renovation delays).  We have four cruises scheduled, one of which is in July.  Final payment is coming up on that cruise.  Yet I have received neither my refund from Radiance cancellation nor FCC applied to June 2021 cruise from March cancellation.  We have to decide, do we want to give Carnival more money when they are slow to return our money and apply credits?

If you can cancel without penalty, I would lean toward that.

[DWolf2020]

On 4/10/2020 at 6:55 AM, sparks1093 said:

I'll ask the question here because the mods might move it here anyway- how do they handle refunds if you've used more than one card for making the payments? I tried to use the same one but I might have used another one somewhere along the line. (I typically pay $100 or so every couple of weeks so the cruise is paid off by final payment date, a practice I will most likely discontinue after this.)

I did the same thing, I suggest you keep track of how much you put on each card.  That is what I did.  You should get the appropriate amount refunded to that specific card.

I reviewed my payments and calculated how much I had on each card.  When I called Carnival and worked with the customer service rep., we actually went booking-by-booking (we were a group that I paid for) and reviewed how much was going to be refunded and to which card.  I compared what they told me with my records and everything lined up.

I will say that I have had zero issues with the customer reps., they have been fantastic and patient.  I treat them politely but I'm firm.  The sad thing is they can't seem to "initialize" an actual refund.  They say "it's processed and sent over to accounting".  Maybe before COVID-19 they could do it, but with the mass cancellations/refunds...Carnival isn't letting any cash out.

[rico]

3 hours ago, sparks1093 said:

Carnival is looking at 10's of thousands of refunds that need to be processed manually with reduced staffing or reduced efficiency in the process (or both).

And that is exactly the problem.  There should be no need for manual processing of a refund; especially when it’s a 100% refund.  It’s a simple electronic function to refund the payment.  Cleaning up their booking may take manual effort on their part (I’m not familiar with their systems), but that shouldn’t impact the refund of the payment (I am familiar with banking and payment systems.).  Airlines aren’t having any issue with the electronics.  I called to cancel the flight and within minutes I could see the refund in process on the airline site and the refund was completed and back on my card within a few days.

Edited April 11, 2020 by rico

[sparks1093]

1 hour ago, rico said:

And that is exactly the problem.  There should be no need for manual processing of a refund; especially when it’s a 100% refund.  It’s a simple electronic function to refund the payment.  Cleaning up their booking may take manual effort on their part (I’m not familiar with their systems), but that shouldn’t impact the refund of the payment (I am familiar with banking and payment systems.).  Airlines aren’t having any issue with the electronics.  I called to cancel the flight and within minutes I could see the refund in process on the airline site and the refund was completed and back on my card within a few days.

That's the thing though, you called and cancelled and the human being you were talking to input the cancellation information immediately into a computer. A far different paradigm then what the cruise lines are dealing with. It may be a simple electronic function but I don't think they have a master button that says "cancel the cruise and issue the refund", it takes a human being to do that. If I were running the business I would want that set of human eyes on the process, I wouldn't trust a computer program to get it right. So they have a given number of employees (I don't know how many) cancelling 10's of thousands of reservations one at a time from home on systems that are probably slower than what they use in the office. It's simply going to take time. 

[webecruzin2]

We were booked on the Radiance in October and only found out here on CC that the ship was a no-go a couple of days ago.
I called Carnival and since they had not yet officially cancelled that sailing, the rep David canceled my booking and told me they waived all fees and I would get a full refund.  

I asked for a confirmation email and the rep said they go out automatically and that he had no way of doing it himself.  Hmmm..
Two days later I received an email from Carnival telling me they're  sorry that  I canceled my cruise and they would only charge me $150.00 pp. penalty.   Whaat?!!
I called again and their rep  Linda told me there were notes in my cancellation that shows all penalties and fees waived and she still could not tell me when I would get my refund nor could she mail out a confirmation of THEIR cancellation.
But she did give me an email address to request a copy of my cancellation with the waiving of penalties.
If they had just canceled the sailing as soon as they knew it was not going instead of being deceitful I wouldn't have to deal with this mess.
What get's me even more is I just made final payment and put more money down on my daughter's cabin a few days before, when they already KNEW that ship was not sailing, but did not tell me and still took my money.
If I don't see a refund within 3 weeks I'm disputing it with my credit card company.
Which I'm already doing for the Celebrity cruise that was supposed to leave on in 12 days.  

If anyone needs the email address as mentioned above it is:
PenaltyVerification@Carnival.com