Carnival Doesn't Have the Common Courtesy

[goduckies05]

Being in a sales job, they don't want the person let go to call you. Good way for that person to leave a bad impression of said company and try to flip you. As to reaching out, a call is better than a boring email, but I bet ther are swamped.

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[Cushing985]

My PVP had a Facebook group and invited her clients to join.  That's also how I found out she was retiring (probably got fed up with all the cancelling and re-booking going on).

[Matco]

Yet another reason NOT to use a TA or PVP...

[cruizergal70]

On 7/30/2020 at 3:49 PM, jetsfan58 said:

Guys please remember that we are living in this "Right To Work" employment mentality. If I fire you "so what" or if you "quit" see you later. Do we really have to ponder "Why There Is No Courtesy" exhibited? 

 

We've trained our Society to be more "Heartless" and less "Caring". We have become the recipients of our own "Creation"  

What? What industry sends out notices to customers that employees have quit? I don't see why one would expect to be notified.

 

I don't see this as anything involving courtesy.

[Banditswife]

I would imagine that Carnival has some kind of rule that your PVP is not "allowed" to contact you.  Like others said- they could take you with them to new job, they could give you a bad impression of CCL, etc.  As for Carnival contacting you, even though we are 5 months into this pandemic, the booking dept is swamped with cancellations & other calls.

[Joe817]

2 minutes ago, Banditswife said:

I would imagine that Carnival has some kind of rule that your PVP is not "allowed" to contact you.  Like others said- they could take you with them to new job, they could give you a bad impression of CCL, etc.  As for Carnival contacting you, even though we are 5 months into this pandemic, the booking dept is swamped with cancellations & other calls.

I agree. I could easily believe that,  like all other agents(real estate, insurance, etc), they are required to sign a non-disclosure agreement stating basically, if they leave, they leave their client list with them, and have no contact with them for a period(2 years is common) for the purpose of solicitation of new business. Just my opinion. 

[sanmarcosman]

38 minutes ago, Banditswife said:

I would imagine that Carnival has some kind of rule that your PVP is not "allowed" to contact you.  Like others said- they could take you with them to new job, they could give you a bad impression of CCL, etc.  As for Carnival contacting you, even though we are 5 months into this pandemic, the booking dept is swamped with cancellations & other calls.

I never said the PVP should be the one to contact me, I said Carnival. I thanked the member who posted what you are saying about sales positions and protocols and told them it was helpful. I don't know how many different ways there are to say the same thing. My point was that Carnival, or any business, should have reached out to me to say " Let us know if we may be of assistance with your current booking or your future cruise needs. Please call 1-800..." That would have been enough to give me a heads up that I may want to request a new PVP. 

Edited August 1, 2020 by sanmarcosman

[Doggielover68]

We used to visit a particular restaurant a lot and one day, our favorite waitress was gone.  People in the service industry don't care that much about customers. They are nice because they have to be. When the job is over, so is their service to you. 

 

Carnival doesn't have time to call people during a pandemic. They've laid off a huge chunk of their staff. Who do you think is going to make those calls and send those emails if there's nobody left?

[Elaine5715]

5 hours ago, sanmarcosman said:

I never said the PVP should be the one to contact me, I said Carnival. I thanked the member who posted what you are saying about sales positions and protocols and told them it was helpful. I don't know how many different ways there are to say the same thing. My point was that Carnival, or any business, should have reached out to me to say " Let us know if we may be of assistance with your current booking or your future cruise need Please call 1-800..." That would have been enough to give me a heads up that I may want to request a new PVP. 

I looked back on some old emails and saw that Carnival had sent me a offer with a new PVP name about 5 yrs ago when mine disappeared.  

[sanmarcosman]

Just now, Elaine5715 said:

I looked back on some old emails and saw that Carnival had sent me a offer with a new PVP name about 5 yrs ago when mine disappeared.  

Thank you for taking the time to research your email files. I hope that Carnival will go back to notifying their customers again. I appreciate you sharing your experience with Carnival. 

[Doggielover68]

2 hours ago, cruizergal70 said:

It sounds like you've never worked a service job. I have. As an employee, my focus was on meeting the standards of my employer in order to get paid. My objective was never to "care" about the customers. It's the employer's policies and procedures that govern the acceptable customer experience. It would be mentally and emotionally exhausting trying to "care" about thousands of random customers.

Not sure if you were referring to me or OP, but nearly every job I've ever had has been in the service industry...call center, restaurants, professional associations, you name it. While I do grow fond of some customers, when I left my job I didn't take the time (or have the time) to say goodbye. 

[sanmarcosman]

9 minutes ago, Doggielover68 said:

Not sure if you were referring to me or OP, but nearly every job I've ever had has been in the service industry...call center, restaurants, professional associations, you name it. While I do grow fond of some customers, when I left my job I didn't take the time (or have the time) to say goodbye. 

Again, I never said I expected the PVP to contact me personally. Several people here have made this mistake and I don't know why. Even the title I chose for this thread should make it clear: Carnival Doesn't Have the Common Courtesy...

Edited August 1, 2020 by sanmarcosman

[cruizergal70]

6 minutes ago, sanmarcosman said:

Again, I never said I expected the PVP to contact me personally. Several people here have made this mistake and I don't know why. Even the title I chose for this thread should make it clear: Carnival Doesn't Have the Common Courtesy...

Why are you differentiating between the PVP and Carnival? There still isn't any reason for Carnival to call their customers every time there is a staff change. Have you considered the possible turnover rate and the complications of notifying the public about internal personnel matters?

[sanmarcosman]

Just now, cruizergal70 said:

Why are you differentiating between the PVP and Carnival? There still isn't any reason for Carnival to call their customers every time there is a staff change. Have you considered the possible turnover rate and the complications of notifying the public about internal personnel matters?

Yes to all and I still think the affected customers should be advised they no longer have an assigned employee for their account. Email blasts are very easy to set up. The IT department highlights all the affected member's email addresses and attaches the  email saying to contact Carnival and then the IT person presses  Enter on their keyboard. 

[edspec]

I'm sorry, I can't imagine this would be a concern. I got a full refund from a cancelled cruise, darn happy Carnival dedicated staff to that. I have a sense my PVP is gone, as he hasn't returned an email and that isn't like him, but it would never have occurred to me that Carnival should contact me in this regard. I think they have bigger fish to fry right now.  

[Nessa55]

On 7/30/2020 at 8:28 AM, ontheweb said:

Get a Travel agent instead. They need the business not to go bankrupt.

Nope same thing happened with the travel agencies. Lost my agent of 11 years, no warning, found out on his FB account.

[xDisconnections]

On 7/30/2020 at 8:28 AM, ontheweb said:

Get a Travel agent instead. They need the business not to go bankrupt.

Travel agencies aren’t a dying business and travel is easy to manage on your own. Why work around someone else’s schedule to do something you can easily do yourself?

[phoneman69]

On 7/30/2020 at 8:26 AM, crewsweeper said:

We've had several PVP changes over the years.  Not a big deal.  The new one will contact you looking for business.  The new one will have your past information.  If planning a new cruise, which is why they call to begin with, you need to be up on the site anyway so that you can assist in getting the correct cabin, and any packages or excursions you want.  NEVER let a PVP (or a TA) plan everything for you with out your assistance.

Oh this is so Very True !! you need to be on top of things

[Doggielover68]

On 8/1/2020 at 5:14 PM, sanmarcosman said:

Yes to all and I still think the affected customers should be advised they no longer have an assigned employee for their account. Email blasts are very easy to set up. The IT department highlights all the affected member's email addresses and attaches the  email saying to contact Carnival and then the IT person presses  Enter on their keyboard. 

As someone who routinely sets up email blasts to a much smaller group of people than Carnival (and no, IT departments do not send out email blasts, that is a communications roll), it is both time consuming and expensive. You have to pay for a service to have an "audience" and the price goes up depending on the number of recipients. Sure, they have marketing people that already send out messages, but they are completely different topics and new audiences (and messages) would have to be created for this new group of people that needs notifications. On top of that, I'm sure the email message has to be authorized by several higher ups before it can be sent out to the public. Then every time a PVP is laid off, quits, etc, the mailing list would need to be modified once again for the new group of people. Every seemingly basic task requires staff and they already don't have sufficient staff to issue refunds. Time is money and they don't have a lot of money right now.

 

Edited August 6, 2020 by Doggielover68

[Cruisesfun65]

2 hours ago, Heymarco said:

That won’t help them one bit right now. Travel agents make $0 until you sail.  So for every canceled cruise they helped with, they are working for free. 

 

Cruise lines have been protecting commissions but only on bookings paid in full. 

But I know of many agents who haven't been receiving these commission payments for a while. 

[Djptcp]

We've never used a personal cruise consultant with Carnival as I book all of our cruises online. But we have when booking our casino promotion cruises on Holland America. We had the same one for a number of years until a month ago when she emailed us and said she had been laid off. She wished us well and gave us the name and contact information of another person who was taking over her clients. I contacted the new person and booked a HAL cruise for Feb. However, the ship was recently sold, so we booked another HAL cruise on their newest ship for April. Now if she could only get the FCC I have been waiting for from a cancelled HAL cruise since March I'd be really happy! It's been so  much easier dealing with our 3 cancelled Carnival cruises than dealing with our 2 cancelled HAL cruises. A quick call to the Carnival casino promotions agents and new bookings with FCC and OBC within minutes.

[Nic6318]

On 7/30/2020 at 2:13 PM, ULCajunCruiser said:

OP, I agree with you.   Great PVP's are few.   OP was not asking for the moon, and just because its not been done in the past doesn't mean it shouldn't be done now.   We are 5 months into this Covid crisis, time to quit using it as an excuse!!!

 

And chill, yes I know they're not sailing.   But they're still taking bookings and deposits, right??   Sure they are, so service those!!!  How hard would it have been to take the client list and blast out an email???

 

Hi

So in your mind nothing should be seen as different from the past. If this were the case, in the past my suggestion always was the same, don't deal with a company if you don't like the way they do business. That's a pretty straight forward and easy to follow. No need to fret about the inconsequential. That should be a rule of thumb for dealing with any company.

[sanmarcosman]

8 minutes ago, fyree39 said:

Actually, they're probably restricted from contacting you that they're leaving so they don't take your business with them.

This has been stated several times in this short thread.

[ULCajunCruiser]

16 minutes ago, Nic6318 said:

 

Hi

So in your mind nothing should be seen as different from the past. If this were the case, in the past my suggestion always was the same, don't deal with a company if you don't like the way they do business. That's a pretty straight forward and easy to follow. No need to fret about the inconsequential. That should be a rule of thumb for dealing with any company.

Well of course things are different.  But that doesn't mean that good old fashioned Customer Service should be thrown out the window.   That's basically the OP (and myself) are looking for.  Carnival should be investing in Customer Service.   There are many angry and disappointed customers out there, and they're just looking for some answers.   Those customers are the future of Carnival, and they should be kept happy.   Again, its a small, totally understandable request.

 

As far as your other point, it's not applicable.   Searching for a plumber, electrician, yard guy, etc, well sure there are lots of choices and you should definitely choose one whose business practices you are happy with.   But they're aren't that many Cruise Lines, and there are fewer still that sail where I want to go, and reduce that number further by ports I want to sail out of!!   So while your vacation choices are plentiful, your cruise options may not be.   I don't have an option to choose who provides electricity to my home.  If I'm not happy with them I don't have the option to cut ties and move on.   My only course of action is to let them know when I have an issue, what that issue is and what I expect them to do about it.  Maybe bump it up the ladder a rung or 2, and then cross my fingers and hope someone listens!!   Same situation, and OP is doing that.

[jetsfan58]

I am really Blessed at this stage of life not having to worry about the absolute things I can't control.  I utilized a travel agent for my first ever Cruise many years ago. After Cruising and speaking with others on board I never utilized another Cruise Travel agent again. Unfortunately we missed out on many perks that should have been offered. At the time we knew no better.

 

Whether you utilize a Travel Agent, Carnival PVP or Do It Yourself Online just learn to enjoy the Journey!!!