POM cancellations - share your experiences here - ours was awful

[Middleager]

We're having trouble getting part of our pre-paid gratuities back.

 

Before we did a POM cancellation, we had our TA remove the pre-paid gratuities (for 4 people, in two cabins).  Our TA said NCL flagged these for removal, and will do the refunds when they get to it, as they are swamped.

Next day, our TA did the POM cancellation for us.  The problem is, less than 1/2 of the pre-paid gratuities got refunded to our CC's, but the other slightly more than 1/2 (Cad$177.88) got put on two CruiseFirst certs (one for me, one for my wife).

 

The CF amount is obviously wrong, they are usually $300 or $500.  Our TA has been contacting NCL about this several times.  I also called NCL, and they just said I need to go through our TA for this.  The last time TA send another request, those CF certs disappeared from our NCL accounts a few days ago.  We thought that was a good sign, and had been waiting for refunds to our CC's.  But today they re-appeared in our NCL accounts again as CruiseFirst certs.

 

The CF certs can only be used one at a time to pay for deposit (unless booking balconies and up can use two).  Sometimes NCL may have promotions to allow using two certs.  We have $300 and $500 CF certs (from cancelled cruises).  So these wrongly placed CF certs at $177 are not that useful.  It doesn't appear NCL is willing to correct their mistakes on this though.

 

 

[ChiefMateJRK]

Remind me again why people pre-pay gratuities?

[julig22]

48 minutes ago, Middleager said:

We're having trouble getting part of our pre-paid gratuities back.

 

Before we did a POM cancellation, we had our TA remove the pre-paid gratuities (for 4 people, in two cabins).  Our TA said NCL flagged these for removal, and will do the refunds when they get to it, as they are swamped.

Next day, our TA did the POM cancellation for us.  The problem is, less than 1/2 of the pre-paid gratuities got refunded to our CC's, but the other slightly more than 1/2 (Cad$177.88) got put on two CruiseFirst certs (one for me, one for my wife).

 

The CF amount is obviously wrong, they are usually $300 or $500.  Our TA has been contacting NCL about this several times.  I also called NCL, and they just said I need to go through our TA for this.  The last time TA send another request, those CF certs disappeared from our NCL accounts a few days ago.  We thought that was a good sign, and had been waiting for refunds to our CC's.  But today they re-appeared in our NCL accounts again as CruiseFirst certs.

 

The CF certs can only be used one at a time to pay for deposit (unless booking balconies and up can use two).  Sometimes NCL may have promotions to allow using two certs.  We have $300 and $500 CF certs (from cancelled cruises).  So these wrongly placed CF certs at $177 are not that useful.  It doesn't appear NCL is willing to correct their mistakes on this though.

 

 

NCL seems to be having an issue with accidentally returning money to CN or CF certificates - it's an accounting error.  I had a small refund due and it came back as a CN credit, which would basically be useless.  My PCC took care of it.

[Dvrgrl38]

3 hours ago, Ryesguy said:

We are not having a good experience with POM credits. My family of 5 was booked on the Escape for the 1/8/22 cruise and cancelled using POM. My mother was separately on the same cruise. We all cancelled on January 4. My mother got her POM credits 2 weeks ago. We all want to re-book using our POM credits for a March cruise on the Getaway. We also have a 10% discount that expires 1/31 (Monday). Our credit has not yet shown up. It has been nearly 4 weeks since we cancelled. We are now afraid that we will not get credits before we have to book on Monday to take advantage of the 10% off (we do not want to put down more cash because we have enough credits to pay for the cruise).  We have called NCL (always a different person) multiple times and explained the situation and urgency of now getting the credits, but have gotten the true run-around. Everyone (usually nice and an apparent smile) says that NCL is busy and working on it and the credits should be in our account in the next few days. Then those next few days pass. Calling the main line is obviously not the answer here. Any suggestions on how to deal with this?

This is concerning to me because they say they should be deposited within 14 business days, a month is plenty past that!

[PaperSniper4]

2 hours ago, Middleager said:

We're having trouble getting part of our pre-paid gratuities back.

 

Before we did a POM cancellation, we had our TA remove the pre-paid gratuities (for 4 people, in two cabins).  Our TA said NCL flagged these for removal, and will do the refunds when they get to it, as they are swamped.

Next day, our TA did the POM cancellation for us.  The problem is, less than 1/2 of the pre-paid gratuities got refunded to our CC's, but the other slightly more than 1/2 (Cad$177.88) got put on two CruiseFirst certs (one for me, one for my wife).

 

The CF amount is obviously wrong, they are usually $300 or $500.  Our TA has been contacting NCL about this several times.  I also called NCL, and they just said I need to go through our TA for this.  The last time TA send another request, those CF certs disappeared from our NCL accounts a few days ago.  We thought that was a good sign, and had been waiting for refunds to our CC's.  But today they re-appeared in our NCL accounts again as CruiseFirst certs.

 

The CF certs can only be used one at a time to pay for deposit (unless booking balconies and up can use two).  Sometimes NCL may have promotions to allow using two certs.  We have $300 and $500 CF certs (from cancelled cruises).  So these wrongly placed CF certs at $177 are not that useful.  It doesn't appear NCL is willing to correct their mistakes on this though.

 

 

How long did you have to use that FCC?

 

I am considering booking an NCL cruise the end of March 2022. However, if it cancels, or I cancel that cruise, it will be nearly impossible for me to fit another cruise in 2022. So an FCC good only until 31 Dec 2022 is worthless.

 

Thanks for the info.

 

Doug

[Middleager]

18 minutes ago, PaperSniper4 said:

How long did you have to use that FCC?

 

I am considering booking an NCL cruise the end of March 2022. However, if it cancels, or I cancel that cruise, it will be nearly impossible for me to fit another cruise in 2022. So an FCC good only until 31 Dec 2022 is worthless.

The FCCs we got were good till 2023/1/21.  We just made final payment for a 3/29 cruise, using 2 + some of the 3rd FCCs out of the 4 FCCs we got.  We hope to go to cruises later in the year, to use the remaining FCCs.

 

The two $137 CruiseFirst certs are the ones almost useless, but NCL accounting doesn't want to correct their mistakes to refund our pre-paid gratuities (which were we asked for refund a day before the POM cancellation).

 

--

If you cannot use your FCCs, you can transfer to someone else who can.  We had the FCCs to our children transfer to my wife and I.

[PaperSniper4]

1 minute ago, Middleager said:

The FCCs we got were good till 2023/1/21.  We just made final payment for a 3/29 cruise, using 2 + some of the 3rd FCCs out of the 4 FCCs we got.  We hope to go to cruises later in the year, to use the remaining FCCs.

 

The two $137 CruiseFirst certs are the ones almost useless, but NCL accounting doesn't want to correct their mistakes to refund our pre-paid gratuities (which were we asked for refund a day before the POM cancellation).

 

--

If you cannot use your FCCs, you can transfer to someone else who can.  We had the FCCs to our children transfer to my wife and I.

Thanks for that good info, I appreciate you taking the time to post that.

 

For us, we could not transfer the FCCs. So that's a negative. Also, if the FCC is only good for a year, which is how it looks to me, we'd probably not be able to use them. Our only positive is the NCL cruise we are considering leaves from NOLA, which means no flying, no hotel, and just driving to/from makes quarantining, etc less of a potential headache.  So it I do book, it will be with expensive CFAR insurance from an outside party.

 

But oh my, we would so much like to be on a ship again! We have canceled about 3 cruises so far since Jan 2020. Luckily we will only loose about $450 with a Princess FCC we cannot use due to our inability to schedule something this year with them. We have that FCC due to the Feb 2022 cruise I canceled about a month ago.

 

Doug

[Middleager]

4 hours ago, ChiefMateJRK said:

Remind me again why people pre-pay gratuities?

For us, when we use TD First Class visa to pay for bookings through ExpediaforTD, we get 4.5% back, including pre-paid gratuities.  If we don't pre-pay gratuities this way, we can later pay NCL directly still using this CC, we'd get 1.5% instead of 4.5%.  Our TA has been very good, so we have been going through her.

 

You can also easily google and see the various reasons people do so.

[Snowrose]

We were told our credits wouldn't come back for one or more months. We got some back within days and all our credits back within a week. That was about 2 weeks ago.

 

We've already rebooked using the credits. Mine were all used for the booking. DH had extra and they did split them for him, so he still has about $900 leftover from the $2300 he was originally credited.

[vadersprincess12]

22 hours ago, ChiefMateJRK said:

Aren't we just talking about $250 fully refundable???

Yes, we are talking about only a $250 refundable deposit, but given the situation and all the run around I just don't trust them.  Reading these boards, people who canceled after us have already gotten their credits, and others are still having a horrible time getting things straight.  When this gets straightened out and I am able to reschedule this cruise one last time, I don't want to leave anything on the table.  

[Ryesguy]

I wanted to give folks an update on the POM credit situation from my earlier post. Yesterday, February 1,  the POM credits were posted to our accounts. We had cancelled on January 4 so it took 4 weeks for the credits to post. There was never any explanation as to why it took so long. NCL did extend my 10% discount on booking a cruise until the end of 2022. Bottom line: NCL did not meet the 14 business day promise in posting our credits, but they ultimately posted and they extended my 10% off so there should not be any negative effect from the delay (other than some agita for the past few weeks).

 

Looking forward to booking another cruise soon -- most likely the March 20, 2022 Getaway cruise out of New York.  

[Lionkingrichard]

3 hours ago, Ryesguy said:

I wanted to give folks an update on the POM credit situation from my earlier post. Yesterday, February 1,  the POM credits were posted to our accounts. We had cancelled on January 4 so it took 4 weeks for the credits to post. There was never any explanation as to why it took so long. NCL did extend my 10% discount on booking a cruise until the end of 2022. Bottom line: NCL did not meet the 14 business day promise in posting our credits, but they ultimately posted and they extended my 10% off so there should not be any negative effect from the delay (other than some agita for the past few weeks).

 

Looking forward to booking another cruise soon -- most likely the March 20, 2022 Getaway cruise out of New York.  

So you start at January 5 and there was a holiday that month so that means 21 days which lands us on the 26th and they paid 4-5 days late?

 

Call the Government right now!

[Ryesguy]

Absent the extension of the ability to use the 10 percent discount (which was set to expire on January 31) which also happened yesterday, the week being late in posting the credit would have meant not being able to use the 10% discount without going out of pocket. Sometimes 4-5 days being late matters. 

[bortman23]

We had a very positive experience. Cancelled our Jan 23rd cruise on the Encore a few days before sailing, we had the FCC within about a week's time.

 

We used a Cruise First $500 certificate to rebook the same cruise in the fall, we only paid $250 for the CruiseFirst certificate, so we saved $250. 

 

Once we had the full POM FCC we applied it to our new booking, which was only slightly more than the one we cancelled so with "free" $250 we came out even, or slightly ahead of the original cost of the trip.

 

Very pleased with the experience, and the cruise consultant we use was excellent!