Bad Bookkeeping or cheating customers?

[Tobi'smom&dad]

My BIL and SIL are sailing on Emerald Princess mid Nov. After paying their final payment and receiving a print-out from Princess showing that they were Paid in full, they checked their account a few days later to discover they had a balance of 36 cents. They called Princess and were told that it was govenrment taxes. Even after insisting that they had a print-out showing a 0 bal, they were told they would have to pay the 36 cents or they could not go on the cruise! The CS rep said that she was receiving a lot of calls and complaints- one person's whole cruise was in jeopardy over 12 cents!!!

 

My husband and I are having a problem right now with them because $100 we put down as a future deposit has disappeared from his account- mine is ok. No one can tell us where it went- just that it "was applied". When we ask where- they can't tell us. Letters to the president and anyone else we can think of have yielded no answers or even an acknowledgement.

 

Is this just very bad bookkeeping or are they cheating their customers? All four of us are Platinum Circle members. Anyone else have a similar problem or can give us ideas on how to solve it?

[star117]

I have heard of taxes going up, so maybe that is what happened. Cannot help you with the other.

[smeyer418]

I am amazed someone would try to collect 36 cents. In people time and processing fees it cost more than that and you just can't charge .36,its ridiculous.

[roe2ship]

I am amazed someone would try to collect 36 cents. In people time and processing fees it cost more than that and you just can't charge .36,its ridiculous.

Ditto!

[Toto2Kansas]

My BIL and SIL are sailing on Emerald Princess mid Nov. After paying their final payment and receiving a print-out from Princess showing that they were Paid in full' date=' they checked their account a few days later to discover they had a balance of 36 cents. They called Princess and were told that it was govenrment taxes. Even after insisting that they had a print-out showing a 0 bal, they were told they would have to pay the 36 cents or they could not go on the cruise! The CS rep said that she was receiving a lot of calls and complaints- one person's whole cruise was in jeopardy over 12 cents!!!

 

My husband and I are having a problem right now with them because $100 we put down as a future deposit has disappeared from his account- mine is ok. No one can tell us where it went- just that it "was applied". When we ask where- they can't tell us. Letters to the president and anyone else we can think of have yielded no answers or even an acknowledgement.

 

Is this just very bad bookkeeping or are they cheating their customers? All four of us are Platinum Circle members. Anyone else have a similar problem or can give us ideas on how to solve it?[/quote']

 

If they are telling you your DH's FCC has been applied, does it show up on his Personalizer with the number of the booking it was applied to? If not, tell them you want to know the booking number it was applied to, that might give you a start to try and attempt to locate it. This should not be a problem for them..................but it sounds like a real mess.

[Globaliser]

Anyone else have a similar problem or can give us ideas on how to solve it?

This will not solve the problem, but it may give you much more emotional satisfaction: Grind them down by polite but repeated correspondence that will cost them more than 36 cents to answer. Much, much more than 36 cents.

[fti]

Most likely it has to do with international airfare being procured through the cruise line. Some airport/government taxes are based in currencies other than US dollars and so when the exchange rate fluctuates, it changes the amount due. The problem probably comes in when you have already given final payment but the cruise line has not had your airline tickets issued yet. Once the tickets are issued, the discrepany occurs.

 

But funny how they can ask you for 36 cents but I have never heard of them trying to give someone 36 cents back if the exchange rate changes the other way!

[FLACRUISER99]

Going on the EP TA they added $1.00($.50/pp) to my account.:eek:

[can786]

I am amazed someone would try to collect 36 cents. In people time and processing fees it cost more than that and you just can't charge .36,its ridiculous.

 

I too am amazed that they do this, but one day I received in the mail a bill for $0.01 for the balance on our home equity line (I had paid the balance the previous month and this was the interest that accrued between the time they mailed it and when they got my payment). On the same day I also received a bill from my son's school for $0.30 for a carton of milk he had bought (he wouldn't eat their hot lunch so I never kept money in his account). I refused to waste the stamps to pay them - I sent the money into school with my son and paid the $0.01 balance when I was passing the bank while running errands.

[garycarla]

Okay, I had to reply.

 

When we dropped an Cingular account about 6 years ago, we had a CREDIT of $0.28. For almost three years, they sent out a bill every month to tell me that.

 

Can you imagine how much that cost?

 

In a previous company we would go through a generate a list of bills under $1.00 and then systematically clear most of them off. The accountants would go nuts because it was real money and only a few would understand how much more saved by not billing them.

[Tobi'smom&dad]

If they are telling you your DH's FCC has been applied, does it show up on his Personalizer with the number of the booking it was applied to? If not, tell them you want to know the booking number it was applied to, that might give you a start to try and attempt to locate it. This should not be a problem for them..................but it sounds like a real mess.

 

They gave us a booking it was supposedly applied to, but we had totally paid for that cruise two months before it was "applied". ( We were saving the deposit for a longer cruise- to get more in OBC- and didn't want it applied to that one). They don't argue that we had paid for the cruise in full in July 06, but insist that the FCC was applied to the same cruise in Sept. 06. They can't tell us who authorized it or where it went and refuse to make any adjustment. I am trying to get a refund on mine, before it disappears too.

[Tobi'smom&dad]

Most likely it has to do with international airfare being procured through the cruise line. Some airport/government taxes are based in currencies other than US dollars and so when the exchange rate fluctuates, it changes the amount due. The problem probably comes in when you have already given final payment but the cruise line has not had your airline tickets issued yet. Once the tickets are issued, the discrepany occurs.

 

But funny how they can ask you for 36 cents but I have never heard of them trying to give someone 36 cents back if the exchange rate changes the other way!

 

They didn't get airfare thru the cruiseline and they paid with US dollars for a cruise starting and leaving a US port.

 

The worst part is the fact that if they didn't check their account themselves, they could have lost the cruise since Princess didn't notify them. However, Princess just sent their documents to them and paid 4.50 in postage- and they already had printed their boarding passes from the internet.

[BJAMINGIRL]

Princess and Holland America is the only ones that seem to do this after final paymnet. We received notice today that GF on the Caribbean Princess for Dec has gone up $1 per person. The fax states that if they have already paid in full, the charge will be added to their on board account. They are not threatening to cancel anyone's cruise.

 

The cruise contract does state that you are resposible for tax increases.

[kerrydee]

princess always adds the adjusted taxes (up or down) to the clients bookings. it's usually under $5 and most TA's just eat the difference (from their commissions) because it's too embarassing to tell a client they owe $1.37 more. the only time i didn't eat the difference was in alaska when they applied the $50 pp alaska tax. if final payment had already been made, it is added to their onboard account.

royal caribbean doesn't do this.:eek:

[cactusrose]

They gave us a booking it was supposedly applied to' date=' but we had totally paid for that cruise two months before it was "applied". ( We were saving the deposit for a longer cruise- to get more in OBC- and didn't want it applied to that one). They don't argue that we had paid for the cruise in full in July 06, but insist that the FCC was applied to the same cruise in Sept. 06. They can't tell us who authorized it or where it went and refuse to make any adjustment. I am trying to get a refund on mine, before it disappears too.[/quote']

 

Doesn't this mean you overpaid by $100, the amount of the deposit? Did you book through Princess or a TA? I would request them to refund the $100 you overpaid. I've never heard of a FCC being applied so long after the initial booking. I would certainly want an accounting and if you aren't getting satisfaction, ask to speak with a supervisor.

[iancal]

They need to get real. Do you think the Princess agent's time is worth the 12 cents or the 36 cents? No. Good insight into how Princess handles a customer satisfaction issue that should never have been one.....should have been written off prior to your phone call. Princess is spending a great deal more in admin and labor charges, while at the same time incurring the displeasure of a customer. Does not add up.

[spongerob]

Sounds like something automatically generated by their accounting software. Makes me wonder if they use SAP...we do, and I once had a huge issue when a client refused to pay several hundred thousand dollars worth of invoices because their electronic payment system didn't have as many decimal points in the invoice prices as ours did, and therefore due to rounding errors there were discrepancies of $2 or $3 on each invoice, less than $50 total for the group of invoices in question.

 

I know in the past that when taxes and NCF have changed after final payment, the adjustment is merely placed on the shipboard account.

[gipper77]

This also happened to us. We had paid for our cruise and then went back to do the boarding pass print out. Well it said the cruise was not paid. Called our TA and she called Princess. They did say that there was an increase in taxes also a small amount. Princess told our TA that we would be charged on the ship. Our next cruise will ***** September 30 on the Dawn Princess and will be sure to check our bill. For whatever reason of the tax increase, we just want to go on our cruise. Had it been a large amount increase, now that would have been questionable.:)

[NthernLgts]

Sounds like something automatically generated by their accounting software. Makes me wonder if they use SAP....

Spongerob, we could definately exchange a few horror stories ;)

[gopher's girl]

oh man, SAP... for people who are SAPs! (yeah we get no choice in using it either)