Gripes About NCL Website Limitations, etc.

[Fishbait17]

This will be my 5th NCL cruise in just about 1 year. I cannot understand for the life of me how they cannot simplify their website/paperwork! We always book 2 or 3 cabins, and what a pain it is!!!!

 

First, when you are booking adjoining cabins for your children, you cannot pull them up under your NCL username. So then I have to set up two MORE usernames for them (and their guests) BUT you cannot have a username unless you are 21, so you have to lie about their age just to access their information to print or try to book shore excursions.

 

Second, once you do get into a username and cruise info, you still have no link to your EDocs. I use a backdoor way in, in case I lose the email with the link.

 

Third, (and most annoying for me), why oh why can't they understand that two people cruising in the same cabin may have different addresses!!! For example: Hubby and I in one cabin, just fine, do Advance Reg and all is good. Then on next cabin, my daughter has our address, fine. Then you change her friend's info to reflect her "official documentation" and lo and behold, it changes not only our daughter's address to her friend's, BUT it has also changed MY address to her friend's!!!! Try this again with third cabin and ANOTHER friend's address, and they all change AGAIN! I have tried to correct it over the phone, and to set up different households, but then it gets even MORE screwed up. Our Latitudes stuff has been mailed to 3 different addresses over the last year, thanks to this glitch (and my hubby's Latitudes history was traded with my daughter's boyfriend on our last cruise, go figure)!! I have since had to go in and change all the addresses back to ours, and told NCL that they can deal with documentation not matching!

 

Fourth, I got a packet mailed to us (thru travel agent). Inside was a note, luggage tags, and a booklet on shore excursions. The note said to fill out the form enclosed for shore excursions, but there was no form enclosed. So you have to look at the book and get prices online. THEN you have to print your EDocs and Adv Guest Reg separately. Come on NCL, get it together! Oh, and one more thing..... I went over all the EDocs and the "Before you cruise" booklet, etc, and there was NO phone number for emergencies (it was there last cruise) and nowhere on any of the papers was even a basic phone number to call NCL (only to book shore excursions or if you had special needs). You would think this would be easily available on the docs to print and leave home for emergencies!

 

Fifth, ugh.... shore excursion booking. It has taken me over 4 weeks to book shore excursions. 3 cabins, 6 guests and things get complicated. I call the desk, and book us on what we want. Five days later, still no confirmation email, so I call again. Now we have one guest booked on 4 excursions, one on 3, and the rest all only have a single excursion (sold out). But I still have no email confirmations, so I have to request them, and now I get two emails instead of 3. Phone again and again and again (trying for excursions and confirmations), and now we all have only 1 excursion each, 4 weeks later. Why can't NCL have live availability for these if you call their desk! It should not be hard to see how many spaces are left on each excursion, instead of booking one person in the last available spot and leaving the others hanging or waiting days to find out that excursion is sold out??? If they tried to do this themselves, they might understand why so many people book outside the ship, not only for cost savings but because its sooo much easier!

 

I LOVE NCL, once I get onto the ship. But this paperwork is ridiculous (4 hours so far this morning) and their reps are absolutely clueless. I have taken up to 15 teenagers to Hawaii several times and never had this kind of prep work! My hubby sells Customer Relations Solutions software, I should get him to call on them and let them know how badly they need it!

 

Sorry for the gripes, but does anyone else ever have these problems?

 

Robin

[JessLCH]

I booked some some shore excursions and the email confirmation went into my junk mail, so maybe check that?

 

I agree about the multiple user name issue. Right now i am managing 3 different user names. I booked my parents on our Alaska cruise and had to set up a separate acct for their info. Then I booked adjoining cabins for my family of 4 on a Hawaii cruise and had to use separate accts for the two rooms since DH and I had to each technically be listed in a room with each child. Have no idea how this will pan out once on the ship as one cabin is a suite and the other an adjoining balcony. I fear my daughter and I will get into Steakhouse for breakfast, but DH and son won't.

[ande54]

Thankfully I don't have your user name issues since it is just the two of us but I agree the process is very disjointed. E-docs separate and printable luggage tags that seem useless while others get good ones through the mail. I had no problems booking shore excursions online but that is without the benefit of the hard copy booklet that others have. Also frustrating has been this bar set-up thing. Why do they make it so hard? Even at somewhat of a discount I can't believe they aren't still making money. This is our 2nd NCL cruise and we loved the last one. Hoping for a wonderful experience this time too! Best Wishes and Good Luck! Yes, sell them a better software system! LOL!

[betsifur]

It took me a while to figure out the multiple user names - we have two rooms booked, and I was able to add the room I'm in to my user name. Everytime I would try to add the other room (booked with my husband and youngest son), it would say reservation not found. Then I would go into a slight panic, and look up the reservation on another part of the site, to make sure it was still there. I finally figured out that he needed his own log-in. It is strange that they are unable to link the two cabins and treat them as one booking.

[retiredonthesea]

We had the same problem for our last cruise in Jan. when we had 4 cabins booked all under different names, but paid by us. I finally got so frustrated that I called my TA and she did the on line registration ect. for us. I just gave her all the info.---Passport #'s ect. and she sent everything out to me. Cruise went great and my stress level stayed low. BUT yes NCL could certainly make it alot easier for us.:rolleyes:

 

Retiredonthesea

[Jill SC]

My gripe is that I booked our next NCL cruise and it assigned a new latiutudes number to my partner. And it wouldn't let me change it. Even when I logged on to the website under his latitudes number and there was no problem connecting the reservation to him, but it wouldn't change his number. I had to phone and get it fixed.

[El-Bac]

The NCL website sucks balls... I can't understand why

[jannandjohn]

Maybe you should email them ( your exact post to us )) to let them see how frustrating it can be....!!!

do you have any hair left??

[TCF]

If you think it's bad now then you should have been around eighteen months ago...BEFORE....they installed the NEW ONE!!

They even hired a new Vice President whose job it was to have adecent efficient website built for them!

By the way....all the excursions we booked on-line for our Alaska cruise last Sept. never made it into the ship's computer and we were left scrambling trying to book excursions last minute! I would check as soon as you get onboard just to make sure your excursions are really there!!!

[fritzmann]

Yep, I know where you are coming from. We are on the Gem from NYC on 4-12. Three cabins and six people. My two kids are each bringing a friend so we have two fourteen year old girls in one cabin and two seventeen year old boys in another (both rooms inside) with my wife and myself across the hall in a balcony room. It would be nice if we could book it that way but I am listed in a room with one kid, my wife in another, and we had to fight to get two kids in room with no adult. When we get to the pier we will have to have everything straightened out. I tried to book six tickets for the Kennedy Space Center but could only book for the room I am in. (Unlike Princess Cruises that allow you to book everything you want). I had to end up doing everything by phone to get it done.

 

BTW, the NCL rep I spoke with gave me a backdoor address to get into any reservation documents = http://edocs.ncl.com/edocs/

you just need the reservation # and name. This way I was able to get into the kids reservations. She said it worked 99% of the time and it did for us. I used it to print out the boarding passes and to check to make sure we had all of our excursions listed. Everything was good for us. Hope this helps a little.

[flarad]

How frustrating! With two rooms booked it took me several hours to do the online immigration paperwork for all of us. Two user names later it's done. I need to go check the addresses though because I didn't notice if thosed changed. I'd complete a form, submit it and it went to nowhere land. Forget about booking excursions. I tried by phone and online, None of the reservations has been confirmed. So, I finally booked through a different tour company and if I have any NCL reservations when we get on board I'll cancel them. We cruised Princess last year and I maybe spend 15 minutes registering five of us. Much more efficient but I like NCL.