djmarchand

I am the OP on this thread. We are back home now and had a wonderful time on this cruise. It was in the top three of eight cruises we have been on so far.

I do have some possible insight as to why Celebrity had to take this extreme action of trying to bump us involantarily. The ship was full of "affinity cruisers". Some maybe all were members of a literary group and an author was on the ship and conducted seminars on his work.

I suspect that late bookers of this cruise by members of this large group (maybe half the ship) led Celebrity to try to bump us to make room for them. Is this good business practice on Celebrity's part. Well, maybe. They certainly p%$#@ off me but maybe it generated enough good will on the part of the affinity group to make it worthwhile.

I have heard of these affinity groups previously but had no idea that they could be so large. I must say that other than seeing a large number of people with strange badges dangling from their necks, this group had no impact on our cruise experience.

Will we ever cruise with Celebrity again? Don't know.

David

Completely agree with you and I don't believe the OP spoke with them on the first phone call, it was the OP's wife. There are always two sides to every story.

I am the OP, sitting here in Celebritiy's cafe sipping a latte reading these posts. I am not going to give any more details or complain to the president. I started this thread to see how prevalent involuntary bumping was and fortunately it seems minimal. Yes, this is my side to the story but I think I have portrayed it accurately.

My wife got the call, spoke maybe a dozen words to the agent, broke down crying and handed the phone to me to deal with the agent as she couldn't. Believe me, the $200 OBC we were given to compensate for her distress doesn't begin to assuage the hard feelings we developed after this episode. We paid almost $7,000 for this cruise and its value to me at least is now a fraction of that. But DW wanted to go in spite of how we were treated, so here we are.

David

OP did they actually say you have no cabin, you're off the ship? or are you "Maybe" overreacting to a move over offer?

No it was clearly "We have to cancel your reservation on a mandatory basis (the agent's words) due to an over booking situation. There was absolutely no question that we were being kicked off of the ship on a non voluntary basis.

Only when I demanded a $10,000 cash cancellation fee did they back down and rescind the mandatory cancellation. That as well as noting that when we booked 6 mo ago the ship was not overbooked, this was a once in a lifetime cruise for us and was my wife's 60th birthday.

And to the yield manager of a river cruise line:

How in the world can you lose money when someone cancels at the last minute and say that that justifies overbooking. Their cruise is fully paid and is non refundable, right?.

What you are really saying is that you are trying to achieve more than 100% by keeping cruise cancellation fees and booking a paying passenger into that cabin thereby doubling up on your revenue.

This is one area where cruises are very different than air travel. At some point before embarkation, all fares are non refundable (on paper). Yes I understand that exceptions are made for favored passengers. But should we not-so-favored passengers pay the price?

David

Do you feel they were going down a list until they found someone who wouldn't stand up for themselves and acquiesced?

 

Are you willing to book another cruise with Celebrity after this traumatic episode even though you got to keep your original cruise?

I am not sure if they were going down a list. I got the impression that they had selected us among others in the same catagory (first time Celebrity cruisers I suspect) to bump. Their initial approach was absolute, it was going to happen whether we liked it or not.

Will we cruise with Celebrity again? Probably not. The whole episode has left me cold, even though we came out better ($200 more OBC) than before.

David

My wife got a call from Celebrity last night. We leave in two days for a 10 day Mediterranean cruise. They said that they were over booked for that cruise and they had to bump us (my words, not theirs) on a mandatory basis. We booked this cruise 6 months ago and paid over $6,000 in full several months ago.

My wife was devastated. We had been planning this cruise for more than a year to celebrate her 60th birthday and was the most ambitious cruise we had ever taken (6 so far). She could not speak any further to the very polite agent who called, she was shaking and crying. So I took the phone.

Their initial offer was full refund of our cruise and airfare (also booked through Celebrity) and a future credit for the same trip less income taxes (presumably such a big payout requires tax withholding).

I then asked why us. We had paid in full for a specific room and just got our luggage tags a few days ago. She couldn't tell me. I said we have a contract with Celebrity and this is a breach of contract. She alluded to the mandatory bumping being covered by their terms of service, ie anyone can be bumped in a similar situation. I said that when we booked in March I doubt if it was oversold so why not go to the people who had booked after the ship filled and created the oversold situation. She couldn't answer.

So I said forget the future credit as we will never use it given the present treatment by Celebrity and I wanted a $10,000 cash penalty paid. This is similar to what the airlines now do. They offer large cash payouts to buy out a seat in an overbooking situation after the fiasco of the poor guy being hauled off a plane recently.

She said she would speak to her management and put me on hold. She came back after about a minute and said due to the distraught situation with my wife, our early booking, etc, Celebrity would rescind the bumping. She offered another $200 in OBCs for our distress.

I would have told them to stick it but my wife wanted to still go on the cruise so we took the deal.

I find Celebrity's approach of mandatory bumping atrocious. We each have our own restrictions/conditions for making a change and accepting the bump: fixed vacation schedules, etc. In our case I didn't think I could book a replacement cruise through Celebrity this season. The opportunity to go on a Mediterranean cruise this year would be gone for good if I accepted Celebrity's credit offer. That is why I insisted on a cash payout in addition to a full refund.

I know it isn't like an overbooked airplane where the flight attendant can make an announcement to everyone saying we are offering X$ if you give up your seat and then increasing the offer until someone takes it. It will take more work, more calls to find passengers willing to give up their rooms voluntarily but this is a much bigger deal than a $300 air plane ticket, 50 times as much in our case. That surely justifies the extra calling.

And mandatory bumping almost certainly results in a customer lost forever which was our situation as soon as they told me it was mandatory.

So, any similar experiences or thoughts?

David