oceanlad

Personally I think the responses to the tune of 'budget better', 'credit cards', and 'well I've never had a problem' are more offensive. As Megabear noted, the cruise providers are not clear about the practice even if it is buried in their terms and conditions somewhere, which leads to people who do budget having issues. Also, as I've repeatedly noted, one pre-authorisation is fine, two is the issue. A family with £1000.00 could budget £500.00 on a ship with £500.00 when they get home for bills, groceries, only to find P&O have pre-authorised it for no good reason. It's not a big problem for me personally but I find it an appalling practice and it's simply not acceptable or reasonable. @Megabear2 I'll see if I can find anything although I obviously won't be able to share any internal documents. Just to clarify the banks do set the length of the withholding internally. For instance, I have worked at organisations which set the withheld balance at 5 working days. Others will set it longer. This is down to the banks risk appetite, as the merchant can redeem an approved payment from an account for 6 months regardless of whether the funds are present. So this could send an account overdrawn if the bank removes the withholding early, and the customer then spends the funds, which is why some hold for upto 30 days. This would of course not matter if P&O just collected the payments daily, as they can. Instead of completing full authorisation twice, which is apparently unique to the cruise industry. Perhaps some people are just enjoying talking publicly about how this would never impact them rather than actually engaging with the issue in good faith though...

You would still need to load £2,000.00 to that card for every £1,000.00 that you spent onboard though. Sorry to labour this point but P&O can collect payments for your onboard purchases at point of sale, without creating a duplicate authorisation here. The problem is that they are putting needless financial barriers in the way of people, which in a cost of living crisis has the potential to be extremely damaging.

1. As stated, needing to use a credit facility, with potential credit file implications, just to appease P&O is nonsense. The system would also work identically on a credit card anyhow. 2. It is entirely P&O / cruise providers, as demonstrated. No other industry does this. You would expect pre-authorisation for potential damages in hotels or vehicle hires. This is not the same as being charged for an item twice. You would not expect a restaurant to charge you authorisation for a bottle of wine on the night that you dine there, and then charge you the payment again a week later. It wouldn't happen in a supermarket, or a shop. If you receive goods / service and upfront, it should be one transaction. P&O chooses to make two full payment authorisations for each transaction made on board, which is completely unnecessary as they have 6 months in which to redeem the first one. 100% this will be done purely to appease some quirk in their accounting system. 3. It may be a common topic but as there is a lot of incorrect information being spouted about how card payments work I felt the need to correct it, and this was the most recent post I found.

Sure, but there are people here implying or outrightly stating vegans / vegetarians shouldn't even be catered for and then discussions about what they believe to be the negatives of veganism. The mention of veganism seems to provoke this in some people wherever it is mentioned and it does become tiresome so I couldn't resist a little nibble back, but no harm intended! There may be an element of cost-cutting - I can tell you now I ate a main that I could have cobbled together for under £1.00 at one point. Places often just combine the vegan and vegetarian option as one though, so the cost-cutting may be falling harder on the vegetarians than the omnivores, meal-wise. I'm new to the forum so expect it will have been covered elsewhere already but I would also hazard a guess that much of the menu change will be geared towards appealing to the next generation of cruise ship travellers. I have seen vegan influencers doing paid promotions for P&O so there is definitely a push towards younger markets with more interest in it. There are much higher percentages of vegans, vegetarians and pescetarians among millennial and gen z than their is of the traditional cruise audience. Many of the studies for figures being quoted about population percentage also indicate more plan to turn towards these diets, whereas unfortunately the immediate economic prospects for the country may also necessitate this for many. So yes, cost-cutting but also future-proofing and market reality in my opinion.

Sorry to bump an old topic but very frustrated with P&O on this, couldn't see a more current one and wanted to correct a few people just blaming the banking system. When a card payment is authorised, your bank will usually withhold funds from your available balance for 7 days, but increasingly popular mobile based banking apps such as Chase will withhold for upto 30 days. If the payment is released back onto your balance as the merchant did not collect it, the merchant *can still* collect that payment for up to 6 months from the original authorisation date. Some have drawn comparisons to making a deposit on a hotel room. This isnt the same thing. When you pay this, you know what you're paying upfront and that it is a pre-authorisation incase of damages, it is not a duplicate of the booking itself. The price per night of the room itself will usually be higher than the authorisation. What P&O is doing is charging people twice, in full, for all purchases made onboard. Yes, they may not ultimately collect the second authorisation, but making somebody wait up to 30 days to access their own funds is not acceptable, particularly in this financial climate. There is nothing that would stop P&O simply collecting the initial authorisation on the day it is made or shortly thereafter, so their insistence on charging twice, in full, without clear communication prior to boarding is incredibly frustrating. Another annoying factor is that P&O will ask you to contact your bank to cancel the authorisation. As somebody who works in the industry I can assure you that no bank will cancel an authorisation solely on a customer's request as they would have no assurance that, for instance, an item wasn't purchased twice and the customer wasn't trying to pull a fast one. So P&O are directing customers down a blind avenue to other organisations on a no hope quest to sort problems of their own making. Incredibly poor and frustrating from P&O. While we won't struggle, we now have to wait 3+ weeks for £600.00+ spent onboard and would have spent differently otherwise, whereas others could really be financially reliant on the withheld payments. Suggestions that people should take credit out just to accommodate a cruise line are nonsense - the cruise line should get their act together.

I'd say overall the vegan options on Iona were fair. Usually one (sometimes two) options in Pearl, Opal etc. Often these were very small portions, but I got a risotto one night which was a good size. The likes of Sindhu and some of the other restaurants didn't have any options when we looked, also the snack bar around the SkyDome, the Quays etc. The buffet always had options, although often the dishes directly below the vegan food sign were not vegan - so please pay attention to the individual allergen signs for each dish to locate everything. I had a few very tasty things (the chocolate based desserts, a potato presse), some fairly confused but well-intentioned things, a fair amount of just ok plates and still far too much potato. I appreciated that there was vegan milk, yoghurt and cheese alternatives available at the breakfast buffet but would have appreciated sausages there. You can get sausages and bacon in the restaurant breakfasts but these are marked vegetarian and the brand varied from day to day (one day I think they served Quorn sausages, a few days later there was This Isn't Bacon & Sausages) so you may have to ask to ensure whether items are vegan, and it's not ideal that you can't get sausages without a formal sit down breakfast. I very much appreciate the wines being clearly labelled when vegan, and while the option of a vegan burger onboard wouldn't have gone amiss, as a vegan of 8+ years I'm generally happy with what was available, can't imagine anything like this back when I started. I'm not sure why vegan options onboard upset so many others though - plenty of the restaurants and areas on board don't have any vegan options at all and our cheaper meals (courgette and carrot noodles?) are certainly subsidizing your steak dinners. Probably better to pick what to get angry about with all that cholesterol going to the heart 😉