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Just used 10,000 points to do a within meta 2 category upgrade.

 

I was told a 2 category within meta was the only option to get into an aft balcony! ;) Apparently there is no way to do a cross meta or double cross meta into a B1 aft balcony, just in case anyone is interested in an aft balcony. I'm also not sure how it works if the ship doesn't have any B3's, does anyone know???

 

Has anyone received different information?

 

My original booking had to be in a B3 (I was in a B2 and actually had to downgrade my reservation to a B3 in order to use my worldpoints). Only then I was able to upgrade to a B1.

 

Oh Well . . . I still saved $2300 with 10,000 points (i.e. $100) on a Panama Canal cruise.

When doing the "within meta 2 category upgrade" from B3 to B1, are you able to pick the cabin you want? If I'm doing a Panama Canal B2B (total 41 days) will they let me upgrade to the same B1 cabin for both cruises as long as it is available?

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Or use it once and get 100 in OBC for your next cruise.
I'm not a big spender and don't generally use credit cards enough to rack up huge points, so I usually will get a new card for the Initial bonus, then cancel it or just never use it again. I've done it for numerous bonuses over the years. Some ppl say it's bad for your credit but my credit score is and has always been in the excellent range.

 

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

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When doing the "within meta 2 category upgrade" from B3 to B1, are you able to pick the cabin you want? If I'm doing a Panama Canal B2B (total 41 days) will they let me upgrade to the same B1 cabin for both cruises as long as it is available?

 

Yes, with the world point upgrades you are allowed to pick your cabin.

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I'm not a big spender and don't generally use credit cards enough to rack up huge points, so I usually will get a new card for the Initial bonus, then cancel it or just never use it again. I've done it for numerous bonuses over the years. Some ppl say it's bad for your credit but my credit score is and has always been in the excellent range.

 

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

I have gotten 100 in OBC from opening new cards on NCL, RCI and Celebrity as well as 200 for Carnival. That's a free 500 in OBC for taking 4 cruises. And since my house and car are paid for and I have zero credit card debt, any slight negativity on my credit rating is a moot point as far as I'm concerned.
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I am not sure if this has been answered someplace before. If you use point that are about to expire for a double meta cross upgrade on a booked cruise that is a year and a half away, and then at some point in the future would need to cancel this cruise, what happens to the points that you used for that upgrade? Do you lose all the points that would have expired, or are they returned to your points balance?

I am trying to figure out if I should just cash out some of the points now, and then use some of the points to upgrade that cruise, or just use points to upgrade that cruise now. I do not want to lose the points if we would have to cancel, since the cruise is so far in the future and it is hard to predict what will happen that far in the future. Thanks!!!

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So I'm clueless on how these points work, currently have 25,458 what would that equate to if used in booking a future cruise? By time I book the cruise may have more points too from booking tours on my current cruise.

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I think I found a cruise for Oct. that I want to book. Right now I have enough points to book and OV to balcony, but, by Oct. I should have enough to do the double meta upgrade. What cat. should I book right now? Also, I'm not sure if these rates are quite right, but, if the inside cabin is say about $699pp and the OV is $899. and balcony is $1299pp, would I be better to just do the OV to balcony and save the points or do the double meta. Depending on the rates, I know that sometimes there's a big difference from inside to OV. This is an 11 day cruise.

 

Also, can my travel agent do this booking. If I book online with NCL how long do I have to transfer?

 

Sorry for all the questions and thank you so much ahead of time!

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Hi Karinad,







I recommend that you do the single meta upgrade now, and here are my reasons.





1) If you wait until October to upgrade a cruise that same month, there might not be any balconies left to upgrade to.

 

2) If NCL upgrades are similar to the airlines (where they only have a certain number of upgrades on each flight), you could lose out if you wait until October. If it was me, I would want to have my upgrade done prior to final payment.



Yes, booking the OV will cost approx. $400 more than booking an inside, but $899 is a great price for a balcony for an 11 night. And once you build you points back up to 30,000, you can get $300 cash (or OBC if you like).

 

As for using a TA, based on the experience I just had with upgrading, it could complicate things if your original booking was made by a TA. My recent experience with a double meta upgrade demonstrates this.

 

1) I booked a category IF inside directly with NCL, with the intention of doing an upgrade a few days later, when my CC statement cut.

 

2) When I called NCL world points for my upgrade, they said my category IF inside cabin would get me a category BD balcony. To get the category BC I wanted, I needed to be booked in a category ID inside ($10 pp more). The world points dept. was able to upgrade my IF to an ID on the spot. If a TA owned this booking, I would have to call them to do this.

 

3) If you used a TA, they might need to adjust the booking on their end, after you have done your upgrade.

 

Just seems cleaner to book directly if you are going to upgrade. Hope this helps.

 

 

Vince

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Hi Karinad,







I recommend that you do the single meta upgrade now, and here are my reasons.





1) If you wait until October to upgrade a cruise that same month, there might not be any balconies left to upgrade to.

 

2) If NCL upgrades are similar to the airlines (where they only have a certain number of upgrades on each flight), you could lose out if you wait until October. If it was me, I would want to have my upgrade done prior to final payment.



Yes, booking the OV will cost approx. $400 more than booking an inside, but $899 is a great price for a balcony for an 11 night. And once you build you points back up to 30,000, you can get $300 cash (or OBC if you like).

 

As for using a TA, based on the experience I just had with upgrading, it could complicate things if your original booking was made by a TA. My recent experience with a double meta upgrade demonstrates this.

 

1) I booked a category IF inside directly with NCL, with the intention of doing an upgrade a few days later, when my CC statement cut.

 

2) When I called NCL world points for my upgrade, they said my category IF inside cabin would get me a category BD balcony. To get the category BC I wanted, I needed to be booked in a category ID inside ($10 pp more). The world points dept. was able to upgrade my IF to an ID on the spot. If a TA owned this booking, I would have to call them to do this.

 

3) If you used a TA, they might need to adjust the booking on their end, after you have done your upgrade.

 

Just seems cleaner to book directly if you are going to upgrade. Hope this helps.

 

 

Vince

Thank you, Vince! Does NCL allow you to book the gty, which wouldn't give you any of the perks. I appreciate you sharing your experiences with me. It's so hard to figure out which is the right way to go! It seems that the TA's aren't giving the discounts and OBC's that they use to!

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Thank you, Vince! Does NCL allow you to book the gty, which wouldn't give you any of the perks. I appreciate you sharing your experiences with me. It's so hard to figure out which is the right way to go! It seems that the TA's aren't giving the discounts and OBC's that they use to!

 

I don't believe they will allow you to upgrade that sail away rate. Booking an obstructed ocean view and upgrading will probably land you the lowest category balcony.

 

I know which cruise you are looking at, and if it wasn't Caribbean, I would recommend just doing an inside or ocean view. I booked the 10/31/17 Gem 11 night Caribbean last minute, and paid $429 for an inside cabin, and I was solo that trip. As someone who generally books suites or Haven, I have to say the inside cabin was better than I expected. The extra space in a suite is nice, but for the price I got, it worked. Having the cruise terminate one day early, and flying back from Barbados was inconvenient, but I just rolled with it. For the price I paid, I feel like I got my moneys worth. Guess I am getting more value oriented these days.

 

As for TAs there is one in particular I like. Going to Bermuda 4/27 out of Boston, and the TA saved us about $600 on our BC balcony, plus gave us $150. NCL kicked in $300 (with my shareholder benefit included). I really have noticed a big cutback on OBC with the 2019 cruises.

 

Good luck with your upgrade, and don't wait too long, especially with them offering sail away rates.

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Has anyone every been charged for an upgrade made with World Points?

 

When I upgraded last year from ocean view to balcony, it went very smoothly. This year, I carefully built up my points by paying all my utilities and doing all my charitable giving on my NCL card. As soon as I hit 30K, I called to upgrade from ocean view to balcony. Near the end of the transaction, the woman said, just so you're aware you'll have a charge of more than $1,000.

 

I was shocked, but went ahead anyway. The only thing I could think of is that we originally booked the 9-day Alaska cruise on the Sun, but NCL switched the whole cruise to the Jewell so it could deploy the Sun in the Caribbean. Since the Jewell is larger and newer, I suspected our booking was grandfathered into the original fare, but lost that in the upgrade.

 

This all occurred about 10 days before my final payment was due. I contacted my travel agent to make the payments (which was complicated by the fact that BofA gave me a ridiculously low limit on this card) and she had never heard of it before. She ended up calling the World Points center and talking them into waving the extra charges.

 

Now I'm a little gun shy. On my next cruise, I'm booking a balcony to start with. (Mostly because we want to book the inside across the way for family members, but also because I don't want to be hit with another surprise.)

 

Just wonder if it had happened to anyone else.

 

Sheryl

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They tried to do that to me once. Turned out they were using the points as payment towards the cruise, rather than as an upgrade. So the 30k points turned into $300 which they were going to apply to the upgrade and then charge me the remaining balance. I called back and talked to someone who knew what they were doing and that time they upgraded me with no charge.

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They tried to do that to me once. Turned out they were using the points as payment towards the cruise, rather than as an upgrade. So the 30k points turned into $300 which they were going to apply to the upgrade and then charge me the remaining balance. I called back and talked to someone who knew what they were doing and that time they upgraded me with no charge.

 

Thanks for the quick response. Our cruise was paid in full months before (that's how I got many of the points). I have a feeling the woman I talked with was unhappy with me. When I first spoke with her, she transferred me to the B of A travel department, where I couldn't talk to a live person. When I called back, I didn't recognize her voice and complained about what had happened.

 

Anyway, this is why I always use a travel agent.

 

Sheryl

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Well, I mean when I called to do the upgrade they calculated the upgrade price as $xx and then took $300 off it with the pts and quoted me the remainder. Grr!!!

 

Yep love how travel agents have more pull... it helps a lot!

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I have a somewhat embarrassing question, but has anyone received an unreasonably low credit limit on their NCL mastercard?

 

My husband is in construction, so we had a tough time during the recession. But the year our youngest child left home, we refinanced our house and paid off all but one Parent Plus Loan.

 

A few months later, we started applying for affinity credit cards. Costco and Amazon gave us decent credit limits - and within a few months gave automatic increases to $12k and $6k. The two B of A cards - Alaska Airlines and NCL - had the lowest credit limits, of $2k and $1k. The ironic part is we've been with Bank of America literally since birth.

 

I've tried to upgrade the NCL card a couple times and was turned down. But now the recession hits are beginning to age off our credit. Our credit score, depending on which consumer site you check, is between 740 and 755, with income well above $100K.

 

Just wondering if this is unusual, and if I should build up the courage to try again? Also, has anyone had an automatic credit limit increase on the NCL card?

 

I'm about to book a cruise for my brother and his wife and my mom and me. It is very frustrating having to pay the travel agent $950, wait until that clears, make another payments, etc.

 

Thanks.

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when i first applied for the card, my credit limit was about 3,500 that i had for years. a few weeks ago, i got pre approved for a credit limit for 10,000 dollars. on the various credit score sites, my score is between 800 and 810

 

when the upgrade was turned down, they are suppose to tell you why. on one of my other credit cards, i keep getting turned down because of lack of card activity. whatever the hell that means to the creditors

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when the upgrade was turned down, they are suppose to tell you why. on one of my other credit cards, i keep getting turned down because of lack of card activity. whatever the hell that means to the creditors

They want to get the fees they receive from vendors when you use the card for purchases. No purchases ~ no income to them. :rolleyes:
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BofA is stingy with the credit limits from what I've experienced. I routinely request credit limit increases on all my cards on a yearly basis, and BofA always takes the other cards I have with them into consideration. They will adjust the credit limit down on one (I have four with them) to give me an increase on the other. They only gave me 10K on the NCL card where AmEx gave me 23K on a card that I opened the same year. I use a credit card for every single purchase and always pay them off every month. My income is nowhere near close to yours.

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I have a somewhat embarrassing question, but has anyone received an unreasonably low credit limit on their NCL mastercard?

 

My husband is in construction, so we had a tough time during the recession. But the year our youngest child left home, we refinanced our house and paid off all but one Parent Plus Loan.

 

A few months later, we started applying for affinity credit cards. Costco and Amazon gave us decent credit limits - and within a few months gave automatic increases to $12k and $6k. The two B of A cards - Alaska Airlines and NCL - had the lowest credit limits, of $2k and $1k. The ironic part is we've been with Bank of America literally since birth.

 

I've tried to upgrade the NCL card a couple times and was turned down. But now the recession hits are beginning to age off our credit. Our credit score, depending on which consumer site you check, is between 740 and 755, with income well above $100K.

 

Just wondering if this is unusual, and if I should build up the courage to try again? Also, has anyone had an automatic credit limit increase on the NCL card?

 

I'm about to book a cruise for my brother and his wife and my mom and me. It is very frustrating having to pay the travel agent $950, wait until that clears, make another payments, etc.

 

Thanks.

 

Can you pay a bunch extra on the card and then make a bigger payment? I often pay my card down to a negative balance before a cruise ... I wonder if you could use this same tactic.

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BofA is stingy with the credit limits from what I've experienced. I routinely request credit limit increases on all my cards on a yearly basis, and BofA always takes the other cards I have with them into consideration. They will adjust the credit limit down on one (I have four with them) to give me an increase on the other. They only gave me 10K on the NCL card where AmEx gave me 23K on a card that I opened the same year. I use a credit card for every single purchase and always pay them off every month. My income is nowhere near close to yours.

 

Thanks all for the suggestions. I went ahead and requested an increase and was immediately approved. The request was modest - just $3,000 which would pay for most of a cruise if we decided to go on a whim or (as happened last year) needed to change a booking. We probably could have gotten a higher limit, but good thing I didn't because we want to upgrade to the next level of card on Alaska Airlines, which gives a free bag on each flight and annual companion fare.

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Can you pay a bunch extra on the card and then make a bigger payment? I often pay my card down to a negative balance before a cruise ... I wonder if you could use this same tactic.

 

I did apply last night and got an instant increase to $3,000. Hubby better not spend that much in duty free!

 

It's funny how it works. Last year, we had to reschedule a cruise. How it works is they refunded (most of) what I paid to the card. (Since it was so close to the cruise, we lost money on the deal.) and then they rebooked the new date. I needed to pay for that cruise immediately, but the refund to my NCL card took several days. So I used my Costco card, which also multiplies points on travel.

 

I thought, this is great. We'll have all the money we need for excursions already. However, even though we had a balance, they will wouldn't let me use more than my $1,000 at a time. I was so embarrassed when one of my payments bounced. It usually, takes a few days for NCL to put through payments, so I had to wait before booking again.

 

Anyway, glad to have a comfortable limit now. We'll have a perfect payment record in a couple years, which will be right before we retire. We'll reach for the max limits then.

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