Slow Refund with Celebrity ...

I had a B2B Caribbean cruise booked on the Reflection in November. Cancelled them before any penalty. Booked an 11 N eastern Med cruise in October. The second week of the B2B was easily transferred to the new reservation, no issues, no refund just a simple call. The first week however was not able to be transferred because they said I originally called to book that cruise instead of booking it online, which I did because their website wouldn't take the payment at the time. They said they must refund the money and then when I get it back to go ahead and pay the new Med cruise off, which I was annoyed with but so be it.

Now it is 3 weeks on and many phone calls and I still do not have that money, which I need to pay off the med cruise. Final payment is due July 12th. They are giving me an excuse that sometimes our system rejects the refund. So they issued it again and now it has been another 5-7 business days and still nothing. Extremely frustrated and worried. I asked them about the final payment and they said they would give me an extension but I have no trust now with their customer service department. I don't know what to do.

Becoming less and less excited to sail.

I had a B2B Caribbean cruise booked on the Reflection in November. Cancelled them before any penalty. Booked an 11 N eastern Med cruise in October. The second week of the B2B was easily transferred to the new reservation, no issues, no refund just a simple call. The first week however was not able to be transferred because they said I originally called to book that cruise instead of booking it online, which I did because their website wouldn't take the payment at the time. They said they must refund the money and then when I get it back to go ahead and pay the new Med cruise off, which I was annoyed with but so be it.

 

Now it is 3 weeks on and many phone calls and I still do not have that money, which I need to pay off the med cruise. Final payment is due July 12th. They are giving me an excuse that sometimes our system rejects the refund. So they issued it again and now it has been another 5-7 business days and still nothing. Extremely frustrated and worried. I asked them about the final payment and they said they would give me an extension but I have no trust now with their customer service department. I don't know what to do.

Even if you have not received your refund by the final payment date, I would say to pay the remaining amount due for your Med cruise with a credit card on the final payment date.

That way you are assured that your cruise is paid in full and won't be cancelled,

while gaining you another billing cycle, (additional time to resolve the issue and receive your refund) before you actually need to pay out any money.

As for dealing with Celebrity's customer service, if they cannot resolve the matter for you, ask to be transferred to the Resolutions department.

We had to cancel a cruise a month ago.

Still no credit on our credit card.

Its really frustrating......every time we call its a different story.I am running out of patience....

We have never cancelled a cruise but have cancelled shore excursions, speciality dining reservations, alcoves and have always had the charge refunded to our credit card in 72 hours or less.

Hope this is just a temporary glitch in the system.

Sometimes you can't refund the money back to the credit card, and have to issue a paper check. It depends on the rules of the merchant account but a common issue is when the original charge is over a certain number of days.

It's a shame they can't just put the money towards the new cruise rather than refunding and having you give it right back to them. That would be easier for all involved. It has to cost them something to issue a check (in the 1980s we had an overhead cost of $52 for each check we issued).

It took me about 2 weeks to get a refund back on my credit card. Good luck with your issue. Just keep calling them and checking and escalate the matter to a supervisor if necessary.

Two weeks here as well, but they forgot to refund the prepaid gratitudes.. Still waiting for that part.

UPDATE:

After spending the better part of 2 hours on the phone, politely and firmly expressing my concern and frustration with the whole situation. The funds were finally moved to my MED cruise without being refund. That is great and I am so happy.

It is a shame that it took this long, countless phone calls and could not be done originally as requested. According to 3 different supervisors this was an impossible task. One said, "sir that exception is never made and cannot physically happen in our system." The very helpful guy that helped me yesterday had to do a lot of digging and get permission and exceptions but it worked. Spoke to his supervisor and praised him for his help and confirmed with the supervisor that all is well. Now I have my email and paper copy confirmation that I have a zero balance due, plus some screen shots of my account on the website.

I think i'll finally be able to sleep a little better.

Thanks for all your input and good luck to all of you waiting for a refund.

UPDATE:

 

After spending the better part of 2 hours on the phone, politely and firmly expressing my concern and frustration with the whole situation. The funds were finally moved to my MED cruise without being refund. That is great and I am so happy.

 

It is a shame that it took this long, countless phone calls and could not be done originally as requested. According to 3 different supervisors this was an impossible task. One said, "sir that exception is never made and cannot physically happen in our system." The very helpful guy that helped me yesterday had to do a lot of digging and get permission and exceptions but it worked. Spoke to his supervisor and praised him for his help and confirmed with the supervisor that all is well. Now I have my email and paper copy confirmation that I have a zero balance due, plus some screen shots of my account on the website.

 

I think i'll finally be able to sleep a little better.

 

Thanks for all your input and good luck to all of you waiting for a refund.

Glad it worked out. I have moved money from one cruise to the next many times and never had any issues, so not sure why this was such a big deal, but glad it finally worked out for you.

I'm having the same problem with refund as well. I found a cheaper price with an online site and wanted to cancel with Celebrity. I called at 3pm and it is now 5:11 pm have not received a call back. If I booked the cruise on line myself instead of using a celebrity TA I would not have this problem. They're telling me the reservation is locked by her and only she can access the booking. After reading what you had to go through I decided to not cancel the cruise. Final payment is 7/18 and I don't want to tie my money up. You live and learn.:mad:

I cancelled a cruise and transferred my deposit plus some to a new cruise. My TA did it for me . Not an issue at all.

Canceled a RCL Trip refund in about a week.

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It seems the disconnect is in what department the reservation is made. Some departments can transfer deposits, payments, excursions, extras from one cruise to another. However, other departments cannot. The only option is to refund and wait. Its so weird and sounds crazy. Its why my 2nd week of my original B2B was able to be canceled and funds transferred but my first week was made in some department over the phone (called number on website) and had to be cancelled and refunded. They reiterated over and over that this was some big exception to the rule and to avoid this in the future it is better to book online. Funny thing is I originally wanted to book it online but their website was down when I booked it. Just glad its over.

I'm having the same problem with refund as well. I found a cheaper price with an online site and wanted to cancel with Celebrity. I called at 3pm and it is now 5:11 pm have not received a call back. If I booked the cruise on line myself instead of using a celebrity TA I would not have this problem. They're telling me the reservation is locked by her and only she can access the booking. After reading what you had to go through I decided to not cancel the cruise. Final payment is 7/18 and I don't want to tie my money up. You live and learn.:mad:

With such little time left, if you don't have funds in another account, I would leave the reservation alone.

UPDATE:.....

It is a shame that it took this long, countless phone calls and could not be done originally as requested. According to 3 different supervisors this was an impossible task. One said, "sir that exception is never made and cannot physically happen in our system." The very helpful guy that helped me yesterday had to do a lot of digging and get permission and exceptions but it worked.

This is not uncommon. Often if you speak with somebody who does not know how to do something, they tell you it can't be done instead of truthfully admitting "I don't how to do it" and transferring you to someone else who does.

I'm having the same problem with refund as well. I found a cheaper price with an online site and wanted to cancel with Celebrity. I called at 3pm and it is now 5:11 pm have not received a call back. If I booked the cruise on line myself instead of using a celebrity TA I would not have this problem. .:mad:

So true. When we book a cruise online ourselves, we can cancel it ourselves whenever we want simply by clicking Cancel.

No red tape and no need to start trying to contact anyone else to do it for you.

But if another person books the cruise for us (either a Celebrity agent or an outside TA), we lose the ability to cancel it ourselves and need to start trying to contact somebody else to cancel it for us, which can be a real pain at times.

Gishua, I am so glad it finally worked out for you. Only sorry that you had to endure all that unnecessary aggravation.

It took me about 2 weeks to get a refund back on my credit card. Good luck with your issue. Just keep calling them and checking and escalate the matter to a supervisor if necessary.

We cancelled a few days ago and the credit is already on the card...they gave 2 sep credits which total the full dep amt,.

We booked business class flts thru ChoiceAir, UA downgraded the plane size, so no biz class. When we got home I filled out the form w/UA for the refund, 2 days later it was approved. We kept waiting for it to show up on our CC, kept calling UA, finally got someone who said it was sent to ChoiceAir dept, more phone calls to them, got someone who said it would take 2 billing cycles for it to get to us--they've had our money since May 9, haven't seen anything for us yet. Time to start calling again. We wanted the money to pay for the air to Quito for our Galapagos cruise.