Advice needed on getting a no-show refund

I had booked 3 of us on the Escape on Sep. 2-9 but my (autistic) son was a no-show so it was just the 2 of us in the cabin. I expected to automatically receive a refund for 1 person for port charges and pre-paid DSC. Adding this up, I was expecting around $250 ($150 port taxes + $100 DSC) What I got was $40?!!

Just prior to receiving the $40 refund, I called NCL and waited on the line for around 45 minutes to get a person who didn't really seem very knowledgeable on how much I was going to get. Thus I'm not particularly thrilled with the thought of calling them again, but I will if I must.

I have sent them an email through the 'Contact Us' form on their website -- they say the standard response time is 15 business days and haven't responded after 11 (so I'll wait 4 more days). I had attached all of the supporting documentation - cruise doc that show DSCs were prepaid and cruise cost confirmations showing port fees.

Does anyone have good advice on how I should proceed to get a better result?

I'm not 100% sure, but I believe that ships need to provide their passenger manifests to their visiting ports in advance of sail departure.  If you had a no show, that guest would still be charged port fees if not cancelled prior to the day of sailing.

Again, just going by what I've heard on the boards over the years.  Might be a different reason for not refunding.

Best of luck to you in getting a refund.

Thanks for the response.  I've heard differently though.  Either way, they at least owe me back at least the pre-paid DSC.

Update on what I did:

I called NCL again -- again another 45 minutes for an unsatisfactory/uninformed response:   the rep put me on hold for a little while and said that in addition to my $40, they refunded some money to my TA on Sept. 11.  She didn't know how much and advised me to call the TA.  She couldn't tell me how that $40 was computed either.

I call my TA and got right through but when she called NCL, she (and I) sat on hold for about 10 mins when my TA came back and told me to call her back later.   I called back and she told me that they opened up a 'ticket' and that would be resolved in 15 working days.  No ticket number was provided.

So...this sounds a lot like the 15 days I spent waiting for a response back from from the 'Contact Us' form from which I got none to date (it's been 16.5 working days now).

Needless to say, I'm pretty frustrated by NCL right now -- it's not a lot of money to them or me for that matter -- It's starting to become more of a matter of principle.  I'll keep bugging them until I get a reasonable resolution which would be at least the DSC or $60 (on top of the $40) refunded.

My guess is that the $40 was the port taxes, that you should have been refunded. The  amount that was sent to your TA was probably for the DSC, which should come back to you from the TA.

Update for those who may have a similar situation:

Just got an email from NCL guest relations stating that they were sorry about the delay and that payment services advised them that I was owed $299 less the $40 already paid - so I should get $259.  The refund should show up on my CC by the end of week.

The email lists a case number associated with it so I'm thinking that this was the case initiated by my TA with NCL.   It would have been nice if my TA gave me the case number but alas she didn't ask for it from NCL.

So my recommendation for those who find themselves with a NCL refund dispute: 

Forget about the NCL 'contact us' website email form; instead, contact your TA and have them ask NCL open up a case.  If you didn't use a TA, call up NCL (wait on hold for 45 mins) and ask them to do this for you.

Feedback for NCL if they are trolling these boards:   

I've done 26 cruises with 9 cruise lines (including 5 with NCL) and haven't experienced this issue before.  This is obviously an exception but I wasn't pleased with the dispute process that NCL provided -- there were no progress notifications and no case tracking available.  It would have been nice to understand how this issue occurred in the first place or at least some communication that NCL was working on preventing this process breakdown from occurring in the future.