A couple charged about $1000 onto our onboard account

[luvtwotrvl]

A couple charged about $1000 onto our onboard account...and it was NOT us.

 

On August 8, we boarded the Emerald Princess for our 7 day Caribbean cruise. This cruise was really a last minute resort to just get out of town before my DW heads back to work.

 

On Friday while on the ship we decided to check our account. Now, Princess has a computer right at the Front desk to just check your onboard account and we did. To our surprised, we had $1000 charged to our account from two people from another cabin that were total strangers. Font desk personnel cleared the problem quickly but it is still concerning to wonder how that could have happened and what if we received the final morning.

 

Lesson from this.....Please check your onboard account before the last day.

 

By the way, we had our account charged to our Credit Card which we did online at home before we boarded the ship.

 

 

David

[cruisinjudy]

It was probably just a room number mix-up.

[TracieABD]

Glad you caught it! And really glad that the cruiseline made good on it!

 

I have always made a practice to get a printout every 2-3 day and just check off the items. I keep them in my stateroom.

 

Twice I have been charged for things I did not purchase. Because, I was able to discuss this with the purser's desk prior to the final day, the issue was easily reconcilled.

 

This must have been a big relief to you to have it resolved so easily!

[Bill S]

Also, if you give your key card to a bar/lounge server, be sure to check it when they give it back to you--check to make sure it is yours!

On our last cruise, our server gave me back some one else's key card and mine to the other party. I didn't discover it until we were returning from an excursion the next day!

I explained the situation to security (who let me back on the ship) and went straight to the front desk. They checked my account and the other folks had charged over $40 in drinks. :eek: I had not used the key card for any charges during the mixup. I assured them that DW & I do not drink alcohol.

I reckon that she could see by my series of soft-drink charges that I was telling the truth, and she cleared the new charges off my account and issued me a new key card. I learned a good lesson!

[luvtwotrvl]

Also, if you give your key card to a bar/lounge server, be sure to check it when they give it back to you--check to make sure it is yours!

 

On our last cruise, our server gave me back some one else's key card and mine to the other party. I didn't discover it until we were returning from an excursion the next day!

 

I explained the situation to security (who let me back on the ship) and went straight to the front desk. They checked my account and the other folks had charged over $40 in drinks. :eek: I had not used the key card for any charges during the mixup. I assured them that DW & I do not drink alcohol.

 

I reckon that she could see by my series of soft-drink charges that I was telling the truth, and she cleared the new charges off my account and issued me a new key card. I learned a good lesson!

 

 

Thank you very much for that info. I would have never thought about that to check my card after getting my soft drinks!!

 

Can not be too careful these days.......Thank you

 

David

[jhannah]

That is something I do ... check to be sure it's MY card they return. I would likely have never thought of it until some years ago when a party of 10 of us went out to eat. Six of us had identical Aadvantage Citi Cards!

[Krazy Kruizers]

Glad you checked your account.

 

I always check our account about every 3 or 4 days -- and I keep all the receipts.

[Sailkeywest]

Thank you for posting this, I wouldn't have thought to be checking our account except maybe for the receipts that we collected. Very good advice that might save people a lot of headaches (and money)!

[world~citizen]

It seems phantom charges are not uncommon. We found some.

 

Under 20 dollars I believe, HAL bartenders don't require you to sign for the bill. I brought that up as a source of concern and got royally thumped for my efforts.

 

So, people make mistakes. HAL has made it more difficult, I think, to resolve them where bar charges are concerned.

 

Smooth sailing...

[cruz chic]

So far, I've never had this probelm on HAL. I've had it happen a few times on Princess cruises. The last time it took them several days to remove the charges even though they agreed that they weren't mine. I'm always checking my bill every few days.

[mudscraper]

It seems phantom charges are not uncommon. We found some.

 

Under 20 dollars I believe, HAL bartenders don't require you to sign for the bill. I brought that up as a source of concern and got royally thumped for my efforts.

 

So, people make mistakes. HAL has made it more difficult, I think, to resolve them where bar charges are concerned.

 

Smooth sailing...

I agree. Signing for every purchase is the way to go.

[RuthC]

Under 20 dollars I believe, HAL bartenders don't require you to sign for the bill.

They told me it's $50. But the amount doesn't really matter.

The fact is that you are given a receipt, even though you don't have to sign. No more running a tab, or posting a charge to your account based on you being a regular in that lounge. Your card must be run through the machine. Mine was charged with every drink, even when I planned to spend the whole night in one lounge.

If it's your card being handed over, the charge goes on your account. If it's someone else's card---well, just be sure you get your card back.

 

Keep your receipts, check them against the preliminary bill (or more often if it makes you feel better), then check the additions on that last morning.

There really is little room for error with the procedures in place now.

[RedmondCruiser]

Always check you account mid cruise. Once did this check to find that I had purchased 50 bottles of sun tan lotion. Seems that the person in the Kiosk was new and the code for sun tan lotion was 50 and he entered it wrong.

[2ptu/000]

We were recently on a Celebrity Cruise. You can check your on board account from your TV. About the only thing that I found that I liked better than HA. Oh wait, the glass of champagne they gave you when boarding the ship on embarcation day was great too!

[jhannah]

We were recently on a Celebrity Cruise. You can check your on board account from your TV.

That would be convenient.

[Randyk47]

We were recently on a Celebrity Cruise.

 

That would be convenient! We like longer cruises and, in fact, don't book anything shorter than 10 days. You can rack up some pretty significant bar bills....OK....at least we do.....in that amount of time. It would be nice to at least check our account every couple of days instead of trying to pour through each and every charge the last night of a cruise. Maybe it's better now that they use the room card but then again I still thought I remembered them just bringing us drinks in the Crow's Nest when they saw us come in. I can't remember if they eventually asked for our card or if they simply input our cabin number from memory. I know in the days before the cards, back when it was just a kind of heavy paper card, that they never looked at it once they got to know you. Seems to me that they could easily make a mistake and enter the wrong information from cabin number to number of drinks.

[DougandEric]

On Princess, most of the stateroom numbers repeat on each deck. Thus you have to say 'Lido 145' vs 'Dolphin 145'. However, on our 2 cruises with Princess, they always took the card and had to write down a number off the card like an account number (it wasn't the room number). Generally on HAL, you just say your stateroom number and the waiter uses that to create the charge so it could overheard by another less than scrupulous passenger.

 

Doug

[taxmantoo]

Generally on HAL, you just say your stateroom number and the waiter uses that to create the charge so it could overheard by another less than scrupulous passenger.

 

Doug

 

Do you honestly believe that a less than scrupulous passenger has to hear someone actually say "4141" to know that there is a "4141" cabin on the ship :rolleyes:...

[fuzzywuzzy]

Do you honestly believe that a less than scrupulous passenger has to hear someone actually say "4141" to know that there is a "4141" cabin on the ship :rolleyes:...

 

Am I missing something here? We have always had to sign a receipt when making charges to our cabin onboard. So it would be easy enough to trace the receipts and verify the signatures. We never just give our cabin # verbally to buy anything onboard (at least on HAL).

[mallbucks]

not nice!!!!!!!

 

I agree that's a bit of a stretch.....but, I did have something stolen from the main theatre on the Golden Princess Hawaii Christmas cruise. So there must be at least a couple that fit that description.

[taxmantoo]

Am I missing something here? We have always had to sign a receipt when making charges to our cabin onboard. So it would be easy enough to trace the receipts and verify the signatures. We never just give our cabin # verbally to buy anything onboard (at least on HAL).

 

No you are not missing anything and you are right. My point is simply that anyone, anywhere can use your cabin number to charge something to and sign your name. The same would also be true in any hotel...you just eat and write "4141" on the bill, get up and walk out! It is up to all of us to examine the charges on our own bills and make certain they are valid.

[GeriatricNurse]

We were recently on a Celebrity Cruise. You can check your on board account from your TV. About the only thing that I found that I liked better than HA. Oh wait, the glass of champagne they gave you when boarding the ship on embarcation day was great too!

 

 

Isn't that great! I just loved that feature when I cruised with X! Sure wish that HAL would upgrade their system so that one could do the same thing on the t.v's in the staterooms! It would make for shorter lines and less work for the Front Office staff!:)

[J & G]

A couple charged about $1000 onto our onboard account...and it was NOT us.

 

On August 8, we boarded the Emerald Princess for our 7 day Caribbean cruise. This cruise was really a last minute resort to just get out of town before my DW heads back to work.

 

On Friday while on the ship we decided to check our account. Now, Princess has a computer right at the Front desk to just check your onboard account and we did. To our surprised, we had $1000 charged to our account from two people from another cabin that were total strangers. Font desk personnel cleared the problem quickly but it is still concerning to wonder how that could have happened and what if we received the final morning.

 

Lesson from this.....Please check your onboard account before the last day.

 

By the way, we had our account charged to our Credit Card which we did online at home before we boarded the ship.

 

 

David

 

 

YIPES! That is scary! On our last cruise we found a sea pass card on the floor in one of the large common areas. I can't say that a nice shopping spree didn't cross my mind ;);):D:D.....but, of course, I would NEVER do such a thing! It's that 'do unto others....' thing that my mother instilled in me. We returned it to the purser who called the woman to whom it belonged and returned it to her.

 

I left my purse on a table in a conference room in the Venetian in Las Vegas a couple of years ago. When I went back for it, it was gone! :eek: A nice man there said he had taken it to the lost-and-found. I took his name and phone number. When I retrieved my purse, I called him to thank him. He was staying at the Wynn and we had breakfast for he and his wife sent to his room the next morning. It was $85, but was the best $85 we ever spent!

 

There are honest people out there....too bad there are some bad apples that spoil the barrel. And you can bet these people didn't just think of this on this cruise....seems that with $1000 in charges, they have practiced and know just how to and where to get away with it! Sounds like a pattern!

[fuzzywuzzy]

No you are not missing anything and you are right. My point is simply that anyone, anywhere can use your cabin number to charge something to and sign your name. The same would also be true in any hotel...you just eat and write "4141" on the bill, get up and walk out! It is up to all of us to examine the charges on our own bills and make certain they are valid.

 

No, you are missing my point. I said that we had to "sign" for our charges. We did not just write the cabin # on the receipt, we had to sign our name. So how would someone else know our names?

[J & G]

No, you are missing my point. I said that we had to "sign" for our charges. We did not just write the cabin # on the receipt, we had to sign our name. So how would someone else know our names?

 

They had to be near you at some point.....like when you were getting your boarding passes, maybe?

 

Did you happen to post your names and cabin number on a rollcall? If so, they would only have to find out your last name.

 

What about introductions at a Meet & Greet? Did the charges start after that?

 

Just some random thoughts......I hate being so suspicious, but as we see, there are dishonest people everywhere.

 

There are cameras all over the ship. It should be possible, if the ship was really interested in catching these people, to look at the times and locations of the charges, and the video records of those locations at those times. I bet anything there would be one couple that would show up repeatedly.