Pre-Cruise Customer Service Issues

[slp123]

My first Celebrity cruise is coming up on January 26th. I am an experienced cruiser, with over 30 cruises on Cunard, Holland America, Regent, Azamara and Costa. In all those cruises I have never spent as much time on hold with customer service trying to straighten out problems caused by Celebrity's error or by issues with their web site which fails to allow you to make certain reservations on line (e.g. Alcove reservations) or blocks you from making excursion reservation claiming (erroneously) that my request conflicts with another one of my existing reservations (quite often an Alcove reservation--which has nothing to do with a fixed time frame). Additionally the Celebrity site is full of dead end links or frequent messages that site maintenance prevents one from viewing ones reservation or making an excursion or dining reservation. Has anyone else has similar experiences? More importantly does anyone know a better way of resolving issues then calling the general number and wasting time on hold, being transferred and/or re-explaining your issue all over again because it was not resolved following a prior call.:confused:

[Andy]

My first Celebrity cruise is coming up on January 26th. I am an experienced cruiser, with over 30 cruises on Cunard, Holland America, Regent, Azamara and Costa. In all those cruises I have never spent as much time on hold with customer service trying to straighten out problems caused by Celebrity's error or by issues with their web site which fails to allow you to make certain reservations on line (e.g. Alcove reservations) or blocks you from making excursion reservation claiming (erroneously) that my request conflicts with another one of my existing reservations (quite often an Alcove reservation--which has nothing to do with a fixed time frame). Additionally the Celebrity site is full of dead end links or frequent messages that site maintenance prevents one from viewing ones reservation or making an excursion or dining reservation. Has anyone else has similar experiences? More importantly does anyone know a better way of resolving issues then calling the general number and wasting time on hold, being transferred and/or re-explaining your issue all over again because it was not resolved following a prior call.:confused:

 

Hi Slp,

 

There's dozens of threads on here about Celebrity's website, and how most members feel it's a huge disappointment. I suggest checking them out, as it will shed some insights on our frustrations. Maybe one of these days Celebrity will deal with the myriad of issues.

 

Over the years, I've made dozens of suggestions to Celebrity, and sent countless emails pointing out general errors and broken links.... but I've stopped wasting my time, as I felt my efforts were not appreciated, and few of the errors were corrected. While I feel my efforts helped somewhat - it wasnt enough versus my time invested. Sadly, I feel that either Celebrity does not care, or is not willing to invest the resources to create a world class website. I will never understand their logic concerning their website, as a significantly improved website could generate mega millions of dollars in added revenue and profits. IMO, it would be money wisely invested. All we can do, is hope for eventual improvement.

 

Regardsing the hold times, Celebrity is currently running a Gift Card promotion, so I suspect that between the new promotion, and how bookings generally pick up in December and January - that's why the hold times are longer.

 

Regarding the reservations folks, I've found them to be much improved over the past year, but I suppose there's always the luck of the draw factor involved. Are you calling reservations ? I usually call Captains Club, but you must be a member for their services. I see that you have not sailed Celebrity yet. If you are having severe difficulties, you can always try calling them, and perhaps they will assist.

 

If you have additional questions, feel free to ask. Happy Holidays !

[slp123]

Hi Slp,

 

There's dozens of threads on here about Celebrity's website, and how most members feel it's a huge disappointment. I suggest checking them out, as it will shed some insights on our frustrations. Maybe one of these days Celebrity will deal with the myriad of issues.

 

Over the years, I've made dozens of suggestions to Celebrity, and sent countless emails pointing out general errors and broken links.... but I've stopped wasting my time, as I felt my efforts were not appreciated, and few of the errors were corrected. While I feel my efforts helped somewhat - it wasnt enough versus my time invested. Sadly, I feel that either Celebrity does not care, or is not willing to invest the resources to create a world class website. I will never understand their logic concerning their website, as a significantly improved website could generate mega millions of dollars in added revenue and profits. IMO, it would be money wisely invested. All we can do, is hope for eventual improvement.

 

Regardsing the hold times, Celebrity is currently running a Gift Card promotion, so I suspect that between the new promotion, and how bookings generally pick up in December and January - that's why the hold times are longer.

 

Regarding the reservations folks, I've found them to be much improved over the past year, but I suppose there's always the luck of the draw factor involved. Are you calling reservations ? I usually call Captains Club, but you must be a member for their services. I see that you have not sailed Celebrity yet. If you are having severe difficulties, you can always try calling them, and perhaps they will assist.

 

If you have additional questions, feel free to ask. Happy Holidays !

 

 

Thanks Andy for the quick reply. Actually I am a Captain's Club member by virtue of the fact that I have cruised on Azamara twice and that line also uses the Captain's Club loyalty program. So should I have anymore issues then I will try calling them.

 

I totally agree with you about Celebrity's shortsightedness regarding their web site. One obvious example is that if you book an Alcove (which you cannot do online even though it indicates that you can) then the system will not allow you to book any excursion on the day of your Alcove reservation is that excursion commences between 8 and 10 AM. The only "work-around" Celebrity has is to have their agent contact the excursion desk on board the ship you have a reservation on and request that ticket(s) for your chosen excursion be set aside. The on-board excursion officer then has to manually set aside tickets, notate somewhere to charge your on-board account during your cruise (your on-board account is not available until you check in), update manually he reservation count, manually email the service center rep back confirming same who in turn has to email me. They have to do this for every passenger who holds an Alcove reservation on Reflections and Silhouette for each off-ship excursion that commences before 10 AM (which is the majority of the excursions if you arrive in a port in the morning). Imagine all the opportunity for errors stemming from failure to follow up or failure to manually record the charges weeks after the reservation was made. And all Celebrity has to do to solve the problem is have one of their IT people "comment out" a single line of website code which in essence would say "if conflict exists and is caused by an Alcove Reservation, ignore (suppress) conflict." I run various websites dealing with consumers, this is about a 3 hour fix (to write, download, install and test). It is so typical of larger corporations (especially owned by an even larger parent company) to be so lumbering and ineffectual when it comes to "putting in a fix".

 

I agree with you, it is not worth putting in ones own time if at first you do not succeed. There are large organizations that are responsive, but it you find yourself hitting a wall it is best to minimize ones own frustration and enjoy what you came there for in the first place.

[Alg63]

SIP, i hear you. I am not only an experienced cruiser, but an experienced international traveller, and having installed hotel reservation systems all over the world have a better than average understanding of reservation systems.

I just returned from an X cruise with 11 friends / 6 cabins that I did the arrangements for.

The CS end pre cruise were .. Well I am trying to think of words.. And they are not good, but totally the opposite of the fantastic experience we had on board. If you take a look at my threads between about July-Oct, i documented a lot of it. Often "errors" that occurred numerous times on some or all the reservations. Agents that denied that the issues occurred or existed even though an agent had previously taken care of it. Invoicing errors (in my favor) which I called and let them know about and then they messed it up again - in their favor.. Online reservations showing "share" names for that trip that were actually future cruises. On and on.

You know what they say about first impressions... Well how do people manage to sort these out that are NOT experienced travelers or bookers? Now i know there are those that will jump in and say they should use a Travel Agent. Yes, that is an option... But it does not solve the basic issues ...

[Arubalisa]

I totally agree with you about Celebrity's shortsightedness regarding their web site. One obvious example is that if you book an Alcove (which you cannot do online even though it indicates that you can) then the system will not allow you to book any excursion on the day of your Alcove reservation is that excursion commences between 8 and 10 AM.

This reminds me of the ongoing confusion for folks new to Aqua Class who are "told" that they may dine at anytime, but their reservation shows an assigned seating time because that is the only way the system will accept the reservation. :rolleyes:

[slp123]

This reminds me of the ongoing confusion for folks new to Aqua Class who are "told" that they may dine at anytime, but their reservation shows an assigned seating time because that is the only way the system will accept the reservation. :rolleyes:

 

 

48 hours have passed and they still have not figured how to override the phony conflict caused by my Alcove reservation which blocs me booking an excursion. Worse than the web site programming issue is the fact that they created a system that they are unable to override when it is clearly leading to an erroneous result.