Might Be Giving Up

[thetaro]

There are a few threads regarding the 10% discount disappearing. There are a few others having the same issues. 

When I called, the CSR said there are hundreds of bookings like this and takes time to fix it manually.

 

Mine took about two weeks.

[ziggyuk]

7 hours ago, JamieLogical said:

I found out about the status match option and since I am Gold with NCL, I thought i would go ahead and do that. This is where things started to go sour. Gold on NCL somehow only matched to ONE point on MSC. One point! It takes 2200 points to go from "Classic" to "Silver" on MSC. They gave me ONE point. I am hardly well on my way to any sort of status with them. I tried to rescind my match, since it is one-time-only, so I could wait until I was maybe a higher level with NCL, but they would not let me. I am stuck with my ONE whole point.

 

Hi JamieLogical,

I think it might me worth a call to the voyagers club, others have had success with getting a match changed, there was a recent one where a husband on wife with the same status were given different levels and it was corrected.

 

Until last October NCL platinum matched to black but since then only gold with platinum plus needed for black, with this is mind NCL gold should match to MSC silver and you could then say NCL silver matches MSC classic.

 

It does appear harsh that both NCL Bronze & Silver now match to classic but it does sort of make sense, I still think it's worth  call.

 

One thing to add is it is normal to match to the bottom of the level, when you match black you get 10,000 which is the bottom of black, when you match classic you match 1 point which is the bottom of classic.

 

Also, although it should be a one time deal to match status, there have also been reports of people being told to reapply, I'm not so sure it is so strict in reality which is probably a reflection of the poor IT systems.

[Host Jazzbeau]

When I decided to ask for a status match the posts here were saying that Celebrity Elite got Black, but by the time I filed new reports were saying they had scaled back to Elite = Gold (which is what I got, with the minimum level of 2200 points).  At first I thought this was a bummer, but on looking at the benefits chart I realized that the really big deal is the 5% discount that every level gets.

 

The other thing to keep in mind about MSC loyalty points is that they expire after 3 years if you don't keep sailing.  This is unusual, but IMHO is actually smarter from a corporate standpoint than what the other cruise lines are doing (where somebody who cruises without any real loyalty can still build up points and keep them forever).  So MSC gives you this nice 'status match' signing bonus, but then they expect you to show them some loyalty to keep it...

[Linda the Book Lover]

36 minutes ago, Host Jazzbeau said:

When I decided to ask for a status match the posts here were saying that Celebrity Elite got Black, but by the time I filed new reports were saying they had scaled back to Elite = Gold (which is what I got, with the minimum level of 2200 points).  At first I thought this was a bummer, but on looking at the benefits chart I realized that the really big deal is the 5% discount that every level gets.

 

The other thing to keep in mind about MSC loyalty points is that they expire after 3 years if you don't keep sailing.  This is unusual, but IMHO is actually smarter from a corporate standpoint than what the other cruise lines are doing (where somebody who cruises without any real loyalty can still build up points and keep them forever).  So MSC gives you this nice 'status match' signing bonus, but then they expect you to show them some loyalty to keep it...

For us, since we are retired committing to sailing before the three years is over - in our case 2022 is not such a bad thing. I am looking forward to the new MSC ships and different locations. The three years gives me an opportunity to also sail other lines as well.

[thetaro]

my wife's NCL Platinum Plus matched to Gold

[Markanddonna]

I can empathize. I was having some difficulties with MSC and fortunately, it came to a peak right before the final payment was due. I called customer service and asked to speak to the supervisor. Things magically were fixed when I told them I would either pay my final payment or just cancel the cruise.  Things have worked 100% ok since then, our cruise on the Divina was wonderful and we have three more MSC cruises booked.

[Nashna]

On 4/19/2019 at 11:21 AM, mafig said:

It took me awhile to book my first cruise with MSC mainly because of horror stories such as yours.

Because I so wanted to go and experience them "anyway", I made sure I booked with a travel agency who had experience with them and wasn't afraid of them.😏

The travel agency I used said they weren't as bad as they were and they had an express phone line to get through to them.

May I ask why you didn't go the TA route?

It doesn't matter if you go with a TA or on your own.  I have two cruises booked with MSC.  One for January 2020, is with a TA.  The other one I did myself directly with MSC.  I have been waiting since March 10th for BOTH sailings to have the 10 percent Bellisimo discount applied.  My TA has called 7 times.  I have called 10 times.  My TA is with a very large Miami based cruise agency.  If he can't do anything with his clout, I don't have much of a chance on my own.  My next step is to try MSC headquarters in Geneva.  

[Bluewake]

As I read the various posts reporting problems with MSC service reps, I have to say that my experience with MSC reps has been, on the whole, quite positive.  The only glitch was minor;  that was when I applied for the initial status match.  It seemed to be taking longer than expected.  In fact, friends who had applied on the same day received their response and a week later I still had heard nothing.  The personal vacation planner to whom I'd been assigned turned out to have little interest in helping out.  I finally just called the main MSC number myself, was  told that the person who had been assigned to process my case had fallen ill and had been out for a week or more.  It was fixed by the person I reached within 24 hrs. 

 

Since then,  I've called MSC  on multiple occasions, had no problems reaching a rep, and all of the reps with whom I've spoken have been very helpful.   Maybe I've just been lucky but I've been very pleased.  

[RobJenn]

And this, my friends, is the exact reason I used my travel agent to book my cruise on MSC in May.  I really think it’s so much easier in this particular case to have a middleman. Because they can deal with all of the garbage and I can enjoy my vacation. And if there’s a problem, they will be the ones hearing about it, and I know that I’ll get a response from them. 

 

 

This being said, I will be getting on the Seaview with an open mind. I’m going to disregard all of the positive and negative comments and form my own opinion, and then I will write a review on my cruise. No matter what, I’m going to have a great time with my son. this being said, I will be getting on the Seaview with an open mind. I’m going to disregard all of the positive and negative comments and for my own opinion, and then I will write a review on my cruise. No matter what, I’m going to have a great time with my son. Even if the ship winds up being nothing more than a floating two star hotel, with semi edible food, I’m going to have a great time. That’s all there is to it.

 

 I was on a similar itinerary to the one I’m taking this year, on the carnival horizon last year on its first regular sailing. The ports were awesome. The history was incredible. We will see about the Seaview however. LOL. 

Edited April 20, 2019 by RobJenn

[mexico8]

People who had good responses when calling MSC are very fortunate.    I, on the other hand, was not so fortunate.   When I called to ask about my 12 drinks vouchers that were listed on a recent e-mail they sent me,  the rep told me they would not be honored.  When I told him that people on cruise critic were getting OBC of up to $80 he said not  to believe everything that I read and that people on cruise critic were liars.   He promptly hung up on me when I asked to be transferred to a supervisor!!!

 

BTW - that was after I e-mailed him the proof I had about the recent e-mail that stated I had the Fantastica experience with the drink vouchers.

[goosemay]

On 4/19/2019 at 10:45 AM, JamieLogical said:

I am beginning to wonder how anyone manages to successfully sail on an MSC cruise. It sounds like the actual cruises are pretty good and I was really looking forward to trying our first one in September. But at this point, I am just ready to give up completely thanks to their truly and utterly TERRIBLE customer support. I had heard it was bad. But reading about it and experiencing it first-hand are very different things. Here's a run-down of my experience so far:

 

• Booked the Sept. 7 sailing on the Seaside in a Balcony cabin with the Fantastica experience under their "All In" promo, which includes WiFi and the Easy Drink Package via their website. That all went super smoothly.
• With the launch of the Bellissima they ran a promotion where if you did the virtual tour, you could get a 10% discount code to apply to a future cruise. I did the tour and got my code.
• I found out about the status match option and since I am Gold with NCL, I thought i would go ahead and do that. This is where things started to go sour. Gold on NCL somehow only matched to ONE point on MSC. One point! It takes 2200 points to go from "Classic" to "Silver" on MSC. They gave me ONE point. I am hardly well on my way to any sort of status with them. I tried to rescind my match, since it is one-time-only, so I could wait until I was maybe a higher level with NCL, but they would not let me. I am stuck with my ONE whole point.
• The only "up side" of my ONE point is that I now qualified for the 5% off Voyagers Club discount. So now that I was to receive 5% off for Voyagers Club and 10% off with my Bellissima code, I decided to call up and cancel my initial booking and re-book with my new discounts. I tried using the "Call Me" form on the MSC website. I filled it out twice and never received a call. So I called them and after about a 20 minute wait, I spoke to an customer service rep and got my booking canceled.
• I then logged into the website with my new Voyagers Club account, proceeded through the booking, this time picking an Aurea Balcony since I wanted to use the money we "saved" through our discounts to upgrade our experience. Got to the screen where I had to enter my Bellissima discount code. It went through. All was correct. Totals looked good and I booked.
• I received my reservation confirmation email with the PDF attachment and everything looked perfect. Both discounts applied and the totals were all correct. This was at 3:48 PM.
• At 9:00 PM, I suddenly received a new booking confirmation email with the same reservation number. I opened the attached PDF and now, all of the sudden, my booking no longer has the 10% discount for the Bellissima promo. It only shows the 5% of for Voyagers Club!
• Since it was now after 9:00 PM, I had to wait until the next day to call customer service. So a long wait time and a long, confused conversation later, I was assured that they would escalate my issue and I should see the 10% discount code reapplied to my booking with 5 business days. That was on the 20th of March.
• I waited and waited. Still no email update and every time I logged into the MSC site, my booking was showing the same info. Decided to give them a little extra time because I had heard that the 10% was causing them a lot of headaches. Went on a scheduled cruise with NCL on April 7, figuring I'd follow up when I got back.
• I got back this past Sunday and was back to work on Monday. I filled out the "Call Me" form on their website three more times. Still no call back.
• Finally, last night I had the time to try to call again. Over 20 minutes on hold before I got a rep. I had to explain my issue to her all over again. She had me forward her my original confirmation email... the one with the correct totals. She was completely confused. She looked up my previous "ticket" in the system and it had not been updated/worked on/acknowledged since the 20th when it was initially created. She told me she would create a NEW ticket and escalate it. She made me no promises about a timeline for a solution. And that was it.

 

So here I am a full month closer to the sailing and no closer to a resolution. I don't know if I'm supposed to give them another 5 business days or another month to get this resolved? I still want to upgrade to the Premium Drink package prior to sailing to save the service charges, but I am TERRIFIED to make any other changes to my booking if they do actually get this resolved. It's just such a disaster. Wait times are insane. No answers are given. And no resolutions are implemented. I just sit in limbo with time ticking away trying to decide if I should risk booking airfare for a cruise I might not even go on. In the grand scheme of things, the 10% off only amounts to about $212. So probably not worth all this hassle. But it shouldn't even BE a hassle. I don't want to REWARD them for their failure. I shouldn't have to pay them MORE to suck whether it's $5 or $1500.

I have mostly sailed with NCL. A total breeze compared to this company. Average phone wait for me has been 40 mins. I cannot get in the website as I typically have because the page thinks I’m a different nationality than I claim to be. Called. They have no idea how to help. If this company has any hopes of running with the big boys, they’d better make some changes... and stop crashing the ships. Horrifying..,

[sconter]

10 hours ago, goosemay said:

I have mostly sailed with NCL. A total breeze compared to this company. Average phone wait for me has been 40 mins. I cannot get in the website as I typically have because the page thinks I’m a different nationality than I claim to be. Called. They have no idea how to help. If this company has any hopes of running with the big boys, they’d better make some changes... and stop crashing the ships. Horrifying..,

 

You do know that this year the Norwegian epic crashes as it came into port, the Viking sky had to be evacuated and there was an accident on oasis of the seas during dry dock don’t you. 

 

You wont be sailing with anyone at this rate. 

[goosemay]

Haha! Didn’t hear about Epic. Will check it out. 

[ziggyuk]

On 4/20/2019 at 6:55 AM, thetaro said:

my wife's NCL Platinum Plus matched to Gold

 

Wowzers, that is a first everyone was reporting P+ matching to black since October 2018 before that Platinum matched to black.

 

Also might be worth a call, hope this is not the start of a further reduction in status matches.

[ziggyuk]

26 minutes ago, ziggyuk said:

 

Wowzers, that is a first everyone was reporting P+ matching to black since October 2018 before that Platinum matched to black.

 

Also might be worth a call, hope this is not the start of a further reduction in status matches.

 

*******

Sorry meant to say "not matching to black since October 2018"

[NJGeorge]

We too booked a cruise with MSC our first with them. 

As loyal NCL cruisers I am most disappointed with MSC. There is no customer service to speak of.

I have emailed them 3 times in the last 2 weeks and have not received any reply or acknowledgement.

Seems to be their way of doing business....not my way. Going to cancel it.

[dexddd]

58 minutes ago, NJGeorge said:

We too booked a cruise with MSC our first with them. 

As loyal NCL cruisers I am most disappointed with MSC. There is no customer service to speak of.

I have emailed them 3 times in the last 2 weeks and have not received any reply or acknowledgement.

Seems to be their way of doing business....not my way. Going to cancel it.

Do what you feel is right.  We have had emails to both lines completely ignored.

 

I can say we've had two great times on MSC and two more booked.  NCL keeps putting more nails in the coffin.  But if you aren't getting response I can see the frustration.

[JamieLogical]

1 hour ago, NJGeorge said:

We too booked a cruise with MSC our first with them. 

As loyal NCL cruisers I am most disappointed with MSC. There is no customer service to speak of.

I have emailed them 3 times in the last 2 weeks and have not received any reply or acknowledgement.

Seems to be their way of doing business....not my way. Going to cancel it.

 

The fact that every email and "call me" form seems to just go straight into a black hole is very frustrating and disappointing.

[Linda the Book Lover]

20 hours ago, RobJenn said:

And this, my friends, is the exact reason I used my travel agent to book my cruise on MSC in May.  I really think it’s so much easier in this particular case to have a middleman. Because they can deal with all of the garbage and I can enjoy my vacation. And if there’s a problem, they will be the ones hearing about it, and I know that I’ll get a response from them. 

 

 

This being said, I will be getting on the Seaview with an open mind. I’m going to disregard all of the positive and negative comments and form my own opinion, and then I will write a review on my cruise. No matter what, I’m going to have a great time with my son. this being said, I will be getting on the Seaview with an open mind. I’m going to disregard all of the positive and negative comments and for my own opinion, and then I will write a review on my cruise. No matter what, I’m going to have a great time with my son. Even if the ship winds up being nothing more than a floating two star hotel, with semi edible food, I’m going to have a great time. That’s all there is to it.

 

 I was on a similar itinerary to the one I’m taking this year, on the carnival horizon last year on its first regular sailing. The ports were awesome. The history was incredible. We will see about the Seaview however. LOL. 

Perfect response. We go on our cruises with an open mind and we have always enjoyed ourselves. Sure there have been times with a hiccup which was quickly rectified when brought to the correct person. Sometimes I think there are more negative issues on CC because people share them more than positive ones. HAve a great time on your cruise as we plan to do the same.

[NJGeorge]

1 hour ago, dexddd said:

Do what you feel is right.  We have had emails to both lines completely ignored.

 

I can say we've had two great times on MSC and two more booked.  NCL keeps putting more nails in the coffin.  But if you aren't getting response I can see the frustration.

Your right about NCL with the nails.

That is why we chose a different line this time.

I think over the years cruising has gone into the dumper in my opinion.

Time for something different for us.

[scpirate]

On 4/19/2019 at 11:21 AM, mafig said:

It took me awhile to book my first cruise with MSC mainly because of horror stories such as yours.

Because I so wanted to go and experience them "anyway", I made sure I booked with a travel agency who had experience with them and wasn't afraid of them.😏

The travel agency I used said they weren't as bad as they were and they had an express phone line to get through to them.

May I ask why you didn't go the TA route?

It was opposite for me I used a t.a. the first time I booked on msc seaside.he screwed things up.i had to call and give correct information but that went smoothly no holds or long waits.i booked next year's cruise my self by phone and it went smoothly and I got my regular discount for repeat cruiser and military.i wasn't going to try for extra when that promotion come out I knew that would be a disaster.sometimes you have to let well enough alone.

[DCGuy64]

To the OP: based on your signature it looks like you've been a pretty loyal NCL passenger (we have friends who only sail with them), so maybe just stick with Norwegian. I imagine you qualify for some pretty nice perks after all of those trips, I'm envious. I can only say what others have, get a travel agent. I know you say you've never had an issue like that before with other cruise lines, but MSC isn't like the others. And that's fine by me, we took our first MSC cruise last fall and have another booked for December. Enjoy your cruise, whichever it may be.

[JamieLogical]

4 minutes ago, DCGuy64 said:

To the OP: based on your signature it looks like you've been a pretty loyal NCL passenger (we have friends who only sail with them), so maybe just stick with Norwegian. I imagine you qualify for some pretty nice perks after all of those trips, I'm envious. I can only say what others have, get a travel agent. I know you say you've never had an issue like that before with other cruise lines, but MSC isn't like the others. And that's fine by me, we took our first MSC cruise last fall and have another booked for December. Enjoy your cruise, whichever it may be.

 

It's true I've only sailed with NCL thus far and probably based too many of my expectations around my experiences with them. I had hoped to find some alternatives to NCL, since I didn't want to feel so "locked in" to Norwegian and I wanted to have more options for ships and itineraries. I had hoped MSC would be a good alternative for us, but it seems as though it just might not be a good fit. We'll see how things pan out. I have internally given them until the end of this week to resolve our issues. Otherwise, we are likely to cancel and just stick with Norwegian for a September sailing.

[DCGuy64]

1 minute ago, JamieLogical said:

 

It's true I've only sailed with NCL thus far and probably based too many of my expectations around my experiences with them. I had hoped to find some alternatives to NCL, since I didn't want to feel so "locked in" to Norwegian and I wanted to have more options for ships and itineraries. I had hoped MSC would be a good alternative for us, but it seems as though it just might not be a good fit. We'll see how things pan out. I have internally given them until the end of this week to resolve our issues. Otherwise, we are likely to cancel and just stick with Norwegian for a September sailing.

 

Yeah, I totally hear what you're saying. My wife and I aren't beholden to any particular cruise line, we've sailed with Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Costa and MSC. They all have their strengths and weaknesses (mostly strengths). For what it's worth, MSC's ships are beautiful and we loved the Seaside. My favorite part of cruising is meeting the staff because I love to travel and am a polyglot, so I'm always interested in where the crew is from and if I speak their language. To me, the front-end of the cruise (the beforehand planning part) is less important than the cruise itself. Wishing you good luck whatever you decided to do. :-)

[NJGeorge]

13 minutes ago, DCGuy64 said:

 

Yeah, I totally hear what you're saying. My wife and I aren't beholden to any particular cruise line, we've sailed with Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Costa and MSC. They all have their strengths and weaknesses (mostly strengths). For what it's worth, MSC's ships are beautiful and we loved the Seaside. My favorite part of cruising is meeting the staff because I love to travel and am a polyglot, so I'm always interested in where the crew is from and if I speak their language. To me, the front-end of the cruise (the beforehand planning part) is less important than the cruise itself. Wishing you good luck whatever you decided to do. 🙂

Hey DCG. Have you cruised on the Splendida?

If so did you like the ship?

Edited April 22, 2019 by NJGeorge