Cancelled cruise in late Feb - will be 120 days for prepaid items refund

[holmes96]

Hi, for those of you still looking for a 'pre-paid' items refund, here's our experience so far.  It's a lot of detail to get to the latest status, just beware.  We cancelled our 3/1 Meraviglia cruise due to a medical issue with a family member on 2/28.  It was completely unrelated to Coronavirus and prior to MSC halting cruises.  We had purchased cruise insurance and was able to obtain a 'cruise fare' refund in late April.  I have been calling and emailing MSC directly since the 1st week of March to obtain a refund (or a status on) on our prepaid items (OBC, excursions, gratuities, internet, and show costs), which was around 2K.  We are also trying to get back the port fees/taxes.

 

I called on 3/8, then again on 3/9, and then emailed mscexistingreservations@msccruisesusa.com on 3/10 to request statuses.  On the first call (3/8), I apparently called 'Reservations', but needed to speak with 'Customer Service' which is only available M-F, thus the 3/9 call.  They asked to me to sum up everything in an email, which I did on 3/10.  I didn't receive any response to that email until I did a follow-up to the original email on 3/29.  On 3/29 I received a relatively generic response back saying it would take 60 days for refunds to be processed.  I also noticed they put a 13 digit SR # (service request, I guess) in the subject line of my email.

 

I sent another email follow-up on 5/5 to ask the refund status.  Calling MSC to get a status had not yielded any success, but much frustration, so I was trying the email route, but enough was enough so I called today, 5/13, to see what was up.  I hadn't received any response to my 5/5 email, BUT apparently someone looked at it and submitted my pre-paid refund request to 'Finance' on 5/8.  The representative I spoke with today said they would pay the port fees/taxes first and then the rest of the refund would be paid out in 60 days from 5/8 (truly 130 days from cancellation, though).  She acknowledged that my initial refund request was just dropped. Had I not emailed/called again, the refund would never have made it into the right hands, which I guess is finance.  So...my lesson learned, just because you have a SR #, or were told 60 days, that doesn't mean anything apparently.

 

I am an American for those that are interested how I booked.  Hopefully everyone has better luck than we did so far.  I am trying to be patient because these are unprecedented times.  It would help if I felt confident that MSC was doing what they actually said they were going to do, i.e. 60 day refunds, as opposed to requests just going into a black hole.  On the plus side, I was able to connect right away to a representative today so that was nice.  I haven't let this experience deter me as we have another MSC cruise booked for Nov, which we are eagerly awaiting.

[travelberlin]

Thanks for sharing. We are also waiting for a refund for prepaid internet package and for a canceled cruise. After reading your post, we will keep an eye on it and not just wait that it happens.

Ivi

[golferwife]

Keep on them. I called every Monday and asked to speak to a Supervisor.  I finally told them if it was not resolved by May 15th, a few months after initial request, I was going to file a dispute with my credit card company.  I received the credit on my May 10th credit card statement.  A pain in the butt, but I truly believe I would not have received the credit if I did not continue to call. 

[aprilF]

On 5/14/2020 at 6:41 PM, golferwife said:

Keep on them. I called every Monday and asked to speak to a Supervisor.  I finally told them if it was not resolved by May 15th, a few months after initial request, I was going to file a dispute with my credit card company.  I received the credit on my May 10th credit card statement.  A pain in the butt, but I truly believe I would not have received the credit if I did not continue to call. 

Glad you got your refund.  I am unwilling to call weekly for months on end so I went the CC dispute route.  What were the circumstances of your refund request?  Cruise fare, add-ons, they cancelled you cancelled and when?

[golferwife]

15 hours ago, aprilF said:

Glad you got your refund.  I am unwilling to call weekly for months on end so I went the CC dispute route.  What were the circumstances of your refund request?  Cruise fare, add-ons, they cancelled you cancelled and when?

Prepaid spa and shore excursions.  They gave me a 50% refund immediately and at first told me I wasn’t entitled to the other 50%. I kept pushing and finally got to someone that actually had the authority to do something 

[holmes96]

On 5/17/2020 at 5:18 PM, aprilF said:

Glad you got your refund.  I am unwilling to call weekly for months on end so I went the CC dispute route.  What were the circumstances of your refund request?  Cruise fare, add-ons, they cancelled you cancelled and when?

Hi, we received a cruise fare refund in late April via our travel insurance due to a family medical situation in late Feb (unrelated to COVID).  Our cruise was to depart on 3/1. Now we're seeking a refund from MSC directly on the prepaid items and it's been a very painful process.