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help, I accidentally paid for full cruise instead of deposit


Nadia83
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Hi everyone, 
I'm hoping someone can help me because Princess customer service is closed for the night. 


I tried to put a 600 dollar payment for a hold on a cruise (Alaska June 2022) and I had no idea that I was paying a full 6600 for the cruise. 

I'm normally pretty observant and detail oriented so obviously upset that I missed this (can we blame it on me being an essential worker for a year during a busy pandemic?).

 

I'm looking up Princess cancellation policy as we speak but I'm curious if this has happened to anyone before? I was hoping to be able to get lower fares as they came up over the next year. 

 

Do you think Princess would refund me so that I could just have the deposit down? I'm also aware that a lot of airlines (prepandemic) you could cancel a booking within 24 hours and have no penalty. Is this something Princess does?

 

Thank you for your advice,

 

I'm feeling dumb enough as it is, please go gentle on me in the comment section. 

 

Nadia

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I did that once. But I was able to call princess immediately & the rep corrected it for me. Call as soon as they open tomorrow & plead your case. Good luck!

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Thank you so much. As soon as I get a spare moment at work I will call them (of course I'm working a 12 hour shift sigh). 

I've sent them an email and I have called my credit card company to notify them too. 

I don't see anything in the fine print about having 24 hours to cancel the way airlines do. 

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Hi @Nadia83. Relax. You can cancel for a full refund all the way up to 91 days before embarkation.  For a June 2022 cruise that would be sometime in March 2022. IF IT WAS ME, I'd give them the option to either:

1. Refund the difference

2. If not, cancel and rebook once you get the refund (about 10 days) Bet this is what will happen. 

 

Then put my feet up and plan what I want to do there. And yes, don't pay the balance until final payment date so you can take advantage of price drops / promotions

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Ombund on post 7 is spot on.  You can cancel up to 91 days for a full refund to your credit card.  When i cancelled about 3 weeks ago and had a large deposit which was needed for a suite it took about 4 working days to get the refund posted to my CC.    You just have to call Princess to cancel you cannot do it on the website,  

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1 hour ago, franktown said:

Ombund on post 7 is spot on.  You can cancel up to 91 days for a full refund to your credit card.  When i cancelled about 3 weeks ago and had a large deposit which was needed for a suite it took about 4 working days to get the refund posted to my CC.    You just have to call Princess to cancel you cannot do it on the website,  

If it just takes 4 days then OP would be rebooking under the same promo / same price so no issue 👍

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I did this Tuesday.  Called Princess they reversed the charges. Filled out the transfer form to send it to my agent who was on vacation. Got a reply from Princess stating the fate has been paid in full and is no longer transferable. I explained the situation, they said it will always show it was paid in full and they could not transfer it. So I called had them cancel and rebook me. Same cabin same fare. New booking number.

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8 hours ago, schrecker96 said:

I did this Tuesday.  Called Princess they reversed the charges. Filled out the transfer form to send it to my agent who was on vacation. Got a reply from Princess stating the fate has been paid in full and is no longer transferable. I explained the situation, they said it will always show it was paid in full and they could not transfer it. So I called had them cancel and rebook me. Same cabin same fare. New booking number.

Amazing how they sometimes complicate things that should be easy to accomplish. First they reversed the charges and then they said they did not. Does the right hand know what the left hand has done?

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On 7/6/2021 at 6:52 PM, 1965 said:

I did that once. But I was able to call princess immediately & the rep corrected it for me. Call as soon as they open tomorrow & plead your case. Good luck!

 

On 7/6/2021 at 6:53 PM, roamerfromtexas said:

Had this happen once, Called Princess and they reversed the wrong amount and posted the deposit amount.  Call as soon as they open tomorrow.

Has happened to me three X. Trying to use my FCDs and instead paid full price twice and full deposit another time.

They've finally (I hope fixed the #@*&) FCD button.

They'll fix it for you, just call ASAP.

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On 7/7/2021 at 9:24 AM, sandancer said:

I wish we had the same arrangements here in the UK. I called when there was a price drop and no luck. 

I called when our seacation went down by £200 after I'd made final payment and was able to cancel and rebook under CWC  just waiting for the refund

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On 7/7/2021 at 11:48 AM, Nadia83 said:

I'm feeling dumb enough as it is, please go gentle on me in the comment section. 

 

Nadia

Hope you have got your money back but don't beat yourself up about this silly mistake because I did it also about 4 years ago.   I didn't think to get my money back because the cruise was only 6 months off but I thought Princess was very sneaky to set the 'radio button' on pay in full instead of pay deposit.

 

I didn't beat myself up about it and in the end, the booking rewarded me because I was offered a move over offer (paying me back my money) for a free 4 week cruise that I accepted and happened before the cruising world was affected by Covid.   All the very best.

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Hi everyone, 

 

Thank you all for your kind words and advice, it helped me sleep a lot better that night. 

It's resolved now but there was a bit of back and forth. What complicated things is that a few hours prior to me trying to place the deposit, I had emailed a form to transfer my booking to my travel agent. 

The next morning I received an email from Princess saying that because my fare had been paid in full they couldn't transfer the booking to my travel agent (oddly enough they didn't respond to the second email I had sent them that night when the call centre was closed telling them I hadn't meant to pay the whole thing). 

The first person I spoke to over the phone said that I would have to wait a week until my payment was processed for them to refund me the difference and then suggested that I keep the booking and ask my travel agent to book me a brand new booking with the travel agent, and then cancel the original booking once I had put a deposit on the second one.  This didn't make sense to the travel agent because I would then lose the room I had wanted. 

 

My travel agent suggested that I call Princess, cancel the cruise and asked to be refunded and then within the same phone call book the same cruise, same cabin and ask to put the deposit only with the person on the phone. 

 

This Princess employee was fantastic. She didn't blink an eye at that and was happy to do it. She also said she would bring this up at one of their next staff meetings because it's very common for people to think they are just putting a deposit but Princess charges them the whole fare. She said there is a small button that I would have had to click but it's very common for people to not see it. 

 

Anyway it's been resolved, waiting for my credit card to process the refund but I was forewarned that may take a week or so. 

Thanks everyone for your help!

 

Nadia

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Nadia, that's good news that it got straightened out.   I almost made the same mistake.   When I recently went to pay a deposit, the default choice was to pay in full.   It's easy to see how someone could be moving too fast and miss that.   Clearly, it is Princess' choice to make "pay in full" the default option.    Apparently the extra funds they get early from those who let it go makes it worth the time their customer service reps spend on the phone reversing the payment for those who didn't intend to pay in full.   🤔  Pay attention everyone when paying a deposit!

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This has happened to me two times. The online system defaults to the pay in full selection during on-line booking. I think it is a flaw in their online system. Both times I called immediately to confess my mistake. The first time I had to explain my error several times before I reached the correct department and then it took about a week or more to rectify. The second time was just a couple of weeks ago during the half price deposit promo. I instantly saw my error as I was hitting the enter button! I called the 800# and very quickly reached the Customer Relations Department who refunded the difference between the deposit & payment in full. It was processed through my Princess Visa account with-in 48 hours. 

I voiced my concern on the payment process with the nice lady in Customer Relations and I followed up with a brief email. I suggested a fix of either the system refrains from defaulting to full payment or adding an "are you sure?" question before the transaction is finalized. Something needs to be done because I feel it will happen to me again! I get so excited to complete the booking I just hit enter too quickly!

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15 minutes ago, carefreebee said:

I voiced my concern on the payment process with the nice lady in Customer Relations and I followed up with a brief email. I suggested a fix of either the system refrains from defaulting to full payment or adding an "are you sure?" question before the transaction is finalized. 

What a great idea!!

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