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3 Hours and 24 Minutes

walkintheplank

By walkintheplank,
in Carnival Cruise Lines

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walkintheplank

walkintheplank

Posted
Posted

That's how long it took to cancel a booking! What morons are running Carnival Corp. these days?

I, as everyone else who has a cruise booked, received the extended protocols email giving me the option to cancel by calling before 2/15/22. Sounds simple? Ha!

 

After four days of getting the "call wait times are too long, please call back", I finally made it to the cue. Let the fun begin! I was on hold for  1 hour and 24 minutes before a person picked up. Okay that was bad, but not near as bad as what was to come. What should have been a simple push of a button on the agent's keyboard took two hours to complete!

 

After patiently waiting a few minutes that I thought was sufficient for the task, I asked her what the problem was? She said that so many people are calling to cancel that she has to get approval from "whoever" to complete the cancellation. Seriously? If the company sends out an email giving customers the option to cancel,  then there is the approval! Why not create an online portal where booked customers can cancel if you are going to give them the option to do so? Rather, let's tie up a phone representative for two hours who could be assisting other customers! This is just horrible customer service!

 

I get it. They are losing money and they are trying to keep it however they can, but pissing off the paying customer is not the way to do it. I was left with the impression that they just hoped I would give up so that they could keep my money. 

 

I don't normally run to internet forums to complain, but I must make exception here. I rooted for the return of cruising and booked a cruise to give my support and this is the return? Good job Carnival, you lost a customer!

 

 

 

 

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Schoifmom

Schoifmom

Posted
Posted (edited)

It's okay to vent here, I'm sure that was frustrating, but I would advocate for patience here. I'm sorry that you went through this and I'm not defending Carnival, but Carnival (like everyone else) is struggling to hire enough workers, and they are all working from home.  Chances are that you stumbled upon someone new who needed help.  We all know just how great Carnival's IT systems are 😬

 

BTW, my cancellation took 1.5 hours on hold and 10 minutes with the representative.  I received my gift card refund that same day (overnight) and I am still waiting on my very small refund to my credit card (cancelled on Friday).

Edited by Schoifmom
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tm_aw_love

tm_aw_love

Posted
Posted

I can at least explain part of what was happening. Carnival (like just about any other company) uses 'tiers' of employees answering calls. The issue is that while the first tier person that you spoke to is more than capable of cancelling a booking they simply don't have the permissions to waive cancellation fees. The long wait was more than likely waiting in a queue for a person with appropriate permissions to waive the cancellation fees. That in conjunction with thousands of other people calling for the same reason creates a bottleneck. 

Giving EVERY employee the capability to perform a task like that opens such a large corporation up to a lot of risk. My suggestion (aside from some patience) is to manage your own booking online or use another person to manage your bookings for yourself (PVP, TA, etc.).

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groundloop

groundloop

Posted
Posted
39 minutes ago, eh24fan said:

People cancelling means prices should go down and ships should be sailing at reduced capacities.  I'm 100% ok with that right now!  

That's what I was thinking also, but while window shopping for any good deals yesterday I noticed that prices across the board appeared to have gone up a good bit.

 

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mbarker10

mbarker10

Posted
Posted
47 minutes ago, groundloop said:

That's what I was thinking also, but while window shopping for any good deals yesterday I noticed that prices across the board appeared to have gone up a good bit.

 

Yeah, my cruise on the Magic in a few weeks is higher than when we booked, plus we basically got Cheers 50% off. But people may not be cancelling for that one.

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Schoifmom

Schoifmom

Posted
Posted
45 minutes ago, mz-s said:

Why can't you cancel online? It takes seconds to click the button in the cruise manager.

 

I'm not sure that the cancellation penalties are automatically waved if you do that.  When I called in, she had to manually waive the penalties.

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Ilovesailaway

Ilovesailaway

Posted
Posted

Yup, times like these you either have a PVP or wish you did. I cruised a few weeks ago. I booked on my own on the website cause I was offered a great deal and pulled the trigger. It worked out but I did have a reason to talk to Carnival after my booking and I spent an unreasonable time on hold. That's when I decided that from now on I will use my reliable and complementary PVP.

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babygrljaz

babygrljaz

Posted
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1 hour ago, Schoifmom said:

 

I'm not sure that the cancellation penalties are automatically waved if you do that.  When I called in, she had to manually waive the penalties.

you're right they're not automatically waived.  i tried doing it online, my penalty would've been almost $200

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cruizergal70

cruizergal70

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, Schoifmom said:

 

I'm not sure that the cancellation penalties are automatically waved if you do that.  When I called in, she had to manually waive the penalties.

When you click the link, you get a pop up explaining your options.  I was emailed a letter noting that my deposit was non-refundable but I would be given FCC for the deposit minus $50 service fee.  It included a link to apply the FCC to a future cruise.

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mz-s

mz-s

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, walkintheplank said:

you're right they're not automatically waived.  i tried doing it online, my penalty would've been almost $200

Don Kehote.    

 

∆This is the correct answer∆

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That is absolutely ridiculous. No excuse for that one Carnival.

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tm_aw_love

tm_aw_love

Posted
Posted
18 minutes ago, mz-s said:

 

That is absolutely ridiculous. No excuse for that one Carnival.

No excuse for what? Charging cancellation fees?

It's simple call your PVP or Travel Agent, they will take care of that for you.... otherwise, call and speak to a representative that will be more than happy to have the cancellation fees waived. 

 

Cancellations is not the normal way that Carnival hopes to do business... why in the world would they never charge a cancellation fee?

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Spaniel Lover

Spaniel Lover

Posted
Posted

When I first started cruising, I just couldn't figure out why people used travel agents to book a cruise when you could do it all yourself without having to explain to anyone what you wanted.  I always booked my cruises directly with the cruise line.

Later, I made a complete change of mind.  Now I always book cruises through a travel agent.  The reason is that the more I cruised, the more I realized that unexpected things happen and sometimes you need to reach the cruise line to change something or to fix a mess.  It's never easy to reach the cruise line, and I hate sitting on hold with them for so long.  I'd much rather explain to my travel agent what I need, and let the travel agent get it done.  I love getting an email from my travel agent saying that she's taken care of everything for me.

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