Port taxes not refunded for missed port

[firefly333]

31 minutes ago, Jimbo said:

Guess a way a cruise lines could make more money is just when they first list a cruise for sale is to jam pack it with port stops everyday....................then after final payment then go into the itinerary and start chopping ports stops off it and don't refund any money back to anyone on that ship.

 

Seems fair ?

 

Kind of dealing with your Panama Canal reference right now, sad part is though Royal hasn't come to me and said we are going to give you a refund, because we chopped some port stops off your itinerary...............This is for a Cruise on Radiance of the Seas October 2023..........Guess they are still working on my refund huh? Also the ship is pretty much FULL all ready, so they should be able to refund some port charges for axed ports. But you know we won't see it happen. They have been messing with this ships itinerary since the day it was posted.   

 

Only thing I'm sure of  it is we  are going through the Canal, because it starts in San Diego and ends in Tampa.........where else we are going is anyones guess?

I'm with you as I also do carnival and if you overpay they give you obc. 

 

If I lay for cayman jamaica and cozumel and get changed to cozumel costa maya and roatan and port fees drop carnival gives you back the difference.

 

I wrote to mbayley and they said since they dont charge if fees go up they dont refund if port fees go down. .. admitting sometimes fees are less than they collected, they just dont refund. I wrote the 2nd time because they also didnt dock in costa maya. Waves too rough last march. 

 

I have the email. .. they dont refund if port fees drop. Per mbayley office. 

[Jimbo]

36 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

And, has booking been stopped on this cruise one year in advance?  Nope.  Not sure how you can figure how many are actually going to sail on the cruise, even if nearly fully booked.  Port fee refunds generally don't go out until the ship has sailed.  The other fact is that the Panama Canal has just passed a new toll structure, to take effect on Jan 2023.  I would expect that your port fees were calculated on the toll structure in place when you booked, and could be considerably higher next year.

Interesting info,  that might be  a reason why once this cruise was listed for sale. Either the ship sold really, really fast or the cruise line decided to put a block of the sailing from being booked. Because after about 2 weeks on sale you couldn't find a balcony or suite to book of any kind.

 

Just a few insides and outsides cabins is all you could find.

 

Could it be they are waiting until Jan 2023 to open up bookings again once the cruise line knows for sure just what the amount will be for the charge to go through the canal.

 

I bet then we see Suites and Balconies available again with much higher port charges then we paid.

[ARandomTraveler]

12 hours ago, Jimbo said:

I'm just saying, say they  estimate when I book that the ship will sail with 2500 passengers, so I get charged an X amount to cover the entire port charges...........but when the ship  actually sails there are 3000 passengers..........okay so there now is a pretty good bet they have more port charges money then needed......if as you say port charges are done by the size of the ship. Where does that  extra money go? if they don't refund it to the passengers?

Oh ok, I get what you're saying. Yeah, I guess they just keep it and maybe use it to cover other sailings where they under-collected. I'm ok with that. How they handle their accounting doesn't really concern me, as long as the price I paid for my cruise is a price I'm comfortable paying, I honestly never even pay attention to the breakdown of the charges. I just look at the total. If I'm owed $10 or $30 or whatever the port fees are, I don't really care if they give it back or keep it. If keeping it makes their accounting work so they can operate at a profit that keeps them providing the product and service that I enjoy, that's ok with me. I've already paid it, so it's spent money.