Celebrity Added More to My Balance Even Though I Paid the Balance When I Made the Reservation

[marshacruises]

I made a reservation online on February 15, 2023 for a cruise on April 7, 2023.  I made full payment at the time I made the reservation.  My credit card showed the charge on my account that same day.  Celebrity sent three different emails to me, showing the total for the cruise, the amount paid, and the balance owing of $0.00. Twice since then, Celebrity has posted that I owe another $6401 for this reservation.  I have called twice and spent over three hours total (on hold and waiting for the representative to figure out what was causing the problem, and how to fix it) trying to get the problem resolved.  Today, the representative was not very knowledgeable about the problem, and was not at all apologetic for all the time and effort I had to put into getting Celebrity to fix a problem that I had not caused.  If this were my company, I would hire and train people to be apologetic for problems and to fix the problem without making it seem like the customer was in some way to blame.  Has anyone else had problems with being charged by Celebrity even though they had fully paid the balance?

[Baynanno1]

Have you seen this thread which was started yesterday?

 

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2926791-final-price-increased-by-over-3000-celebrity-refuses-to-honor-it/page/2/

 

[C4HCG]

26 minutes ago, marshacruises said:

I made a reservation online on February 15, 2023 for a cruise on April 7, 2023.  I made full payment at the time I made the reservation.  My credit card showed the charge on my account that same day.  Celebrity sent three different emails to me, showing the total for the cruise, the amount paid, and the balance owing of $0.00. Twice since then, Celebrity has posted that I owe another $6401 for this reservation.  I have called twice and spent over three hours total (on hold and waiting for the representative to figure out what was causing the problem, and how to fix it) trying to get the problem resolved.  Today, the representative was not very knowledgeable about the problem, and was not at all apologetic for all the time and effort I had to put into getting Celebrity to fix a problem that I had not caused.  If this were my company, I would hire and train people to be apologetic for problems and to fix the problem without making it seem like the customer was in some way to blame.  Has anyone else had problems with being charged by Celebrity even though they had fully paid the balance?

I would be worried about the cruise - its next week! How do you stand for it?

[TrueCruiseaholic]

I'm very sorry to read about this.

 

I also posted on the other thread that was previously referenced with this same information.

 

Another cruiser had prices changed on them because the price was an "error" on Celebrity's behalf. This was the Silhouette in 2024/25 for which the threads about the price change have all been removed.

 

 

Upon escalation, a corporate representative informed the guest that Celebrity has the ability to change the price of a booking at any time for any reason. An example being, Celebrity claims they can increase your cruise fare at their discretion at any time including embarkation day.

 

I hope this gets resolved, but Celebrity asserts that they can charge whatever they want. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you, but after I heard this information, I am much more uneasy about booking any future cruises.

[purpledew]

This happend to me on my April 15 cruise.  Called 3 times the last representive said somehow that the residency rate fell off that is why I was charge for full price.  After she fixed that my balance was zero.

Edited March 28, 2023 by purpledew

[marshacruises]

I have read the other post (Final Price Increased...), and see that they have not yet paid the final balance, so that is different from my situation because I paid the total amount when I made the reservation.  But it does seem that Celebrity is having trouble with the computer system.  Again, no surprise there, since there are a large number of posts over the years about the Celebrity computer system.  Still, we passengers should not have to keep calling, waiting on hold, then talking to different people to get the problem solved, when it is Celebrity that is responsible for the error/problem. Thanks for the comments from Cruise Critic's helpful and friendly posters.  

I have printed all the paperwork from Celebrity's emails, and website, showing that my balance has been paid, and I owe $0.00.  If I run into a problem, when I board on April 7, I have a paper trail to prove that I paid in full.  

[purpledew]

I booked mine on March 17th or April 15th cruise.  Paid in full at time of booking.  Invoice said 

Balance Due: 0.00
Final Payment Due: 0.00

When log into my Celebrity account it show I have a balance 1,420.00 need to be pay by March 17th.

[Georgia_Peaches]

45 minutes ago, marshacruises said:

I have printed all the paperwork from Celebrity's emails, and website, showing that my balance has been paid, and I owe $0.00.  If I run into a problem, when I board on April 7, I have a paper trail to prove that I paid in full.  

You just need to make sure they don’t cancel your booking under the assumption that you still owe money. Showing up on embarkation day only to find you’ve been cancelled is a double whammy. Please keep us posted on this most disturbing trend. 

[Georgia_Peaches]

4 hours ago, TrueCruiseaholic said:

Upon escalation, a corporate representative informed the guest that Celebrity has the ability to change the price of a booking at any time for any reason. An example being, Celebrity claims they can increase your cruise fare at their discretion at any time including embarkation day.

I don’t doubt you on this bc reading the contractual fine print is daunting and admittedly, I’ve never done it. But doesn’t the customer have any guarantees in the cruise contract as well? Like, I paid your asking price now honor your end of the contract?  Seems pretty shady that a company could get away with such. As an example, for the last 12 years I’ve rolled over a car lease into a new car every three years. I’m coming to the end of my lease and the dealer is chomping at the bit to get their hands on my little low mileage red sporty. But not so fast. Cars like mine are twice what they were in 2020 so we are going to buy it per the terms of the lease contract for far less than they could get in today’s market. Could they decide to change the price on me now that they know they could get more?  I think not bc it’s a contracted price to which we both agreed. How does the cruise line get away with this practice?

[TrueCruiseaholic]

9 hours ago, Georgia_Peaches said:

But doesn’t the customer have any guarantees in the cruise contract as well? Like, I paid your asking price now honor your end of the contract? 

 

 Could they decide to change the price on me now that they know they could get more?  I think not bc it’s a contracted price to which we both agreed. How does the cruise line get away with this practice?

The information given by a corporate representative was that Celebrity has the ability/right (whatever you want to call it and yes we would have to delve into legalese which nobody wants) to rectify any pricing error at any time. What Celebrity defines as a pricing error is definitely a good question.

 

The concern is that this policy could be a slippery slope that allows Celebrity to increase prices after booking if they think they can get more money for bookings. This is essentially what happened with the Silhouette in 2024/25 - some person or people concluded that the prices were too low (whether the prices were mistakenly set or not).

 

I am not a lawyer so I have no understanding of what Celebrity can or can't legally do. I also am unaware of exactly what legal protection is afforded to the consumer.

[mayleeman]

1 hour ago, TrueCruiseaholic said:

The information given by a corporate representative was that Celebrity has the ability/right (whatever you want to call it and yes we would have to delve into legalese which nobody wants) to rectify any pricing error at any time. What Celebrity defines as a pricing error is definitely a good question.

 

The concern is that this policy could be a slippery slope that allows Celebrity to increase prices after booking if they think they can get more money for bookings. This is essentially what happened with the Silhouette in 2024/25 - some person or people concluded that the prices were too low (whether the prices were mistakenly set or not).

 

I am not a lawyer so I have no understanding of what Celebrity can or can't legally do. I also am unaware of exactly what legal protection is afforded to the consumer.

 

I spent my career as a lawyer and a judge, and I can assure that Celebrity has not reserved the right to change prices willy nilly for any reason, as your first post said. Your new post--that they can correct errors--is correct. The Silhouette initial prices were all demonstrated by a diligent poster to be errors (including a chart of how aberrant they were), and were all corrected and cruisers notified soon after booking. They all were given the opportunity to cancel with no penalty. I suspect the threads were removed because of baseless accusations of fraudulent repricing.

 

Problems like the OP has here are clearly mistakes, and not an effort to arbitrarily extort one cruiser's money.

 

That being said, it is definitely horrendous for any business not to have an immediate path for someone in OP's predicament to get it fixed. And the errors should be cleared up with respect and some type of compensation. Most importantly, they should fix the causes.

Edited March 29, 2023 by mayleeman

[marshacruises]

Reading several responses to my post, makes me think that the best way to be sure that you don't have any problems at embarkation is to check the Celebrity website every day, verify that they have your reservation correct, and call them if they don't.  It means that you are spending your time and energy to make sure that Celebrity does not spring any surprises on you.  I had not gotten any emails from Celebrity that I still had a balance due, I was just checking on making dining reservations when I saw the balance due on my account on the Celebrity website.  I keep hoping that Celebrity someday gets their computer programmers to understand how the company works and figure out how not to have so many "glitches".  They would start to save money on not having to hire so many people in the customer service department, and have a lot happier customers.  

[TeeRick]

6 minutes ago, marshacruises said:

Reading several responses to my post, makes me think that the best way to be sure that you don't have any problems at embarkation is to check the Celebrity website every day, verify that they have your reservation correct, and call them if they don't.  It means that you are spending your time and energy to make sure that Celebrity does not spring any surprises on you.  I had not gotten any emails from Celebrity that I still had a balance due, I was just checking on making dining reservations when I saw the balance due on my account on the Celebrity website.  I keep hoping that Celebrity someday gets their computer programmers to understand how the company works and figure out how not to have so many "glitches".  They would start to save money on not having to hire so many people in the customer service department, and have a lot happier customers.  

Celebrity outsources their IT function and website as many corporations do.   But they do contract and pay for this outsourcing and should expect better service.  They also outsource their call center function.

[Ferry_Watcher]

19 hours ago, marshacruises said:

Twice since then, Celebrity has posted that I owe another $6401 for this reservation.

 

Is it possible that you may have booked 2 staterooms?  $6,401 is a fair bit of money, especially as an add-on to an existing held stateroom.  I do check-in in Seattle, and once I had a passenger who was flagged to speak to the Pier Coordinator, and it turned out that she had 2 bookings, one with a travel agent that she got annoyed with, but didn't cancel (or the agent didn't cancel the booking), and the other stateroom the passenger booked herself.  We had the passenger acknowledge that pier-side staff informed her of the additional amount that was still owed, but there wasn't anything that the check-in staff could do.  The passenger had to deal with the cruise line directly.

[marshacruises]

Ferry_Watcher:  I don't show two staterooms on my account.  I did sit down and try to figure out where the $6401 came from and found that adding up the discount for second guest (at the time it was 75% off second guest, offered in a mailer addressed to me personally) and a couple of smaller discounts offered in that same package, the total was $6401.  It was just an error on the part of Celebrity where the special code for the package was deleted at some point.  But the same error was made on my reservation two different times!  I had to call and spend a lot of my time trying to get their error fixed.  That is what is so frustrating.  I have worked in customer service for most of my career and understand that mistakes can happen.  The sign of a good company is what they do to fix the error.  

 

Thanks to everyone who has posted about my post.  I hope that maybe someone in Celebrity who cares and has the authority to fix the problem sees this.  

 

Edited March 29, 2023 by marshacruises

[DCPIV]

11 hours ago, marshacruises said:

Reading several responses to my post, makes me think that the best way to be sure that you don't have any problems at embarkation is to check the Celebrity website every day, verify that they have your reservation correct, and call them if they don't.  It means that you are spending your time and energy to make sure that Celebrity does not spring any surprises on you.  I had not gotten any emails from Celebrity that I still had a balance due, I was just checking on making dining reservations when I saw the balance due on my account on the Celebrity website.  I keep hoping that Celebrity someday gets their computer programmers to understand how the company works and figure out how not to have so many "glitches".  They would start to save money on not having to hire so many people in the customer service department, and have a lot happier customers.  

 

Just be sure to get your "guest copy" invoice when you make the reservation abs whenever you make any changes or payments (especially final payment). That way, you have a record as well as something to compare should something go awry.

[awhcruiser]

Maybe use a TA instead of booking directly with Celebrity?    A good TA would find a resolution to the problem and he/she would be spending the hours on the phone.

Edited March 31, 2023 by awhcruiser

[blue67]

The same gaszjust happened to me. I booked our first cruise with Celebrity yesterday and paid in full. Today, "My Account" online shows an outstanding balance of £244. I've spent hours trying to work out what it relates to until I found this thread. My heart has sank! 😒

[Bo1953]

4 minutes ago, blue67 said:

The same gaszjust happened to me. I booked our first cruise with Celebrity yesterday and paid in full. Today, "My Account" online shows an outstanding balance of £244. I've spent hours trying to work out what it relates to until I found this thread. My heart has sank! 😒

b67 let your heart and spirits rise!!!

 

It most likely is an IT issue and will get sorted once you speak with someone at X or your TA wherever you booked the sailing.

 

Once you get on-board you will look back and laugh and start the enjoyment of your holiday, for sure!!!

 

bon voyage

[blue67]

Hopefully so. Although not a great start having to make phone calls, only 1 day after booking, to query what appears to be their error.

[Bo1953]

2 minutes ago, blue67 said:

Hopefully so. Although not a great start having to make phone calls, only 1 day after booking, to query what appears to be their error.

I understand... not too much fun.

 

Just think, once resolved you can continue, in earnest, planning for your great sailing ahead!!!

 

Which sailing have you booked???

 

bon voyage

[blue67]

It's the 7 night med cruise from Rome on Celebrity Edge in September. Sure I'll be really looking forward to it once this niggly issue is resolved 🤞👍

[Rustyman]

Similar issue with us, had a few new invoices for our cruise all several hundred more than the price agreed and documented. Wasted hours speaking to various Celebrity customer services staff and each one is a new adventure. Really getting annoyed by the lack of competence and considering pulling the plug on all our booked cruises.

Had various excuses including wrong code added and have had battles getting the correct OBC reinstated. My patience is running out and I wonder how Celebrity can continue with this mess which is not a one off as we encounter this situation frequently on booking direct.

By the way we book direct to use a Blue Light Card,  ever had such problems when using a TA.

[scrapcreator]

I received an email late on July 8th letting me know that due to recent changes in my 8/9/23 Apex cruise, I owed $70+ and that (something) would be canceled if I didn’t pay by 7/11. Not sure what they were going to cancel since the link went to my main cruise reservation page.

 

Problem is that that no changes had been made, cruise had been fully paid a while ago, the last restaurant reservation had been made in March. 

 

Strangely, the same thing happened a couple of months ago for our 7/31 cruise for over $200.

 

I called our big box TA who then called Celebrity. It sounds like some of our OBC fell off? (Why only some and not all? 🤷‍♀️)

 

All I know is that I’ll be bringing copies of my paperwork and my emails.

[Arimaren]

On 3/28/2023 at 2:34 PM, marshacruises said:

I made a reservation online on February 15, 2023 for a cruise on April 7, 2023.  I made full payment at the time I made the reservation.  My credit card showed the charge on my account that same day.  Celebrity sent three different emails to me, showing the total for the cruise, the amount paid, and the balance owing of $0.00. Twice since then, Celebrity has posted that I owe another $6401 for this reservation.  I have called twice and spent over three hours total (on hold and waiting for the representative to figure out what was causing the problem, and how to fix it) trying to get the problem resolved.  Today, the representative was not very knowledgeable about the problem, and was not at all apologetic for all the time and effort I had to put into getting Celebrity to fix a problem that I had not caused.  If this were my company, I would hire and train people to be apologetic for problems and to fix the problem without making it seem like the customer was in some way to blame.  Has anyone else had problems with being charged by Celebrity even though they had fully paid the balance?