WTH is Celebrity doing with our Japan cruise?!

[luckybecky]

Very long story: I'll try to make it short. I've posted a few times about this saga on the very long thread about Celebrity canceling many Japan cruisers due to an oversold situation.

 

We wanted to volunteer to be canceled. It would work for us and would open up our two cabins for cruisers who did not want to be canceled. We know there are many very unhappy cruisers who are being involuntarily canceled so we thought this could potentially be a win-win. It works for us, and hopefully also for Celebrity. Hoping it would work like an oversold flight; the airlines taking volunteers before involuntarily bumping people. We hoped this would be how it could work for us.

 

We have called our big box TA several times about this and gotten different answers from Celebrity EVERY SINGLE TIME including multiple different answers within the same call.

 

First, they said, sure, we can do that! We will refund your deposit to your original form of payment. More than we asked for! We were just hoping for FCC. Then in the SAME phone call, after we said, "great! we'll take it!" they immediately rescinded the offer.

 

Another time they said they would give FCC. Great! We'll take it! Then when I called a couple of days later to follow up (since we had received no confirmation of this agreement) they said they could do no such thing. We had a lengthy three way call with our TA and Celebrity; the TA read them the notes of our prior call which documented that Celebrity had offered FCC. Celebrity said, "I'm not saying you're lying, but we will have to pull the recorded call to review what we said to you. " They said our reservation for both cabins is still active, although our TA is showing one of them as cancelled.

 

And that is where things stood last time we spoke on Friday. Celebrity told us to give them a few days to conduct their review of our phone call. 

 

This evening I happened to be checking my credit card account and see a credit for $900 from Celebrity -- the full amount of the deposit for one of our two cabins. And one cabin is cancelled on the Celebrity website -- it was not cancelled last time we spoke on Friday.

 

Meanwhile, the price of our other cabin was increased by $100 per person. (And the final payment date was moved from mid June to early July.) WTH?  Can they just randomly tack on an extra $200 to the booking after we booked? Why would they move the payment date? But most of all, every conversation we had with the about this cruise involved BOTH cabins. We are a family traveling together and do not want to change one booking without changing the other. What the heck are they doing, and do we have any recourse? Now that they have canceled one cabin, we really don't know where we stand.

[Fly and Sail]

Email the Executive Office! Shenangigans.

[cruisestitch]

We feel your pain.  Celebrity has mishandled this so badly……..

[Georgia_Peaches]

Agree that Celebrity should have jumped at the opportunity to take volunteers willing to cancel in lieu of randomly cancelling others.  Seems like some things just need to be handled by upper management from the get-go.  Good luck getting this sorted out.

[jelayne]

It is possible that the cancellation of 2 cabins involved 2 separate transactions which are processed separately.  Be may have gone through before the other, this occurred with cancellations during Covid. Particularly with bookings that had shore excursions, specialty dining or other purchases on the reservation.   Those transactions have to be reversed and then the cancellation of the cruise processed. I would wait a day or 2 and see if the second cancellation is processed.  
As for the extra charge, since you plan to cancel that reservation I wouldn’t bother with it as it I’ll disappear with the cancellation

[luckybecky]

Thanks to all who responded. I called our TA again today. Before calling, our inside cabin was still showing as an active booking on our TA website. 

 

After yet another lengthy call, it was announced that both cabin deposits are going to be refunded in full, AND they are giving us each an FCC for an equal amount! 

 

This is more than we expected or asked for, but after all the hassle we are happy to take it! Maybe after all the negative press and so many very unhappy customers, someone at Celebrity has determined to do some damage control.

 

At this point I still have nothing in writing -- and I specifically asked for an email confirmation which they said they cannot provide. But I was given an FCC certificate number for each of us. We are still waiting for our kids' deposits to be returned, which they said would take 7-10 days. But it seems hopeful. 

 

Thanks again for the replies to our predicament. I hope things turn out equally well for the many people who have been affected by this oversold situation. 

[canloan]

Glad this has worked out well for you. Such a shame that you needed to go through this.

 

How Celebrity has handled this "oversold" situation overall is extremely poor for all of us who have been impacted.

 

Their handling of this on so many levels is definitely not a case study for demonstrating  ethical business practices or wise customer and stakeholder relations (IMHO).