Balance due after cruise was paid for !

[Smmessineo]

Help talk me off the ledge here. My January 21 Ascent cruise was paid for back in October. I have the pdfs showing zero balance, and my website account showed zero balance as recently as yesterday. Tonight, I went into the account to add a celebration note to the sailing, and it has an alert to pay over $1500 dollars or my cruise could be  cancelled. Now it's locked, so I can't even look at it again. I'm on hold with Celebrity, with an estimated 2 hour wait.

I just bid on a move up today....did this f#$% up my booking and rebook it at the current rate or something crazy like that . I'm beyond freaking out, this was our first AQ room and the second half of a b2b and I'm worried it will be screwed up. 

Anyone else going through this?

[mahasamatman]

There have been several reports of this recently. Suffice it to day that Celebrity's IT sucks.

[Smmessineo]

I think I can see where their error is.  The amount per person that shows on the website page now  is exactly the amount per person on my  pdf. But of course, there are many deductions from this amount on my real booking , which the PDF shows....such as % off for second passenger, $100 off pp from whatever sale it was, etc.

So somehow Celebrity's website or accounting,  lost all the deductions and thinks I need to pay the full cruise fare with no deductions.

If they boot my reservation, I'll lose my AQ stateroom. 

I really hope my upgrade bid didn't trigger this somehow. It's my first time trying that and I'll never do it again 😟

[563toM]

I have seen the weirdest things happen and that's why I always have screenshots as well as printed copies of the bookings.  I had a cruise booked thru a big box store and the final payment wasn't due yet.  I called directly to RC to add on about a food allergy.  

 

I was updating all paperwork for our cruises with due dates, balance amounts and double checking with the account online with big box travel.  I notice the one where I called about the food allergy now has a remaining balance that is over $500 higher.  I call big box travel and they reach out to RC which tries to state that on that date I called to upgrade our room.  My husband deals in business and he taught me years ago when you call a client you always make notes of date, time, name of person you talked to and quick recap.  I recapped those notes to the big box travel and said I only contacted them once and named the date as well as the name of the person I talked to.  It took about 30 minutes but big box came back to tell me that RC is going to adjust the bill...I would accept nothing less as a contract is a contract.  Anymore I don't think these are accidents but deliberate tries to get a little extra money here and there.

[Smmessineo]

After around 90 minutes on hold, the Celebrity rep I reached was very helpful. She also didn't seem surprised at all and immediately knew that all the promo codes had dropped off the reservation. I'm guessing this is a common problem. She said sometimes the smallest change to a reservation causes this to happen.  So even me adding a special occasion note? She did not think bidding on an upgrade triggered it.

She passed the info onto someone who fixed it, while I stayed on hold. So a great experience with customer service but a panic  attack from their accounting software.

[chemmo]

14 minutes ago, Smmessineo said:

After around 90 minutes on hold, the Celebrity rep I reached was very helpful. She also didn't seem surprised at all and immediately knew that all the promo codes had dropped off the reservation. I'm guessing this is a common problem. She said sometimes the smallest change to a reservation causes this to happen.  So even me adding a special occasion note? She did not think bidding on an upgrade triggered it.

She passed the info onto someone who fixed it, while I stayed on hold. So a great experience with customer service but a panic  attack from their accounting software.

Sadly it seems to be all too frequent. We have had similar situations twice. The first time four weeks before our cruise we received quite a challenging email saying if we didn’t pay the outstanding balance of £0.12 our cruise would be cancelled and on the second occasion an email saying if our outstanding balance of $0 wasn’t paid our cruise would be cancelled…even more bizarre as we had paid in £…On both occasions the staff had no idea where the emails had come from (generated). Staff were helpful and sorted things out but, as you say, didn’t seem the least surprised…On the positive side we did receive some extra OBC for our trouble the first time!

 

 

[keesar]

Similar issues with us.  I was checking my reservation and then logged out.  The next morning, I noted that the price had gone up by thousands as all of the discounts were gone.  Spent nearly 2 hours on the phone and eventually all was restored except for the correct OBC amount.  Going on 3 weeks and still waiting.  Then last week, I paid the balance due and received a $0 balance due.  A couple of days later, started getting emails about balance due even though the agents said nothing is due. Said it would be adjusted that day. Did not happen.   Now saying it will take another week to 10 days to resolve the issue to stop the emails and removing the balance due on My Reservation.  Frustrating...  

 

Just received yet another reminder of balance due.  Notices are arriving daily!

Edited November 25, 2023 by keesar

[WrittenOnYourHeart]

I just emailed my TA to ask her to double check that my balance due hasn’t changed since my whole debacle with the disappearing OBC happened. That got resolved, but now I am paranoid that my balance due may be much higher than it’s supposed to be. I figure better to catch it early if there’s a problem.

[TMLAalum]

This happened to me earlier in the year when I received an email from the BBTA warning my cruise would be cancelled because the balance hadn't been paid! The invoice was wrong with a higher amount owed as well as a much larger amount of a cash card rebate based on the inflated price! The BB clarified everything with Celebrity so all was well. My big surprise was that the cash card awaiting us was for the big bucks!

 

I didn't realize the glitch was the fault of Celebrity!

[LoveThatCorgi]

2 hours ago, Smmessineo said:

After around 90 minutes on hold, the Celebrity rep I reached was very helpful. She also didn't seem surprised at all and immediately knew that all the promo codes had dropped off the reservation. I'm guessing this is a common problem. She said sometimes the smallest change to a reservation causes this to happen.  So even me adding a special occasion note? She did not think bidding on an upgrade triggered it.

She passed the info onto someone who fixed it, while I stayed on hold. So a great experience with customer service but a panic  attack from their accounting software.

Even something as small as changing dining time from early fixed to waitlisting anytime dining, having FBC make a change to flights, or adding a special occasion to the reservation can cause this. The first time it happened, I panicked, of course.  My Celebrity cruise planner assured me all was fine, and he took care of it while I waited on the phone. Anytime since then, I have emailed him my last correct confirmation and asked him if he could take a look. He usually has it corrected in a few hours. Yes, it has happened multiple times on the same reservation!  😉

[horseymike]

2 hours ago, Smmessineo said:

After around 90 minutes on hold, the Celebrity rep I reached was very helpful. She also didn't seem surprised at all and immediately knew that all the promo codes had dropped off the reservation. I'm guessing this is a common problem. She said sometimes the smallest change to a reservation causes this to happen.  So even me adding a special occasion note? She did not think bidding on an upgrade triggered it.

She passed the info onto someone who fixed it, while I stayed on hold. So a great experience with customer service but a panic  attack from their accounting software.

Very happy that this was resolved for you. Hope you have a great cruise 🚢 

[kands6191]

I'm glad I read this post today. I had put in a MoveUp bid yesterday and logged in to manage the reservation today to see if my room number changed (cruise is 12/2/23) and noticed it said I had better pay the balance due or be cancelled.  Long story short, I called about it.  We determined that when I cancelled and rebooked the drink package earlier this week to take advantage of the Black Friday sale, Celebrity applied the refund amount (just for one person, go figure) to the cost of the cruise!  Now I am in limbo waiting for an additional refund credit to process before they will take payment from me to even it out.  I started a thread about it if anyone is interested.  I'm on pins and needles now hoping this truly gets resolved.

 

Thanks to the OP because my first instinct was to just rely on my zero balance invoice and blame it on Celebrity's bad IT department showing the wrong display.

[1Virgo]

we had issue awhile back with looking as though we owed 💰💰💰 on a fully paid for cruise.  Celeb said when they looked, it showed all good, yet logging into my account, numbers were sure didn't match.    Explanation, they see different on screen.  Incompetent software more likely

[WrittenOnYourHeart]

Seems to be an issue with fully paid cruises. Mine is not fully paid yet (doesn’t have to be until April) so mine still shows the same amount due per my TA who I emailed yesterday to check since I had the issue with my OBC disappearing.

 

Note to self: don’t touch anything once it is PIF!!

 

Good luck to all dealing with this!!

[Smmessineo]

3 minutes ago, WrittenOnYourHeart said:

Seems to be an issue with fully paid cruises. Mine is not fully paid yet (doesn’t have to be until April) so mine still shows the same amount due per my TA who I emailed yesterday to check since I had the issue with my OBC disappearing.

 

Note to self: don’t touch anything once it is PIF!!

 

Good luck to all dealing with this!!

I am thinking the same thing about my future cruises....once I've paid in full, no changes ! I've had to add "check reservations" to my daily routine now 🙄.

My biggest concern with this particular problem was if they cancelled the cruise, I'm sure they could somewhat fix it, but my state room category is now sold out so I'd miss out on Aqua. 

[keesar]

1 hour ago, WrittenOnYourHeart said:

Seems to be an issue with fully paid cruises. Mine is not fully paid yet (doesn’t have to be until April) so mine still shows the same amount due per my TA who I emailed yesterday to check since I had the issue with my OBC disappearing.

 

Note to self: don’t touch anything once it is PIF!!

 

Good luck to all dealing with this!!

Good advice.  However, 3 weeks ago, my cruise fare went up by $3500 overnight and all of the discounts and OBC disappeared.  And this was before final payment was due.  It is advisable to periodically check your reservations.

[WrittenOnYourHeart]

6 minutes ago, keesar said:

Good advice.  However, 3 weeks ago, my cruise fare went up by $3500 overnight and all of the discounts and OBC disappeared.  And this was before final payment was due.  It is advisable to periodically check your reservations.

That's why I have a TA. 🙂

[keesar]

8 minutes ago, WrittenOnYourHeart said:

That's why I have a TA. 🙂

I wonder how many people just pay the amount due? Especially when there are words like cancelling your cruise.   I was about to pay the amount but then I realized that it was the same amount of OBC  that I was short-changed.  That was a red flag for me and I then did some math.  

[Lena11033]

2 hours ago, WrittenOnYourHeart said:

Seems to be an issue with fully paid cruises. Mine is not fully paid yet (doesn’t have to be until April) so mine still shows the same amount due per my TA who I emailed yesterday to check since I had the issue with my OBC disappearing.

 

Note to self: don’t touch anything once it is PIF!!

 

Good luck to all dealing with this!!

 

I paid in full in Oct because of the stories I kept hearing of having to call and sort out why suddenly there was money owing (due date was Nov 12 anyway). Now I randomly keep going to check it still says $0