I love Princess, but...

[Waimea'sMom]

One thing that drives me crazy is that they will never discuss a booking with you over the phone...only directly through your TA. We called today just to confirm final payment had been made on our 11/3 booking, and to question why our onboard credits were not showing in Cruise Personalizer for our 8/29 or 11/3 cruises. Princess refused to discuss either with us over the phone and said they would only give that info to our travel agent.

 

Normally I would have no problem with this, but my agent on my 8/29 cruise actually charged me for final payment but never paid Princess. It was only because a kind Princess customer service person informed me we were about to lose our cabin because our final payment had never been made. After frantic phone calls to our TA, we finally got it sorted and didn't lose our booking. But needless to say this (and the fact they failed to get the insurance for one of our group) led us to abandon that TA and choose our new one.

 

I have complete faith in my new TA that they probably DID make our final payment last week, but I am (understandably I think) nervous after the last fiasco. I also don't doubt our shipboard credit exists but is merely not showing in Personalizer (and this is for both of us in the cabin, not just the secondary party), but I still wanted confirmation.

 

All of this doesn't even include my frustration over having the booking/payment section of Personalizer vanish after I transferred my direct booking to a TA.

 

I understand Princess would rather deal with the TA on most items, maybe even all. But I fail to understand how my simple questions on these most basic topics are forbidden discussions.

 

I am at the point where I am resolving to refuse to book with a TA on any more future sailings, just so I can retain control over my own booking. Can anyone out there shed some light on why Princess is so maddeningly ridiculous on this area.

 

Before you flame me, read my cruise history. I am Platinum, and soon to be Elite. My Mom is Elite. We love Princess as a general rule and are not going to stop cruising on them over this, it just ticks me off.:mad:

[cynt]

I feel your frustration. This happened to me two cruises ago and now I always book directly with the cruiseline. I'm a hands on kind of person and after my last fiasco I told myself let's keep it simple book directly w/ the cruiseline and save yourself the headaches. It's been smooth sailing every since. Yes, I would love to have the little perks that the TA and online agencies offer but to keep my peace of mind I'm doing just fine without them.

[Coral]

I understand your point and also understand Princess's point. It is also obvious why you are gun shy.

 

I think the main issue here is that the agreement between Princess and the Travel Agent is that the TA will handle all issues. With Princess dealing directly with you, the agent may get upset because they are breaking the agreement they made with Princess. I think we both know what would happen if both the passenger called Princess with changes and the agent called Princess with changes and something went wrong - it would be a pointing game over who screwed up the booking. So the theory they operate on, I understand.

 

There are ways to check if final payment was made - you can call your credit card and see if a charge was made.

 

In the future - I definitely think you would be more at ease booking with Princess directly. Given your circumstance, most of us can understand why you would.

[carqueen1]

I always book directly with the cruise line after being mislead many times through various cruise lines. At least that way if there is a mistake, I can only blame myself!:D

[swscruiser]

All the cruise lines we've cruised with have had the same policy, so its not just Princess.

 

Keith