Why are Cruise Planner purchases "tethered" to a specific cruise?

[Dad2Cue]

I'm just wondering why cruise planner purchases can't be transferred to another cruise. I do understand that the prices vary from one cruise to another.  It seems the prices could be "standardized" but that is another issue.  My problem is with the thousands, maybe millions of refunds being generated every time there is a cruise planner sale or when someone changes a sail date or cancels a cruise.  Also, many times the refund is split in two - one for my wife and another for me even though the original payment was one transaction.

Since I'm seriously considering changing a cruise from this year to next year, my understanding is that it can be done easily since my  booking is refundable and outside the 90 day full payment window.  However, I believe my cruise planner purchases can't be transfered to the new cruise and will be refunded---why can't they be transfered too??  I dread having to wait for those refunds to materialize before repurchasing the same things for the rescheduled cruise.  Why is it not possible to transfer what I have already spent to the new cruise in the form of an OBC that shows up in the cruise planner.  That way, I could repurchase everything on the cruise planner during a sale or spend it later on the cruise.  It seems it would save a lot of refunds and repurchase transactions.

[CrznTxn]

Understand your pain, have the same issue on several cruises. Not sure if the Royal IT group could keep up with that :). Fortunately for us the refunds came quickly to cover the new purchases. However, we still have a July cruise planned that we have not booked excursions until closer due to slow refunds of earlier cruise fare that has not come back.

[twangster]

We can only speculate why Royal is the way they are.

I suspect that each ship is a business unit and while we see it all as one big company, that's not how they are structured internally.  Transferring money between business units sounds easy to us but could have implications we can't imagine.  Compound that with aging legacy back-office support systems and it's just easier to make every clean for them by cancelling rather than having to maintain all the audit trails of where the money came from as it potentially moves multiple times around the company.  You just want to move it once to a new booking but what about the people that move stuff four or five times?  Maintaining that audit history as money moves between business units would be a logistical challenge without the systems in place designed to do so.  

At the end of that day, who knows?  

[Ampurp85]

Well I always thought that just because it is a ship doesn't mean they are the same ship...get it? What you propose doesn't even work when it comes to branding. Yum corporation owns KFC and Taco Bell, they are both restaurants but if you get a gift card from one, it cannot be used at another. Mariner and Allure are both owned by RCCI but differ in class and offering. There would be almost no way to standardize CP cost because it is relative to class, capacity, length etc. Therefore like @twangster said these ships are treated as separate units and when we book we do so with a specific unit. The only feasible, legal way to do what you are asking is to create an universal account, akin to a Visa gift card. But then you would have to put a balance down as opposed to paying specifically.

[Dad2Cue]

13 minutes ago, Ampurp85 said:

What you propose doesn't even work when it comes to branding. Yum corporation owns KFC and Taco Bell, they are both restaurants but if you get a gift card from one, it cannot be used at another. Mariner and Allure are both owned by RCCI but differ in class and offering.

I'm thinking about something akin to a purchased OBC that could be transfered from one ship to another and not the actual items purchased.  It could be itemized with the cruise fare, taxes and fees, gratuities and purchased OBC.  They don't seem to have any problem transfering the first three items from ship to ship when a cruise is rescheduled.   They just total up the amount paid and transfer it to the new reservation and don't even change the reservation number.

I was always impressed with the OBC they used to offer as part of a cruise package.  I could purchase something on the cruise planner with the OBC and the remaining OBC was displayed.  When a sale on the cruise planner happened I could instantly see the amount being "refunded" to the OBC and ready to be spent again. They seem to be capable of doing this so it is just a matter of transfering a dollar amount for the OBC from ship to ship.

[Ampurp85]

@Dad2Cue What you are implying is again a universal account. RCCI does not have an umbrella that all funds fall under, which gets dispersed to various offerings and then comes back to the fund when said offerings are refunded. There is a change fee to process a change in ship and itinerary, which goes along with the rest of my posting. Right now with Cruise for Confidence, they are waving the fee by turning said amount into FCC. Do you want to lose $100 every time you want to move OBC? Because they are way different, OBC is a different department with vastly different accounting records. Also remember that CP purchases primarily deal with vendors and other liabilities.

OBC is still a thing on CP that you can see. If I have $300 OBC and I buy an UDP for $179, it will say $121. If I return the UDP my OBC will update automatically because they never had to pull funds from anywhere. OBC is not real money but a perk. People who had OBC on cancelled cruises did not get that money in a refund, because it technically doesn't exist. So having to actually pull money from another source means they need a record..which is why there are fees for changes.

[Dad2Cue]

1 hour ago, Ampurp85 said:

So having to actually pull money from another source means they need a record..which is why there are fees for changes.

They must have some way to keep a record of it because they offered 125% future OBC for cruise planner purchases on cancelled cruises which can be used on any future cruise through 2021.  That is real money that people have paid and choose not to have it refunded --- only the extra 25% is a perk.

I understand what you are saying.  When my cruise was cancelled, I took the refund of my cruise planner purchases because I didn't think RCCI would be able to keep a record of it very well and I didn't have any future cruise to apply it to. 

In my example, I have a cruise that I want to reschedule to a different date in 2021. There is no change fee because I booked the cruise refundable and it isn't past the 90 day full payment date.  I simply want to apply the total dollar amount of my cruise planner purchases from the original cruise to the rescheduled cruise.  You would think RCCI would like that because they wouldn't need to process multiple credit card refunds AND they get to keep the money in exchange for a future OBC.

[DunkelBierJay]

I think it has to do with each Royal ship being a separate cost/profit center following the every tub on its own base. Logically, you could think of buying something at one target and returning it at another, but I think the balance sheet for each ship is so different that their systems wouldn't support such transfers. You could also make the argument that purchases are attached to your account instead of the ship. I would think that would be a huge change in their business philosophy.

[Ampurp85]

@Dad2Cue No I mean a new record. So every transaction is assigned a record, code, reference/transaction number etc. The OBC you described was not what is currently being offered. Most OBC is a perk, factored into the cost of a fare. In the case of the 125% OBC, which is again a perk, my understanding is it once used situation. By allowing them to hold your funds and create interest they will increase your CP funds by 25% and that amount can be applied to one future cruise only. There is no reason to constantly do this, it cost them time and money with no real incentive during business as usual.

[Matt]

I think the primary reason you cannot transfer cruise planner purchases between sailings is they are not equal.

The daily cost varies between ships and sailings, so it's not like a pair of jeans that has equal value between different Gap stores.