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Alaska, chances of sailing, and cruise planner cancels


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So I am both bored and worried.

I had a cruise planned on April 16th.......it was canceled in mid March.

I was offer what you should all be aware of by now.....125% FCC or cash refund and 125% cruise planner credits or cash refund.

I opted to take FCC and cash cruise planner.

I received the FCC in a painfully slow process the first week of May and have not received any cash refund from cruise planner or taxes/port fees from cancelled cruise (total amount $3006.88 in refunds stuck somewhere in RL systems)

Flash forward....we have August 2 sailing to Alaska that I also have now paid in full for the cruise and all cruise planner items.  It is looking more and more like this sailing isn't going to happen.  As soon as they canceled sailings in March we were immediately locked out of cruise planner so we could not go in and manually cancel ourselves.  I know from experience that previously when I needed to cancel something in Cruise planner I was automatically refunded those fund with 2-5 business day....it was VERY VERY quick and required no manual interaction from RCCL.

So.....I decided to go in and cancel everything in cruise planner TODAY for my August sailing.  If the world suddenly regains sanity and Aug 2 magically does happen....I will be more than happy to rebuy all my excursions, drinks, and salon services.  But.....I would much rather have the $6932 NOW refunded quickly than end up waiting for those funds to be returned 3 months from now if there is a cancel.

 

All of this assume RCCL hasn't turned off the quick automated refunds out of cruise planner.  I already received all the cancel confirmation emails for every item.  I will keep you all updated if anyone wants to follow a similar approach to try and mitigate the risks associated with these slow refunds.

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36 minutes ago, dodgestang said:

All of this assume RCCL hasn't turned off the quick automated refunds out of cruise planner.  I already received all the cancel confirmation emails for every item.  I will keep you all updated if anyone wants to follow a similar approach to try and mitigate the risks associated with these slow refunds.

It took a few days longer than typical for the Cruise Planner refund, but it was still a pretty quick turnaround compared to the refund situation.  I did a purchase and cancel to take advantage of a lower price on something.

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I'm sure I guaranteed us a small Alaska season by proactively cancelling all my cruise planner items...so I can buy them all back at a higher price just before leaving ?

In other news....I haven't seen the refund on them yet ?

 

Looks like sailings are now cancelled through July 31st.....so I guess that's another month of waiting before we will know for sure about Alaska on Aug 2

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1 hour ago, dodgestang said:

I'm sure I guaranteed us a small Alaska season by proactively cancelling all my cruise planner items...so I can buy them all back at a higher price just before leaving ?

In other news....I haven't seen the refund on them yet ?

 

Looks like sailings are now cancelled through July 31st.....so I guess that's another month of waiting before we will know for sure about Alaska on Aug 2

You wont be sailing to Alaska in 2020 unfortunately

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My mom and her BF have an alaskan cruise planned for August 9th out of Vancouver. I’m worried if the cruise is still sailing there might be an issue with the Canadian boarder because of all the mandatory 14 day quarantines. 
 

would rcl still cruise from that port if that is still an issue?

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4 hours ago, Sharla215 said:

My mom and her BF have an alaskan cruise planned for August 9th out of Vancouver. I’m worried if the cruise is still sailing there might be an issue with the Canadian boarder because of all the mandatory 14 day quarantines. 
 

would rcl still cruise from that port if that is still an issue?

They have to visit at least one Canadian port during the sailing, so if Canada still won't let cruises in then Alaska cruises are done for the season (unless it's an all-American line).

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23 hours ago, SpeedNoodles said:

They have to visit at least one Canadian port during the sailing, so if Canada still won't let cruises in then Alaska cruises are done for the season (unless it's an all-American line).

Thanks they just decided to cancel but we were on hold with rcl for 1.5 hrs today. Will try again soon. Want to talk to an agent to make sure we are clear on everything.

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Well seemed easy enough....moved from Aug 2 2020 to Aug 15th 2021 easily enough.

Two reservations moved in 10 minutes...and they cancelled the 'room hold' reservation I had done a few weeks ago without blinking an eye.  We are sailing in a Royal and a Grand...and since there is only 1 royal....I had reserved it thinking it might  become hard to get the room category if we were force to do a lift and shift.

 

Still waiting on those cruise planner refunds from two weeks ago though ?

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 5/14/2020 at 11:26 AM, dodgestang said:

All of this assume RCCL hasn't turned off the quick automated refunds out of cruise planner.  I already received all the cancel confirmation emails for every item.  I will keep you all updated if anyone wants to follow a similar approach to try and mitigate the risks associated with these slow refunds.

Well here we are....30 days after I manually cancelled my cruise planner items for a cruise that was ultimately cancelled....I finally just started seeing some of the refunds come through...still about 2k short.....but I'll take what I can get at this point.  Hopefully the rest will show up soon enough.

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9 minutes ago, Baked Alaska said:

With royal, I consider Saturday and Sunday business days, since they do. They charge and process my card on the weekends, so they're fair game in my eyes.

That is really unhelpful to me when deciding how long they mean to take to refund the money.  I'd rather know what other's experiences have been (was it 30 calendar or 30 businesses).  Knowing what you believe is fair isn't helpful at all.

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2 hours ago, dodgestang said:

Well here we are....30 days after I manually cancelled my cruise planner items for a cruise that was ultimately cancelled....I finally just started seeing some of the refunds come through...still about 2k short.....but I'll take what I can get at this point.  Hopefully the rest will show up soon enough.

This is what's crazy to me..when they announced the latest round of cancellations we cancelled the cruise planner items before it locked the cruise planner.  Got the cancellation email dated June 2.  My refund showed up on June 11.  My brother got his refund even faster.  He used AmEx and I used Bank of America.

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43 minutes ago, AshleyDillo said:

This is what's crazy to me..when they announced the latest round of cancellations we cancelled the cruise planner items before it locked the cruise planner.  Got the cancellation email dated June 2.  My refund showed up on June 11.  My brother got his refund even faster.  He used AmEx and I used Bank of America.

I canceled a Cruise Planner purchase that wasn't even associated with any canceled sailing and they told me 45 days ?

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3 hours ago, SpeedNoodles said:

That is really unhelpful to me when deciding how long they mean to take to refund the money.  I'd rather know what other's experiences have been (was it 30 calendar or 30 businesses).  Knowing what you believe is fair isn't helpful at all.

Sorry. I didn't mean to offend.

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9 hours ago, SpeedNoodles said:

30 calendar days or business days? 

I made the post May 14 (the day I manually cancelled all my cruise planner items for a cruise that was still schedule to sail in August) and finally saw SOME (not all) of the over 6k in cruise planner items back to my CC today.....so 30 calendar days.

I made this post a month ago because it had taken 60+ days to get refunds of cruise planner items from an April cruise that had been cancelled and they closed us out of cruise planner so we couldn't manually cancel things.  I have cancelled cruise planner items many times and received a refund systemically in a matter of single digit days (as recently as late February of this year).  Up until this crap I had been willing to give the benefit of the doubt that the COVID 19 impacts overwhelmed them and they just weren't staff/architected for the situation they are in......but I believe now it is obvious that RCCL across all channels has turned off automated refunds and is trickling it out through a heavily control internal process.  That is my opinion that I have formed based on this personal investigation/anecdotal evidence. 

This situation I find to be frustrating enough that I will be evaluating and possibly just cancelling 2 of my 3 planned cruises and not sailing with them anymore.  This is something I will have to talk over with the wife.  We turn Diamond on what ever boat we manage to get on next and really enjoy cruising, and I understand WHY they are doing this but they need to understand the consequences of their poor customer service choices and the short sighted quarterly outlook only management being employed.

I have the same crap with my client....I have contracts in place, send them invoices, and they just don't pay anymore...I have to chase them on EVERY invoice....everything is 30-60 days past due before I squeeze it out of them and all I get with each "you are past due" notice I send is the same cut/paste email from accounts payable "We are closely monitor our accounts payable, we are only doing one payment run a week, all payments need to be approved by leadership"....so technically I continue to work everyday with a client who is knowingly and willfully in breach of contract.  So maybe that's shame on me.

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Final update here.

I have added up all the posted and pending credits now from both the April 16 cancelled cruise and the August cancelled cruise and now it looks like I am over refunded $545.15 which means either I missed something I bought that was really large in cruise planner....or they messed something up.

I wonder if they will at some point in the future reverse the credit.  ?

Either way.....I guess we're all good here finally.

 

 

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