Any Remedy for Cruise Cancelled by RC for missing final payment?

[Jakejosa]

Hi All, I am seeking advice for my daughter. She booked a cruise with RC while the 48 hour cancellation policy was still in effect. This is very important for my daughter as her fiance' is in the military and therefore his schedule is entirely unpredictable. She contacted the travel agent prior to final payment to purchase travel insurance. At that time, she asked the TA about final payment as was told that her card would automatically be charged. However, her card was not charged for final payment which resulted in her cruise being cancelled as well as all of her cruise planner purchases. Has anyone had success with their TA to re-instating the cruise at the same price and/or success re-instating  cruise planner purchases? She is also very concerned at losing the CWC 48 hour cancellation. Any tips and advice is appreciated! 

[CrimsonCruiser]

Prefacing this by saying I've never had to experience this. The only time I've ended up paying after final payment was on our last cruise but that was on Royal's end because just before our payment date, they shifted our ship and need almost 2 weeks to get things properly put back in order. Since it was on their end

 

Did she get it in writing from the TA that the card would be charged automatically?

If so, maybe she can go directly to Royal with all of her information and try to fight for her rebook. Ideally, if she has a TA they should be doing the fighting since it was their error that caused the charge to be missed but it sounds like this TA may be dropping the ball quite a bit.

If not...fighting with the TA may be the only recourse.

Unfortunately, if she was paying in bits, they would probably end up charging the whole fare at once (if they did manage to reinstate it) which may be more than her credit limit given that whatever refund she's due at that time won't have processed yet. And there's no chance at reinstating cruise planner purchases so that would have to be done manually at whatever the current price is.

 

Sorry for the potentially bad news...

[Moby Dick]

16 minutes ago, Jakejosa said:

Hi All, I am seeking advice for my daughter. She booked a cruise with RC while the 48 hour cancellation policy was still in effect. This is very important for my daughter as her fiance' is in the military and therefore his schedule is entirely unpredictable. She contacted the travel agent prior to final payment to purchase travel insurance. At that time, she asked the TA about final payment as was told that her card would automatically be charged. However, her card was not charged for final payment which resulted in her cruise being cancelled as well as all of her cruise planner purchases. Has anyone had success with their TA to re-instating the cruise at the same price and/or success re-instating  cruise planner purchases? She is also very concerned at losing the CWC 48 hour cancellation. Any tips and advice is appreciated! 

The cruise companies are very upfront about their final payment dates.  It doesn't sound like the TA did you/your daughter any favors.  Is your TA working on it any harder?  In the mean time, if I were you/your daughter, I'd call Royal, ask for a supervisor/manager and plead my case.  Being very polite and humble.  

[recogneyes]

We had this happen one of our sailings this year.  We had two cabins and I called our TA to switch 2 of our party between the cabins.  Long story short, there was an FCC attached to one of the parties and when they moved cabins their FCC fell off and the cabin now had a balance owing.  The problem was -  neither our TA or Royal advised this was the case.  I only found out because the booking disappeared from my app.  The cabin was no longer available and Royal was still capping the sailing.  Royal would not deal with it as it was a TA booking but thank goodness our TA pressed on and got our booking back -in the original cabin.  Royal insisted that we needed to pay the current fare but in the end they honoured our original booking.  The cruise planner items were lost but with Royal's math and promotions it didn't really impact us as we just re purchased during the next sale.  So, my advice is to have your daughter's TA work with Royal's resolutions dept to get this sorted out.  Sounds like the TA gave incorrect information so they should be willing to try to fix.   Ideally, she would like the original reservation number reinstated which should then identify her as having being booked during CWC.  Good luck

[twangster]

There a lot of "it depends" involved.

Some cruises in the near term are now blocked due to capacity or "sold out".  In those cases it can be difficult to reinstate a booking that was cancelled.

If the cruise is still accepting new bookings it is possible the booking can be reinstated.

If can be reinstated, as far as the price, that's a discussion between the travel agency and Royal.  If the travel agent was in error that is something that doesn't involve Royal and Royal may not be in a position to participate in the resolution.  The travel agency may have some obligation but that's a discussion to have with their senior management, not the travel agent.

[Jakejosa]

Thanks everyone for the great advice! I will pass this along to her! Her sailing and room category are not sold out, so there may be hope for her to resolve.

[Jakejosa]

Update- called the TA and they worked with Royal to get booking reinstated (even the same cabin!). All cruise planner purchases were lost,  but most importantly she retained the CWC guarantee. When speaking to travel agent, they asked if they should charge final payment to the card they had on file…

[twangster]

Great to hear but it's unfortunate about the cruise planner purchases.

Just to be clear though, the cruise planner purchases were refunded right?  Not completely lost?

[wordell1]

51 minutes ago, Jakejosa said:

Update- called the TA and they worked with Royal to get booking reinstated (even the same cabin!). All cruise planner purchases were lost,  but most importantly she retained the CWC guarantee. When speaking to travel agent, they asked if they should charge final payment to the card they had on file…

Travel agent should not have allowed this to happen.  Royal does not auto bill the final payment and the agent should have known that.  If it were me, I would be getting a new agent.

[Reigert2008]

I always recommend that people make their final payment at least 5 business days before the date on the invoice.  This allows time for you to know the payment occurred and that there were no issues.  You never know when you or your TA could have an emergency and in an emergency, you’re probably not thinking about your cruise payment.  In most cases the day it hits your credit card doesn’t matter, unless of course your final payment date coincides with your credit card billing cycle and you’re trying to push your bill off one more cycle. 

 

[Jakejosa]

21 hours ago, twangster said:

Great to hear but it's unfortunate about the cruise planner purchases.

Just to be clear though, the cruise planner purchases were refunded right?  Not completely lost?

Correct, refunded.

21 hours ago, twangster said:

Great to hear but it's unfortunate about the cruise planner purchases.

Just to be clear though, the cruise planner purchases were refunded right?  Not completely lost?

 

[Jakejosa]

21 hours ago, wordell1 said:

Travel agent should not have allowed this to happen.  Royal does not auto bill the final payment and the agent should have known that.  If it were me, I would be getting a new agent.

Definitely switching agents! 

[CrimsonCruiser]

On 4/15/2022 at 9:39 PM, Jakejosa said:

Update- called the TA and they worked with Royal to get booking reinstated (even the same cabin!). All cruise planner purchases were lost,  but most importantly she retained the CWC guarantee. When speaking to travel agent, they asked if they should charge final payment to the card they had on file…

I'm glad things worked as best as could be expected.

Hopefully there aren't big cost differences on those cruise planner purchases she had.