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Where Has the Refundable Deposit Option Gone ?


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Try as I might, I cannot find any pricing that includes a refundable deposit - anywhere..

Is this a browser issue or one of the world famous Royal Caribbean website glitches ?

At first I thought it was just a "suites thing" since the NRD has been an issue with suites for some time but I cannot find any refundable deposit pricing for ANY cabin category for any cruise.

I mentioned this to my TA and she said that this has been causing the TAs a lot of trouble.

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8 minutes ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

Try as I might, I cannot find any pricing that includes a refundable deposit - anywhere..

I just tried to book a cruise for April 2020 and they offered both. (I was looking at Suites) and they offer the Junior Suite and Ocean View Suite (this was on Grandeur) Refundable.

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Looks like it must be another website glitch... I too do not get both deposit options and once again the cancellation policy states you lose your deposit if you cancel after TODAY... defaults to the non-refundable deposit pricing and cancellation policy.

PS - I'm using Chrome too...

 

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I had the same issue and called Royal Caribbean and she said she was not aware of an issue as she could see both refundable and non-refundable.  She did say that some Bahamas cruises won't offer refundable option (for shorter cruises).  Saying that, I had to get a quote through her.

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2 hours ago, Lindsay said:

Okay, kinda off topic but I use Chrome.  What is this Incognito thing on Chrome??

Going Incognito is supposed to mean that they are not tracking your cookies from your PC browser, I think they still.

An example I have is that I was mock booking a flight to Barcelona, every other day or so I would check the pricing and availability of seats, the web page kept giving me the same results every time, which I didn't like, so I asked some experts what to do, they said clear my cookies, delete my browsing history, and/or use a different PC, I didn't want to do any of those so they told me to go Incognito, I did, and received different search results. I don't do it all the time because I don't really feel like I need to, but I know it is there...

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I’ve tried again this morning... Chrome, Chrome in Incognito mode, deleted my cookies... Internet Explorer... Safari... none give me the option to choose deposit option/rate and they all immediately default to the non-refundable rate...

I’ve also priced different cruises, different ships, different departure years... no luck... strange and frustrating to say the least! 

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Straight from the horses mouth, "In an attempt that Royal Caribbean is trying to force all bookings to be nonrefundable, they have implimented this so-called website glitch, but failed to notify their customer service team of it, so as to not look so stupid when a perspective booking calls." Well folks, there you have it. I couldn't believe my ears when I heard it directly from within Royal Caribbean. IF this is not true, you must ask yourself, why hasn't Royal Caribbean fixed this issue AND their website, going on all this time? Makes me think that Royal is playing foul!!  SILLY ROYAL, TRICKS ARE FOR SINKED SHIPS!!  ?????

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I just went onto the site to look at the rates for my October Bermuda cruise on Anthem with the current promotion applied. Like most everyone else on this thread, I'm no longer seeing the choice of refundable or non-refundable; after selecting the room class (for all classes, not just balconies or suites) I just get a list of the different categories within the class to select from. I'm seeing this in Safari, Chrome, and Firefox; both regular and Incognito mode windows.

This by itself wouldn't bother me so much, since I'm already on an NRD booking. BUT... Now when I select the Suites class to view Jr. Suites, there are only two options:

  • Jr. Suite Guarantee (J3 and J4)
  • Jr. Suite with Large Balcony (J1)

There is no longer any option to select a Spa Jr. Suite / "Regular" Jr. Suite and pick the cabin! ? So at this point I cannot do any kind of price check for better rates on my booking.

I hope my TA has better luck checking the rates. I can only assume the J3 / J4 have been "stuck" for several months now (just based on what I've seen of available inventory each time I'd price check before now), and since they haven't been selling enough of those they've taken the remaining inventory and shuffled it over to the Guarantee side of things to fill it up. I just don't get why they wouldn't still allow direct selection of a J3/J4 when you can still self-select a cabin in every other class of suite without issue.

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1 hour ago, JLMoran said:

 

This by itself wouldn't bother me so much, since I'm already on an NRD booking. BUT... Now when I select the Suites class to view Jr. Suites, there are only two options:

  • Jr. Suite Guarantee (J3 and J4)
  • Jr. Suite with Large Balcony (J1)

There is no longer any option to select a Spa Jr. Suite / "Regular" Jr. Suite and pick the cabin! ? So at this point I cannot do any kind of price check for better rates on my booking.

This is interesting, I noticed this months ago already that the Spa Jr. Suite option was gone.  And I was checking for fares beyond your October 2018 sail date.  I just thought it might be due to the re-categorization that is due to happen next month but now after reading all of this I'm not sure anymore.

Regarding the price checking, you can still price check and get re-priced even if your category is gone.  I have done it many times before.  Basically, if I book a suite and notice that the other suite prices have dropped, I call and see if mine dropped.  More times than not, it has as well.  The same applies to if you booked a balcony and your exact category is gone, if others have dropped then call.  The most recent example is the TL that I booked for March 2019.  There's only 2 of those on board.  I grabbed the last one, however, I have already had it re-priced twice now saving an additional $500 since booking using that strategy.

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Just read this on another site and thought I would post it here.  I'm just going to quote it:

"The refundable option is still there but you now have to go thru the entire booking process and only AFTER entering all passenger info you will see a box to check for a refundable fare for an additional $$$ amount. It no loner displays the 2 rates."

"you have to add all passenger info and get to the screen where you pick dining time"

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11 hours ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

Just read this on another site and thought I would post it here.  I'm just going to quote it:

"The refundable option is still there but you now have to go thru the entire booking process and only AFTER entering all passenger info you will see a box to check for a refundable fare for an additional $$$ amount. It no loner displays the 2 rates."

"you have to add all passenger info and get to the screen where you pick dining time"

This is correct!! I booked a cruise and you now have to go thru the entire booking process and only AFTER entering all passenger info you will see a box to check for a refundable fare for an additional $$$ amount.

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12 hours ago, JohnK6404 said:

It’s back... it’s now working the way it used to... for the next ten minutes... LOL!

Comes up immediately as usual after selecting # of cabins, # of guests, and room type.

Not for me, still getting just the cabin category list after selecting cabin class.

14 hours ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

Just read this on another site and thought I would post it here.  I'm just going to quote it:

"The refundable option is still there but you now have to go thru the entire booking process and only AFTER entering all passenger info you will see a box to check for a refundable fare for an additional $$$ amount. It no loner displays the 2 rates."

"you have to add all passenger info and get to the screen where you pick dining time"

3 hours ago, princevaliantus said:

This is correct!! I booked a cruise and you now have to go thru the entire booking process and only AFTER entering all passenger info you will see a box to check for a refundable fare for an additional $$$ amount.

This at least makes some measure of logical sense, but I hope that they're making it clear up front that this is a non-refundable rate you're starting with and that the checkbox to make it refundable is really big and prominent when you get to that screen. If it's like the trip insurance checkbox, I had to go hunting for that a bit the first time I tried to do a mock booking.

I take it this checkbox is at the same screen where you also elect to buy their trip insurance? That would be a logical place to group it, but then this is Royal IT we're talking about; logic (at least user-friendly logic) is apparently not always foremost in their design process.

I have to say that in a way, this makes a certain amount of design sense as well. This lets Royal push the NRD as the standard without fully removing the refundable option, and I'd argue it also removes what I imagine was a common user behavior of going back and forth between web pages at the start of the booking process to try to compare the NRD vs Refundable rate on different rooms. Now there's no up-front comparing; you want a balcony, just pick the one you want and then we'll let you know the add-on cost for refundable if that's what you really want / need, just like we let you know the add-on cost to get trip insurance. But this is also pretty clearly what I recently learned is called a "dark pattern" -- keeping users in the dark about certain options or making them (much) harder to find in order to effectively trick or lock users into whatever behavior the company wants to drive.

And that's troubling, because it does mean that refundable rates are 100% not the way this company wants to go any longer. They'll continue offering them, maybe in part because consumer laws or sentiment, or history, or something else says they have to (at least for now); but they're going to make it harder to find them and as time goes by, may also make it more costly to choose. If you've already gotten that far in the booking process, are you really going to stop because of a checkbox when you're one or two clicks away from actually being done and having that long-desired vacation on your calendar? Yeah, it's over a year away, but is there really something that's going to make you miss that cruise when you can plan that far in advance?

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36 minutes ago, JLMoran said:

Not for me, still getting just the cabin category list after selecting cabin class.

This at least makes some measure of logical sense, but I hope that they're making it clear up front that this is a non-refundable rate you're starting with and that the checkbox to make it refundable is really big and prominent when you get to that screen. If it's like the trip insurance checkbox, I had to go hunting for that a bit the first time I tried to do a mock booking.

I take it this checkbox is at the same screen where you also elect to buy their trip insurance? That would be a logical place to group it, but then this is Royal IT we're talking about; logic (at least user-friendly logic) is apparently not always foremost in their design process.

I have to say that in a way, this makes a certain amount of design sense as well. This lets Royal push the NRD as the standard without fully removing the refundable option, and I'd argue it also removes what I imagine was a common user behavior of going back and forth between web pages at the start of the booking process to try to compare the NRD vs Refundable rate on different rooms. Now there's no up-front comparing; you want a balcony, just pick the one you want and then we'll let you know the add-on cost for refundable if that's what you really want / need, just like we let you know the add-on cost to get trip insurance. But this is also pretty clearly what I recently learned is called a "dark pattern" -- keeping users in the dark about certain options or making them (much) harder to find in order to effectively trick or lock users into whatever behavior the company wants to drive.

And that's troubling, because it does mean that refundable rates are 100% not the way this company wants to go any longer. They'll continue offering them, maybe in part because consumer laws or sentiment, or history, or something else says they have to (at least for now); but they're going to make it harder to find them and as time goes by, may also make it more costly to choose. If you've already gotten that far in the booking process, are you really going to stop because of a checkbox when you're one or two clicks away from actually being done and having that long-desired vacation on your calendar? Yeah, it's over a year away, but is there really something that's going to make you miss that cruise when you can plan that far in advance?

Aaaaannnnnnndddddd, if anyone has reeeaaalllllly notice, the OBC sales are going away slowly but surely!! Looks like Royal wants to be like Carnival!!

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I just booked Brilliance of the Seas for the October 1st cruise. In the beginning where you usually have a choice between refundable and non refundable, I had no choice.

 

When I got to the final checkout page I DID get a box that I could check to turn it into a refundable deposit. For this cruise it was only a $10 extra charge (not per person, $10 total). 

 

CT

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6 hours ago, ctwilliams said:

I just booked Brilliance of the Seas for the October 1st cruise. In the beginning where you usually have a choice between refundable and non refundable, I had no choice.

 

When I got to the final checkout page I DID get a box that I could check to turn it into a refundable deposit. For this cruise it was only a $10 extra charge (not per person, $10 total)

 

CT

That's amazing. I just booked Symphony for May 2019 and the difference for refundable for 2 people was $192. But, as we did for our upcoming cruise, know that you can call a little before before final payment date, switch to non refundable and get what the difference is at the time.

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