P&O, have recently up dated their Cruise Personaliser with new features and facilities but are all the changes better for you the passenger?
So what can you do, well you can see personal detail, flight details, cabin details and you can amend who the beds are set up, dining information with dress information, you can access and print eTickets and luggage labels when they are available, purchase gifts and luxuries and even add your own notes.
All of these seem to be an improvement for the customer.
Then you come to excursions. You can view and book as you could before but here comes the rub, when you confirm those you want you have to add your card details and pay for the excursion up front. This is a big change for P&O, but you are right to say no different to Royal and Celebrity.
However, what happens if you have some on board spend, historically you booked the excursion and the cost was charged through your on board account, so paid at the end of the cruise and if you had any on board spend it could go towards these excursions. Now, you pay before the cruise and therefore if you do have some on board spend it can't be offset again the cost of the excursions!
Now, the answer from P&O is that you can use the on board spend for purchases on board, so you could wait till you were on ship and then purchase your cruise line excursion. But would you do that for St Peterburg or other ports where it is perhaps better to do the cruise lines tours than your own thing? Perhaps not.
I do understand that things change, but I bet that this will come as a big surprise to many long standing P&O customers who may have booked their excursions like this for many a year. You do have the option to cancel and get a refund, within terms and conditions but how many people will?
So, overall the changes appear to be an improvement but just be aware of that unexpected cost! Of course, also watch for Cunard although I don't have any information I can't imagine that their personaliser will not change in the same in the future.
Cunard have adopted the same system as P&O and my issue was that if you booked and paid upfront via the Voyage personaliser but then for some reason cancelled the tour (or the ship did not call at the port) was the refund put to your on-board account therefore forcing you to spend that money or refunded to your credit card? I have been informed by Cunard that the refund will go to the original credit card, we shall see in Jan when we next cruise.
ReplyDeleteThat is a good question. I also think it goes back to your credit card, but as you say time will only tell.
ReplyDeleteI have found the new personalise quite hopeless! Why is is so SLOW?
ReplyDeleteIt takes ages to bring up the excursions and on the last 2 occasions I haven't been able to view them at all; instead there has been an error message. (And yet there is no problem accessing them on the main site, but I can't book them there.) Today I cannot get into the personaliser at all
Any pre paid shore excursions that are cancelled will be refunded back to the credit card on which they were originally booked, I've checked this out and been told it's true, plus P&O's FAQ pages state such so it shouldn't be any different.
ReplyDeleteI know that when I was on board last year, my account ran up a little and that's not including the cost of any excursions (drinks, special restaurant charges, items bought in shops etc) so if I had been given any on board credit then it would have covered all these other bits too!. If you're going on board before christmas and have some on board credit then it's a perfect time to get some christmas presents which won't cost you anything!