Princess Cruises
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Moved the goal-posts
Im really disappointed to be writing this however, situations like this need to be told that tell you what companies are really like and are prepared to do at the drop of a hat. I will caveat this by saying we travelled with Princess last year and was taken aback by the level of service we received and off the back of that decided to book again this year. We paid a deposit last year through a 3rd party TA and paid in full this year for a cruise to Norway which sails 19th August 23. Anyone reading this will likely know the packages and when we booked we were upgraded to Premier. Friday I became aware of certain posts on FB/Twitter etc that PC were changing their packages with new “perks” At first glance it seemed in our favour but once I drilled down its quite obvious we are now receiving less and having to pay more for the same package we originally signed up for. Certain types of casual dining which were all included have now been given a $14.99 per person per visit charge. Last week we could eat in that section free of charge (casual dining ) now we have to pay every time we visit unless we upgrade to the new premier package. We were also sold the award winning “ocean now app” where we could place orders on the app and have it sent to wherever we are… it forms part of their advertising and has always been their selling point. Now we have to both pay a $14.99 one off activation fee to enable this option on the app. This covers the entire cruise however it is an additional charge we now have to pay for that we had already paid for on the original package. Heres the rub…..if we had booked our holiday after the 14th December last year we would get all these added extras (being sold as added extras but actually were already included) with no extra charge. Because we were impressed by the experience we received we booked early last year meaning that was before the 14th December cut off so we now have to pay an additional $200 per person to receive the same things we had already paid for. The situation now is that essentially you could have people who have waited until the last minute to book their holiday and have likely got some cheaper deal V what we paid last year. These people after paying less will benefit from all the new “perks” whilst other people who booked before the cut-off have to pay. This is a particularly mind boggling decision by Princess and is purely a money grabbing exercise to maximise their profits from loyal customers. I have emailed princess twice with no reply, i have used the online chat twice (first girl didn't know anything about it) I'm trying to find out more information but I'm being directed back to my travel agent for more info by Princess. I rang my travel agent yesterday and they weren't even aware and have now started the process of looking in to it. Im totally appalled that a company can do this to a paying customer who has already paid for items and are taking them away only to redress them as perks and making us pay more.