Princess Cruises
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Don’t use a debit card on Princess cruises
Whilst we enjoyed the actual cruise from Brisbane to New Zealand.13 Jan to 27th Jan. We are appalled at their billing methods for on board expenses, such as trips and spa. I opted to pay by debit card to avoid extra charges if you pay by credit card. I was under the impression you paid at the end of the cruise. All payments showed immediately on my bank account as pending but reduced the amount of cash in the account. When the cruise was over they took the full amount again as one payment but left all the pending payments. Meaning we have a cash shortfall of £ 500+ that we can’t access. I got in touch with our “cruise specialist” who referred it to guest relations, nothing happened, I tried to ring guest relations myself and the person in a call centre somewhere said you couldn’t speak to them and it could take 28 days for them to get back to me. I got back onto the cruise specialist and asked her for a direct line number or email. To be fair someone eventually made contact with me from the UK GR, who took details and said it would have to be released by someone in America so would take a couple days. That was 10 days ago and still everything is pending. I’ve been in contact with the our bank who have said they can’t do anything until 30 days have passed. So it looks like I will have to wait. Take this review as cautionary tale and if you do book a Princess cruise pay by credit card. Another thing we didn’t like was the constant trying to sell you things. We’d no sooner stepped on the ship when we were being asked to upgrade the package we’d bought before we’d even had 1 drink. If you went to a well being talk, it was really a sales pitch. Although the cruise was enjoyable we will not be choosing Princess again. This has really spoiled the whole holiday experience. Surely in this day and computer age they can program their billing system to cancel all pending payments when they take the full amount or just take the pending payments.