I have some unexpected advice that I need to give stay away from the Cloud 9
spa on Carnival Cruises this is very important they are not part of the
Carnival Corporation they are not part of Carnival Corporation Carnival Cruise
Lines they are a random business partner and they are not a good one as a
birthday gift I bought Mindi something called a fire and ice treatment some
sort of pedicure thing and I prepaid on my credit card the charge went through
and everything the day it was supposed to happen they call our cabin at 8:20 in
the morning and wake all of us up and say that she has to come an hour early
versus the time that was selected so she rushes she gets ready she runs up there
she gets there right on this new time this hour early time and they say that
she's been double-booked and that she has come back an hour later at the time
that was originally scheduled she gets there and they don't give her the
treatment that I paid for they don't even give her the option they don't even
tell her that it's not an option they just start doing a completely different
thing and she speaks up and they tried to sell her things, they try to sell her oil
and massages and all these different sorts of treatment now when they had
screwed up on the time and she had shown up the hour early they requested and
told her to come back they said we'll throw in a massage for the inconvenience
well that didn't happen so instead she got some different treatment nothing
that we ever wanted or booked and she never got this free massage thing that
was supposed to happen in compensation and round and round we go with
complaints trying to sort this out and she's up there she's speaking to the
manager all this kind of nonsense they're refusing to own up to it all
this other kind of stuff the whole time they're trying to sell her things even
while she's complaining here's where I get involved again
they randomly decided to charge my sign and sail card even though I had already
paid with my visa so I was upset with this and I went to guest services guest
services on a Carnival Cruise cannot do anything about the spa not a thing
short of maybe apologize they are different companies and they do not have
a fluid business relationship all they can do is they can call the spa for me
and hand the phone over so I'm speaking to the person at the spa and they said
that oh well Mindi said to charge your card again I don't know how that would
make sense to anyone oh the guy who's already paid for this charge him again
even though I didn't receive what I wanted where's the logic there and how
can you be allowed to charge something to another person's card
I think the spa has some security issues that knowing somebody's cabin number and
their first name is sufficient to charge something to your card I go up there and
I have to talk to these people and they explained to me that when you booked
online even though it's the carnival site Carnival isn't the spa and so you
can book your bottomless bubbles on the carnival website and it's fluid it's
seamless you show up and it's it's on your account and you're ready to go there's
no funny business but with the spa apparently when you go on when you get
on board they credit the amount you've paid onto your sign and sail card and
then when you show up they charge it so it nets against it and that makes for a
very confusing sign and sail account to say nothing of a confusing experience to
the customer when I was presenting them with the fact that they had charged me
for something that I already paid for now they had credited her account
because it was in her name it was a gift so you don't have to be sailing to buy
these things for people this could have been some friend who's never been on a
cruise ship could have gotten it for her for a birthday present
they wouldn't been here to help solve the problem and so I'm up there and I'm
saying he charged my card without me here without my permission I never set
foot in the spa and they were able to charge me that's interesting no
signature no card swipe just charged they're explaining to me how
the shoreside sends them a printout and that's carnival shoreside is cloud 9
jargon code for Carnival they call it shoreside watch out for that so they say
Oh shoreside gives us a printout and that's all we ever have to deal with
when there was an issue we tried to make sure the right person got charged the
right amount and so we called accounting now they didn't say whether accounting
was cloud 9 spa accounting Carnival shoreside accounting or I don't know
maybe a third entity but they said accounting wouldn't let them charge it
the way it should be charged so they had to put it on my card and then they said
that Mindi told them to do it that way when really it was this accounting I
have to go round and round with Emma the manager here on the Carnival Dream at
the cloud 9 spa before she'll even consider correcting it so she finally
corrects it and I explained to her that like I shouldn't have had to come to the
spa to fix their mistake I shouldn't have to know that they call
Carnival shoreside I shouldn't need to know the jargon just get them to fix
their mistake well she can't do anything she's just the manager of the spa she's
not empowered to do anything no no and it's not her fault it's not cloud 9's
fault it's the website that's managed by Carnival it's shoreside sending them bad
information it's accounting refusing to allow them to charge things you know in
a sane manner it's absolutely ridiculous she said I'll send that feedback
tomorrow but you won't hear anything but I'll send that for you take
that on faith because they've screwed up so far now it's the time to take things on
faith. I go to Carnival guest services and I need to let them know that their
business partner is screwing with them and treating their guests like crap Emma
the manager of the spa is up there wearing a carnival nametag saying I
don't work for Carnival how is that not misrepresentation? How is that not
borderline fraud I don't know so I complain to guest services here on the
Carnival Dream and they take some notes and they- I say I want to file a formal
complaint no I don't want to speak to the spa people again because they
weren't able to do anything about their screw up other than just remedy it
they've wasted a bunch of my time they've made me literally run from one
end of the ship to the other end back again once to go complain then I'd go
back and get Mindi because they were saying that she said things she never
said and she had to be there to refute the lies before they would correct it
and so I've had to do all this and have this negative experience I said it's my
12th cruise I have one more booked I have plans to book three more in the
coming year at least and I've been doing nothing but introducing new people in the most
positive light possible to Carnival Cruises you watching my videos know that
I've become quite the Carnival fanboy and free advertiser I said you know
that's a problem she took some notes she wasn't even gonna take my name I handed
over my sign sail card I'm like don't you need my information the spa wasn't
able to do anything I need some sign from Carnival this isn't acceptable
behavior to them because otherwise you have to rethink things Sam wants to book
the breeze for November seven-day sailing I wanted to do a balcony after
this I don't know that I want to go at all I don't want to inconvenience Sam Sam's
blameless in all of this he's still in love with Carnival and I don't blame him
I would like to be back in love with them if they can make this better but
it's service recovery time it's time for them to step up and tell us what they're
all about I did customer service training for eight years I trained
people sometimes in their first ever jobs on how to deal with service
recovery you take ownership of the problem no one's done that you say
you'll fix it no one's done that I've received a few apologies that's about it
this is the test now the thing about service failures is they're not all bad
this can be an opportunity this will be the test that will
tell me what they're truly all about it's easy to do a good job when nothing
goes wrong but when things start to go wrong that's a test of character but let
me tell you they make this right I'll be a bigger fan of theirs than I was before
and I can't imagine what that would look like that's the opportunity that they
have now they've gotta give me a sign I've had issues with Hilton and when it
got escalated to corporate they made it they did it maybe they didn't do it
perfect they didn't you know maybe they didn't even make me feel whole again off
of what I had lost but there was always a gesture and it wasn't just an apology
it was a gesture of some substance and some meaning and so that tells me
there's a corporate structure at Hilton that doesn't believe that my experience
was acceptable and so when I booked at Hilton even if there's maybe not the
best reviews online I have confidence that it will be made right and that the
things online maybe they're anomalous maybe they're before the service
Recovery's kicked in you can't expect things to be perfect
all the time absolutely not but when things go wrong it's time to
man up fortify whatever you want to call it
this is carnival's moment what will they do how will they respond I really really
hope they come through because I've invested a lot of my time and money
traveling with them I've leveled up in their loyalty program to gold I was
looking forward to platinum by the end of this year it was my new year's
resolution for God's sakes so I really don't wanna see this relationship
trashed but you know you can go back and look at our old videos we do road trips
well we do Vegas well we you know we we know how to have a good time without
carnival if necessary so hopefully it doesn't come down to that but I'm going
to need something I'm gonna need a sign something of some substance that says
this is this isn't us this business partner this Cloud 9 Spa doesn't speak
for us or represent us and the thing is the spa can do very little to make things
right with me short of you know some sort of a refund or something I don't need
spa services I'm not interested in it and from everything I've heard it's you
know short of Mike's massages which he enjoyed
it's massive sales pitch it's a timeshare without the free stuff so I
can't imagine a thing that they would have to offer me it needs to be outside
of their limited scope because they had some mission creep and the screwed over
a guy who wasn't actually a direct customer but a guy who gave them money
I think carnival needs to make this right their business partner screwed up
and when that happens you have to take responsibility even if you weren't the
cause in my years of customer service I can't tell you how many times I've done
that and you say I'm going to make this right I haven't heard that from anyone
yet when I was speaking to the person at guest services I said I'm willing to
cancel my next cruise over this and I asked them can I cancel it on board can
I do it now they said no you have to wait till you're back on shore before
you can cancel a future cruise which is disappointing
you can book all the future cruises you want but you can't cancel when you're on
the ship so that's awfully convenient I hope that they take it with some degree
of seriousness but it's completely out of my hands now it's up to them all I
can do is try and picture the best outcome and hope that reality comes to
match it I think there's a lot of really low cost options for them to substantively
show me that this is not who they are this is not what they're about there's a
lot of things that they could do all I can do is wait no sense in speculating
much more than that and again this is the spa people it's Cloud 9 spa stay away I
don't trust them I would not give them money I would not trust them to give me
a good experience the jury is still out on Carnival so I hope they come through
stay tuned and in terms of the spa situation I did contact Carnival
afterwards and despite the fact that they're separate companies Carnival made
an effort to make it right they followed up through through email and so they did
offer some sincere apologies and so I appreciate that I do feel that the spa
in the way that it behaves and it's arms-length structure from the carnival
organization does do damage to carnival's brand but at least in that instance
Carnival was too willing to go the extra mile
to make it right and so that was that was good