I'm Gary Bembridge this is another of my cruising tips for travellers. I want to take
a look at why cash refunds, and the allocation of future cruise credits is
taking so long and some of the things that you can do to make things go
quicker easier and reduce a lot of the stress. Let's take a look of five things
that you need to know about why refunds are taking so long. The first time and most
obvious of them is volume. If you consider there's around about 600,000
people on cruise ships every single week of the year when they're sailing, so
that's assume that most people travel as a couple, that's around about 300,000
bookings. What the cruise lines are telling us is between 40% and
50% of cruisers are asking for cash refunds, so that's around a hundred and
fifty thousand bookings every single week that have been canceled that have to be
processed. If you consider cruise lines are cancelling roughly about a
month of cruises at a time, that means there's up to half a million
of cash refunds that need to be processed at one go. The volume is absolutely
enormous, and that of course takes a lot of time to work through process and
raise the refund which then gets charged back to your credit card.
The second thing that's also creating a huge amount of work is, even
if you take the future cruise credit option, in many cases and for most cruise
lines there's also another refund that has to happen. You'll find for example
you get port fees need to be refunded in cash, or if you've done things like you
bought Wi-Fi in advance, paid gratuities in advance,
drinks packages, excursions or you've bought any other kind of things like
that, those are cash refunded. So even if you're taking future cruise credit,
someone has to work through and cash refund all those elements that you get
cash refunds for. If you take for example a couple of my experiences,
for example I had a Royal Caribbean cruise cancelled and I decided to take the
cash, but got back six different refunds which included the fare, the
gratuities etc, so that meant for that actual one booking there were six actual
transactions that had to be processed. So the volume is absolutely enormous. The
third thing to note is that the cruise lines themselves are reducing the number
of staff. A lot of people have been laid off or furloughed and there are
some of them working shorter hours, and most of the call center people
(because of social distancing and lockdowns) are working from home. So
they're working with less resources out of the office, so for them
it's a much more complicated process because it's reliant on the hours they
can work, the time they can work, the situation at home, connections to Wi-Fi
etc etc - so actually their whole process is not as simple and easy. You've got
this huge volume and you've got people trying to cope with just the
volume to be processed. The fourth thing to understand is that when they cancel
they're cancelling five weeks or four weeks or whatever at a time, so they're
generating millions of transactions that have to be processed, and what they're
then doing is they're tending to work at them on a first-come first-served or
cruise by cruise. So depending on the cruise line, some of them are saying what
they'll do is their work through refund cancellations in the days order that
cruises were due, so if your cruise happens to be at the end of that batch that's
cancelled, you're probably going to be at the end when they start processing refunds. Some of
the cruise lines are doing it slightly differently, and it's based on the order that
they get the request. There is a sequencing process that will of course
add more time to the whole process of getting your refund. The fifth and one of
the things that concerns people perhaps the most, is of course the cruise lines
are managing cash. Cruise Lines have a big cash flow issue. They are not getting
any revenue in, or getting very limited revenue in, but have huge costs going out.
We know that it costs between a hundred million and a hundred and fifty
million dollars per ship to keep that ticking over, now they've going into cold
layups, which means they've reduced the costs quite significantly but they are
spending literally billions every single month to keep things ticking over. At the
same time they then have to have the cash flow going out for refunds. So
without a shadow of a doubt, there will be some cash flow management going on to
keep the flow of this cash draining out of the system much more manageable. The
cruise lines are bring a lot of money in, billions of dollars in to help tide them
over, but they are going to be managing cash which is why you'll hear things
like some of the cruise line saying it's going to take 90 days. A combination of
the volume, staff just being able to cope with it and also to manage the cash. So,
what are the five things that I think you should do to try make this process
less stressful, easier and hopefully speed up the whole process of getting a
refund. Well first of all, and absolutely really importantly, is keep up to
date with your specific Cruise Lines rules regulations and processes. As this
has been going on, the rules and regulations have changed, the time frames
have changed, the percentage that they're giving you incentives in terms of future
cruise credits have been tweaked over time. So make sure you really understand
what the current terms and conditions are, particularly if you're waiting for a
cruise to be cancelled. For example I've had five cruises cancelled so far, I
have two more that I'm expecting and so I'm keeping an eye on those two cruise
lines to understand what they're currently doing, what the rules are -
are they automatically refunding future cruise credit? Are they giving a specific
window of time where I'm going to have to apply for a refund ? What are the actual
regulations and rules and expiry dates? So make sure that you absolutely
understand for your cruise line what the rules and regulations are, so you know
when your cruise gets cancelled and as your cruise get cancelled which option is
going to work best for you, and which process you want to go with. Personally
I'm taking mostly cash refunds because I have so many cruises,, as I've already
mentioned, I've had all those cruise canceled and I have a whole bunch more for the
rest of the year, so I actually want to have the cash to maintain flexibility as
I look at next year. I don't want all the future cruise credits piling up and
locking me into having to go to a certain route. So that is my second point,
you need to decide do you want the future cruise credit or do you want the
cash? I've told you why I'm taking cash. Why should you consider taking
future cruise credit? Well if you know already that you're going to be booking
on that cruise line immediately that you get your future cruise credits, then of
course take the future cruise credit because you're going to get that bonus, and
then you can go straight in and use that to make your next booking. Generally
speaking, the futures cruise credits are coming through really quickly for
most cruise lines. The third really important thing and something that I
found is working quite well for me, is diarise everything. When you know that
your cruise is cancelled diarise some specific dates, so for
example using the Norwegian Cruise Line example they were going to give
a very specific window of time when they would open for
making a cash refund claim, now that was like two weeks after of once they announced that
cruises have been canceled. So I put that in my diary, when I got up that morning I
logged on, it was available to make the claim and I put the claim in and hopefully
that would mean that I'm at the beginning of the queue for processing. So
make sure you you know the exact date especially if you have a window of time you
have to do something, as some of them then also give you an expiry date you have
to have submitted a claim by a certain date. Make sure you understand when
that is. Also diarise when you should be getting that refund, so for example I put
in my in my diary all the dates that I should have a refund (the latest date) so
that just reminds me at what point I can start chasing. In that way, although it
does mean you're waiting for a long time, it takes out some of the stress. So
instead of me checking every day in my bank, have I got the refund have I got the
refund, I knew that I had a certain date to check and it certainly took a lot of
stress out the process. The good news is that I've found so far all the cruise
lines that I've had cancelled, I've actually been paid before that date has
come up. If you do take future cruise credit, make sure you've put in your
diary when it expires, and perhaps have little reminders every couple of months if
you haven't decided what to do, so you don't let those future cruise credits
expire. My next point is be kind, especially to the cruise line agents
that you may be talking to, emailing with, communicating with. This is a very
stressful difficult time for everybody, and bear in mind the cruise lines are under
enormous pressure. Lots of their colleagues have been laid off or furloughed.
There's a lot of uncertainty. It's a very stressful and difficult time for them.
They have a lot of work on their plate and actually getting really angry and
difficult with them is not actually going to help. Be firm, be kind and I
think you're going to find you generally find that people are responding really
well to that. Hopefully you've understood a little bit why they're
taking so long to process through. It's probably less of a conspiracy and much
more just of a pure logistics and challenging time that cruise lines have
to do deal with. I have loads more videos packed full of tips and advice about all
things cruising so why don't you watch another one of those right now