Future Cruise Deposit Princess: think twice

A few years ago I received a check from Princess for $200 for an expired FCD. I had totally forgot about it (we had taken off from cruising for a few years). What a bonus that was!

I guess we were lucky respecting the FCD. We put a deposit using the FCD, for a cruise just prior to its expiration date in 2016, but had to cancel. Princess Cruises subsequently issued us a complete refund of the FCD, no fuss no muss.

While the deposit was time limited, the deposit was made with the term, and I quote from the FCD form: "The FCD will be automatically refunded if not applied to a new booking created within two years from the date of purchase."

And that is absolutely not the case in my experience. Even when I contacted them for the refund I was ignored and when I kept on I only got lame excuses. So yes I had a bad experience.

I gotta agree with Johngold on this one.

Yes, there are limits on FCDs but that is a known factor at the time of booking. The cautions for others is to be really sure that you are going to cruise prior to the expiry date if you are going to put down a deposit.

We always have one each in the bank and use them regularly as we rebook another voyage while we are onboard. This approach has worked out for us. It is unfortunate that is not the case for you.

Yes eventually we got our money back. But only because we had the help from our cruiseline travel agent. We had booked directly with Princess, but had been customer of this travel agent before and that is why they helped us with this matter.

I never got any answer from the Princess staff. I cannot begin to describe the indifference of the staff, the lack of communication and the poor customer service all around this company. I even wrote to Ms. Jan Swartz, the President at Princess Cruises *) , but never got a reply.

There are many good other cruiselines to choose from, so no more Princess for us.

Good luck and don't give up Vittorio! Took me about a year.

*) http://www.princess.com/news/notices_and_advisories/cbresponse/videos/message-from-jan-swartz.html

I hope you get your money back. We have never had a future cruise deposit long enough for it to an issue.

Hello, I have the same problem, did you get your money back? do you have an email address to write to?

thanks and Regards, Vittorio

I am so sorry that you had problems with this issue. My sister who sails all the time with Princess said that the money would be refunded automatically by Princess if not used. That didn't happen unfortunately. She just purchased one on a recent cruise. But, she has always used the future cruise deposit within the time frame.

Keep fighting!! Best of luck.

Thanks. I finally got a reply from them on their Twitter account and via DM I supplied him with my info. They told me that they would bring this to the UK office, so hopefully this issue will be resolved soon.