Carnival Cruise Lines Corporate Office Headquarters HQ

Chris Krauter

We haven't even stepped foot on the ship and we are experiencing the poor service attitude of the Carnival employees. My wife and I reserved a cruise in June of this year on the Carnival Glory bound for the southern Caribbean – and requested early seating for dinner. This is our 19th cruise in thirty years – Sixteen on Royal Caribbean and the third on Carnival – and we have always had early seating for meals. After our decision to cruise six of our friends decided to go and they booked through the same travel agent. A month ago two of the people in our group received an email that confirmed them at late seating. My assumption at that time (since only two in our party received this email) was that the rest of our group was in early seating where we requested when we paid. I contacted Carnival customer services on October 19th and explained that we wanted the group together for dinner and asked for the two in late seating to be moved to early seating with the rest of us. The agent was very nice and explained that I would have to go through our travel agent to get all four booking numbers linked. After some discussion she volunteered to call our travel agent and get permission to make my requested change – and she did. Now we had eight people (four booking numbers) linked together for early seating – and I verbally confirmed before hanging up – all eight of us are together for early seating – Joanne replied "yes you are, it is all taken care of". So there is nothing else I need to do – her answer "no – you are good to go"! I did write down her name – later to find out that really is for not. Yesterday (four days before sailing) we received an email that we were confirmed for late seating – I spent all day talking to different "SERVICE" representatives all with the same results – you will need to talk to the matradee when you board the ship to see if he can move you from late seating to early. So it is my belief the customer service representative in October linked our four booking numbers together and rather than moving two people from late to early seating she moved six people from early to late seating. The last customer service person was short and nasty and said we never had early seating even back when we booked the trip in June – which I find very suspicious as only two in our party were contacted in October with late seating verification! Oh yeah – as of today six people are confirmed for late seating and two are unassigned??? The long and short of it is we were told in October that all eight of us were together in early seating and today we have no idea where we are setting and with who. I have written this to confirm the above statements – Carnival customer service is severely lacking – especially when compared to a cruise line like Royal Caribbean!