Misleading Advertisement?

[JACKHAWK]

I received the email from Regent on Oct 23 (as many of you did) about their winter 2011 cruises being available on Oct 26.

 

Six times in the email it showed:

 

Business Class Air from $999 each way.

 

So I made my reservation for the NZ - Australia cruise on Feb 8, 2011. When I received my booking statement - it showed $1,598.50 pp each way. I called my TA & she agreed there was a mistake. She call Regent & the agent agreed it was probably a mistake, but re-entered it in the computer & it still came back at the higher fare. They then checked with someone higher up & was told the higher fare applied.

 

I now realize it does say in small print "from", but it does seem misleading.

 

Has anyone else had this quote on Pacific business class?

 

Sorry, but I needed to vent.

[Wendy The Wanderer]

Oh, nasty. I see that "from". Good catch, sorry about your higher price. Guess it's still a good price, but...I agree, kind of slippery. Funny, they did not use this wording for the 2010 cruises, so this is a change.

[RachelG]

I have been hooked by wording such as this before too. It is clearly frustrating and a bit misleading. I would annoyed as well.

But business class to New Zealand and Australia is VERY expensive, and award tickets are hard to come by (main reason we haven't made it there yet). So it is still a good deal, just not as good a deal as it appeared.

Out of curiousity, what airline are they flying on?

[Paint Horse]

The meaning of from seems pretty clear to me. Was only that word in really small type or something?

[scb]

This is directly from the email:

 

Many consider Business Class essential for longer flights. That’s because you can stretch out, enjoy movies, a good book and more attentive service. When you step off the plane, you feel the difference. On select sailings guests in Categories D–H can upgrade to Business Class from just $999 each way, per person.

In a couple of places the "from" is as bit smaller, but I would not consider it to be deceptively so.

[Travelcat2]

That seems really high. I'm looking at my invoice for our cruise departing 11/21/2009. The flights are as far as New Zealand or Australia (at least I think Cape Town is that far -- 21 hours to get there -- flight time alone). Anyway, our invoice shows Business Air Roundtrip $1,998 x 2. . . $3,996.00. Added to that is $610 for "Air Taxes $305 x 2). Guess things are quite a bit higher next year.

[JACKHAWK]

The cruise is still 15 months off, so no airlines.

 

It may not be deceptive, but it fooled my TA and Regent Rep.

 

But we do love Business class on long hauls. We have used them 3 times.

[mikeIam]

I noticed the from and thought that it was very precise wording. Whether or not it is deceptive depends on the number of times the fare is $999 and the number of times it is greater. Regent could easily remove any ambiguity by noting what fares are applicable under the Special Offers tab on the cruise description.