P&O admit switching the promised 10% 2020 discount to 5% - but won't honour the offer

[grapau27]

This is what it says on one of the cruises I booked

 

 

"New guests booking this cruise on Select Price will receive a 5% saving if booked before 3 December 2018. Discount has been reflected in prices below. Past guests booking this cruise on Select Price will receive a 10% discount if booked before 3 December 2018. Discount taken from full fare and will be applied at checkout."

 

 

Not sure I quite understand it. However, my cruise is now £400 pp more than it was when I booked. So if I take off 10% that's £360

Looks like you scored by booking early.

[grapau27]

Many thanks this is more than enough for my complaint on the matter.

Anyone have the most up-to-date email for complaints and customer service to hand? A friend of mine complained a month ago and has received nothing as yet.

I find you have to email at least twice usually 2 weeks after the first email before anything happens.

[NoFlyGuy]

I haven't booked anything for 2020 yet but, as posted on an earlier thread, I didn't seem to have any problems with the two dummy bookings I went through on cruises we may have been interested in.

 

Using the base price quoted when registration opened for the lowest grade of each cabin type, I found that that if I continued through the booking then the price reduced by 5% or 10% depending on whether I entered our Peninsular Club numbers.

 

Obviously it was partly a marketing ploy by P&O to make it look as though everyone was getting a discount but ended up confusing everybody.

 

Why they didn't just drop the base price by 5% and stick to a 5% discount for past customers I don't know.

 

They probably wish they had now!

[Harry Peterson]

Anybody managed to get any half decent offers out of P&O on this yet (apart from Heatherlea10)?

 

I'm going to start ratcheting things up for them tomorrow, and just wondered whether there have been any interesting developments.

[jeanlyon]

I am still confused by this. I found the original price written on a pad on 3rd September. I had written down the prices for 2 cruises for us and our single friend. I had worked out the discount due to us before asking our TA to book for us on 17th. Having just received our bookings from P&O and our confirmation including extra discount from our TA, I find that I did in fact get the original price with the 10% discount.

[Heatherlea10]

I am still confused by this. I found the original price written on a pad on 3rd September. I had written down the prices for 2 cruises for us and our single friend. I had worked out the discount due to us before asking our TA to book for us on 17th. Having just received our bookings from P&O and our confirmation including extra discount from our TA, I find that I did in fact get the original price with the 10% discount.

 

In my case I’ve actually received a 15% discount from when the prices were first advertised on 3rd September. I too wrote down the prices of 2 cruises we wanted to book and what the prices were on 3rd September. When I was able to book the cruises on 19th and 20th September, the prices shown online had actually decreased by 5%, so I did end up paying what I anticipated paying on 3rd September after the automatic 5% discount. However, as the wording on their website said that a 10% discount would be applied at checkout for past customers (ie no mention that the prices already included a 5% reduction) I phoned up P&O and queried it with them and was very lucky from the sound of it, to receive a new confirmation email with a further 5% discount included.

 

P&O only changed the wording to say that a 5% discount was already included on 26th September. I think that anyone who booked their 2020 cruise prior to 26th September should get a further refund of another 5%. I know that I would be fighting for it if they hadn’t refunded me. Things like this do leave a very sour taste in your mouth and P&O should honour the price for all customers as it’s not worth losing loyal customers over.

[Harry Peterson]

I am still confused by this. I found the original price written on a pad on 3rd September. I had written down the prices for 2 cruises for us and our single friend. I had worked out the discount due to us before asking our TA to book for us on 17th. Having just received our bookings from P&O and our confirmation including extra discount from our TA, I find that I did in fact get the original price with the 10% discount.

 

P&O have deliberately made it confusing to throw people off the scent!

 

What matters is whether the price you wrote down was the original price that P&O put out, or the price quoted by the TA, and the reason I say that is that on 3 September my TA had a different P&O price list from the one that P&O were showing on their website. Neither of us could understand why that was, but she did comment that other people were saying the same thing.

 

The reason for the difference, I now realise, was that P&O had craftily increased the TA prices, while leaving the publicly available prices alone (they later altered them). The TA prices had been increased by roughly 5% so that when the 10% was taken off the real reduction was only 5% - and not the promised 10%. They had, very cleverly and deviously, made it look like a 10% discount, though, by first increasing the prices.

 

I hope that explains the situation - but I'd be the first to admit that P&O have been so sneaky about this that it's very difficult to make any sense of it. What you need to be comparing is the original price put out by P&O with the price paid, rather than the pre-discount price originally quoted by the TA. The TA prices had all been increased by 3 September when bookings started.

[jeanlyon]

I definitely got the price they put out on 3rd September. We were not able to book until 17th as it was not for Iona and we are Caribbean tier, so could book on 17th. I have got a 10% discount and then a further discount from my TA.

 

 

Now if you think about it, if they changed the prices down 5% to reflect this, then my amount would still be correct. As I've only paid £69 pppn I am a happy bunny.

[NoFlyGuy]

My dummy bookings were direct, not through a TA.

Had I gone ahead with either booking I too would have been a happy bunny as I would have received the discount expected.

 

Do I think P&O have been deceitful? No, I think incompetent is a better word and their marketing tricks have backfired.

 

Other cruise companies are just as bad at employing marketing tricks such as CMV with their second passenger travels free ( ha ha), they just double the price for the first passenger! Or RCI with their second passenger travels half price.

 

The companies know how much they want for a given cabin at a given time and pitch the price accordingly, with or without so called discounts / incentives.

 

I ignore all of it and, if I'm happy with the price, I'll likely book and if not I'll pass.

[Spike11]

I am still confused by this. I found the original price written on a pad on 3rd September. I had written down the prices for 2 cruises for us and our single friend. I had worked out the discount due to us before asking our TA to book for us on 17th. Having just received our bookings from P&O and our confirmation including extra discount from our TA, I find that I did in fact get the original price with the 10% discount.

Hi Jean,

Can I ask whether your cruise was classed as a Peninsular club cruise? If it was ( ours was) then you should have got 15% off. We should have got 15% off, but only got 10% off compared the prices on the P&O website on 5th September, because as we now know, 5% had already been taken off. Hope that makes sense!

[jeanlyon]

Yes it makes sense and no neither of them are Peninsular Club cruises.

[amajaa]

Well I phoned P & O and said we booked the first day and they said as you have booked with a TA phone them, I expect they have already dealt with this and they will phone the Agents team here and negotiate. So I phoned TA who phoned me back and said they say you have already had the 10%. I tried to explain again that the price wasn’t advertised as already having the 5% off but I don’t think she understood.

[Harry Peterson]

Well I phoned P & O and said we booked the first day and they said as you have booked with a TA phone them, I expect they have already dealt with this and they will phone the Agents team here and negotiate. So I phoned TA who phoned me back and said they say you have already had the 10%. I tried to explain again that the price wasn’t advertised as already having the 5% off but I don’t think she understood.

 

That’s the standard initial P&O response - call your TA, even though they know full well it will just waste your time and the TA’s.

 

All decent TAs know exactly what’s happened, and what P&O are up to.

 

You are being conned by P&O, as are most of us, and they’re relying on limited publicity to enable them to get away with it. I intend to ensure they don’t and the more of us that make formal complaints to Trading Standards, the Advertising Standards Authority and ABTA the better the chances of forcing them to stick to the promised prices.

[majortom10]

Doesnt matter what reason or issue you phone P&O direct if you have booked with a TA they will always tell you to phone your TA they are not fobbing you off that is why they pay them commission. The same happened to me with Cunard on a different unrelated issue and they said the same and ring my TA which I did and they sorted my issue out.

[Harry Peterson]

Doesnt matter what reason or issue you phone P&O direct if you have booked with a TA they will always tell you to phone your TA they are not fobbing you off that is why they pay them commission. The same happened to me with Cunard on a different unrelated issue and they said the same and ring my TA which I did and they sorted my issue out.

 

This is rather different, though, isn't it. Only P&O can sort this one out, because it's a situation they alone created and it's not within the power of any agents to change P&O pricing.

 

This is going to come back and bite Carnival/P&O very hard if they don't sort it very soon because of the wall of adverse publicity they're going to get, along with some adverse decisions. Even this thread is now becoming more visible than P&O would like, and I'd be very surprised if they weren't aware of it.

[NoFlyGuy]

Bottom line is if you feel you have been 'cheated' by P&O then it's your prerogative to pursue matters further as you seem fit.

As mentioned I haven't booked for summer 2020 but that has nothing to do with pricing, misleading or otherwise.

 

I just hope P&O get their marketing and general communications sorted out - remember the new data protection rules that came into effect and what a dog's breakfast P&O made of that!

 

That's me done on this thread (sigh of relief all round?).

[grapau27]

Well I phoned P & O and said we booked the first day and they said as you have booked with a TA phone them, I expect they have already dealt with this and they will phone the Agents team here and negotiate. So I phoned TA who phoned me back and said they say you have already had the 10%. I tried to explain again that the price wasn’t advertised as already having the 5% off but I don’t think she understood.

Didn't or didn't want to?.

[Strawberry field]

Just out of curiosity are there any updates to this thread?

[terrierjohn]

On 10/5/2018 at 4:58 PM, grapau27 said:

This is what it says on one of the cruises I booked

"New guests booking this cruise on Select Price will receive a 5% saving if booked before 3 December 2018. Discount has been reflected in prices below. Past guests booking this cruise on Select Price will receive a 10% discount if booked before 3 December 2018. Discount taken from full fare and will be applied at checkout."


Not sure I quite understand it. However, my cruise is now £400 pp more than it was when I booked. So if I take off 10% that's £360

Looks like you scored by booking early.

I booked a B2B for Sept 2020 through my usual TA, the quote I had on day 3 after initial opening was the same that I eventually paid on launch, however checking now both base prices on the P&O site are 5.25% less than the base price on my original quote, but P&O's response to my TA was that I received the full discount available at the time. 

I accept that fluid pricing has now kicked in, but being a cynical sort the new lower prices look too close to the 5% lower prices that were probably listed on day 1, which makes me wonder if I somehow missed the boat. 

[Strawberry field]

It all seems a little strange to me. I have received extra OBC as has a friend of mine but not quite as much as me. Another couple hasn't even received an acknowledgment of their email. Perhaps it's a case of ignore it and it will go away?

[Rupert2251]

We finally had a reply back over the weekend offering us the standard £50 per person OBC, it was either that or a free cancellation. Well we didn't want to cancel so we accepted but it is nowhere near the 5% which would be £265 for our cruise. It seems that a lot of people have been conned by P&O and somehow I don't think we have heard the last of it. The travel trade newspapers have been on the case so a friend of mine has said so who knows where it will end!

[sweep2907]

Awaiting my reply still. I would consider £90pp.would cover our extra 5% and won't settle for half of that but we shall see. 

[majortom10]

Everybody has been conned and fobbed off with poor OBC amounts if they would have offered me free cancellation I would have snapped their hands off and told them the reason why and walked away. They did exactly the same with the double charging fiasco offering paltry OBC offers compared to those on Princess who suffered the same problem and got better compensation.

[SausPud]

I have made my complaint through my TA. I mentioned it didn't add up when booking and they phoned and asked at the time of booking. I got them to phone P&O and they said an email was needed and my TA did this (BCC me in on the email so I had a copy of what was sent). 

Even the basic maths don't add up. If the 5% was already taken off the prices and they gave you an extra 5% off for past passengers totalling 10%. Well, in fact, let's do those simple maths. 100 - 5% = 95. 95 - 5% = 90.25. 100 - 10% = 90. Round this to every pound spent and it can add up when in the £1,000s. 

I'll post any response I get from P&O

[Strawberry field]

I was lucky as I had a favourable response in hours but friends of ours are still waiting after nearly two weeks.