Getting RCI to Honor Price Drop Was Like Pulling Teeth.

[rusty nut]

Has anybody had issues with this? I called to take advantage of a price drop on our Oct, 2020 Symphony cruise. I noticed a $120 price drop so I called, and for 45 minutes, all I got were excuses and a bunch of smoke and mirrors on how I must be calculating it wrong. They tried to mumble jumble the taxes and fees and even the insurance. I finally had to go over it with him with a fine tooth comb before he would agree. Is this standard operating procedure for RCI?

I booked this cruise while on our last cruise, so no agent.

Edited May 10, 2019 by rusty nut

[LuCruise]

I sometimes have to remind the Royal agent to enter my C&A number so balcony discount gets included.  

[rusty nut]

3 minutes ago, LuCruise said:

I sometimes have to remind the Royal agent to enter my C&A number so balcony discount gets included.  

Thanks, but that's information he should have had with my reservation number.

[Floridadude]

This is why I have used an online travel agency for the last 12 yrs with zero problems and excellent customer service.

If there is a price drop I just do screen shot and email to agent...done!

Never understood why anyone uses RCCL directly, I always check Royal before booking and it’s always $200-1600 more than I book it for.

My Upcoming Symphony cruise in December.

I booked 8D ocean view balcony for $2100, RCCL $3700.

Huge difference.  Just saying.

[awestover89]

14 minutes ago, Floridadude said:

This is why I have used an online travel agency for the last 12 yrs with zero problems and excellent customer service.

If there is a price drop I just do screen shot and email to agent...done!

Never understood why anyone uses RCCL directly, I always check Royal before booking and it’s always $200-1600 more than I book it for.

My Upcoming Symphony cruise in December.

I booked 8D ocean view balcony for $2100, RCCL $3700.

Huge difference.  Just saying.

 

I also always book with my travel agent. Local, small business so he doesn't always get a big discount (although I did get $400 off each of our upcoming B2B cruises and bonus OBC), but even if it's the same price as Royal directly he does a great job managing things and catching price drops for me.

 

The main reason to avoid a TA is if they turn out to not be trustworthy. Getting a TA who stops responding to your requests can be a disaster; you can't make any changes, cancellation, or even payment without the TA approval unless you get a super understanding phone agent. 

[ryano]

26 minutes ago, Floridadude said:

This is why I have used an online travel agency for the last 12 yrs with zero problems and excellent customer service.

If there is a price drop I just do screen shot and email to agent...done!

Never understood why anyone uses RCCL directly, I always check Royal before booking and it’s always $200-1600 more than I book it for.

My Upcoming Symphony cruise in December.

I booked 8D ocean view balcony for $2100, RCCL $3700.

Huge difference.  Just saying.

 

Travel agents are not allowed to discount cabins that I know of.  Evidently you have been very fortunate and are a part of a group discount where the TA reserved a huge block of cabins.  My two experiences with Travel agents will horrible.  I will keep booking through RC directly as I never find these discounts you speak of.    

Edited May 10, 2019 by ryano

[awestover89]

12 minutes ago, ryano said:

 

Travel agents are not allowed to discount cabins that I know of.  Evidently you have been very fortunate and are a part of a group discount where the TA reserved a huge block of cabins.  My two experiences with Travel agents will horrible.  I will keep booking through RC directly as I never find these discounts you speak of.    

 

If they have a group booking available they can lock in a price at a group rate, and keep that price until it expires, typically 4 months prior to sailing. They can also use a portion of their commission to increase the value, although they can't actually discount the cabin using this method (OBC, gifts, spa packages, excursions, etc are all fine)

[NateUpNorth]

1 hour ago, rusty nut said:

Has anybody had issues with this? I called to take advantage of a price drop on our Oct, 2020 Symphony cruise. I noticed a $120 price drop so I called, and for 45 minutes, all I got were excuses and a bunch of smoke and mirrors on how I must be calculating it wrong. They tried to mumble jumble the taxes and fees and even the insurance. I finally had to go over it with him with a fine tooth comb before he would agree. Is this standard operating procedure for RCI?

I booked this cruise while on our last cruise, so no agent.

 

Yep. We've called on price drop before. 

As our bookings are fairly straight forward we've rec'd the drop, but we always gotta "play the game" a little bit with RCL to get it.

[Ourusualbeach]

3 hours ago, ryano said:

 

Travel agents are not allowed to discount cabins that I know of.  Evidently you have been very fortunate and are a part of a group discount where the TA reserved a huge block of cabins.  My two experiences with Travel agents will horrible.  I will keep booking through RC directly as I never find these discounts you speak of.    

It’s only 8 cabins to create a group, definitely not huge.  

[awestover89]

4 minutes ago, Ourusualbeach said:

It’s only 8 cabins to create a group, definitely not huge.  

 

And, depending on the agency, that group might be split across multiple agencies. There are conglomerates where dozens or hundreds of travel agencies are contracted to a single large parent company which can grab group space on hundreds of cruises each year.

[Saman]

I am in Spain and with my price drop when i called they were saying they could not see it coming up any cheaper so in the end i made another reservation (here we get about 2 weeks to pay deposit) and phoned with that booking number which was for the same thing as in my original booking but about 300 euros cheaper and the automatically gave me the discount on my original booking and cancelled the new one , but actually it was them that originally tipped me to do it this way . I had a refundable deposit so could of cancelled original booking but prefered to stay with that one as i had a good cabin.

[Ourusualbeach]

6 minutes ago, awestover89 said:

 

And, depending on the agency, that group might be split across multiple agencies. There are conglomerates where dozens or hundreds of travel agencies are contracted to a single large parent company which can grab group space on hundreds of cruises each year.

I know.  I work for one of those. 🙂 

[awestover89]

2 minutes ago, Saman said:

I am in Spain and with my price drop when i called they were saying they could not see it coming up any cheaper so in the end i made another reservation (here we get about 2 weeks to pay deposit) and phoned with that booking number which was for the same thing as in my original booking but about 300 euros cheaper and the automatically gave me the discount on my original booking and cancelled the new one , but actually it was them that originally tipped me to do it this way . I had a refundable deposit so could of cancelled original booking but prefered to stay with that one as i had a good cabin.

 

I had to go that route once years ago, on our first cruise because Royal said the new price was only for new bookings. Ended up just making a new booking and then cancelling the original booking for a refund (this was before they started rolling out non-refundable deposits)

[rs45thompson]

Yes it took forever to get my price drop I had to actually screenshot it and send it to them before they would give it to me. But it was well worth it.

[MixerDave]

4 hours ago, rusty nut said:

Has anybody had issues with this? I called to take advantage of a price drop on our Oct, 2020 Symphony cruise. I noticed a $120 price drop so I called, and for 45 minutes, all I got were excuses and a bunch of smoke and mirrors on how I must be calculating it wrong. They tried to mumble jumble the taxes and fees and even the insurance. I finally had to go over it with him with a fine tooth comb before he would agree. Is this standard operating procedure for RCI?

I booked this cruise while on our last cruise, so no agent.

I was working with an outside TA - noticed a price drop after final payment - she got us upgraded to Concierge - our friends who booked directly had to pay $120 for the upgrade - Royal, in so many words accused us of lying.  Royal is a pain.

[Ourusualbeach]

39 minutes ago, MixerDave said:

I was working with an outside TA - noticed a price drop after final payment - she got us upgraded to Concierge - our friends who booked directly had to pay $120 for the upgrade - Royal, in so many words accused us of lying.  Royal is a pain.

Concierge class is a category on Celebrity not Royal. 

[voyager70]

I always call the C&A desk when calling for a price drop.  I book directly on the website and have never had a problem getting the reduced rate.

 

 

[dacsmom]

I had no problem getting a price drop on my Anthem cruise last September. I just called the C&A number and they did it right away, emailed me the new invoice.

[MixerDave]

1 hour ago, Ourusualbeach said:

Concierge class is a category on Celebrity not Royal. 

My error - it was a Celebrity cruise - but still it was the Celebrity rep who insinuated we did not get this from a TA

[rusty nut]

Is that where I went wrong? Do I need to call the Crown and Anchor desk instead of RC?

[Ourusualbeach]

2 minutes ago, rusty nut said:

Is that where I went wrong? Do I need to call the Crown and Anchor desk instead of RC?

I’ve never had a problem calling the regular number.  C&A has limited hours while the regular number is 24 hours. 

[bajathree]

19 hours ago, LuCruise said:

I sometimes have to remind the Royal agent to enter my C&A number so balcony discount gets included.  

It sometimes depends on the promos you are booking with....I actually have got cheaper pricing sometimes NOT using my diamond plus discount. Actually just went through similar to the OP where there was recently a price drop on Harmony for next March....took me a half hour on the phone disagreeing with the rep on pricing....then we finally figured out why my pricing was coming up cheaper...when they took off the C&A discount the price dropped to what I was seeing.....go figure.

[rusty nut]

42 minutes ago, Ourusualbeach said:

I’ve never had a problem calling the regular number.  C&A has limited hours while the regular number is 24 hours. 

What number are you calling? The 1-866-562-7625 number that I call has limited hours. That's the number on their home page.

Edited May 11, 2019 by rusty nut

[LuCruise]

35 minutes ago, bajathree said:

It sometimes depends on the promos you are booking with....I actually have got cheaper pricing sometimes NOT using my diamond plus discount. Actually just went through similar to the OP where there was recently a price drop on Harmony for next March....took me a half hour on the phone disagreeing with the rep on pricing....then we finally figured out why my pricing was coming up cheaper...when they took off the C&A discount the price dropped to what I was seeing.....go figure.

Yes, I've seen that too, and recently with one of the Wow sales (I'm not diamond but same idea where it was better without the C&A number).  The funny thing is in my case, I've had it twice where the Royal agent started with my reservation, and then was getting a higher number than I was seeing.  Guess entering the C&A number is a separate step when pricing.  Once i reminded him, he got the correct sale price.  What's scary is what if its someone not familiar with stuff and then they get booked at a higher price than it should be.

[Ourusualbeach]

22 minutes ago, rusty nut said:

What number are you calling? The 1-866-562-7625 number that I call has limited hours. That's the number on their home page.

Press the number for new bookings and they are open 24 hours.