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HELP! Azamara is trying to cancel my trip because of their mistake! Horrible Cruise!


PatG2
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10 hours ago, Whitby100 said:

Just glanced back to see what was happening here and surprised to find you haven’t found the solution.  I just did a quick google search and the US Dept of Transportation does indeed require that the customer gets the error pricing if paid in full.  Clearly some information is askew. I am confident Azamara will sort it out for you.  Good luck.

Thanks Whitby. I've done many google searches and have gotten conflicting information. Can you share the link you used?

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14 minutes ago, rallydave said:

Unfortunately sounds exactly like the Azamara where we loved our first cruise where the home office did everything right when we were booked the last Club Continental Suite by an agency that we only were looking for information on and easily got the booking switched to our chosen Agency.   We booked a follow-on cruise while on board as we were so happy with the experience.

 

Then, in the name of increasing profits with Cuba cruises,  Azamara decided to cancel our cruise and move it a month earlier in an extremely unprofessional manner wanting to charge the same price for a cruise 4 days and 3 ports fewer..    We couldn't change our date as we had booked a river cruise that matched up to our booked cruise dates.  Our agency took the issue to the highest level and the only thing Azamara would do was a full refund and even that was an adventure in their inept home office.

 

Really hope they honor your purchase but, with the horrid money grubbing home office not really sure what will happen.  Think you can get the federal trade commission involved.   Unfortunately our experience is that Azamara is deceiving and out to improve profits not to say profits are a bad thing   but, customer service is important and a competent home office would really help.

Wow. Sorry for your experience rallydave. Still can't believe they get away with things like this.

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Would you mind disclosing how much less than regular price did you pay? If it's too good to be true then it's not true. Airlines have made mistakes, sometimes they honor them but when it's ridiculously wrong (low) they do not.

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6 minutes ago, dabear said:

Would you mind disclosing how much less than regular price did you pay? If it's too good to be true then it's not true. Airlines have made mistakes, sometimes they honor them but when it's ridiculously wrong (low) they do not.

I had what I am sure was a mistake fare on Seabourn about a year ago after booking and got them to change to the posted fare without any issues or problems later.

 

Pretty sure it was an error as it went up less than a week later by several thousand dollars and we were on a B2B that was sold as a single cruise and we ended up paying exactly what the first cruise price was thus in essence getting the second cruise free.

 

Even if this is a mistake fare, with all of the questions the OP asked and the written and verbal confirmations plus paying the fare and being accepted, there is no doubt that Azamara needs to honor that fare no matter how much below the regular fare is/was.

 

This simply appears just another of too many cases where Azamara puts their feet in their mouth and makes extremely poor business decisions and loses more and more customers.

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We are of course all curious as to which cruise and how cheap the fare was.  However, I understand completely if the OP doesn’t want to reveal this info.  Why stir the pot with those that paid higher fares should Azamara actually honor the low fare that they posted and for which they accepted payment?

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45 minutes ago, dabear said:

Would you mind disclosing how much less than regular price did you pay? If it's too good to be true then it's not true. Airlines have made mistakes, sometimes they honor them but when it's ridiculously wrong (low) they do not.

 

22 minutes ago, SoBaycruiser said:

We are of course all curious as to which cruise and how cheap the fare was.  However, I understand completely if the OP doesn’t want to reveal this info.  Why stir the pot with those that paid higher fares should Azamara actually honor the low fare that they posted and for which they accepted payment?

I received about 75% off of the regular price for a suite. Here is why I still believed the price was valid:

 
1) I confirmed it multiple times. If my fare was so obviously wrong then the cruise employees should have said something when I called to confirm. They are the "experts" and they said nothing. The Sr. Manager Nicole was one of the people that confirmed my reservations the next day. She even said, "I saw the price you paid and thought you got a great deal but didn't think anything of it." If she couldn't see it was an obvious price mistake, then how am I supposed to?
 
2) Cruises drop their rates all the time. I usually buy fares at about 50% off by waiting till last minute deals or special promotions. Some of Azamara's cruises leaving soon are over 50% off what other people paid.
 
3) It was the end of the month/quarter/half year. I work with different car dealerships that will take $10,000 of the price of a car on the last day of the month so they can meet their sales quota. Car dealerships like many other services will lose money on some deals and make up for it elsewhere. No other industry would get away with having the customer come back and return an item after it has already been paid for.
 
4) There is simple technology in place to prevent "mistakes" like this from happening. Azamara is part of a multi-billion dollar company (worth over 25 billion dollars!). For them to not have safe guards in place to prevent something like this from happening is either very careless at least, or a way for them to get away with deceptive advertising practices.
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42 minutes ago, rallydave said:

I had what I am sure was a mistake fare on Seabourn about a year ago after booking and got them to change to the posted fare without any issues or problems later.

 

Pretty sure it was an error as it went up less than a week later by several thousand dollars and we were on a B2B that was sold as a single cruise and we ended up paying exactly what the first cruise price was thus in essence getting the second cruise free.

 

Even if this is a mistake fare, with all of the questions the OP asked and the written and verbal confirmations plus paying the fare and being accepted, there is no doubt that Azamara needs to honor that fare no matter how much below the regular fare is/was.

 

This simply appears just another of too many cases where Azamara puts their feet in their mouth and makes extremely poor business decisions and loses more and more customers.

Thank you for sharing rallydave. I'm glad Seabourn stayed true to their word. I would recommend people cruise with them instead of Azamara since Azamara has not stayed true to their word.

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You've had a busy 23 hours, PatG2!  If you'd rather not share the details of which cruise you're posting about, can you say where in Florida you're from?  I have friends on the east coast there who are upset about changes for Azamara's Cuba cruises... 

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1 minute ago, Ithikan said:

You've had a busy 23 hours, PatG2!  If you'd rather not share the details of which cruise you're posting about, can you say where in Florida you're from?  I have friends on the east coast there who are upset about changes for Azamara's Cuba cruises... 

Lol thanks Ithikan. It has definitely been a crazy 23 hours. This whole situation is crazy!! I still can't believe it. I'm in SouthWestFL. However, the cruise I booked is in Europe so I still needed flights, hotels, transports, etc. The whole Cuba situation is crazy too... However, at least that is out of Azamara's hands... as long as they find something comparable and not try to do less days, less ports, for the same amount of money. Someone posted about Azamara doing something like that earlier in the thread.

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16 hours ago, hiccups said:


It's not OP's job to notice a "glaring" pricing error.  Several years ago RCI had a glitch in their online pricing and grand suites for a particular cruise were listed at less than half their typical rate.  We, along with a bunch of other cruisers, booked those cabins, and RCI never tried to take them away.

Azamara made the bookings, took the money, and now needs to man up and give the OP the cabins for which he paid.  Perhaps when a few of these errors start hurting Azamara they might put a little more money into IT.

 

hiccups - I did not mean to imply that it was the OP's job to notice a "glaring" pricing error.   I simply meant to say that in my experience over the years, if something appears to be too good to be true, it probably is.    And from more recents posts, it appears that a 75% discount was too good to be true.

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8 minutes ago, PatG2 said:

Lol thanks Ithikan. It has definitely been a crazy 23 hours. This whole situation is crazy!! I still can't believe it. I'm in SouthWestFL. However, the cruise I booked is in Europe so I still needed flights, hotels, transports, etc. The whole Cuba situation is crazy too... However, at least that is out of Azamara's hands... as long as they find something comparable and not try to do less days, less ports, for the same amount of money. Someone posted about Azamara doing something like that earlier in the thread.

That was my post PatG2 and it was when Cuba cruises were just starting and Azamara was trying to make more money on cruises there.  We were offered the shorter replacement cruise with fewer ports and did include Cuba for the same  price then Azamara posted the price for the replacement cruise and it was lower than what we had paid and Azamara wanted us to pay.

 

Really unfortunate that Azamara has such a wonderful product that is too often ruined by a greedy inept and incompetent home office and seems to consistently make the wrong decision and try to take advantage of their customers.  Also, their IT department needs to be completely replaced with all of their IT issues yet Senior Management seems to think that they can fix the horrible website and mailing list one customer at a time rather than build a completely new mailing list program that won't continually lose customers email addresses.

 

Yes Pat, your issue is brand new to CC but, only one of many poor decisions made too often.

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Agree. If it was a $10,000 suite for $5,000, it should be honored, but if it was priced at $500, it's an obvious error that probably would not be honored.  At $2,500 (or 25%) it's questionable and probably would reflect a loss to A. About IT, how come the airlines ocasionally make mistakes along the same lines as possibly this one and they can afford the best techs.

 

BTW, airlines do the same thing. If you purchased a ticket on line at a ridiculously low price, you would immediately get a confirmation. The next day when the auditors review the transaction, you would get a notice that the erroneous ticket would not be honored.

Edited by dabear
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4 minutes ago, dabear said:

Agree. If it was a $10,000 suite for $5,000, it should be honored, but if it was priced at $500, it's an obvious error that probably would not be honored.  At $2,500 (or 25%) it's questionable and probably would reflect a loss to A. About IT, how come the airlines ocasionally make mistakes along the same lines as possibly this one and they can afford the best techs.

 

BTW, airlines do the same thing. If you purchased a ticket on line at a ridiculously low price, you would immediately get a confirmation. The next day when the auditors review the transaction, you would get a notice that the erroneous ticket would not be honored.

Don't believe the amount of the mistake fare has any bearing on being honored or not.  It is false advertising to not honor a publicly listed fare.  And with all of the fare games the cruise lines play, don't know if that 75% discount is real or less depending on the raal, if there is such fare involved.

 

And don't understand why you would say that the airlines could afford the best techs.  Airlines work on extremely small margins.  Just look at all the weather problem costs they have t absorb plus lately millions of dollars from the Boeing Max 8 mess.

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You have my sympathies.  While on cruising  on the Celebrity Equinox, we booked a cruise for Oct, 2020, Azamara Journey  to Israel.  I frequently check cruise critic and found that Celebrity decided to change the entire month because they wished to Drydock Journey.  In other words our cruise was cancelled.  It was only after I had my travel agent contact Azamara (he was on hold for over one hour) did we receive a note via the travel agent about the cruise being cancelled.

No way for an upscale cruise line to handle public relations.

Edited by stevenr597
to make the message clearer, mentioning the ship in question.
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7 minutes ago, rallydave said:

Don't believe the amount of the mistake fare has any bearing on being honored or not.  It is false advertising to not honor a publicly listed fare.  And with all of the fare games the cruise lines play, don't know if that 75% discount is real or less depending on the raal, if there is such fare involved.

 

And don't understand why you would say that the airlines could afford the best techs.  Airlines work on extremely small margins.  Just look at all the weather problem costs they have t absorb plus lately millions of dollars from the Boeing Max 8 mess.

Agreed Dave. People get rooms for 50%-75% less than other passengers all the time. Cruises fluctuate their prices drastically all the time. In the past week, I've seen the cabin I booked fluctuate $5,000 (not even including the price I bought it for). So someone that booked the suite this week compared to last would be paying $5,000 more (no mistake there).

Not to mention, you book a lower category then bid to upgrade to a suite when they haven't filled them. People pay 50%-75% less than other people paid all the time! Cruises doesn't give a discount to the people that paid more, nor do they tell the people that paid less that they made a mistake and need them to pay more again.

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Rallydave:  IMHO there is a difference between false advertising (intentional for a period of time) vs erroneous advertising (an accident which is fixed in a short period of time).

 

I don't understand your analogy of weather related impact to airlines vs manmade pricing errors. The 737 max mess is a technical one, not a misprint. 

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11 minutes ago, stevenr597 said:

You have my sympathies.  While on a cruise on Celebrity Equinox, we booked a cruise for Oct, 2020 to Israel.  I frequently check cruise critic and found that Celebrity decided to change the entire month because they wished to Drydock Journey.  In other words our cruise was cancelled.  It was only after I had my travel agent contact Azamara (he was on hold for over one hour) did we receive a note via the travel agent about the cruise being cancelled.

No way for an upscale cruise line to handle public relations.

I can't believe it Steven. I've had way better customer service on Carnival than Azamara so far. 1/10 of the price, 10 times the customer service.

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3 minutes ago, dabear said:

Rallydave:  IMHO there is a difference between false advertising (intentional for a period of time) vs erroneous advertising (an accident which is fixed in a short period of time).

 

I don't understand your analogy of weather related impact to airlines vs manmade pricing errors. The 737 max mess is a technical one, not a misprint. 

Not an analogy DaBear.  They are reasons why airlines don't have the money to pay for expensive IT people.  As to false advertising, really don't think there is much difference between intentional and erroneous when it is posted publicly.  Most companies honor these false rates because they should have been sure before posting and it makes good public sense to not do what Azamara is doing to Pat.  Much better to let this go than to have this type of thread for all to see and probably lose many future bookings.  

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2 minutes ago, dabear said:

Rallydave:  IMHO there is a difference between false advertising (intentional for a period of time) vs erroneous advertising (an accident which is fixed in a short period of time).

 

I don't understand your analogy of weather related impact to airlines vs manmade pricing errors. The 737 max mess is a technical one, not a misprint. 

I think all he was getting at is that they operate on small margins and don't have the best IT. They don't charge $10,,000 a ticket like Azamara so margins are smaller. It would be very easy for IT to implement a warning pop-up if an employee list a price for 50% less than their standard price. Maybe make it so a manager has to approve it.

 

That's all irrelevant anyways. At the end of the day, Azamara made a "mistake" on the price, and they continued to mistake after mistake every time they confirmed it. If it was an obvious error, than it should have been caught during the 3 verbal confirmations and 6 email confirmations. How many times can they make a "mistake" before they have to honor something?

If a customer books a cruise for $10,000 when they thought they were booking a $1,000 cruise, Azamara isn't going to refund them if they are within the refund deadline. That customer is out of luck. Maybe if the customer called within 24 hours but definitely not after multiple confirmations and emails. 

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Interesting that PG2 will not disclose the price she paid but she quickly tried to purchase 2 suites at that price. Yes, she received confirmations, but a sales agent doesn't know pricing except whats in front of them. Her $10,000 example makes no sense unless the buyer was incompetent. In fact it would not be a binding contract since there could not have been a mutual meeting of the minds.

I don't mean to say that I don't understand her disappointment, but one has to be realistic. Tell us what you paid and perhaps we could be more sympathetic.

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25 minutes ago, dabear said:

Interesting that PG2 will not disclose the price she paid but she quickly tried to purchase 2 suites at that price. Yes, she received confirmations, but a sales agent doesn't know pricing except whats in front of them. Her $10,000 example makes no sense unless the buyer was incompetent. In fact it would not be a binding contract since there could not have been a mutual meeting of the minds.

I don't mean to say that I don't understand her disappointment, but one has to be realistic. Tell us what you paid and perhaps we could be more sympathetic.

 

If you read back, he did disclose that he paid 75% off of the actual price of the suite.

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15 minutes ago, 2pbears said:

 

If you read back, he did disclose that he paid 75% off of the actual price of the suite.

 

That is not telling us what she paid for the suite. Is 75% off the brochure price (which no one pays), the general advertised price, the "actual price", whatever that is, or what?

Edited by dabear
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I’m sorry this happpened. There are killer last minute deals all the time so I understand you thinking it was legit. I have been subject to a pricing error on Princess which I knew was too good to be true, I escalated it to my TA a couple of times, saying it couldn’t be right...(21 day version for cheaper than the 14 day version)....they finally caught it and honoured it. Sadly Azamara doesn’t seem to be doing the same. I hope they work with you to find a solution. 

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36 minutes ago, Cruise Junky said:

I’m sorry this happpened. There are killer last minute deals all the time so I understand you thinking it was legit. I have been subject to a pricing error on Princess which I knew was too good to be true, I escalated it to my TA a couple of times, saying it couldn’t be right...(21 day version for cheaper than the 14 day version)....they finally caught it and honoured it. Sadly Azamara doesn’t seem to be doing the same. I hope they work with you to find a solution. 

Thanks Cruise Junky. I appreciate your story. Seems like Princess made the right call. I already like them better for it. Question, did you say anything in particular to get them to honor it? In other words, did you have to fight it and if so what helped your case?

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