Refund or Credit from Alaska Transfer Co.

[jimdalva]

Now that the beginning of the Alaska Cruise season has been canceled, I asked for a refund from the Seward to Anchorage Transfer Co. I had paid $427.57. They responded with a heartfelt and sincere e mail that said; 

 

 

Our company has been operating cruise ship transportation since 2004 and we have been through some hard times throughout the years, but we could not have possibly planned or predicted what is happening at this time in the world.

We are a single family, small, local business. We only operate for the cruise lines, and our operating season is mid May through mid September, we don’t have any income coming in during the winter months and we still have to pay for our loan equipment, land, and building mortgages. Knowing that sales start to ramp up in March, we naturally use the pre-paid reservation funds to pay our winter bills. We understand that it is a tough time for everyone in the world and we are not the only ones affected.

 

In this current situation with no new reservations and mounting cancellations, our family is facing loosing everything including our home to be able to last until summer 2021, when hopefully people will start to travel again. As a way to save our business we are proposing the following to you:

 

 

They went on to offer 1- 110% forever credit   2- a refund in June. OR 

 

3 - If none of the above 2 options work for you, please let us know and we will refund as soon as possible. Please don’t submit a chargeback to your bank at this time, this will cost us more money as we have to pay for each chargeback a fee and we might loose our merchant account forever if we get too many chargeback. Please simply reply to this email and let us know that you need these money refunded as soon as possible.

 

 

We replied that we wanted them to survive this crisis and would let them hold our money till next year. 

 

I hope other cruisers who are financially able , think about the little family businesses as we go through the flurry of cancelations. 

 

 

[Kevin's girl]

So glad you were able to make that decision. I hope more are able to do the same. Their season is short to start with and this current situation can easily wipe them out.

[strickerj]

I don't suppose there's any insurance available to businesses that would cover this sort of thing?

 

I haven't started canceling my shore excursions and other arrangements since I haven't received an official cancellation from HAL yet, but this is a good thing to think about - thanks for sharing!

[Italy52]

One of the independent vendors I am using has listed cancellation options on her website.  One of the options is to defer refund to a future reservation --- this will be our option as we have already rebooked our Alaska cruise for 2021.

[Jimbo]

You would think with the prices up there they charge for excursions that they would have  nice savings account loaded up with $$$ saved up from last summer.

 

 

[Coral]

1 hour ago, Jimbo said:

You would think with the prices up there they charge for excursions that they would have  nice savings account loaded up with $$$ saved up from last summer.

 

Many tourism places in Alaska only work 5 months out of the year. They work long days and 7 days a week to pull them through the remaining months.