Regent: It’s time to do the right thing!

[UUNetBill]

1 hour ago, flossie009 said:

Sorry, Bill, but that is incorrect.

There is nothing in UK law that obliges Regent, or any other travel operator, to require a hefty non-refundable deposit.

Unfortunately it has become "custom & practice" for cruise-lines to put this in their UK booking conditions.

Sometimes the companies seek to argue that they need the cash from their customers to fund the contributions they have to make to the two consumer protection schemes, ATOL & ABTA.

Arguably this might justify a significant deposit but certainly does not justify that deposit being non-refundable.

Flossie, sorry, I didn't express that properly - I know from reading these boards (assuming they contain reasonably correct information) that the UK laws are different than the US and don't appear to cover air or other expenses - I didn't mean that they required higher deposits.  That's set by each line, I believe.  But yes, the higher deposits can be scary, especially in the current situation.

 

51 minutes ago, flossie009 said:

I don't know in detail as we have been Regent loyalists for some years, but I suspect that the normal UK Ts&Cs are similar across all the lines.

However, it does appear that the special arrangements in relation to the present crisis are starting to diverge between companies.

This is more the gist of what I was trying to say was that I'm pretty sure most cruise operators have similar policies - but maybe I'm wrong, I haven't looked at the T&Cs of other lines here in the US, let alone the UK.

 

Friday afternoon - my brain is already switching into weekend quarantine mode...

[mrlevin]

I am not sure I understand the current situation properly.  If I were to book 25 April Callao to Miami on the Navigator and pay full amount (around $20,000) I would get back $25,000 FCC when Regent eventually cancelled this cruise?  I chose this as an example as I am quite confident that this cruise will be cancelled.

 

Even if Regent holds onto my money for a full year that is pretty darn good return.  As you can apply multiple FCC to the same cruise maybe I should book five cruises that will be cancelled.  What am I missing?

 

thanks,

 

Marc

[HotRoot]

4 hours ago, etual324 said:

    SilverSea  stepped up right away with FULL CASH REFUNDS going into Dec 2020 sometimes a luxury line is not just the glitter up front but what goes on when things go BAD

SS full CC till May then CASH REFUNDS till DEC 2020

We cancelled a SS cruise to Japan five weeks ago.  Two weeks ago our TA inquired about our refund (14K).  They showed he had called to cancel but nobody "processed" the cancellation.  Said they would do it that day.  We still do not have a credit.  They might talk the talk but they do not walk the walk.

[UUNetBill]

46 minutes ago, HotRoot said:

We cancelled a SS cruise to Japan five weeks ago.  Two weeks ago our TA inquired about our refund (14K).  They showed he had called to cancel but nobody "processed" the cancellation.  Said they would do it that day.  We still do not have a credit.  They might talk the talk but they do not walk the walk.

Not making excuses but they're probably kind of busy the last few months.  I can understand things slipping through the cracks; all the more reason to keep following up with them.  Shouldn't have to, I know, but I'm trying to be a bit more understanding for a while.

[seaknots]

1 hour ago, mrlevin said:

What am I missing?

ethics 🤨

[mrlevin]

9 minutes ago, seaknots said:

ethics 🤨

 

Interesting thought.  Since I am homebound, I took Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Camus' Myth of Sisyphus off my bookshelves.  Would be a good topic to peruse; take some time.

 

thanks,

 

Marc

 

edited to add:  C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity starts off with ethics, I will find that and bring that down, too.

Edited March 20, 2020 by mrlevin

[ronrick1943]

1 hour ago, UUNetBill said:

Not making excuses but they're probably kind of busy the last few months.  I can understand things slipping through the cracks; all the more reason to keep following up with them.  Shouldn't have to, I know, but I'm trying to be a bit more understanding for a while.

I go with ethics myself.  Sure they are busy right now, and mistakes do happen.  However if one want to use the FFC on a cruise the change happens overnight, great.  So why does a full refund take up to 90 days to process, we know it doesn't take that long as it should be 10 to 12 days at best.  I'm all for a little slack right know, but Really.......

[Travelcat2]

2 minutes ago, ronrick1943 said:

I go with ethics myself.  Sure they are busy right now, and mistakes do happen.  However if one want to use the FFC on a cruise the change happens overnight, great.  So why does a full refund take up to 90 days to process, we know it doesn't take that long as it should be 10 to 12 days at best.  I'm all for a little slack right know, but Really.......

 

It has not been my experience that booking a cruise using FCC’s happens overnight.  In our case it is taking up to 3 weeks (Regent is holding the suite).  Before a cruise can be booked using FCC’s, they need to be calculated.  As I understand it, this is not straightforward and Regent is backed up.  We also need to consider that Regent salaried employees just took a 20% pay decrease (until June) and are working a 4-day workweek.  This slows the process even more.  I would rather wait than put any more pressure on the employees at Corporate.  

 

So, (and I’m guessing here), one would assume that before a refund can be made, there are still calculations to be done.  

 

RIck, I just wanted to share our experience with booking a new cruise with “FCC’s.  I think that we all wish that things would happen quickly but, for the reasons mentioned, we need to be more patient than normal.  

[ronrick1943]

12 minutes ago, Travelcat2 said:

 

It has not been my experience that booking a cruise using FCC’s happens overnight.  In our case it is taking up to 3 weeks (Regent is holding the suite).  Before a cruise can be booked using FCC’s, they need to be calculated.  As I understand it, this is not straightforward and Regent is backed up.  We also need to consider that Regent salaried employees just took a 20% pay decrease (until June) and are working a 4-day workweek.  This slows the process even more.  I would rather wait than put any more pressure on the employees at Corporate.  

 

So, (and I’m guessing here), one would assume that before a refund can be made, there are still calculations to be done.  

 

RIck, I just wanted to share our experience with booking a new cruise with “FCC’s.  I think that we all wish that things would happen quickly but, for the reasons mentioned, we need to be more patient than normal.  

Not my experience, we canceled one cruise and got FFC, a day later all FFC was applied to the cruise we booked, no problem.  Regent cancelled another one of our cruises, got the invoice showing canceled cruise and the amount.  With a note that it could take as much as 90 days for the refund.  Really if they do all that it's not that hard to do a credit card credit.

[Travelcat2]

22 minutes ago, ronrick1943 said:

Not my experience, we canceled one cruise and got FFC, a day later all FFC was applied to the cruise we booked, no problem.  Regent cancelled another one of our cruises, got the invoice showing canceled cruise and the amount.  With a note that it could take as much as 90 days for the refund.  Really if they do all that it's not that hard to do a credit card credit.

 

Wow - we have totally different experiences.  I wonder if people booked on the March 14th cruise have a different calculation.  After all, most people (not us) took the Regent flight to the ship before it was cancelled.  I wonder if they will get reimbursed for the flights.  In any case, we have not received paperwork for the cancelled cruise (as you know, it was cancelled a week ago today).  

 

I'm glad that we are sharing real experiences as it could be helpful to others.  

[Pam]

Jackie, I didn't know the salaried personnel had taken a pay cut and a shorter work week!  Was it financial problems or something else?

[SWFLAOK]

3 hours ago, HotRoot said:

We cancelled a SS cruise to Japan five weeks ago.  Two weeks ago our TA inquired about our refund (14K).  They showed he had called to cancel but nobody "processed" the cancellation.  Said they would do it that day.  We still do not have a credit.  They might talk the talk but they do not walk the walk.

We cancelled a SS cruise from Fort Lauderdale to Auckland next January about a month ago. We had paid for it in full last fall to get a 10% discount (and we could still afford to do that back then). We were told that it would take 2 or 3 billing cycles to get our money back, minus the 200 administrative fee (which can be used as a future cruise credit). We haven't seen it, and recently told it would still be 1 or 2 billing cycles. Our refund is much more then 14K. And we weren't offered a refund on our April 11 Paul Gauguin cruise from Fiji to Bali, and the FCC doesn't include the pre or post hotel and transfers, or the included airfare and our business class upgrade. They can't tell us if we will get a voucher or credit on those, but if we want to book another cruise, and use the cruise only credit being offered, we need to make a decision soon to find availability before the FCC expires. Our next Regent cruise is well over a year away, and the full payment isn't anytime soon, so we are trying not to worry about it at this time. Cruising shouldn't be this stressful.

For any Regent return cruisers traveling on a cruise that you can no longer look forward to since you are pretty sure it isn't going to sail, and you can still do so without a significant penalty,  then I would just rebook for a future cruise. That will let you look forward to it in the future, and give the cruise line a better chance of surviving. If you have never cruised before at all, or not on Regent, and are still out far enough to cancel with just a minimal administrative fee, I would do that. It gives you a chance to start over at a better time, and choose a cruise line and an itinerary with ports that have survived the covid-19 cruise vacation apocalypse.

[boblerm]

26 minutes ago, Travelcat2 said:

 

Wow - we have totally different experiences.  I wonder if people booked on the March 14th cruise have a different calculation.  After all, most people (not us) took the Regent flight to the ship before it was cancelled.  I wonder if they will get reimbursed for the flights.  In any case, we have not received paperwork for the cancelled cruise (as you know, it was cancelled a week ago today).  

 

I'm glad that we are sharing real experiences as it could be helpful to others.  

We are in a somewhat different situation than you, although we were booked on the same cruise, we canceled several days before Regent officially canceled. We called our ta to cancel and apply the FCC to a cruise next year.  We had to put an additional deposit on the new cruise. The next day on the Regent web site MyAccount showed the canceled cruise was gone, and I was able to put in my confirmation number for the new cruise. A few days later, the refund for port charges and taxes were credited back to my card. For us, it was seamless.

[SWFLAOK]

1 hour ago, Travelcat2 said:

 

It has not been my experience that booking a cruise using FCC’s happens overnight.  In our case it is taking up to 3 weeks (Regent is holding the suite).  Before a cruise can be booked using FCC’s, they need to be calculated.  As I understand it, this is not straightforward and Regent is backed up.  We also need to consider that Regent salaried employees just took a 20% pay decrease (until June) and are working a 4-day workweek.  This slows the process even more.  I would rather wait than put any more pressure on the employees at Corporate.  

 

So, (and I’m guessing here), one would assume that before a refund can be made, there are still calculations to be done.  

 

RIck, I just wanted to share our experience with booking a new cruise with “FCC’s.  I think that we all wish that things would happen quickly but, for the reasons mentioned, we need to be more patient than normal.  

That's the same as our current experience with Paul Gauguin, and we understand the problems that all cruise lines are facing at this point. Airlines for domestic flights don't want to hear from us anytime soon for rebooking, and we can only cancel flights that close enough to do so online.

[Travelcat2]

18 minutes ago, Pam said:

Jackie, I didn't know the salaried personnel had taken a pay cut and a shorter work week!  Was it financial problems or something else?

 

Pam - here is a link to the article (the full article is in Business Insider but I can't open it because I have ad blocker). https://www.cruiseindustrynews.com/cruise-news/22635-norwegian-cuts-pay-20-moves-to-4-day-work-week.html

[Pam]

I have an ad blocker, too, but I can disable it for one page.  That was a very short article; said from March 30 through mid-June.  That was it.

[SusieQft]

2 hours ago, boblerm said:

A few days later, the refund for port charges and taxes were credited back to my card.

Thank you, boblerm.  I had been wondering about the port taxes.  I am familiar with Crystal, which refunds the port taxes even if you cancel while in penalty.  And refunds them  to  the passenger's credit card even if the rest of the fare is a FCC.  Since Regent does not itemize the port taxes on a separate line, I was not sure how they would handle it. 

 

From your comment, I am assuming that regardless of who cancels or when, and whether or not there is any penalty or FCC involved, that Regent will refund the port charges to your credit card?

[Travelcat2]

3 hours ago, Pam said:

I have an ad blocker, too, but I can disable it for one page.  That was a very short article; said from March 30 through mid-June.  That was it.

 

I know that I can do that but am too lazy.  I thought that you would click on the link in the short article to get to the Business Insider article.  Sorry that I didn't explain it well. 

[boblerm]

9 hours ago, SusieQft said:

Thank you, boblerm.  I had been wondering about the port taxes.  I am familiar with Crystal, which refunds the port taxes even if you cancel while in penalty.  And refunds them  to  the passenger's credit card even if the rest of the fare is a FCC.  Since Regent does not itemize the port taxes on a separate line, I was not sure how they would handle it. 

 

From your comment, I am assuming that regardless of who cancels or when, and whether or not there is any penalty or FCC involved, that Regent will refund the port charges to your credit card?

I am not certain as to what Regent does if you cancel while in penalty.  But if you cancel for FCC, this is what they do.

In my case, I cancelled the March 14 San Diego to Miami cruise.  I received a credit of $703 pp for port and tax charges.  This cruse had 8 ports of call, not including the Panama canal (I don't know if there are port charges involved there), and not counting the embarkation and disembarkation ports.  

 

It's true that Regent doesn't break out port and tax charges, (at least, not where I can find them), so I guess we just have to take their math on faith.  FWIW, I found a similar itinerary on Crystal, and these charges were $880.

[DaisyUK]

Somewhat off topic, but just another word on UK travel agents and the experience we have just had with ours (soon to be 'ex'). We were considering canceling an early June cruise which had been paid in full. Before Regent offered the 100% FCC,  and being just outside 90 days,  I wrote to our travel agent to ask for the exact amount of the refund to help us with our decision. The answer? We would lose 100% of the total cost. Even though Regent would refund 80% of the cruise value, less flights and transfers, the travel agent would keep the rest because we had paid in full. They referred me to their T&Cs which said nothing of the sort, but when questioned told me 'I would have been told' when booking that the cruise and ancillary arrangements had been booked through their sister company, the T&Cs of which were different and included 100% loss in the event of cancellation once full payment had been made. I have no correspondence from the sister company, and I don't actually believe they could have got away from this, but in the midst of a heated argument with the TA, Regent came out with the Regent Reassurance programme so we decided to go with that. When this has settled down, we may decide to take it further, with the TA as we feel that they have behaved outrageously. 

[liptastic]

7 minutes ago, DaisyUK said:

Somewhat off topic, but just another word on UK travel agents and the experience we have just had with ours (soon to be 'ex'). We were considering canceling an early June cruise which had been paid in full. Before Regent offered the 100% FCC,  and being just outside 90 days,  I wrote to our travel agent to ask for the exact amount of the refund to help us with our decision. The answer? We would lose 100% of the total cost. Even though Regent would refund 80% of the cruise value, less flights and transfers, the travel agent would keep the rest because we had paid in full. They referred me to their T&Cs which said nothing of the sort, but when questioned told me 'I would have been told' when booking that the cruise and ancillary arrangements had been booked through their sister company, the T&Cs of which were different and included 100% loss in the event of cancellation once full payment had been made. I have no correspondence from the sister company, and I don't actually believe they could have got away from this, but in the midst of a heated argument with the TA, Regent came out with the Regent Reassurance programme so we decided to go with that. When this has settled down, we may decide to take it further, with the TA as we feel that they have behaved outrageously. 

Daisy this is a shocking story. Surely to goodness they have to be supporting you with the Regent Reassurance? 
Our next cruise is April 16th. I don’t think for a minute this will go ahead.  In preparation our excellent TA contacted Regent and gave us the amount of £ that would be given for the FCC obviously minus the flights, which are 4 in total which was a very substantial amount of £.

We would prefer the £ refund as to the FCC as I asked the question as to whether the FCC could go toward our November booked cruise and Regent said no it has to be a new booking which I understand fair enough. 
Your situation is not acceptable at all. Hopefully Susan (Flossie) will be able to mybe shed some light as I always feel she has much more knowledge in our UK arrangements than I ever will?  Hope things get sorted for you.  Jean.

[DaisyUK]

Jean, thanks for your reply. We are being supported by Regent Reassurance, but no thanks to our TA! I called Regent, and was told that if we take the FCC then it is applied to our personal account and the TA has no access to it, so that is what we have done. As for the TA - I am shocked and disappointed in them. We have booked several high value cruises with them in the past, and so I was/am surprised they would react in this way. Needless to say, we will not be booking anything with them in the future. We may possibly keep this one FCC with the employee who booked it in the first place, as it is not her fault that her employers are behaving in this way. I guess they must be hurting badly because of the virus and looking to the short term to try and survive, but if they do survive the outcome of the virus, I can't see them having any customer base left.

[papaflamingo]

On 3/20/2020 at 9:04 AM, flossie009 said:

 

 

Although this is correct advice for @gr'aunt, it is not the same for Regent bookings made in all countries; the Regent booking conditions vary outside North America.

For example, for bookings made in the UK guests stand to lose their total deposit which may be up to 20% ☹️

Good point. 

[flossie009]

2 hours ago, DaisyUK said:

When this has settled down, we may decide to take it further, with the TA as we feel that they have behaved outrageously. 

It is very sad to hear of companies attempting to profiteer out of their client's difficulties during these difficult times.

I would suggest that you check whether your TA (sorry, ex TA) is a member of ABTA (you can easily check on ABTA's website). If they are then report their actions to ABTA as their behaviour is clearly against the ABTA Code of Conduct. 

Also suggest to RSSC (UK), who are members of ABTA, that they might wish to cease doing business through that TA.

 

 

2 hours ago, liptastic said:

We would prefer the £ refund as to the FCC as I asked the question as to whether the FCC could go toward our November booked cruise and Regent said no it has to be a new booking

I find this to be a disappointing reaction from Regent. In the past it has always been possible to apply FCCs to an already booked cruise where the final payment has yet to be made.

[DaisyUK]

Thanks for your comments Flossie. The TA is a member of ABTA and it is a good idea to report them, which I will do. Regent are already aware of the situation; they know the TA and apparently take a lot of bookings from them. When this is all over I will share the correspondence with them. I'm sure at present they are inundated, so I won't bother them now.