Charge excursions and then get money back from SBC once onboard

[Sailor Sam 407]

I hope I can explain this clearly. Some SBC don't appear in your account until after you've booked your excursions. Once you board, can you have those credit card paid excursions shifted to your SBC and have your credit card charges refunded? We did this with another line, but I don't know if Viking allows same. Thanks

[Heidi13]

When you purchase and pay for Shore-ex prior to embarkation, the tours are transferred to the ship and upon embarkation the tickets will be in your cabin.

 

If you decide to cancel a tour, or the ship misses a port, Viking issue a credit to your Shipboard Account. Tours paid with a credit card are designated as refundable credits. However, tours purchased with Viking provided OBC are designated as non-refundable credits.

 

When we disembarked, we received a cheque for the total amount of refundable credits. Any non-refundable credits were lost. The cheque took about 6 weeks after disembarkation.

 

This was our experience on the 2020 WC.

[Sailor Sam 407]

Thanks Heidi13. Let me see if I can better explain with an example. You pre-purchase $1000 worth of excursions on your credit card. Between that purchase and embarkation, you receive a $1000 SBC. Upon embarkation you go to the Destination Office and say that you want to use that $1000 SBC to pay for those excursions and you want your credit card refunded or cash. That was an option available to us on Regent (albeit pre-covid), so just seeing if Viking offers same. Thanks

[Heidi13]

3 hours ago, Sailor Sam 407 said:

Thanks Heidi13. Let me see if I can better explain with an example. You pre-purchase $1000 worth of excursions on your credit card. Between that purchase and embarkation, you receive a $1000 SBC. Upon embarkation you go to the Destination Office and say that you want to use that $1000 SBC to pay for those excursions and you want your credit card refunded or cash. That was an option available to us on Regent (albeit pre-covid), so just seeing if Viking offers same. Thanks

 

Never had the need to try it, but there's no harm in asking at the Shore-ex desks.

 

You can always cancel and then re-book, as the refund to your onboard account should be designated as refundable OBC, then rebook the same tours, as we found they always charged the non-refundable OBC first.

 

At the end of the cruise you can get the remaining refundable OBC as a refund.