Silversea Cruise Refunds

[palamoh]

I had a Cruise on the Whisper scheduled for Nov 17th. Deposit was only $500, had to cancel Mid July. Took 4 1/2 months for Silversea to refund.  If I listed all the phone calls and E Mails Involved in this small refund it would take up a full page.  They readily accept our money, but some how fall asleep during the refund request.  Not their finest hour. They ignore E Mails and seldom return phone calls.  Anyone else with this problem?  

Edited December 3, 2021 by palamoh
Clicked on the Send button. By mistake before I was finished

[frantic36]

I was supposed to cruise on Muse this December. They cancelled the cruise a couple of months ago due tour countries border closures and we received our refund within two weeks of cancellation. We expected 2 -4 weeks so were happy with this.

[Etexvrc]

We were booked for a 13 day cruise.  Paid in full for months, then we get notified SS is shortening our cruise to 10 days.

They have been dragging their feet and holding my last $12,000+ hostage.

This has been going on for months now.

 

We are veteran Viking Ocean cruisers, and thought we'd change things up and try Silversea.  After this experience, we will never step foot on a SS ship.  And will advertise that fact to anyone who will listen.  

[redrocklife]

We made a decision to pull out of the 2024 World Cruise on March 10. Long range thinking, but we do not believe the Russian Far East ports will happen, nor do we want to support them if they do. We were promised our hefty deposit refund in "7-10 business days". Today is the 10th day, and no refund has even been processed by Silversea. In fact, we were just now told "refunds in 30-45  business days...."

So now the process begins of escalating within Silversea and with our TA to get our $$ deposit back. Of course that deposit was due and payable within hours of booking. 

 

We are veteran Oceania cruisers and this was to have been our first cruise on Silversea, primarily for the itinerary.  Etexvrc, we feel your pain and frustration and hope your $$ have finally been credited.

[fudgbug]

1 hour ago, redrocklife said:

We made a decision to pull out of the 2024 World Cruise on March 10. Long range thinking, but we do not believe the Russian Far East ports will happen, nor do we want to support them if they do. We were promised our hefty deposit refund in "7-10 business days". Today is the 10th day, and no refund has even been processed by Silversea. In fact, we were just now told "refunds in 30-45  business days...."

So now the process begins of escalating within Silversea and with our TA to get our $$ deposit back. Of course that deposit was due and payable within hours of booking. 

 

We are veteran Oceania cruisers and this was to have been our first cruise on Silversea, primarily for the itinerary.  Etexvrc, we feel your pain and frustration and hope your $$ have finally been credited.

For the same reason as you, we canceled our fully paid September 2022 Russian Far East cruise and had a refund in 2 days!

[Observer]

1 hour ago, redrocklife said:

We made a decision to pull out of the 2024 World Cruise on March 10. Long range thinking, but we do not believe the Russian Far East ports will happen, nor do we want to support them if they do. We were promised our hefty deposit refund in "7-10 business days". Today is the 10th day, and no refund has even been processed by Silversea. In fact, we were just now told "refunds in 30-45  business days...."

So now the process begins of escalating within Silversea and with our TA to get our $$ deposit back. Of course that deposit was due and payable within hours of booking. 

 

 

Your post raises several questions in my mind:

• Deposits for world cruises are due within several days -- not hours! -- of booking.  Who told you it was due within hours?
• Apparently you have a TA, but you say you are dealing directly with Silversea.  Why isn't your TA handling this?
• Does the refund go via your TA?  Mightn't the delay be with your TA?

 

I book directly with Silversea and always get refunds promptly.  In one instance my bank/credit card issuer held up the refund for a week or so.

[MBP&O2/O]

Four working days for us ...

[redrocklife]

The Cruise was booked on July 16, 2021 via our TA when the WC first became available.. We were waitlisted for a Deluxe Veranda, as we were told Silversea was still in "pre-sale" ,processing Venetian Society members, and those from cancelled 2020 and 2021 WC.  Deposit $250pp. No problem, we understood.

On July 26 Silversea offered us GTY Deluxe Verandah, with a deposit due of 25% in 48 hours. On July 30, 2 days after our deposit had posted, we were assigned a cabin, which we felt was in a good location and accepted. 

All Silversea communications first went thru our TA, and followup invoices came from Silversea through our TA.  No payments or refunds process to the TA first. 

I normally contact both the TA and the Cruise line if dealing with a cancellation to ensure I am receiving the same information on when to expect the credit- and both said "7-10 business days" on the day we cancelled the cruise.  Silversea admitted the refund had not been processed yet. So now that I have that information, the TA becomes involved.

So what I don't understand is why 2 days, and 4 days to show back up on a credit card for others.....

 

 

 

 

[Observer]

What I find puzzling in all of this is that Silversea would accept a cancellation from you when the booking had been made through -- and the booking was "owned" by -- the TA.  It may be that the refund had not been processed because the cancellation had not come through the TA and was thus not "official".  Travel providers are generally very reluctant to deal directly with customers if the bookings have been made by a TA.  

[redrocklife]

The cancellation was made by the TA. I'm sorry if I was not clear. 

[cruiseej]

@redrocklife I think the 7-10 days may be their guess on normal processing times at this stage of the pandemic; 30-45 days was the norm during a lot of the pandemic. But keep in mind that they recently had to change all their Baltic/northern Europe cruises for this summer, undoubtedly with lots of cancellations in the past two weeks. And all the far east cruises were canceled a week or so before that. So things may be running behind.

 

There haven't been reports of any major problems regarding refunds of late, so my suggestion would be to just give it a little more time to get sorted out. I say that fully understanding that a 25% deposit on a WC is a lot of money, and you'd like to see it back in your credit card account a.s.a.p.! I just think it's not worth getting aggravated about or spending time pursuing until some more time has passed. 

[redrocklife]

Today's update: Silversea has processed & posted the refund, and extended an apology. So give or take a couple days, we should see it on our credit cards. 

I will say we may be a bit hyper-sensitive after waiting 6 months for a Crystal refund back in early 2020, early on in the Covid era. 

We hope to experience a Silversea cruise at some point in the future.

[OlsSalt]

We booked the South Atlantic expedition on the Explorer with an immediate "deposit" of the full five figure cruise price, that added the bonus of free airfare.

 

Because of the continuing "covid" protocols not being lifted by the upcoming departure date, we decided to cancel.  We got our full refunds within a week or so. We were impressed.