Arcadia cancellations!

[Fionboard]

These comments re-affirm my decision to book direct in future. Hassle with TA not worth a small discount!

[terrierjohn]

7 minutes ago, Fionboard said:

These comments re-affirm my decision to book direct in future. Hassle with TA not worth a small discount!

I find the hassle is with P&O, dealings with my TA are totally straightforward and generally very beneficial.

[jeanlyon]

15 minutes ago, terrierjohn said:

I find the hassle is with P&O, dealings with my TA are totally straightforward and generally very beneficial.

Yes me too.  Strangely though when Covid began and our cruises were cancelled, my refund came direct from P&O, although I did have to contact the top brass to get it.

[Jazzytelly]

31 minutes ago, jeanlyon said:

I would think that the chap at P&O just gave you the usual line that the refund had been sent.

Well first he said I can see the refund has been sent, then he went oh oh yes you need to speak to your Travel Agent. Which I took as he could see it had been sent then he suddenly realised that it wasn’t sent to us so he backtracked a bit. 

[tring]

10 minutes ago, Jazzytelly said:

Well first he said I can see the refund has been sent, then he went oh oh yes you need to speak to your Travel Agent. Which I took as he could see it had been sent then he suddenly realised that it wasn’t sent to us so he backtracked a bit. 

 

We have had problems getting a refund from an agent about a year ago, (not P&O), but our agent constantly kept telling us they had not received it from the cruise line.  I then emailed the cruise line after ringing the agent one day and the cruise line rang me within the hour to tell me they had sent the refund to our agent two weeks  earlier and gave me the date of that payment.  On calling the agent back, they just so happened to "find" that payment and agreed to.process our refund.

 

The agents have had problems with cash flow as much as the cruise lines and some will.hang on to cash as long as they can, though I was able to put them on the spot, hence force them to pay up.

 

Edited April 23, 2022 by tring

[terrierjohn]

56 minutes ago, Jazzytelly said:

Well first he said I can see the refund has been sent, then he went oh oh yes you need to speak to your Travel Agent. Which I took as he could see it had been sent then he suddenly realised that it wasn’t sent to us so he backtracked a bit. 

Being a cynic I would assume that although the refund has been approved, it's probably still in a queue waiting for P&O to authorise the payment to the TA.

[arlowood]

16 hours ago, Jazzytelly said:

Just got this e mail from our TA, obviously they have had lots of phone calls. I have deleted the name of the TA but it is a very well known Cruise one 

 

Further to the emails from both ……….. ……… ….. and from P&O Cruises regarding refunds on cancelled cruises, we are currently getting lots of calls from our customers chasing refunds.

If you are still waiting for your refund, as you are aware, P&O Cruises will be making this payment directly to yourself and they have advised that these should be done within 28 days of your cruise being cancelled. Unfortunately, as refunds are in the hands of P&O Cruises, I am afraid we have no way of expediting these or indeed checking if they have been processed.

I appreciate this isn’t what you want to hear and it’s not the service we want to give, but the only thing that can be done is for you to wait for your refund to come through. If you call P&O Cruises to chase your refund, we are finding that they are directing our clients back to us, as the travel agent. Unfortunately, their call centre does not understand that we are unable to obtain information regarding direct refunds.

I would like to thank you for your understanding and ongoing patience in this regard.

Assuring you of my best attention at all times.
 

Jazzytelly. I struggle to grasp this explanation from your TA. As has been pointed out elsewhere, when you book through a TA, all your major payments are made via the TA. (I accept that you can separately book shore excursions etc using a credit card directly on your "My P&O Cruises" portal and these would be refunded directly from P&O). Otherwise P&O have no bank or CC details available to refund the major cruise balance. They would have the TA's details on record as the source of that payment.

 

Consequently I am suspicious of the excuse you have been given and would suggest you challenge your TA as to whether they have provided P&O with your bank details to allow that direct transfer. (Potential breach of data protection rites). If not I would ask them to explain how your money will get into your account, as clearly P&O have not requested any bank details to effect the transfer.

 

I am in the same position awaiting the refund for our 1sy May Baltic cruise on Arcadia. The 14 day deadline expired yesterday and I will be in touch with our TA on Monday to get an update on the situation. We have used this TA for many years and they have always gone above and beyond when things have been problematic so I'm willing to give them a bit of wriggle room on this.

Edited April 23, 2022 by arlowood

[zap99]

12 minutes ago, terrierjohn said:

Being a cynic I would assume that although the refund has been approved, it's probably still in a queue waiting for P&O to authorise the payment to the TA.

If somebody is telling porkies, how do you know which party is the culprit. P&O seem to process refunds for direct bookings promptly, but takes ages through an agent , who's the culprit?. Who really knows.. We have never had a problem with P&O direct bookings. With Celebrity/RCI our direct booking refunds have taken about 3 days. Don't know about Agents as we haven't used them for a while. I get daily emails from a leading Agent. The last one offered me £26 special discount..........pass🤔

[wowzz]

49 minutes ago, arlowood said:

Otherwise P&O have no bank or CC details available to refund the major cruise balance. They would have the TA's details on record as the source of that payment.

The TA we use take your credit card details,  but payment goes direct to P&O,  therefore P&O do have your cc details.

[arlowood]

8 minutes ago, wowzz said:

The TA we use take your credit card details,  but payment goes direct to P&O,  therefore P&O do have your cc details.

Fair enough. Just going on my experience where our TA has the deposit and final balance executed to them via a bank transfer from my current account.

Edited April 23, 2022 by arlowood

[Bazrat]

8 minutes ago, wowzz said:

The TA we use take your credit card details,  but payment goes direct to P&O,  therefore P&O do have your cc details.

So the TA takes your cc details and pass them on to a third party, if they did that to mine I would be extremely angry about it, or the TA takes the money and passes it on to P&O ?.

[AndyMichelle]

2 minutes ago, Bazrat said:

So the TA takes your cc details and pass them on to a third party, if they did that to mine I would be extremely angry about it, or the TA takes the money and passes it on to P&O ?.

Not sure Baz, but we were confused when our refund that we thought we had paid over to the TA, was refunded directly from P&O. 

This caused massive confusion during the first lock down as we were chasing the ta but were being told it would come direct from P&O, but neither would update us, just passed between the 2.

Seems this is happening again... 

Andy 

[wowzz]

37 minutes ago, Bazrat said:

So the TA takes your cc details and pass them on to a third party, if they did that to mine I would be extremely angry about it, or the TA takes the money and passes it on to P&O ?.

John has already explained that this is not the case.  The cc details are input into the P&O payment system, in exactly the same way as if you paid via the P&O web site.

[terrierjohn]

52 minutes ago, Jazzytelly said:

That is the same one but as I said we still haven’t got payment.  We did see the FCC on our account almost straight away so P & O did their bit on that one 

Yes but that cost them nothing, refunding the payment reduces their cash flow, so possibly that is why there is a delay, especially if the refund is to come directly from P&O.

[tring]

We cancelled our late May cruise on Aurora after P&O changed about half of the ports (so cancellation for refund was allowed).  That was late March this year and we had booked through the agent a lot of people use on here and I had requested the agent to cancel via a messaging system on social media as we were on the continent at the time, so a phone call not easy. 

 

Our refund came through direct to the credit card we had used to pay for the cruise and was marked as a payment direct from P&O.  As Wozz has explained, although you book through an agent, sometimes the payments go straight through to P&O and, that was the case for our cruise.

 

[Bazrat]

4 hours ago, wowzz said:

John has already explained that this is not the case.  The cc details are input into the P&O payment system, in exactly the same way as if you paid via the P&O web site.

You are correct he answered my post not posted originally, can you please show me the post where he answered before mine I cannot seam to find it.

[bobgiles]

Hi everyone,

 

Just had our TA call us as they have just got off the phone from P&O.

 

So the latest info is P&O have today checked for her and agree the total amount we paid for the cruise is still with them and hasn't been processed yet for refund.

 

We paid the TA directly via bank transfer for almost all of this amount "however" we had forgot the initial deposit, back in August last year, was by CC. Checking on the old statement just as Wowzz has previously posted, even though we paid the TA the statement shows P&O, so they do indeed have our CC info. So why we haven't had this part refunded already by P&O is a mystery still.

 

The outcome is we still don't have our monies back but the P&O representative told our TA they would "chase" the accounts department BUT still could not tell when or indeed how the money would come back. Could be all to the TA or part to our CC or indeed a "cheque is in the post"!!!!

 

Anyway we are away on our Celebrity Cruise next week so will post more info if we hear or receive anything back.

 

Bob.

[Shipsareus]

I’m aware this has been a topic when the cancellations were announced. However we are still waiting for a refund. Our TA assures us that it will come from P&O direct. I have also emailed P&O but of course, a week later have not had a response.

Has anyone who was due to sail on June 1 and booked through a TA now received a refund.?

According to the government website the refund should be made within 14 days of the cancellation. 
Any information gratefully received.

 

[arlowood]

Hi there

I am also caught up in this having had our 1st May Arcadia Baltic cruise cancelled.

 

Our deposit and final balance were paid directly to our TA via bank transfer so in our case there is no way P&O will be able to reimburse us directly unless the TA has given them our bank details (which I sincerely hope they have not). The last response from my TA about a week ago was that they were still awaiting the funds to come back from P&O and we will be refunded as soon as that happens.

 

However , others on here who have used a TA, have stated that they have used a credit card, the details of which were given to P&O. In those cases refunds have come directly back to the credit card rather than via the TA's accounts.

 

It's all a bit confusing but my guess is that where P&O have card or bank details that they can access directly, the refunds have been processed fairly quickly. In the case where they have to refund a TA then these transactions may be pushed to the back of the queue.

Just my take on it but of course there may be some TA's who have been refunded but have not yet got round to passing the cash back to their clients

[Shipsareus]

8 minutes ago, arlowood said:

Hi there

I am also caught up in this having had our 1st May Arcadia Baltic cruise cancelled.

 

Our deposit and final balance were paid directly to our TA via bank transfer so in our case there is no way P&O will be able to reimburse us directly unless the TA has given them our bank details (which I sincerely hope they have not). The last response from my TA about a week ago was that they were still awaiting the funds to come back from P&O and we will be refunded as soon as that happens.

 

However , others on here who have used a TA, have stated that they have used a credit card, the details of which were given to P&O. In those cases refunds have come directly back to the credit card rather than via the TA's accounts.

 

It's all a bit confusing but my guess is that where P&O have card or bank details that they can access directly, the refunds have been processed fairly quickly. In the case where they have to refund a TA then these transactions may be pushed to the back of the queue.

Just my take on it but of course there may be some TA's who have been refunded but have not yet got round to passing the cash back to their clients

It’s just frustrating, We want to use the money to pay for a holiday which we have to pay in full. We don’t want to put it on the credit cars until the refund appears to cancel it out. So we are stuck. Reading the government website it does clearly state that refunds should be made within 14 days of cancellation. If nothing comes next week I may be inclined to take some legal advice.. Certainly has made us very wary of booking with P&O again. 
our next cruise is on Viking and our friends have had cruises cancelled due to the pandemic and have had almost immediate refunds from Viking. 
just annoyed that P&O don’t even answer the phone, or emails or even just send a message explaining what will happen.

[Jazzytelly]

Phoned our TA yesterday they have been told refunds should be with us by the end of the month. Well it has to go in by tomorrow then as last working day in the month, I’m not holding my breath. I did point out the two week rule but was just told people waited months at the beginning of the pandemic. I did say that was why they brought the two week rule in but no joy on that really. They were very nice about the whole thing but said it wasn’t with them.

[mrsgoggins]

2 minutes ago, Jazzytelly said:

Phoned our TA yesterday they have been told refunds should be with us by the end of the month. Well it has to go in by tomorrow then as last working day in the month, I’m not holding my breath. I did point out the two week rule but was just told people waited months at the beginning of the pandemic. I did say that was why they brought the two week rule in but no joy on that really. They were very nice about the whole thing but said it wasn’t with them.

 

I will be amazed (and delighted!) if we do get the refunds so soon.  My TA have responded to my communications speedily but are pointedly ignoring any reference to the 14 day refund legislation. As I said previously, I do have a bit of sympathy with them but less so with P&O. However, I won't be stomping my feet for at least another week.

[arlowood]

5 minutes ago, Shipsareus said:

It’s just frustrating, We want to use the money to pay for a holiday which we have to pay in full. We don’t want to put it on the credit cars until the refund appears to cancel it out. So we are stuck. Reading the government website it does clearly state that refunds should be made within 14 days of cancellation. If nothing comes next week I may be inclined to take some legal advice.. Certainly has made us very wary of booking with P&O again. 
our next cruise is on Viking and our friends have had cruises cancelled due to the pandemic and have had almost immediate refunds from Viking. 
just annoyed that P&O don’t even answer the phone, or emails or even just send a message explaining what will happen.

Just had an email from our TA stating that the refund is still pending from P&O. Their Admin Manager has chased P&O recently so they are hoping the money will appear soon.

 

From your comments I surmise that you or your TA provided P&O with your credit card details. If that is the case then there should be no delay in refunding you.

The only thing I can think is that P&O are prioritising those who booked direct and leaving the TA bookings for later refunding.

[terrierjohn]

Just now, arlowood said:

Just had an email from our TA stating that the refund is still pending from P&O. Their Admin Manager has chased P&O recently so they are hoping the money will appear soon.

 

From your comments I surmise that you or your TA provided P&O with your credit card details. If that is the case then there should be no delay in refunding you.

The only thing I can think is that P&O are prioritising those who booked direct and leaving the TA bookings for later refunding.

On past performance I would doubt their IT dept has the ability to programme that sort of action.  It's either sheer incompetence, or deliberately trying to limit the impact on cash flow, but that might be beyond their IT capabilities, so it must be incompetence.😉

[Gettingwarmer]

I have no idea exactly how this works but I would imagine accounts are paid once a month. If theTA owes P&O after all transactions are taken into account they pay them, if P&O owe the TA money they pay them. The TAs are not using their money to pay back clients until they receive the money from P&O. 

Edited April 28, 2022 by Gettingwarmer