Cunard Upgrade

[Minnie29]

I have recently received an email from Cunard regarding my April cruise on QV.

i was invited to bid on an upgrade.

I did put in a bid.

Does anyone know when I would be notified if successful?

[Pushpit]

The Cunard website says 7 days before departure, or even 1 day beforehand. In reality my last Plusgrade came through at 8 weeks to departure. Now that was on a lightly loaded service, so it makes sense to shift inventory quick so you can readvertise my previous cabin. I would guess fuller services will be nearer the 7 day mark.

[Minnie29]

Thank you for that. 
Although I bid way over minimum I don’t really expect the upgrade as the cruise seems very full.

[LittleFish1976]

I recently had an upgrade bid accepted a week after I had lodged it and about 5 weeks prior to embarkation. I did revise my bid upwards twice during that week and it was accepted a couple of hours after the last revision. I assumed the sailing had a reasonable amount of availability and so when they labelled all the higher grades of cabin as sold out I assumed they were just taking some time to shuffle people/cabins around. You can hear any time I think is the moral of this story. It will depend on availability on your particular cruise. If you bid as you said 'way over minimum' I should think you'd have as good a chance, or better, as any but the cabin has to be available first. I bid, from memory, a bit more than 10% over their minimum which was still in their anaemic end of their quality-of-bid graphic. Mind you, it was a substantial bid in terms of sheer numbers.

 

Edited March 19 by LittleFish1976

[Jim_P]

I've bid on an upgrade on Cunard three different times. Each time bidding the minimum (plus a token $5 to outbid any other minimum bidders). Two times it was successful and was approved within a week of making the bid. The time it was unsuccessful I wasnt notified until just before the cruise. 

 

So going my experiences, if you dont hear back within a week, its probably been unsuccessful and they are waiting until right before the cruise and if theres any unsold rooms you'll get a second chance to be bumped up. 

[Carnevale]

Are upgrade bids by invitation only or is there a process at a certain point in time prior to the cruise that bidding is open to all?  If it is by invitation is there anything one needs to do to be invited?

 

We always book a stateroom that we like but still find it can be fun to get in on the bidding knowing that if we are unsuccessful we will still have a great cruise in the stateroom we booked.

[Jim_P]

No, it just seems random and it's by email. You don't need to do anything.  It's a third party agency that handles it for Cunard, not them directly. As far as I know there's nothing you can do other than just wait and see if you get the email. Probably depends on how fast a cruise is being filled.

Edited March 21 by Jim_P
Spelling

[TowandaUK]

If you google introducing Cunard upgrade there is a section in the site explaining the upgrade system. There is a button to upgrade, but this only works after you receive the email. 

[LittleFish1976]

If you 'qualify' for a bid-to-upgrade you should see a button on the page relevant to your voyage once you're logged in on the My Cunard page.

 

I qualify for two I'm travelling on soon - one was booked direclty with Cunard and the other through a travel agent. Can't explain why they should have qualified when some other people's haven't.

[Pushpit]

A lot of background and examples about this can be found in this thread: