20% discount Princess promo on excursions a bogus offer?

[YWW]

Yesterday I received an email from Princess advertising a 20% discount on excursions on a late July Alaskan cruise we are booked on. We immediately went into our account and looked into the various excursions. To our surprise, none of the excursions in our voyage offered by Princess show any discounted price reflecting the 20% discount. All are showing the regular non-discounted price. Previously Princess would show the regular price crossed out and the new discounted price shown next to it. This time no changes. I called Princess customer service twice and also used the CHAT session twice to enquire about the 20% discount promo. First agent said the current displayed price is the discounted price. I told him the prices were identical to the prices shown back in January when we first booked the cruise. He explained the current excursion price likely reflects a 20% jump in pricing which is the reason why it is the same price as in January. He wasn't sure about that. Second agent I talked to said only selected excursions get the discount. I explained I went through all the excursions offered and none showed any discount. He couldn't provide any details. 3rd CHAT agent I chatted with said the 20% discount was not for my voyage but applicable to some Princess voyage but didn't know which one. I told him the email promo has listed my voyage. The 4th CHAT agent said he would look into it but no reply from him yet. For those of you who have booked recently and received a similar discounted excursion offer, what's your experience? Did you get the discount offered by Princess? Thanks.

[coops]

Yes our group rebooked some excursions as they had a 30 percent discount on our stuff. But it didn't show old price just the new price. So we all cancelled and rebooked them all. And the over pay was put on our credit card in a few days. 

Edited April 26 by coops

[YWW]

39 minutes ago, coops said:

Yes our group rebooked some excursions as they had a 30 percent discount on our stuff. But it didn't show old price just the new price. So we all cancelled and rebooked them all. And the over pay was put on our credit card in a few days. 

So are you saying the new price reflected the 30% discount? If no old price was shown, how did you know you were given a discount?

[Ken the cruiser]

Here’s what the excursions look like on our upcoming May 8 Alaska cruise.

 

 
Now I will say we have had excursions booked at each port since we booked this cruise well over a year ago, and most of them have gone up in price, some over $100 pp. But there was one excursion with the discount that saved us $10 pp. We originally booked it at $179 pp and the new price was $169 pp. So we canceled and rebooked the excursion.
 

[YWW]

1 hour ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Here’s what the excursions look like on our upcoming May 8 Alaska cruise.

 

 
Now I will say we have had excursions booked at each port since we booked this cruise well over a year ago, and most of them have gone up in price, some over $100 pp. But there was one excursion with the discount that saved us $10 pp. We originally booked it at $179 pp and the new price was $169 pp. So we canceled and rebooked the excursion.
 

Thanks so much for posting picture of your excursion page. Your picture shows clearly the discounted price whereas mine shows the normal price with no special discount notation. One thing I am 100% positive is the current excursion price is identical to the price shown 2.5 months ago.

[NavyVeteran]

I have three Alaska cruises currently booked. Some of the excursions show the "Price reflects discount" notation and some do not. None of the excursions are priced lower than what I paid months ago, and a couple are priced higher even with the discount. Since I did not look at the prices last month, I don't know what they were charging then.

[ChutChut]

Yes - it's legit for selected excursions.

[rocklinmom]

The excursions for our May Alaska cruise are also currently marked with the 20 percent off "sale" but they are still higher than when we booked ours in February. Glad I booked them early. 

[coops]

16 hours ago, YWW said:

So are you saying the new price reflected the 30% discount? If no old price was shown, how did you know you were given a discount?

Because we booked excursions months ago and I check often for price drops . One excursion was 95.00 pp and when I checked couple weeks ago it dropped to 65.00 . So we cancelled and rebooked it. So the new price definitely reflected 30 percent discount. And few days later received the credit on my credit card.

[Paula_MacFan]

2 hours ago, rocklinmom said:

The excursions for our May Alaska cruise are also currently marked with the 20 percent off "sale" but they are still higher than when we booked ours in February. Glad I booked them early. 

Same here!  We leave in 4 weeks and have had our excursions booked for months.  All of them have gone WAY up in price, and the 'sale' prices reflected now at '20% off' are still much higher than we paid originally.  

[coldweather]

Same experience.  My 6 excursions are the exact same price they were 2 weeks ago.  Now the price says it reflects the 20% savings.  It was a pain to go look at each excursion to conclude there was no savings for us. 

[Crystabel]

I wonder if one can still get the 10% elite discount on top of the 20%. 

[Ken the cruiser]

20 minutes ago, Crystabel said:

I wonder if one can still get the 10% elite discount on top of the 20%. 

Yes. But I believe you get that 10% in OBC posted to your shipboard account once you board your cruise. At least that's how it worked on our recent Antarctica/SA cruise. In fact, it was in the form of refundable OBC, as we paid with a credit card for most of the excursions we prebooked.

 

Edited April 27 by Ken the cruiser

[leck57]

23 hours ago, YWW said:

Thanks so much for posting picture of your excursion page. Your picture shows clearly the discounted price whereas mine shows the normal price with no special discount notation. One thing I am 100% positive is the current excursion price is identical to the price shown 2.5 months ago.

 

The key words in the picture are "up to" which means the supposed discount can be almost nothing. I received a similar email a few weeks back and when I compared the prices of the "deal" to what I had fairly recently booked, not one excursion was cheaper. Like most Princess, and other cruise line sales, nothing to see here.

[frugaltravel]

The may be some deals but for me it looked like bogus advertising. I booked an excursion in Alaska months ago and the 20% off price now is still $10 more than I paid.

[rocklinmom]

18 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Yes. But I believe you get that 10% in OBC posted to your shipboard account once you board your cruise. At least that's how it worked on our recent Antarctica/SA cruise. In fact, it was in the form of refundable OBC, as we paid with a credit card for most of the excursions we prebooked.

 

Yes the Elite 10 percent discount posts as refundable OBC to your shipboard folio after you have done the shore excursion. 

[Ken the cruiser]

24 minutes ago, rocklinmom said:

Yes the Elite 10 percent discount posts as refundable OBC to your shipboard folio after you have done the shore excursion. 

If I remember correctly on our recent Antarctica/SA B2B on the Sapphire, we got the entire 10% in refundable OBC posted to our shipboard account (visible in the PCL App) at the beginning of the applicable leg rather than once we completed the excursion. My guess is if we cancelled an excursion while on the cruise (which we did not), the full cost of the excursion minus the 10%, since it had already been previously added, would then be posted to the shipboard account.

 

Edited April 28 by Ken the cruiser

[BamaVol]

Excursion prices seem to bounce around based on demand. I watched one increase by $10 before I booked it. A couple weeks later, it’s back to the earlier price point (no discount shown). Still “20 available “. 
 

I will cancel and rebook to save $20. 

[Tinknock50]

I booked just one excursion for my Alaska cruise and got the discounted price.  I have no idea what the price was in the past so don't know if that is a "scam" price.

What I did find interesting is the price varied on departure time and high availability for the best discount. The lowest priced time was the best one for me anyway, so it worked out.

[NavyVeteran]

4 hours ago, Tinknock50 said:

I booked just one excursion for my Alaska cruise and got the discounted price.  I have no idea what the price was in the past so don't know if that is a "scam" price.

What I did find interesting is the price varied on departure time and high availability for the best discount. The lowest priced time was the best one for me anyway, so it worked out.

It is not unusual to see a different price for a different departure time. Most of the time, it's the same. They know in advance which departure times are more popular, so having a different price evens out the demand - instead of selling one out.

[no1racefan1]

I don't think it's a scam or bogus, it just depends on when you booked your excursions or if you've already booked them.

 

If you didn't book them super early, you may be more likely to get a cheaper price under this promo than you would without the sale. If you booked them a long time ago, prices have gone up considerably, so even the sales price is more expensive. 

 

Basically if you're booking now, under the 'up to 20%' sale, you might be able to get a cheaper price than if you booked full price NOW. But the BEST time to book excursions seems to be as early as you know what you want!