Passport/ Visa Problems with Passport Exp.?

[gr8aunt]

ZVS is an excellent service. Used them last year for my Russian visa. They also have a great web site. In the case of Russia, there were explicit instructions about filling out the rather lengthy form.

[cathi]

Would love everyone's ideas - We are sailing on the 2008 Hong Kong to Athens and we are Canadians not Americans. Should we use the Oceania visa program or do it on our own??? I keep trying to figure out what countries we actually need visas for. Does anybody know which countries on this itin require visas?? If we use Oceania's visa program how early/late do we have to send out passport away?

[pmcgsan]

Hi Cathi,

 

I have been following the discussion regarding visa's, we are also on the April 2008 sailing from Hong Kong to Athens. I found a great web site for information: www.travel.state.gov I went through each country that we are going to go to then copied and pasted the information and printed it so I don't have to keep looking it up. We may get some of our visa's in San Francisco, we live in the San Diego area so that is easy to do, my sister lives in Sacramento and we can visit and get visa's! We can't apply till about 6 months before our travel dates. I am still researching.

 

Pat

La Jolla

[pmcgsan]

Cathi, I should have added that Canada probably has a similiar web site.

 

Pat

[shoshona2]

Cathi,

 

Call your Travel Agent and have him or her check this out for you. Since you are from Canada, there are vast differences betweeen countries who require visas. We were on the Black Sea cruise last year, someone couldn't get off the ship in one of the countries because there was a political situation between countries. I told the lady she wasn't missing anything much (which was true) and she ended up winning the Bingo Jackpot. She felt much better after that.

 

Another thing, one has to ALWAYS check the Visas when you get them back. One lady thought she had a double entry Visa into China (we started in Beijing and went to Korea and then back to Shanghai, China). The Visa Service didn't give her a double-entry visa and she had to stay on the ship in Shanghai.

 

Sheila

[cathi]

Thanks for all the opinions. Sheila, I did check with my travel agent cause I am one! And I do have a Canadian company that will do them. I just wanted to know if the Oceania service was a cheaper alternative than doing each individually. This probably isn't the best thread to ask this question seeing as how they appeared to have messed up someone's but have other people who used Oceania's service had similar experiences or was it an isolated incident???

[shoshona2]

Hi Cathi,

 

We used Zierer Visa Services as we have done in the past ten years or so. Oceania wanted TWICE the amount of money for the visas and Zierer had our Passports and visas back in plenty of time. We always send them via Fed Ex so we know they get there.

 

Sheila

[Lido]

We began this thread with a simple question to find out if we were the only people having problems with Passport Express and their handling of Visas. We made the initial mistake of thinking that paying $790 for the two of us to get our India Visas for the trip would assure responsible handling of it. We then found out that to get my wife's visa expidited so her passport would be back to us by March 1st, it would entail an additional $105 expidite fee, which seemed reasonable. My passport was expideted. It was wife's passport that needed to be expidited. My first contact to Oceania to get help resolving the problem brought an "it's not our problem, contact your travel agent" response. My wife had to cancel her trip abroad on March 6th. On the positive side, her passport did finally arrive.but too late for her take her trip abroad. Also, FedEX left it outside by the garage. I had given specific instructions on where to leave it in a secure place.

 

Oceania told us they would insist that Passport Express refund the $105 expidite fee to us. To date we have heard nothing more from Passport Express or Oceania. I expect this will require repeated follow up from us. Many of you have read the posts above by "tgg" who also suffered a similar fate with their Visas. "tgg" also contacted their TA, and like us never got the proper response from Oceania. If you think this is just somone whining about a petty detail, we would hope that your passport/visa experience is not as stressfull or expensive as ours has turned out to be. To date our visas have cost us over $2400! We remain optomistic that our Oceania Cruise will be as satisfactory as other guests' have experienced. For those who have not yet started on the Visa quest, there must be a more satisfactory outcome than us and "tgg" experienced with Passport Express. Happy Cruising.

Lido

[tgg]

Lido:

 

I hope you enjoy your upcoming cruise despite the mess with your visas. I'd love to hear your impressions of the cruise experience when you return.

 

Bon Voyage.

[DuggerPDX]

I'm in the process of acquiring Turkish travel visa's through ZVS and so far the process has gone smoothly. I forgot to include two passport sized photo's and they were on the phone the day they received my paperwork reminding me I needed to send them in, and they have online tracking.

[Lido]

As the initiator of this thread it seemed that a follow up on the "Visa Package Issues" would be appropriate:

 

First, the good part. It was a wonderful cruise. By far the best of any of the 40+ cruises we have taken. I would have to say it exceeded expectations in every category. Oceania really does a wonderful job on the Nautica. Service tended to be over the top in every area. On a 35 day cruise you have enough time to get pretty picky about small things. Yes, it was hot, there were some laundry room issues etc. but it would be hard for anyone on the cruise not to feel they got good value for their money and had a great time. Anyone considering the cruise next year should read the wonderfully descriptive series of posts by JackWa that probably is the most read post of all time on this board. Those who were on the cruise can relive it again.

 

As for the passport package from Passport Express, we certainly were not the only ones to have issues with them. However, some of the people who got their own visas had some problems too. Interestingly, we met one couple who were on "standby" for the trip until about three weeks before departure and of course had no visas. They were told "Nautica would take care of it on board or at the ports" and they did. We did get a check from Passport Express for $105 for the expedite fee when we got back and while gone I had a voice mail from Lisa August at Oceania to please call her regarding my visa issue. I returned the call to her voice mail twice but never heard back from her. Even a note of apology from Oceania or a bottle of wine would have smoothed our feelings about the gross mishandling of our passport and visas by Passport Express and the fact that the whole process ended up costing us well over $2000. Oceania does a much better job of running their shipboard operation than they do handling visas. Yes, we certainly would travel on Oceania again. No, we would NOT use their visa service.

 

Lido

[tgg]

Hi Lido,

 

How happy I am that you enjoyed your cruise. After what you went through with the visa situation, it is a relief to hear that Oceania exceeded your expectations. We love the sailing experience on Oceania, but the office details are an area that need some fine tuning.

 

If you do hear from Lisa at Oceania please put in a good word for us. We have a B2 guarantee on the October 30, 2007 Regatta sailing.

 

Toni

[Jancruz]

Lisa is on vacation for two weeks..TGG if you have a guarantee..I would bet you will get your stateroom!

Jan

*****