Booking on board - UK passengers

[uktog]

Has anyone from the UK recently booked another cruise on board. We usually do this and are planning our next bookings, however I cannot work out how the new process for US residents is being applied to UK passengers. As I see it, US citizens can pay an amount without committing to an actual sailing if they wish - does that apply to those of us from the UK as we always had different deposit rules with our being non refundable

Thanks

[lucky white heather]

Hi UKTOG, I see we are from the same place...and like you we have always understood the booking process for onboard bookings (or any bookings really) are subject to different booking conditions if you live here in the UK .We recently were on ML/TA and I looked at the *US brochures available to cruisers at the future sailings desk...there was actually a note on the booking conditions that said for UK PAX the booking arrangements differed, as bookings were subject to different conditions...I took that to mean we would not automatically get a complete refund should we decide not to take up our option if we booked on board ..I know US cruisers do ...as long as it is before final payment date...they can expect to get a complete refund of their deposits or transfer their booking to an alternative cruise etc etc without penalty but we in the UK don't enjoy these privileges.

As to these"ghost" type bookings ..where you do not specify what ship, what date of travel etc, it will be interesting to find out from anyone on the X board who can tell us!

[uktog]

Thanks White Heather.

I am less concerned about the deposit issue, it is the "ghost" I need to look at as we are not 100% sure of a date but would like to sort something out

[Albert Ross]

Has anyone from the UK recently booked another cruise on board. We usually do this and are planning our next bookings, however I cannot work out how the new process for US residents is being applied to UK passengers. As I see it, US citizens can pay an amount without committing to an actual sailing if they wish - does that apply to those of us from the UK as we always had different deposit rules with our being non refundable

Thanks

Believe you are tallking about the new Next Cruise Option where you can put down $100 and decide on which ship later. This 'Next Cruise' is for US guests only. Specifically mentions Canadian or Puerto Rican citizens are not eligible at the moment. It does not mention Europeans but take it that we are excluded too....

[OnlyMe]

I haven't sailed X yet (will do in July) but on RCCL it is the same policy as X with UK / European bookings being non-refundable, there IS a way to get around it though ....... if you book AND pay the deposit in $US and request that the booking be either managed by a $US TA (that you select) OR by the Miami office then the US rules apply (at least on RCCL). Now I'm not sure if they still allow the following (or indeed if this is X's policy) but this is what we did in 2005 - The cruise we wanted wasn't available yet so we were told to book 'any' cruise to get you the shipboard credit and then we could change the booking but MAKE SURE to keep the ORIGINAL booking number. In the end we ended up cancelling the cruise and we received a full refund.

Just to be clear, this was all on RCCL but I was of the understanding that RCCL and X hold the same policies in relation to onboard bookings.

[Moeve]

AARgh they do know how to make everybodies lives difficult don't they!!! One would think when changing the whole process they could come up with a solution that helps unify the system

BUT WHAT DO THEY DO...well I guess the saying "they can't organize a p*** up in a Brewery" would fit the bill

[budster]

Is the deposit for booking onboard 100. per couple or per person? Also, does this give you the 200. on board credit on any cruise? I see many people seem to take advantage of this. Thanks for the info. :)

[Moeve]

No the OBC is based on how expensive the cruise and cabin is that you take... ok that is sort of fair since those spending more money should get a better reward...

[lucky white heather]

The change from getting a universal OBC (eg $200 per cabin I believe...not PP) for any cruise regardless of price the cruise costs you, is supposed to be being discontinued as of now, and the OBC applied will reflect what your money outlay for your selected cruise is.....viz. cheaper cruise outlays get smaller OBC's

We still feel it['s a bit risky about buying through a US based T/agent although it has definite advantages and I know many do it....especially if you feel you may want / have to cancel as long as it is before final payment so you get a complete refund...we feel like we are disadvantaged completely here in the UK , but if you are not willing to put your booking to a US T/agent then you have to bite the bullet I suppose!

[Albert Ross]

You can book on board - pick any ship and date and pay the deposit and get the OBC, then as OnlyMe says, you can swap this to another cruise - so long as you do this all within the same booking reference #. You can swap as many times as you like with no penalty - the only condition being that the value of the cruise fare must not go down [Otherwise £20pp admin fee]

The 'Next Cruise' option is totally different - you just pay $100 and that is held in limbo as a deposit till you pick what cruise you want.

 

You may be interested in a thread over on the RCL boards where a lady was trying to get together all the discrepencies between UK and US bookings and put a case forward when she was on board Liberty OTS last week - http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=527747

[Elaine0138]

Be warned one UK travel agent can charge you £200 to change a cruise, they are cetainly not 'kings of my cruise'. Worse part is they tried to tell me it was the cruise line that was charging this, it wasn't I checked with them.

[lucky white heather]

You can book on board - pick any ship and date and pay the deposit and get the OBC, then as OnlyMe says, you can swap this to another cruise - so long as you do this all within the same booking reference #. You can swap as many times as you like with no penalty - the only condition being that the value of the cruise fare must not go down [Otherwise £20pp admin fee]

The 'Next Cruise' option is totally different - you just pay $100 and that is held in limbo as a deposit till you pick what cruise you want.

 

You may be interested in a thread over on the RCL boards where a lady was trying to get together all the discrepencies between UK and US bookings and put a case forward when she was on board Liberty OTS last week - http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=527747

 

I emailed the lady who posted and said I supported whatever she was trying to do in bringing our concerns about unequal treatment to the notice of any "high heid yins" that she might be able to buttonhole .... she said she thought she might be able to update the boards next week .. stay tuned.

[OnlyMe]

......

We still feel it['s a bit risky about buying through a US based T/agent although it has definite advantages and I know many do it....especially if you feel you may want / have to cancel as long as it is before final payment so you get a complete refund...we feel like we are disadvantaged completely here in the UK , but if you are not willing to put your booking to a US T/agent then you have to bite the bullet I suppose!

 

You don't actually HAVE to use a TA at all, just book on board and tell them you want the Miami office to manage th booking (as in booking direct with X but with the Miami office and not the UK office) - this was the way we did it. The only disadvantage is that you need to telephone Miami to make any changes etc. to the booking as the UK office cannot deal with US bookings - it doesn't make sense but that's RCCL / X for you!

And, just to add, YES we are being totally and utterly short changed with the cancellation policy and one more thing to note - US vs UK prices (when comparing after exchange rate is applied) can be vastly different for the same cruise in the same cabin (at least with RCCL) -I noted $300 difference on one of the cruises we were going to change our booking to with the UK price being the lower of the two .... just something to keep in mind!

[keela1eva2]

From what I understand if you change your booking this counts as a cancellation in which case you would lose the deposit ie £100 pp.

I would be happy if this were not the case. Sometimes things happen and it would be great to be able to change that booking if need be.

 

Sue

[Albert Ross]

From what I understand if you change your booking this counts as a cancellation in which case you would lose the deposit ie £100 pp.

I would be happy if this were not the case. Sometimes things happen and it would be great to be able to change that booking if need be.

 

Sue

Sue - No - you can change/swap cruises so long as you keep it all within the same booking ref #. You can swap as many times as you like with no penalty - the only condition being that the value of the cruise fare must not go down [Otherwise £20pp admin fee] and it must not be inside 57 days before sailing. There may also be penalties if flights are already ticketed. Your T/A should not be telling you any different!

[6MonthsHere6MonthsThere]

We booked a "Next Cruise" whilst onboard the Navigator TA cruise last week, just paid the $200 in $$$s then will have the credit card convert it into GBP.

Given a booking reference and date never expires:) . But will only use it when we are looking for a short/cheap cruise as we can get more than a $200 reduction from our UK TA for longer/more expensive cruises.

[midwife]

We here in Australia are also feeling shortchanged. We look at the ads sent to us from US based TA's and find it difficult to understand why we can not book directly with the US. It costs enought just to get the cruise from Australia.

 

From some of the posts i noted that some people have been able to book using US based TAs. How do we find these?

 

Peta

[lucky white heather]

We here in Australia are also feeling shortchanged. We look at the ads sent to us from US based TA's and find it difficult to understand why we can not book directly with the US. It costs enought just to get the cruise from Australia.

 

From some of the posts i noted that some people have been able to book using US based TAs. How do we find these?

 

Peta

 

Hi Peta, we have had the same problem here in Scotland as joining most cruises to sunny destinations like Florida for example ,usually means at least one flight but more often two, with one Transatlantic (time consuming and expensive to add to the cruise expense).

We have friends in the USA who offered to be the US addressee for our documents because if we booked via a US agent we were concerned that the docs. might not reach us or if problems arose it would be difficult to resolve these from such a distance, however our last set of documents came from Chicago USA and apparently you can receive them by email now!!!!It seems X outsource them to the US , even if you are Brits booking in the UK. I have the name / email of one US travel agent who seems to be a top agent used by many many people even outwith the US ..and successfully too..no problems mentioned.If you want that name I am not allowed to put it here but can supply you with it if you have an email I can write to. It was actually mentioned on our old roll call if you want to browse that instead (ML / TA March 18th ,07.)

[Glenndale]

We've recently booked directly with Celebrity on-line.

:confused:

Do I understand it correctly that if I'd have paid a deposit on board for an unspecified future cruise I could have booked on-line, applied the deposit to the cruise and then received on board credit? Or would I have had to transfer the booking to a travel agent?

I think that we got a good deal booking directly with Celebrity but OBC as well would have been nice:)

Is there a time limit involved in applying the deposit?

[midwife]

lucky White Heather.

Thanks for that, would like to have that information. My email is p.welten@westnet.com.au.

 

Just a question, for those who have booked directly with US TA how have you paid. The reason that i am asking is that we have always found to use a credit card we need a US billing address.

 

Peta

[UK Cruiser]

We've had no problems using a US TA, obtaining documents or using our UK credit card. We've usually sent our credit card details split across two e-mails. The payments have always been charged by the cruise companies (not the TAs) to our credit card in US Dollars.

 

Hope this helps?