UK pricing RCCL online vs travel agent

[foxyG]

Thought I'd just share my experiences with you as I'm completely new to cruising but for some strange reason have ended up booking 3 cruises!

 

All our cruises have been booked through a very well known TA, on line. mainly because they offer a 7.5% discount (their name rhymes with a large collection of pages that you read!) Hope that satisfies the rules regarding naming TA's :)

 

We spotted a price drop on our JOS cruise, thanks to the info from this site, and rang the TA to ask for the drop to be applied. It's maybe worth noting that this cruise is an air inclusive. The agent's rep said she had "never heard of RCL reducing prices after confirming bookings" and advised us that we couldn't get a reduction! The price drop would have saved us £300 on our original booking, so I pointed out that even if we cancelled, lost the £200 deposit & re-booked we would still be £100 better off! After a little more discussion she agreed to call RCL UK and check it out. When she called us back she was a bit astonished to confirm that RCL would honour the drop in price, also apologised for doubting us and said "she had learnt something new!"

 

I recently contacted the same lady at the TA's call centre to ask her to apply for the $600 drop in price on our 2010 EOS booking, she remembered me, we had a bit of a laugh regarding the earlier conversations, and consequently she rang me back 20 mins later to confirm that the price had been dropped for us.

 

I suppose the bottom line is that the big high street TA's have so many staff that aren't necessarily "cruise specialists" and maybe aren't clued up on the rules. My experience has taught me to be a little "pushy" if you know that you are right!

 

Hope this is of help to some other UK cruisers in dealing with TA's :)

[coxswain]

Nice discount - but if you find a nice small TA i'm sure you'd get a higher discount :-)

 

 

 

 

 

jj........

[MAKEM]

Both are incorrect I'm afraid.

You see price drop- you call and get the new price code -irrespective of whether you have booked on line or not.

Yes some price codes are for totally new bookings only, ususally for the WXYZ guarentee rooms, and have quirky rules such as no flights allowed, and you cannot swap an existing booking to that guarentee to take advantage of that costing, in my experience.

How can you have a price drop on a new booking anyway - it is new so that is the price, there is nothing previous to compare it to?

 

what I said, price drop would be for only new bookings,

look at the small print.

Yes you can,I have,changed to an guarrantee, the difference is in your favour,you loose any early booking & Diamond balcony discounts

Yes I have had many price drops applied to my account after the final payment,

But this is something that RCI are tightening up on.

[raffles]

The EBD and OBC offer started on 1st December so on any booking which qualifies this will be done automatically.

 

Bottoms :o - I booked at the end of November - should have waited a couple of weeks but I wanted to grab a particular cabin. wish I had known about the discount I would have taken my chances with the cabin. After much haggling I was offered a miserable $50 OBC

[spirite]

... I don't really know why but what I do know is I'd choose booking direct every time!

 

Feeling very pleased with mysef today :D

 

Congrats.

 

I tend to agree - we prefer to book direct rather than high-st TAs who are generally pretty poor. But equally savings of £100s per person will pay for the flight to Barcelona and most of our drinks!