24hr cancel policy

So a friend of mine has informed me that RCI gives a 24 hours grace period to cancel if I am not able to make my cruise, with no penalties???? I am not able to find this in writting....so is it true??

Thank you all for the help.

So a friend of mine has informed me that RCI gives a 24 hours grace period to cancel if I am not able to make my cruise, with no penalties???? I am not able to find this in writting....so is it true??

 

Thank you all for the help.

never heard of that one.

Why would you book anyway if within 24 hrs you'd think you might not be able to go?

No penalty anyway unless it's a cruise leaving very soon.

Im sorry i spoke wrong....24 hrs after you make the booking and do payment. Not 24hrs before the cruise sails..Sorry about that!

They will provide what is called a "courtesy hold" for 24 hours, whereby you do not have to secure your reservation with a credit card. After the 24 hours the res goes away if you have not put down a deposite.

If the cruise is within 90 days, when the 24 hours is over you need to pay in full. If it is more than 90 days away you just need to pay the initial deposit to ensure you have the cabin, and then pay in full by the "pay in full" date. You will get your deposit back if you cancel your reservation more than 90 days in advance. Less than 90 days are you will be leaving dollars on the table.

Im sorry i spoke wrong....24 hrs after you make the booking and do payment. Not 24hrs before the cruise sails..Sorry about that!

If you book online through RCI, you can put a 24 hour courtesy hold on the cabin you selected without putting down a deposit. If you book with a TA, you can get them to hold a particular cabin for 7 days without making a deposit. I know that ours does that for us.

Once you book a cruise with a deposit you have until when final payment is due to cancel and receive your initial deposit back.

For 3, 4 and 5 night cruises final payment is due 60 days prior to sailing.

For 7 nights and longer cruises final payment is due 70 days prior to sailing.

unless you are booking with a special or something you can still get a full refund as long as you cxl 3 months out

unless you are booking with a special or something you can still get a full refund as long as you cxl 3 months out

Most cruises are fully refundable until 70 days before not 3 months, the exceptions are shorter cruises at 60 days and holiday sailings are longer at 90 days.

Also, the information people have provided applies to U.S. bookings. In Europe I believe that deposits are generally not refundable regardless of how far out the cruise is.

Also, the information people have provided applies to U.S. bookings. In Europe I believe that deposits are generally not refundable regardless of how far out the cruise is.

That is correct. Once we have paid our deposit that is it.

We have a cruise booked for next April. We have had to pay over £1000 deposit. If we cancel we lose that money. This cruise is with HAL but it is the same whichever cruise line we book with.

We take out travel insurance which also covers loss of deposit. We can claim on the insurance if we have to cancel due to health reasons etc. If we cancel just because we changed our minds, the money is lost.

This happened to us on Brilliance of the Seas earlier this year. We had to cancel due to work reasons and lost our deposit because it was not covered by the insurance.

As I have said on other threads, this is unfair as Americans hold cabins with returnable deposits and we cannot book them.

I would like to see all deposits non-refundable so that we are all playing on a level playing field and people only book cabins if they really intend to take them.

I would like to see all deposits non-refundable so that we are all playing on a level playing field and people only book cabins if they really intend to take them.

I wouldn't book something that was non-refundable. I wonder why they have a different rule for outside the U.S.?

The OP is correct that you do have 24 hours to cancel. For example, this is what happened to me:

I recently booked a cruise sailing in 60 days, so within the period in which there would be cancellation fees, through RCI directly. Final payment was due at time of booking and my credit card was charged the full amount. I told the representative booking the cruise that I had a Nextcruise certificate I wanted to use and he said C&A would take care of that and he would transfer me after we were done. However, as I later learned, he was wrong and nextcruise must be applied during the initial booking because it is a reservation number and my nextcruise was through the agent I booked the previous cruise through.

After a lot of phone calls and being told different things, it became clear that the easiest strategy would be to simply cancel my first booking, and rebook through the TA using the nextcruise. RCI said this was not a problem and I could do that within 24 hours of initially booking with no penalties (even though I was within the normal penalty timeframe). So, I called and the booking was canceled and fully refunded.

So, YES, it can be done.

Interestingly, I have been told several times that the courtesy hold is only available on-line, not when you call the reservation line. If, as a previous poster noted, they will cancel penalty free within 24 hours, I guess it all works out the same.

Ken

that is under usa ts and cs only i think.