Peekskill

Glad to hear about Hagia Sofia Mansions. We're booked there for 3 nights proceeding the Ancient Mediterranean Antiquities cruise starting January 24th, 2024. We considered using the place Viking used for their 2 night preliminary tour but the Conrad Istanbul Bosphorous is not well located. Our hotel choice will allow us to walk all over the Sultanahmet area and adjacent sites. Should be great.

We cancelled a bit earlier and, as promised by the second person we spoke to, got a full refund of our down payment and insurance cost. This certainly makes me feel better about dealing with them in the future. 

Wow, Viking really needs to get its act in gear.  As mentioned previously, after a snippy discussion we believed that we would be dunned $100 each for cancelling the Cuba Cruise and would lose out on a refund of our insurance.  The next day when we called because nothing changed on our cruise records,  Viking's response changed to "full refund."  Great. But why does it take 30 days when they were so quick to grab the dough from our credit card when we made the deposit for the trip? I realize they probably want to make this quarter look good on their financials but it doesn't take 30 days to process a credit.  It seems that they put the bean counters in charge of their customer service which is a bad model for this sort of business.

It would have been easier to be patient if  in April Viking proactively reached out to those of us who signed on to the "Cultural Cuba" cruise.  We we were going to travel with another couple who had not stayed on top of the news.   Until we spoke to them this past Monday to tell them we were cancelling, they knew nothing of the changes! 

We did call to cancel on Tuesday. We were told that we would be dunned $100 per person and that it was up to us to see if we could get our insurance cost refunded because Viking didn't issue it. I did point out that Viking's name was all over the insurance materials and that we had paid the money directly to Viking so they should return the money.  The response was canned and unsympathetic so we just figured that we were screwed.  We consoled ourselves by thinking  that at least we weren't going to be paying the rest if the trip cost only to be stuck with vouchers we had to use within the year on another Viking cruise.  

On Wednesday, my husband checked our booking information and found that no cancellation was listed so we called again. This time we spoke with someone who told us that we would NOT be dunned the $100 per person and would be refunded the insurance costs we had paid to Viking.  (We are watching the credit card account to see if and when the credit shows up. As of a few minutes ago, it had not.)

Maybe they noticed that this would have been our fifth cruise with them, maybe their policies changed, maybe they read this website--who knows? I am reminded of what Ben Franklin said about reputation being like china plates---once cracked, never properly mended.  

I contacted Viking right after the ban was implemented in April. Their website had already changed the itinerary so that the 4 nights in Cuba were now "TBD."  While they responded to my ongoing inquiries, only today  (June 17) did we get a direct message indicating that they were seeking an exception to the new US rule. Since Cuba closed its ports in response to the ban, that would have to be dealt with as well.

Other cruise lines announced that they would give credits to people who decided to accept the changed itineraries for their bookings or, if they were not happy with the changes, get a full refund.  Lines other than Viking reacted promptly and clearly. Vikings response so far has been unsatisfactory.