vival

12 minutes ago, blag said:

 

I don't really understand this post.

The italicised content in your post refers to payment TO Azamara from travel agent, not the other way round. 

You refer to Azamara's response, but what I see here doesn't suggest anything unethical. Or is there more? 

Sorry if I didn't explain myself very well. My understanding from Azamara's response (which was exactly as quoted) was that in fact our TA had never passed on our final payment to Azamara in the first place so the TA has had all our money except the £500 all along and should have refunded us much sooner!

I agree with uktog that many travel agents need to clean up their act! I"ll certainly look more closely next time, that is if I ever book a cruise again. 

We have now finally received a full refund into our account on 12th June, however I’m also very unhappy with the TA’s handling of this . Our booking was with a large online UK agency.

When I emailed Azamara regarding our refund on 4th June they replied saying they had refunded our TA on 18th May with two amounts which in total was £500. When I queried this with Azamara this was their reply:

“Thank you for your email. Azamara has a contract with your travel agent as to when funds for your reservation are sent to Azamara. Please contact you travel agent regarding any remaining refund due to you.”

We paid the final payment in mid January for our 9th May cruise which was cancelled on 25th March. From Azamara’s response it would appear that the TA has retained almost all of our  money throughout. In any correspondence with our agent she repeatedly implied the refund was coming from Azamara which was the cause of the delay.

If this is the case it strikes me as very unethical!

Has anyone else any experience of this?

1 hour ago, royallondon said:

With a refund also due from Oceania cruises, I’ve been taking an interest in the same topic on their board.  There are postings that one UK TA has had a customers monies now for 3 weeks.  Unfortunately it’s the same TA as mine and several others waiting for monies.  This does not sit well.

 

Regards

Sounds like the same TA they will have had our refund for 3 weeks now and I have to ask how much longer it would have taken them to tell us had I not contacted them!

I was increasingly getting annoyed with Azamara while it seems they did refund within the promised 45 days.

I have like many others been following this discussion as I awaited my refund for my 9th May Quest cruise which I applied for as soon as it was cancelled.
 

I’ve  been in touch with my TA  (a large online one in UK) every few weeks and she kept telling me I needed to be patient. On 26th May in response to an email she said ‘refunds are now starting to come through’ 

On Friday 5th June I emailed Azamara and they got back to me today saying my refund had been processed to my TA on 18th May. 
 

After half an hour on hold I spoke to my TA who confirmed that yes they had my full refund and said ‘seeing as you have phoned I can speed this up for you and get it transferred to your bank today!!’
 

When asked why it had taken so long I was told ‘we mustn’t have got it till the end of the month’ 😜 Hopefully we will see it in our account tonight.

I just thought I would post this as if you’re still waiting for a refund it might be worth phoning your TA in case they’re holding on to it. 

Thanks Bonnie for looking into this.

Yesterday I received the email from Azamara notifying me that our cruise 9th May is now cancelled. I followed the link on the email to apply for a refund. When I completed the process a message came up on screen saying

”Your request has been received.You’ll receive a confirmation email shortly”

Now over 24 hours later I haven’t got an email so am left wondering if the form went through.

I’m not expecting them to have processed it or anything but had hoped for an automated confirmation of receipt. 
 

What has anyone else’s experience been?

Thanks!

Until last night I was giving Azamara the benefit of doubt, making excuses for them like ‘it does take a long time to sort things out’ ‘ they need to make sure they take their time in order to make the correct decision so as they don’t have to keep changing it’ 

Quite frankly I think last yesterday’s update is totally unacceptable, it’s quite obvious not only that it’s inadvisable to cruise in Europe anytime soon but it may become virtually impossible with so many ports now closed, I see as of yesterday Spain have closed Their ports.
 

The only reason I can think of for their lack of cancellations is they want us their loyal customers to give in first and cancel and accept FCC thus saving them from having to pay refunds.
 

Even though we know our 9th May is bound to be cancelled it’s still very unsettling waiting for confirmation. (First world problem I know)

We are quite shocked by this and find it totally unacceptable!  I don’t think we would book Azamara again, they are losing so much goodwill from many very loyal customers.

This is a quote from the UK Foreign office website which is advising against all travel to Italy and advising any tourists currently there to leave!

'Ports remain open although we understand that passengers on cruise ships will not be allowed to disembark for tourism purposes.'

Obviously there is no way any cruise ship will be in Italy anyway soon! 

Azamara really does need address this sooner rather than later!

2 hours ago, Janet&David said:

Note - unfortunately the legislation probably doesn't apply if you just booked the cruise, as this is not a 'package'

Has anyone any idea what our rights are if we booked cruise only with a TA and booked  flights and hotels ourselves?

I'm assuming that if Azamara cancel or change the cruise significantly we should be entitled to a refund under their terms and conditions and then we would claim the rest through our insurance?

37 minutes ago, excitedofharpenden said:

If you were a port in other parts of the world knowing the potential problems a cruise ship could bring would you be happy to let them dock?  Not good. 

 

Phil 

Malta have already refused entry to a MSC ship because their doctors threatened to strike if the authorities let it dock!

Ok, very disappointed in Azamara's latest announcement! However they are now denying boarding to anyone who has travelled through Italy not just the regions previously mentioned - so as things stand they can't board our cruise in Venice so I guess its just watch this space for now!

I agree that attacking management at this point is unfair. As David said things are changing by the hour. The logistics of this must be a nightmare for Azamara and they will want to have a definite plan in place before making it public. I think any cruises in the Med this summer must be In doubt.

Have any other cruise lines as yet cancelled their Italian cruises?

I know some lines have changed their cancellation policies but the sceptic in me says it would be better for the cruise lines if anxious passengers cancelled and rebooked rather than waiting for the line to cancel the cruise and then they will have to refund the fare.

We are booked on 9th May cruise out of Venice and definitely aren’t planning to be on board. Personally, given the current situation I don’t see any way that this cruise will go ahead.
 

Difficult as it is we have to be patient and allow Azamara time to make their very complicated decisions. I wouldn’t be surprised if they either delayed or cancelled altogether bringing their ships to Europe for the Summer.

We received the full refund from Azamara for our flights on Friday. The delay was entirely due to SAS who took nearly 3 weeks to cancel our booking! When we got our cancellation email I forwarded it to Azamara and I was surprised and delighted to get a call from them within an hour saying the refund would be processed immediately and it was. 

I was chatting to the agent, a very helpful girl (not sure if I should mention names here) and she told me that Azamara were really focused on improving their Customer Relations department and to that end they were now based in USA and that she came to work at 2:30am in order to be at her desk at 8:30am UK time to deal with enquires. 

We are now looking forward to our rebooked cruise next Spring. 

So well done Azamara! Hopefully all their customer service will be as good as we received.

My TA spoke to Azamara UK yesterday and they are happy to refund our flights for the above cruise. I sent the details to Azamara last night and they replied this morning asking for an e mail from the airline stating that they were not refunding the cost. I hadn’t cancelled the flights as I was waiting to be sure that Azamara would compensate me for them. I’ve done so now so am awaiting an email from SAS. 

Thank you Bonnie for your input, Im very happy with the way this has been handled so far and will post again when we get the actual refund.

Meanwhile this enabled us to transfer our deposit to an itinerary that was better for us and thanks to LCV discounts our new cruise is a similar price.

I know from reading these boards lots of people have had many issues with Azamara Head office, but we have once again been very happy with their service. 

5 hours ago, BBMacLaird said:

Hi Vival, yes there IS compensation for your air. Your TA will have all the information. Just wondering, are you domestic (US) or booking international?

Did you receive the letter discussing the changes or did you hear verbally? 

I ask because the other day I looked for your voyage Roll Call to post the letter but there wasn’t a Roll Call.

Thank you Bonnie for your quick encouraging response, we received a copy of the letter from our TA on Tuesday and there was no mention of air. I haven’t as yet spoken to her about it I intend to do that this morning, I thought I would ask here first and I’m glad I did. 

Thank you uktog and Riocca for your replies, I will post an update when we have one. Richard Twyman has been very helpful in the past. 

We were booked on the Denmark Intensive Voyage on Quest June 2020 and yesterday our TA informed us of major changes in the itinerary! This was to be our 8th Azamara cruise and we were really looking forward to it especially visiting the smaller Danish ports.

The cruise is now called Northern Capitals Voyage. We feel the changes that have been made will change the whole experience, we have no desire to visit Rotterdam, Amsterdam or Warnemunde. It has been changed to a very different type of cruise to the one we booked!

They are also including a Kiel Canal transit which we would like to do sometime - so one positive!

We feel that that options that they are offering us in terms of sticking with the cruise booked, changing to another or cancelling completely, are quite fair, except that we booked our flights on 30th June. They don’t seem to be offering to reimburse these costs if we were to cancel and book a different voyage.

We love Azamara but unfortunately just don’t think this now is the cruise for us.

We have always found Azamara to be very fair in dealing with issues in the past so hopefully we will be able to get this sorted.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thank you lots to think about for next year. 

Thank you Desdichado and SoccerMom your input is much appreciated.

We are staying for a couple of nights in Stockholm post cruise next year. Where would be the best area of the city to stay? Also I would like some recommendations for a good value hotel.

Thank you!

I spoke too soon! Yes, Azamara had reduced their price yesterday morning, but what appears to have happened is they adjusted their prices to include the second guest half price promotion 18 hours before the promotion started!! So the price this morning after all the hype of the countdown to "best offer yet" is exactly the same as yesterday and £1000 more expensive than if I had booked the same cabin last week. As others have said do Azamara really think we're stupid? 

Bonnie, I find this totally unacceptable and will not be booking! I would love to have your comments on this.

15 hours ago, uktog said:

We’ve just got updated pricing. It’s better than we were given this morning! 

Thank you for posting, I had a look at the Spanish Cruise I had been looking at and the prices had reduced significantly, so maybe I'll book after all. We had a fabulous cruise on Pursuit in October and I'd love to sail on her again.

Also in preparation for this new UK promotion they have increased the cost of one of the cruises I've been watching by almost 50%.  I'm not happy. Its enough to make me look elsewhere! 

24 minutes ago, Host Grandma Cruising said:

Doesn’t go very far into the future. I was hoping for some 2020 sailings.

I'm disappointed, I was hoping for later in 2019. I suppose I'll just have to wait until the next offer comes out and see if I like it ☺️

Thank you Bonnie, I’m also hoping for something that will encourage me to book another cruise!