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Sachmo
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I cannot get an answer as to why shore excursions that were free/included when I signed up now have prices next to them. I wanted to change one excursions from the morning to the later one and now there is a charge. Help!!!!!

Is this a new Regent policy?

Judy

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I cannot get an answer as to why shore excursions that were free/included when I signed up now have prices next to them. I wanted to change one excursions from the morning to the later one and now there is a charge. Help!!!!!

Is this a new Regent policy?

Judy

Well, obviously something like this shouldn't happen, but unfortunately Regent has kind of a history of having website 'issues'. I know the burden of proof shouldn't fall on you to prove that they were no-fee excursions when you signed up for them but if you have a receipt of any type showing a $0.00 cost and now there's a cost listed, I'd call Regent directly (or get your TA on it) and let them know that that kind of 'bait-and-switch' doesn't fly.

 

PS - I just saw where you said you "cannot get an answer as to why" this changed. Who did you try to get an answer from and what did they say when you brought this to their attention?

Edited by UUNetBill
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We got charged for an excursion, and it doesn't show up on our list. I called Regent, they assured us it's on the list--but still doesn't show in the online file for that cruise. Just call, the agent should be able to get you information. We've never had a problem when we call and always get an answer to our question.

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I called Regent directly - spoke to 2 different agents that said they would get back to me after they spoke to excursion department. agent 1 had no idea agent 2 said that the later one that day has a cost - makes no sense - I will reach my travel agent today

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By any chance did you print out your booked excursions when you first booked? This would be your proof. I’m OCD and paranoid with things like this.

 

Good point - even if they did not print the booked excursions, hopefully they saved the email they receive from Regent!

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I cannot get an answer as to why shore excursions that were free/included when I signed up now have prices next to them. I wanted to change one excursions from the morning to the later one and now there is a charge. Help!!!!!

Is this a new Regent policy?

Judy

 

I called Regent directly - spoke to 2 different agents that said they would get back to me after they spoke to excursion department. agent 1 had no idea agent 2 said that the later one that day has a cost - makes no sense - I will reach my travel agent today

Am I understanding you to say that you have booked an excursion in the morning without charge, but that an identical excursion later the same day is a Regent Choice excursion with a charge attached?

 

That does sound very strange and is either an error or the later excursion has some additional elements e.g. a meal or refreshments.

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For our cruise on the Voyager last year we received a PDF of all the excursions and each of the included excursions showed a Tour Price of $0.00 but a non zero Retail Price. Maybe it is something like this that you are seeing?

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I called Regent directly - spoke to 2 different agents that said they would get back to me after they spoke to excursion department. agent 1 had no idea agent 2 said that the later one that day has a cost - makes no sense - I will reach my travel agent today

 

Please let us know what your TA says. Unfortunately, sometimes Regent representatives have a difficult time giving accurate answers.

 

While it is possible that Regent changed an excursion from being "included" to one that has a charge, this would be unique and something that I have not seen or heard of in all of my years of sailing on Regent (since included excursions were implemented).

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Spoke to another rep from Regent. He did change the time of the tour at no fee and has no idea why it shows a fee now. In addition to that one 2 additional ones that I booked now show a charge. Still makes no sense all I know is that I have a copy of my excursions and it shows no charges. Something else to keep tract of

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another regent call this time I was told that they are showing us what the excursion would have cost. I guess I will not get an answer

 

Suggest that you ask to speak to a supervisor. There is no way you should be getting different responses. However, if what the last person said was true, did they allow you to change excursions without a charge? And, what does your TA have to say about this?

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another regent call this time I was told that they are showing us what the excursion would have cost. I guess I will not get an answer

 

 

 

Below is a typical page from a pdf of Regent Excursions:

 

69a3bcbb2f32cf3104da956a9f12e61b.jpg

 

Against each excursion are two prices:

- Tour price: What Regent charges their guests (zero for included excursions)

- Retail price: What Regent estimate the actual cost would be if the excursion were not included

 

Can be confusing!!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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After reading this I looked up the excursions we booked (December cruise Cape Town to Cape Town) to see if there is now a cost.

Wild Horses of the Namib was free - now $99/pp

Dolphin and Seal Cruise was free - now $49/pp

Addo Elephant Park by 4x4 was $139/pp now $149/pp

Tala Game Reserve was free - now $99/pp

Shakaland was free - now $99/pp

Another poster (Sachmo) said Regent told them it is showing "what it would have cost". I don't think this is true since many of the excursions are still shown as FREE. Many others that were free now have fees and some that had fees now have higher fees.

I am not planning on changing our excursions so it won't affect us, but I think this is a very bad policy for Regent to do this.

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After reading this I looked up the excursions we booked (December cruise Cape Town to Cape Town) to see if there is now a cost.

 

Wild Horses of the Namib was free - now $99/pp

Dolphin and Seal Cruise was free - now $49/pp

Addo Elephant Park by 4x4 was $139/pp now $149/pp

Tala Game Reserve was free - now $99/pp

Shakaland was free - now $99/pp

 

Another poster (Sachmo) said Regent told them it is showing "what it would have cost". I don't think this is true since many of the excursions are still shown as FREE. Many others that were free now have fees and some that had fees now have higher fees.

 

I am not planning on changing our excursions so it won't affect us, but I think this is a very bad policy for Regent to do this.

 

 

 

Carol,

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I think that this is what Sachmo was referring to. You may want to double check that you won't have to pay for the excursion. While I haven't seen an excursion go from "free" to having a cost, I have seen Regent Choice excursions increase in price. Unfortunately, when this has happened, we have had to pay the higher cost.

 

As an aside, we have done the Dolphin and Seal cruise twice and really enjoyed it. We did not have to pay but would go even if we had to pay for it.

 

Please let us know if you learn anything more as I'm sure that many of us on CC would be unhappy if this happens .

 

Jackie

 

P.S. Before someone calls me on this, I am not a fan of included (aka "free) excursions but would be unhappy if they get people to book and then have the price go from $0 to $49 or $99 or ???

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After reading this I looked up the excursions we booked (December cruise Cape Town to Cape Town) to see if there is now a cost.

 

Wild Horses of the Namib was free - now $99/pp

Dolphin and Seal Cruise was free - now $49/pp

Addo Elephant Park by 4x4 was $139/pp now $149/pp

Tala Game Reserve was free - now $99/pp

Shakaland was free - now $99/pp

 

Another poster (Sachmo) said Regent told them it is showing "what it would have cost". I don't think this is true since many of the excursions are still shown as FREE. Many others that were free now have fees and some that had fees now have higher fees.

 

I am not planning on changing our excursions so it won't affect us, but I think this is a very bad policy for Regent to do this.

Yes, just checked our November cruise and, sure enough, a charge has now been introduced for the Dolphin & Seal Cruise in Walvis Bay.

Glad we booked our excursions early while they were still at zero extra charge.

 

So it looks like Regent are reducing or phasing out free (i.e. included) excursions and offering more Regent Choice (i.e. paid for but “subsidised”) excursions instead :(

 

Hopefully a representative from Regent will come on here to explain their change in excursion arrangements.

 

During this period of excursion cost increases it will be less attractive to change a pre-booked Regent Choice excursion while on board in order to use OBC. The cash refund will be the original lower price; the new charge will be at the higher price. A recipe for confusion :eek: ............. and from the runaround that the OP has experienced the changes to excursion charges are already creating confusion for Regent representatives.

Edited by flossie009
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My attempted "edit" for clarification purposes to post #18 did not go through. Arrrgh. The "supposed/phantom savings" I'm talking about would be if Regent were to eliminate "included excursions" in the future. Fares would continue to rise and cruisers would just pay for their own future excursions. My opinion.

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This morning I went on the Regent website and requested the pdf of the full list of excursions. I compared it to the previous one. There are definitely changes in prices for many of them.

 

5 of the excursions we booked have changed prices.

 

Wild Horses of the Namib was free - now $99/pp. PDF I printed today says retail price of tour is $189 and tour price is $99. It was previously free.

Dolphin and Seal Cruise was free - now $49/pp. PDF I printed today says retail price of tour is $199 and tour price is $49. It was previously free.

 

 

Addo Elephant Park by 4x4 was $139/pp now $149/pp. PDF I printed today says retail price of tour is $289 and tour price is $149. We previously paid $139.

 

 

Tala Game Reserve was free - now $99/pp. PDF I printed today says retail price of tour is $159 and tour price is $99. It was previously free.

 

Shakaland was free - now $99/pp. PDF I printed today says retail price of tour is $169 and tour price is $99. It was previously free.

 

Of course I am glad I booked and paid for my excursions early. Anyone booking excursions now or booking them on board will have to pay the new prices listed.

 

Now I don't see how I can use OBC for the excursions I paid for if the price is now different. If once on board I cancel and rebook I assume they will want the higher amount.

 

I think this new policy of Regent is unfair. Once the prices were set and once the excursions that were free were set as free, to then raise the prices on most of them before the cruise is a pretty unfair policy.

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Another view.......

 

Last night I was discussing this with my DH and was pretty upset about what I read on this thread. He gave me another perspective. Excursions are provided to Regent by contractors. We can book excursions 240 days in advance of a cruise and during that time the excursion provider could have raised prices (perhaps under a new contract). As many of us know, there are times when we cannot book excursions on the date that excursions bookings are suppose to open and sometime this is due to negotiations still going on with the tour operators. When prices go up, Regent can "eat" the increase or pass some/all of the increase onto passengers. While none of us know what happened in this case, at least some of the increase was passed on passengers.

 

Having been to Africa twice with Regent, I understand that tour guides could be difficult to come by. It could be a case of supply and demand.

 

So, while his explanation made me think about the situation, I feel that the key is to see if this is a special circumstance or if it will be happening with excursions worldwide. Another thing that will be telling is whether or not this increase will be passed on to passengers that have already booked the excursion. People on this cruise on in the penalty phase and it would seem unfair to charge them extra at this point.

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Another view.......

 

Last night I was discussing this with my DH and was pretty upset about what I read on this thread. He gave me another perspective. Excursions are provided to Regent by contractors. We can book excursions 240 days in advance of a cruise and during that time the excursion provider could have raised prices (perhaps under a new contract). As many of us know, there are times when we cannot book excursions on the date that excursions bookings are suppose to open and sometime this is due to negotiations still going on with the tour operators. When prices go up, Regent can "eat" the increase or pass some/all of the increase onto passengers. While none of us know what happened in this case, at least some of the increase was passed on passengers.

 

Having been to Africa twice with Regent, I understand that tour guides could be difficult to come by. It could be a case of supply and demand.

 

So, while his explanation made me think about the situation, I feel that the key is to see if this is a special circumstance or if it will be happening with excursions worldwide. Another thing that will be telling is whether or not this increase will be passed on to passengers that have already booked the excursion. People on this cruise on in the penalty phase and it would seem unfair to charge them extra at this point.

 

Perhaps some others who have cruises booked can check to see if this was done on their cruise. I have a feeling this is not a special circumstance and only happening on our upcoming cruise in December. I am not worried about having to pay now for excursions I have already booked that were previously free, as I have a complete list of all excursions booked and they are noted as such (free). I also don't think this has anything to do with the tour operators in South Africa. I think this has everything to do with Regent changing their policies. Some people will get hit with having to pay for excursions if they have not already secured them. I think this policy is very unfair. It's one of the reasons we left Regent several years ago and moved over to Oceania. We liked that Oceania was more of an "a la carte" cruise with excursions, and we liked that on Oceania we could book private excursions with just 1 or 2 couples that we met on the CC roll call. They were better than big busloads of people on an excursion. We decided to try Regent again and have two cruises booked on the Explorer. The whole point of "included excursions" seems to be false advertising. There are very few excursions that are listed as "free" now on our cruise. I would be very angry if we would have to pay for most of the excursions.

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Perhaps some others who have cruises booked can check to see if this was done on their cruise. I have a feeling this is not a special circumstance and only happening on our upcoming cruise in December. I am not worried about having to pay now for excursions I have already booked that were previously free, as I have a complete list of all excursions booked and they are noted as such (free). I also don't think this has anything to do with the tour operators in South Africa. I think this has everything to do with Regent changing their policies. Some people will get hit with having to pay for excursions if they have not already secured them. I think this policy is very unfair. It's one of the reasons we left Regent several years ago and moved over to Oceania. We liked that Oceania was more of an "a la carte" cruise with excursions, and we liked that on Oceania we could book private excursions with just 1 or 2 couples that we met on the CC roll call. They were better than big busloads of people on an excursion. We decided to try Regent again and have two cruises booked on the Explorer. The whole point of "included excursions" seems to be false advertising. There are very few excursions that are listed as "free" now on our cruise. I would be very angry if we would have to pay for most of the excursions.

 

Believe your take Carol is absolutely correct. We now have 3 different cruises reporting these price changes. As to the point about possibly being caused by increased supplier costs there are several reasons this is most likely not true. First of all the tours were available to book at zero cost of reduced pricing and doubtful Regent would list tours being available without first having contracts in place.

 

For the previous "free" tours, if it were a price increase, looking at your before and after highly unlikely tours would have gone up in the neighborhood of $99 for tours valued at retail less than $200 and for previously Regent Choice tours with extra cost, the minimal increases might be due to vendor changes but, again not likely as they were already ready to book and doubt Regent would accept increased costs with a contract in place.

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Perhaps some others who have cruises booked can check to see if this was done on their cruise. I have a feeling this is not a special circumstance and only happening on our upcoming cruise in December. I am not worried about having to pay now for excursions I have already booked that were previously free, as I have a complete list of all excursions booked and they are noted as such (free). I also don't think this has anything to do with the tour operators in South Africa. I think this has everything to do with Regent changing their policies. Some people will get hit with having to pay for excursions if they have not already secured them. I think this policy is very unfair. It's one of the reasons we left Regent several years ago and moved over to Oceania. We liked that Oceania was more of an "a la carte" cruise with excursions, and we liked that on Oceania we could book private excursions with just 1 or 2 couples that we met on the CC roll call. They were better than big busloads of people on an excursion. We decided to try Regent again and have two cruises booked on the Explorer. The whole point of "included excursions" seems to be false advertising. There are very few excursions that are listed as "free" now on our cruise. I would be very angry if we would have to pay for most of the excursions.

 

Just did a quick look at one of our cruises (February, 2019) and our two Regent Choice excursions went up (one from $70/person to $94.00/person). As I said, this is the first time I've heard of an excursion going from "free" to having a cost. While I don't mind the increase and understand prices going up from the time that we booked excursions to now, it is still surprising.

 

Perhaps we all need to double check our excursions for our booked cruises.

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