Riviera - Maiden Voyage Rescheduled

[Mura]

Rhonda,

 

I'm so glad to hear this update! I couldn't believe such loyal customers were being treated this way! The best part is not having to deal with that wholesaler!

 

Mura

[wripro]

Yes, congratulations. Persistence pays.

[Paulchili]

Rhonda,

As you know, FDR regularly visits these boards (in fact he posted yesterday about Internet) - maybe he read your post and was also outraged about the way they have treated you.

I am glad it is working out for you.

[yorkiemomjn]

Rhonda, I am so glad Oceania is making things right for you. They are probably drowning in all the paperwork trying to help people out.

I am disappointed we did not get to meet you & Glenn and do the wonderful tours we had planned together. :( Hopefully we can cruise together someday on Oceania.

(John has no interest in cruising with any other line.)

We were really looking forward to meeting some of the others here on CC too, like Don & Betsy & Jim & Stan. :( Hopefully sometime in the future!

We plan to book a cruise for 2013 when the new books come out. Maybe something that includes London. We have about decided to do a land tour to Israel with our Pastor, Charles Swindoll. He is an awesome teacher and takes a group there every other year. We still really want to see Istanbul though.

Please keep your fingers crossed for us that Oceania will be generous and help us out with our airfare that we are stuck with.

Judy & John

[rhohea]

Maybe they are ashamed of the way they have acted.

 

I received a phone call late this afternoon from a lady at the Oceania Office in Sydney to say that they will have prices for the 3 cruises we wish to do tomorrow including a full itemised statement taking into account our previous discounts for B2B, booking onboard etc & OBC etc for our now 3 cancelled cruises.

 

I have to say she was very nice and said there was no excuse for why it had taken so long. She gave me her direct line to call anytime we had a problem.(she might be sorry about doing that between now and June)

 

She advised me that for these 3 cruises she intended to cut out the wholesaler and deal direct with us and our TA. Thank god for that. They are the ones who bump up the prices, damand the higher deposit and then keep $500 of the deposit if you cancel/change your booking & also demand that the balance be paid approx 4 weeks before our US/Canadian cruisers are required to pay.

 

She also had a copy of the quote this wholesaler had sent to our TA yesterday and told me she was very surprised at the costing they had given us.

 

She also confirmed that she had managed today to secure us the Cabin Cat on the first 2 cruises that we wanted even if on a guarantee, but that is better than having to waitlist. Now just have to wait to see if we can secure at least a balcony cabin on the September cruise. At this stage they only have oceanviews available - but we have time to work on that.

 

 

So hopefully by this time tomorrow we will have an acceptable pricing.

 

Funny that I got this call the day after I vented on CC.:rolleyes:

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Well it is almost 5 weeks since I received the above mentioned phone call from Oceania office in Sydney and it is even much longer since the April cruises we had booked were cancelled.

We still have not received our amended invoices for the 2 new cruises we selected to replace the original cruises.

We worked out what we thought the balance should be on both new cruises and the verbal price we were given came within a few hundred $$ on one cruise but the other cruise was approx $1500-$1800 more than what we expected.

The Sydney office advised our TA that they would send the quotes back to Miami to be recalculated.

So the waiting game started again. And we are still waiting. 5 weeks later.

We did advise our TA 1/2 way through this 5 weeks that we wished to changed cabin Cat as we noticed on the Oceania web site that our first choice of cabin had now become available after they told us there were none available. But I don’t see how that change should hold a new invoice up 5 weeks. We do live in the age of emails/phones.

I again waited up until 1am to phone Miami myself to try to talk again to one of the special agents who were dealing with the clients effected by the cancellations. But I was told very quickly that as I had an International booking I would need to go through the Australian agent.

Early last week Oceania contacted our TA to ask us to select a cabin for the first cruise. We were given 4 cabin numbers from which we selected our 1st & 2nd choice. Guess what. We got neither of these 2 choices. Our new cabin is now straight opposite the laundry. But rather than protest this we said nothing, just in case it held things up further. We have not been contacted re the second cruise cabin choice. Guess we are on a guarantee or maybe they have an upgrade for us.

We seem to have lost the accommodation credits for the first 2 original cruises (I know that the 1 night accommodation is not on offer in 2012 BUT it was when we booked + some OBC that was on offer for the first 2 cruises when we booked + they told us we only get the $350pp credit on 1 of our cruises not both that were cancelled. Who knows if this is correct as we have not seen an invoice. Also we were booked on the ORIGINAL maiden cruise which was also cancelled and as compensation we were to be given the 12 night cruise for the cost of the 10 night cruise. This has now also been lost. When we questioned this we were told that they would give us $200 per cabin as OBC in lieu – all this is verbal so who knows if we will ever receive this OBC. The original saving was approx $1200.

SO here we are 5 weeks on and we still have been unable to confirm flights/accommodation nor my DH’s Turkey land trip which is fully paid for and needing to be rescheduled depending on our NEW cruise dates. Don’t even mention the lost accommodation/airfare from the cancelled cruises which we have heard nothing back from Oceania after submitting a claim weeks ago.

Bookings are now open for activities like Culinary classes and we can’t book as we don’t have booking numbers nor any bookings showing online.

I would hate to think how long this would all take if we were not repeat cruisers with Oceania.

ARE WE ASKING TOO MUCH. ALL WE WANT IS AN ITEMISED INVOICE FOR OUR 2 CRUISES ON JUNE 5 & 17, 2012 INCLUDING PREVIOUSLY OFFERED DISCOUNTS ETC.

RHONDA & GLEN

rhohea23@yahoo.com.au

[LHT28]

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Well it is almost 5 weeks since I received the above mentioned phone call from Oceania office in Sydney and it is even much longer since the April cruises we had booked were cancelled.

 

WOW

I cannot believe you are still waiting to get things cleared up

 

Oceania needs to cut the middle man from Australia & let repeat passengers book direct with Oceania

 

That is way too long to be in limbo land

Your cruise date will be here & you will have no idea that you are on it

 

Lyn

[ksps cruise fan]

Well it is almost 5 weeks since I received the above mentioned phone call from Oceania office in Sydney and it is even much longer since the April cruises we had booked were cancelled.

We still have not received our amended invoices for the 2 new cruises we selected to replace the original cruises....

 

I again waited up until 1am to phone Miami myself to try to talk again to one of the special agents who were dealing with the clients effected by the cancellations. But I was told very quickly that as I had an International booking I would need to go through the Australian agent....

We seem to have lost the accommodation credits for the first 2 original cruises... cancelled and as compensation we were to be given the 12 night cruise for the cost of the 10 night cruise. This has now also been lost. When we questioned this we were told that they would give us $200 per cabin as OBC in lieu – all this is verbal so who knows if we will ever receive this OBC. The original saving was approx $1200.

 

SO here we are 5 weeks on and we still have been unable to confirm flights/accommodation nor my DH’s Turkey land trip which is fully paid for and needing to be rescheduled depending on our NEW cruise dates. Don’t even mention the lost accommodation/airfare from the cancelled cruises which we have heard nothing back from Oceania after submitting a claim weeks ago...

 

ALL WE WANT IS AN ITEMISED INVOICE FOR OUR 2 CRUISES ON JUNE 5 & 17, 2012 INCLUDING PREVIOUSLY OFFERED DISCOUNTS ETC.

 

I sincerely hope that someone from Oceania management is monitoring posts on this board and he/she is embarrassed by this perfect storm of customer non-service. I hope that you hear within hours -- not days -- from someone who presents a solution that addresses all your concerns.

[Mura]

Rhonda,

 

I cannot believe your nightmare is continuing. What a way NOT to run a business!

 

Mura

[Pearl64]

Hi Rhonda,

 

I am so sorry to hear about this. I thought everything was working out. It seems to me that the powers that be should be talking with one another to settle this. You have a lot of patience dealing with this situation. You were part of our tours for the second maiden voyage that got cancelled! All of this doesn't seem quite fair. Good luck and keep us posted.

 

Pearl (Patty)

[yorkiemomjn]

Hi Rhonda,

Like Pearl, I too am sorry you have had such a problem with this rescheduling and also that we did not get to take the tours with you.

 

We just now rescheduled ours for a May 2013 Riviera sailing. We were most concerned about our air because we had booked our own. Oceania could not have been nicer, they told us what we needed to do in order to get our cost refunded. We are really excited about the itinerary for next year and looking forward to FINALLY getting to be on the Riviera.

 

Hope we get to sail together some day.

 

Judy