Upgrading your cabin in the uk

[holidaylover10]

Hi,

Have booked a inside cabin for Scandinavia & Russia Cruise June 2012, Finance dictated a inside over a Balcony cabin. We booked early as to take advantage of the early booking offer of £200 per person discount, free parking & Captains Club on board credit.

If the price of a balcony should fall can i upgrade and just pay the difference of the new balcony price or will Celebrity say i have to pay the price the balcony was advertised for when i booked originally. Also will i lose my early booking incentives if i change cabin catorgories. I am in the Uk so need answers about the Uk booking system.

Sorry if it sounds complicated .

[kruzgal]

Hi,

Have booked a inside cabin for Scandinavia & Russia Cruise June 2012, Finance dictated a inside over a Balcony cabin. We booked early as to take advantage of the early booking offer of £200 per person discount, free parking & Captains Club on board credit.

If the price of a balcony should fall can i upgrade and just pay the difference of the new balcony price or will Celebrity say i have to pay the price the balcony was advertised for when i booked originally. Also will i lose my early booking incentives if i change cabin catorgories. I am in the Uk so need answers about the Uk booking system.

Sorry if it sounds complicated .

 

I presume you have now paid in full for your trip since it is in June of this year and therefore you may not be lucky with this. Recent posts suggest it is very inconsistent so all you can do is phone and ask. Did you book direct or through a travel agent? If you booked direct you may have more luck but there are no guarantees. You may lose some of your benefits but depending on how much you can save by switching you may consider it to be worth the loss. All you can do is keep monitoring the prices and phone up to see. Good luck!

[holidaylover10]

I'm sorry i just noticed i put 2012 it should have said 2013. Times running away i can't keep up.

[mum and son]

I'm sorry i just noticed i put 2012 it should have said 2013. Times running away i can't keep up.

 

From my understanding, the UK system is similar to Australia. It is not easy to make changes, even before final payment date. Have you booked through a travel agent or with Celebrity directly? Is their office in the UK?

 

Do they charge cancellation fees if you were to cancel prior to final payment? I know they charge them here in Australia, but I book through a US TA to avoid that. If they don't have any fees, and the balcony price drops, then you could always cancel and rebook - but you'd lose all previous offers and get the offer available on the day. Sometimes an agent or Celebrity will help you to shuffle cabins without cancelling a booking but I don't think this is commonplace in the UK or in Aus.

 

There are a lot of variables here so I would ask all of these questions of the person who currently holds your booking.

[Project_gal]

If you have booked direct with Celebrity, you should be able to upgrade for the difference between what you have booked your inside for and the current price of a balcony BUT this may mean losing any incentives for early booking. You need to check the terms of your early booking offer. I would speck to Celebrity now and, if they say that you can upgrade without penalty, request this in writing.

 

If you have booked through a UK travel agent, it depends on their T&Cs and I would check with them.

 

Sue

[holidaylover10]

Have booked via a travel agent.

[danrad]

Call today as the early booking promotion is on until the end of May so your booking is still in that time frame!

[simon stingray]

We are also in the UK and have booked previous cruises directly with Celebrity.

 

We sailed on the inaugural Silhouette sailing last July which we had booked directly with Celebrity the previous year whilst onboard Constellation.

 

As we booked onboard we qualified for onboard credit and a 2 category upgrade but a couple of months before the cruise there was a large price drop on sky suites so we called Celebrity here in the UK and there was no problem upgrading to a S2 Sky Suite for the new lower prices. Whilst we lost the 2 cat upgrade (Not applicable to suite bookings) we confirmed at the time of upgrading that we would still have our on board credit.

 

I would call celebrity here in the UK and ask as we have found them to be very helpful and accommodating.

[swigso]

Keep an eye on the pricing, when you see a price/Cat that you want call

your TA. X will not talk about the booking with you if you

have used a TA.

Some TA's are better than others

There is no problem upgrading, so lets say you booked an

inside at £1000 pp and a Cat 1a is being sold at £1050 per person

you can upgrade for £50 per person.

Hope this helps.

The secret is to keep watching the prices.

[holidaylover10]

Thank you all for your replies. Will keep an eye out for any price drops and then phone the Travel Agent.

[Tiggertastic]

We have booked a few times on celebrity, some direct and some through an agent - ring them and they will change it - happy to take an upgrade and the price that goes with it

 

I recommend a balcony for this trip - the views in sweden through the archipeligos is amazong

[welshfamily]

Hi,

Please be aware you may not be able to take advantage of any price drops. We have booked with a large well known TA who has encourgaged us to put in a letter of complaint to Celebrity to add to their own letter of complaint as Celebrity have not let us upgrade as the price dropped never mind keep our Captains club OBC as the only way we could upgrade was to cancel and re book thus losing us our booking reference and our deposit of £150 per person,£600, for our family of 4.

To upgrade Celebrity wanted us to pay the price the up graded cabin was on the day we booked in November not the price advertised in April. This would have cost us an additional £1200.

The complaint went in last Tuesday. Our TA has not yet had a reply.

Yes, it was our decision in the end to cancel and rebook but the TA can not be held responsible for Celebrity having no fixed policy, it is basically the luck of the draw. By the way the TA shared the loss of the deposit with us.

Will this stop us cruising with Celebrity, No it won't but neither we will book as early again.

Let's hope Celebrity sees the sense of a adopting a clear policy in the UK to stop this lottery.

[mum and son]

Thank you all for your replies. Will keep an eye out for any price drops and then phone the Travel Agent.

 

Just make sure that your TA doesn't have any fees and charges associated with making changes to your booking...

[Project_gal]

Hi,

Please be aware you may not be able to take advantage of any price drops. We have booked with a large well known TA who has encourgaged us to put in a letter of complaint to Celebrity to add to their own letter of complaint as Celebrity have not let us upgrade as the price dropped never mind keep our Captains club OBC as the only way we could upgrade was to cancel and re book thus losing us our booking reference and our deposit of £150 per person,£600, for our family of 4.

To upgrade Celebrity wanted us to pay the price the up graded cabin was on the day we booked in November not the price advertised in April. This would have cost us an additional £1200.

The complaint went in last Tuesday. Our TA has not yet had a reply.

Yes, it was our decision in the end to cancel and rebook but the TA can not be held responsible for Celebrity having no fixed policy, it is basically the luck of the draw. By the way the TA shared the loss of the deposit with us.

Will this stop us cruising with Celebrity, No it won't but neither we will book as early again.

Let's hope Celebrity sees the sense of a adopting a clear policy in the UK to stop this lottery.

 

I am unsure what is "unclear" about Celebrity's policy.

 

In my earlier reply, I said that the OP may loose the original incentives if they upgraded later at a lower price than the original price of a balcony. What Celebrity [or any other business] offers at any one time is a "deal". That "deal" is a price plus other incentive such as OBC and/or free parking. The "deal" later on may be a price with NO incentives. If you want to upgrade at a later point, you are accepting that later "deal" - you cannot take the later price alone.

 

Where we differ from the US is that they are rarely offered as many incentives as we are. This is primarily because we have different price fixing laws in the two countries.

 

At other times, Celebrity here or in the US may have offers limited to "new bookings only". You cannot expect to get price drops in these circumstances any more than they do in the US.

 

At any one time, there will be different "deals" in the UK and US. They are different markets requiring different incentives to attract customers and work within different consumer laws. There is much we get in the UK that they do not get in the US. It is all too easy only to see the negatives.

 

Sue

[Adammara]

Celebrity UK also have terms and conditions that are not published.

 

This a a reply I had from customer services:

 

As you’re aware, we’re always happy to reduce the cost of the holiday if there is a price code available that applies to your existing booking. This is true for our UK-booked guests whether you’ve paid in full or not, and whether you’ve booked directly with us or through a travel agent. It’s worth noting, though, that if you’ve booked with a travel agent it’s at their discretion whether they will honour the price drop or not

 

The 'price code' does not appear on your invoice, so when you book you are not informed of this clause, which they then quote to you when you try to make a change. It would be intersting to know what a court of law in the UK would make of this policy.

 

And, yes, I'm biased, after final payment they sold an Aqua A1 cabin next to us for £1200 less than we paid, and will do nothing at all.

 

Richard

[iandjm]

Hi,

Please be aware you may not be able to take advantage of any price drops. We have booked with a large well known TA who has encourgaged us to put in a letter of complaint to Celebrity to add to their own letter of complaint as Celebrity have not let us upgrade as the price dropped never mind keep our Captains club OBC as the only way we could upgrade was to cancel and re book thus losing us our booking reference and our deposit of £150 per person,£600, for our family of 4.

To upgrade Celebrity wanted us to pay the price the up graded cabin was on the day we booked in November not the price advertised in April. This would have cost us an additional £1200.

The complaint went in last Tuesday. Our TA has not yet had a reply.

Yes, it was our decision in the end to cancel and rebook but the TA can not be held responsible for Celebrity having no fixed policy, it is basically the luck of the draw. By the way the TA shared the loss of the deposit with us.

Will this stop us cruising with Celebrity, No it won't but neither we will book as early again.

Let's hope Celebrity sees the sense of a adopting a clear policy in the UK to stop this lottery.

 

I have had similar issues with Celebrity. The stupid thing is by making you cancel and re book you have the chance to look at other cruise lines offers, and maybe move away from Celebrity. Surely any sensible cruise line would encourage you to keep a booking with them, rather than encourageing you to cancel and start the booking process again?

 

Ian

[iandjm]

Hi,

Have booked a inside cabin for Scandinavia & Russia Cruise June 2012, Finance dictated a inside over a Balcony cabin. We booked early as to take advantage of the early booking offer of £200 per person discount, free parking & Captains Club on board credit.

If the price of a balcony should fall can i upgrade and just pay the difference of the new balcony price or will Celebrity say i have to pay the price the balcony was advertised for when i booked originally. Also will i lose my early booking incentives if i change cabin catorgories. I am in the Uk so need answers about the Uk booking system.

Sorry if it sounds complicated .

 

 

What date are you cruising on? I have booked 22 June 13

 

Ian

[holidaylover10]

Hi Ian cruising on the same day as you. Think I your name on the Roll Call.

[iandjm]

Fantastic, If you need any advice I did the same cruise last year :)

[Suzy Smith]

We have upgraded in the past when the price has dropped, but you need to check with your TA that you are making the right decision before switching.

 

If a discounted price is for new bookings only, then you will not be able to take advantage of that offer and I don't imagine you could transfer your £200 early booking discount to a later booking at a lower price. If your OBC is also for booking early you may not be able to transfer that.

 

It is a bit optimistic to expect to keep the perks Celebrity offer for booking early and combine that with price drops that are being offered later, so if prices drop and you are thinking of changing your reservation, check with your TA which (if any) of your early booking incentives you will be able to keep.