Princess Booking transfer policy

[jagoffee]

This does not really affect me because I book with my TA because I get a discount on the cruise fare instead of OBC.

 

The only benefit from Princess notifying the Travel Agents is for them not the request or encourage booking transfers that are more than 60 days old.

the TA would not even know which customers have direct bookings.

 

Princess certainly messed up the implementation of this change.  They should have notified all customers or at least announced the change in policy and given everyone 60 days to transfer their bookings.

 

On on the other hand it is a long overdue change. It never made sense to me that Princess would spend the resources to support a direct booking for up to two years and then allow customers to transfer the booking at the end, thus issuing an unearned commission.  The commission is usually split wit the customer.  Good for the customer and TA, but bad for Princess IMO.

 

i was surprised to read some of the comments that imply that certain TAs actually encourage this behavior.  Let Princess support the booking and then transfer at the end. Questionable business practice IMO.  (Not transferring, but encourage waiting until all the work is done)

 

The bottom line is that is another botched change implementation.

Edited November 28, 2018 by jagoffee

[Cruise Junky]

Just received an e:mail from an agent notifying of this.  Seems really poor on Princess's part to retroactively put in this policy for all of those that are booked.

[BigTimeCruiser]

Wow....So much for booking early!  Looks like Princess has again rolled out a new policy without letting passengers know anything.  We just got an email from our travel agent this morning about this situation.😡

[JF - retired RRT]

Everyone who got turned down when you requested a TA "takeover"...TRY AGAIN!!

We got turned down.

Contacted our TA and she suggested these steps:

1) Call Customer Relations

2) Explain why you're calling, when the rep who answers the phone says "no", ask for a supervisor. Note: when I did this the rep put me on hold for about 15 minutes.

3) If you get the supervisor, explain your position: no notice, no grandfather, etc.

OR when the rep came back, she told me to have my TA send the transfer request and "it would be approved".

And it worked!!! It took 3 days for them to get it done. 

Well worth the wait. I have 2 cruises booked in 2019/2020 and was 2 weeks past the 60 day mark. Saved me a nice chunk of change.

[voljeep]

3 hours ago, jagoffee said:

This does not really affect me because I book with my TA because I get a discount on the cruise fare instead of OBC.

 

The only benefit from Princess notifying the Travel Agents is for them not the request or encourage booking transfers that are more than 60 days old.

the TA would not even know which customers have direct bookings.

 

Princess certainly messed up the implementation of this change.  They should have notified all customers or at least announced the change in policy and given everyone 60 days to transfer their bookings.

 

On on the other hand it is a long overdue change. It never made sense to me that Princess would spend the resources to support a direct booking for up to two years and then allow customers to transfer the booking at the end, thus issuing an unearned commission.  The commission is usually split wit the customer.  Good for the customer and TA, but bad for Princess IMO.

 

i was surprised to read some of the comments that imply that certain TAs actually encourage this behavior.  Let Princess support the booking and then transfer at the end. Questionable business practice IMO.  (Not transferring, but encourage waiting until all the work is done)

 

The bottom line is that is another botched change implementation.

and other posters have posted that they " didn't want to bother their TA's" - isn't that their job ???

[jeanandjim]

Well, We got the good news today from our travel agent. We have a number of cruises booked, two of which were outside the 60 day policy. A seven day Europe and a fourteen day T/A. these were booked in early May for November 2019. They were able to transfer over our bookings because they are tenacious. They are a small 2 woman firm in Ohio.

 

We received a notice today from them to all their Princess clients that instructs anyone in this position to call Princess Customer Relations department directly and demand they transfer your booking(s). Once that is done the travel agent will then fax in the necessary paperwork. 

 

I hope this helps and we can get back to planning our excursions, etc. We were able to lock in a decent discount, some added OBC, a bottle of wine, and coupon books. We are once again Happy Campers.

 

Jim (and Jean)

[Colo Cruiser]

4 hours ago, BigTimeCruiser said:

Wow....So much for booking early!  Looks like Princess has again rolled out a new policy without letting passengers know anything.  We just got an email from our travel agent this morning about this situation.😡

Why can't you book early anymore?

[caribill]

4 minutes ago, Colo Cruiser said:

Why can't you book early anymore?

You can. Bigtimecruiser was basically saying any advantage of early booking and then transferring to a TA much later is now a lost "benefit."

 

From my viewpoint, I see no reason not to transfer a booking early to my favorite TA if the initial booking was not with them. More chance that the TA still has group space available. And any better offers from Princess before final payment can also be handled by contacting the TA.

[Colo Cruiser]

3 minutes ago, caribill said:

You can. Bigtimecruiser was basically saying any advantage of early booking and then transferring to a TA much later is now a lost "benefit."

 

From my viewpoint, I see no reason not to transfer a booking early to my favorite TA if the initial booking was not with them. More chance that the TA still has group space available. And any better offers from Princess before final payment can also be handled by contacting the TA.

Like I said 2 months is plenty of time.

[Cruise Junky]

57 minutes ago, Colo Cruiser said:

Why can't you book early anymore?

A lot of agencies with big OBC charge a cancellation fee.  I understand the two months and I agree, it should be enough time, it's the retroactively changing policy for those that have current bookings that I find out of line.   They didn't give 60 days notice of this, they said too bad so sad that you booked over 60 days ago.  That's unprofessional. 

[chamima]

51 minutes ago, Colo Cruiser said:

Like I said 2 months is plenty of time.

 

2 minutes ago, Cruise Junky said:

A lot of agencies with big OBC charge a cancellation fee.  I understand the two months and I agree, it should be enough time, it's the retroactively changing policy for those that have current bookings that I find out of line.   They didn't give 60 days notice of this, they said too bad so sad that you booked over 60 days ago.  That's unprofessional. 

 

Again - no one is arguing that 2 months isn't plenty of time to assign your cruise to a TA.

The problem is the change of policy with absolutely no notice .

 

[Colo Cruiser]

8 minutes ago, Cruise Junky said:

A lot of agencies with big OBC charge a cancellation fee.  I understand the two months and I agree, it should be enough time, it's the retroactively changing policy for those that have current bookings that I find out of line.   They didn't give 60 days notice of this, they said too bad so sad that you booked over 60 days ago.  That's unprofessional. 

I am not disagreeing with you on the way Princess handled it. The fact that they screwed it up is not factored in my answer.

IMO any agency that charges a cancelation fee or any fee for that matter is nickel and dimming and not a good TA. IMO!

[Colo Cruiser]

6 minutes ago, chamima said:

 

 

Again - no one is arguing that 2 months isn't plenty of time to assign your cruise to a TA.

The problem is the change of policy with absolutely no notice .

 

Again..........I am not disagreeing with you on the way Princess handled it. The fact that they screwed it up is not factored in my answer.

 

[smf81]

Following the advice here, I called Princess directly and politely asked that they make an exception for me given the lack of notice, etc.  I have a feeling the agent had heard all this before, because she quickly agreed to forward the request someone in customer relations who could make the decision.  It took 20 minutes for them to pick up, but once they did I got an immediate "yes" and he made the change without me even needing to fax in another transfer request form.

 

So in my case at least, patience and persistence paid off and I can get back to planning the rest of the trip!

[JF - retired RRT]

3 minutes ago, smf81 said:

Following the advice here, I called Princess directly and politely asked that they make an exception for me given the lack of notice, etc.  I have a feeling the agent had heard all this before, because she quickly agreed to forward the request someone in customer relations who could make the decision.  It took 20 minutes for them to pick up, but once they did I got an immediate "yes" and he made the change without me even needing to fax in another transfer request form.

 

So in my case at least, patience and persistence paid off and I can get back to planning the rest of the trip!

👍

Good for you!!

[Wulfwyn]

On 11/28/2018 at 3:54 PM, smf81 said:

Following the advice here, I called Princess directly and politely asked that they make an exception for me given the lack of notice, etc.  I have a feeling the agent had heard all this before, because she quickly agreed to forward the request someone in customer relations who could make the decision.  It took 20 minutes for them to pick up, but once they did I got an immediate "yes" and he made the change without me even needing to fax in another transfer request form.

 

So in my case at least, patience and persistence paid off and I can get back to planning the rest of the trip!

Thank you.  I followed  same advice and I was  able  to get mine transferred  to travel agency today.  I was on hold 30 minutes. This was after I got the email  on Monday  saying  I was past the transfer  window and Princess  was not going to transfer  the booking.   Politeness,  Patience  and Perseverance  made it happen.  Back to planning.  

Thanks OP for letting  everyone  know about the update on new policies.

[chamima]

I just called Princess to transfer my booking to my travel agent.

The phone rep never even questioned the fact that my booking was WAY over 60 days old (like maybe 6 months over) and just verified my email to send me the transfer form.

So I think Princess has officially backed off enforcing the new policy on old cruises.

 

As a side note - we sail a lot on Celebrity also and I really have found that Princess listens to and responds to passenger concerns a LOT better than Celebrity.

[TracieABD]

I just learned about this yesterday from my TA who is not happy with this...

We did book our next cruise on board, and I am very, very glad that we did. It is a rather iconic cruise.

In the space of 3 days- it partially sold out AND went up in price by $400 pp. 

I have completed the paperwork to turn it over to my TA- who could discount it some and offer a bit more OBC.

 

[NavyVeteran]

It looked like Princess may have fixed this customer relations mistake.

 

On Friday, November 30th, I faxed a request to transfer three 2020 cruises from direct booking to a travel agent. I booked these three during the last Sip & Sail promotion - way more than 60 days ago. I had previously transferred all of my 2019 bookings. I faxed the same information I had used before - I did not use the new form or mention any knowledge of the new policy.

 

I received the following email from Revenue Support Department (PCL) this morning: "We have recently implemented a new transfer policy which went into effect November 12, 2018. Booking may only be transferred within 60 days of booking creation so long as (a) the request is made outside of final payment period, and (b) the booking is not paid in full. We have reviewed your request and will make a one-time exception for these transfers. For your reference we are attaching the form that should be used with any future request. Thank you for your time."

 

I checked Cruise Personalizer, and all the cruises now show with the travel agent information.

 

I recommend anyone who has had a transfer rejected contact Princess to resubmit it. Princess automatically and quickly approved a one time exception for me without any special requests. I recommend you transfer all of your current bookings that you want to transfer in a single request - I suspect they will not approve a second request from the same person.

 

 

[Thrak]

I have 3 cruises booked with Princess. They were booked in May, July, and September. All are outside the 60 day limit. This was a pretty nasty surprise. I just found out about it as I have been sailing on Princess cruises for the past month - we sailed 2 days before the "non-announcement" of this change. What a crock.

[Renmar]

17 minutes ago, Thrak said:

I have 3 cruises booked with Princess. They were booked in May, July, and September. All are outside the 60 day limit. This was a pretty nasty surprise. I just found out about it as I have been sailing on Princess cruises for the past month - we sailed 2 days before the "non-announcement" of this change. What a crock.

Try what NavyVeteran suggests. As you mentioned before, if you really nice in your correspondence with Princess they might accommodate you.

 

Theo

[Colo Cruiser]

24 minutes ago, Thrak said:

I have 3 cruises booked with Princess. They were booked in May, July, and September. All are outside the 60 day limit. This was a pretty nasty surprise. I just found out about it as I have been sailing on Princess cruises for the past month - we sailed 2 days before the "non-announcement" of this change. What a crock.

If you try you may get them transferred by the end of the month.

They are making a bunch of exceptions right now.

Or at least they were over the last couple of weeks.

[dickinson]

I got an email from my TA who said that Princess is making one time exceptions til Dec 31. 

[jagoffee]

1 hour ago, Thrak said:

I have 3 cruises booked with Princess. They were booked in May, July, and September. All are outside the 60 day limit. This was a pretty nasty surprise. I just found out about it as I have been sailing on Princess cruises for the past month - we sailed 2 days before the "non-announcement" of this change. What a crock.

I recently received an e mail from my TA stating that Princess will allow transfers outside the 60 day window until the nd of December.

 

Better Hurry

Princess has recently implemented a new transfer policy which went into effect November 12, 2018.

Bookings that are booked directly with Princess may only be transferred to an agent within 60 days of booking creation so long as (a) the request is made outside of final payment period, and (b) the booking is not paid in full.

Princess will make a one-time exception until 12/31/18.  Don’t wait, send me your bookings now!

 

 

Edited December 14, 2018 by jagoffee

[Sea Day Cruiser]

1 hour ago, dickinson said:

I got an email from my TA who said that Princess is making one time exceptions til Dec 31. 

 

I got the same email. Before I got the email I had already transferred 2 cruises booked almost a year ago. The customer relations person at Princess that I spoke with said she was making the exception because I was transferring them to an agent I had dealt with before. The impression I got was that it would not have been allowed if it wasn’t an agent that I had already booked a cruise with in the past.