booking amendment

[victor150]

Due to cruise 8th july greek mystic and due to pay the full amount on april 20th. I think there is little to no chance of this going ahead so wanted to move it to next year. Unable to do this as wont let me amend booking. Seems they want me to pay in full for this cruise or lose my £400 deposit. Losing faith with marella . Doubtful i will cruise with them again as bad customer service seems the norm. Anybody on here had the same problem?

[Pensioncruiser]

Yes we did last March and they informed us as they have you about loss of deposit, which will happen if the cruise goes ahead, but if it doesn't they, legally, under the PTR 2018 sections 12,13 & 14 have to refund you and they cannot cite force majeure. We received our deposit but am still waiting a cash refund for a voucher. Good luck 🤞

[Notts1964]

If you booked after 1 October 2020, you should be able to move your cruise for free according to their terms and conditions. I didn’t do it (booked before this date), but looked into it because I had a cruise booked for 28 April 2021. My cruise has obviously now been cancelled. It was cancelled a couple of weeks after our final payment,  which I had to make or lose my deposit.

I have now requested a full cash refund but don’t know how long I will have to wait for this.

[Pensioncruiser]

10 hours ago, Notts1964 said:

which I had to make or lose my deposit.

As I have found from legal advice you can only lose your deposit if the cruise goes ahead they must refund if it is cancelled, think its something to do with if the cruise is not available it can not be sold. You should be OK with your refund unfortunately ours is complicated, voucher etc, prior to the Marella refund policy, looking like ours will be a court action 🙄

[ormy]

I would amend the cruise to 2022, you will probably have to pay £100 fee ( for the two of you ) but for peace of mind I think it might be a good idea, we have already done it.  We don't know, at this point,  what restrictions other countries might have, and the obvious rules that will apply once onboard.

Just terrible times and we have to try and make the best of a bad situation.

[victor150]

Thanks for the replies, The problem i have is the site is not letting me amend cruise to next year. I am due to pay the full whack on the 20 th april and dont want to give them another 2+ k and wait till cruise is cancelled then fight for it back. All i want to do is shift the 400 deposit to a cruise  next year but they are not allowing me to do this. Why ?   I booked for last year and moved it to this year no problem why are they not letting me do it this year.

[ormy]

Give customer service a ring, I did and got adviser very quickly and was very helpful - there is a number on website for this.

[victor150]

thanks will do ormy I,m assuming they wont let me shift as ive already moved it from last year.

[ormy]

No thats not the case - we had moved it once, the one we have just done with be the second change, they want your business, and more so in the present climate.

[victor150]

thanks got an email  reply from them to get in touch and they will sort something out. looking at cruises for 2022 now

[ormy]

Great news Victor - we have booked 2022

[sugarnuts1]

We have same problem regarding £400 deposit.

We have around 30 cruises with a variety of lines under our belts but have never been with Marella before but we had booked and paid for a 14 day back to back cruise to Panama canal scheduled for March 2020 which was cancelled and we then had a fight of more than 10 weeks to get a full refund. We also had a second Marella cruise booked scheduled for New Year 2020 . for which we had only payed the £400 deposit. As the time approached to pay the balance I had several discussions with our travel agent as this cruise had not so far been cancelled but we felt it  most probably would be as Marella were leaving cancellations to the very last minute (unlike most other operators) and also government guidance was not to cruise which if ignored invalidates travel insurance. At this point we decided not to pay the balance because if we did and the cruise was cancelled we would then be faced with a similar refund fight as experienced earlier in March which we did not relish or in the unlikely event the cruise was not cancelled we would be forced to either travel without insurance (due to government guidelines) which would be stupid or not go and lose all of the money. We therefore chose to cancel our booking due to government guidance and requested a deposit refund (in accordance with Package Travel Regs 2018 and Competition & Markets Authority).  However despite numerous correspondence with Marella both through our agent and directly we have still not received a refund and Marella will only say that as the cruise was not cancelled at the point we cancelled the booking we are not entitled to a refund so they are totally ignoring PTR 2018 and CMA.  I have been trying to discover a  contact number or address for a complaints department but each time I have spoken to customer services I am told there is nobody else I can speak to and messages sent from their website contact form are not answered.

Does anybody know of a contact number or email address for a Marella complaints department.

[ormy]

We have never had any problems with TUI/Marella, ok at the height of the early days of the pandemic we had to wait quite a while to be dealt with,  but generally everything OK

Email: customerservice@tui.co.uk

Tel:      0203 451 2716

Hope this helps

[Pensioncruiser]

1 hour ago, sugarnuts1 said:

We have same problem regarding £400 deposit

Hi sugarnuts1 have a look at my post #4 above, as you say they have a legal obligation to refund you but only after the cruise does not go ahead.