Vantage -Anyone else experience this?

[imallears]

I'm curious about how many people have had this happen? I booked a Portugal river and land tour with Vantage for September 2020. Obviously, this did not happen and it was rebooked for September 2021. I'm not upset about that and accepted that decision. However, Vantage has now canceled this 2021 cruise and rebooked us for 2022 with NO NOTIFICATION! My sister-in-law went to their site to check on the final payment date and she found her trip (we are traveling together and it is noted on both our profiles) was changed to late August of 2021. I checked on my account and it was still showing the September 2021 cruise. One week later, our cruise was changed to the September 2022 date. I called to get to the bottom of this and the agent was extremely belligerent with me. He even had the nerve to tell me it was my responsibility to, basically, go to their website on a daily basis for notifications! He could not explain why my sister-in-law's cruise was changed to an earlier date, while ours was rebooked for a year later. He even lied, telling me that the government wouldn't allow our cruise date to sail. According to their own website, the itinerary before and after our cruise is sailing. Also, I receive almost daily advertisements from other river cruise lines showing that they are sailing this itinerary during our supposed forbidden cruise dates. He also refused to tell me which "government" when I asked if it was US, Portugal or Spain?

 

I still have our deposit paid to them, as well as the insurance I bought for both of us, totalling about $2,200. I fear if I cancel, I'll be out all that money. I don't trust them to tell me the truth. 

 

 

[rljan]

We are experiencing some of the same problems.  We were scheduled for the same tour in August 2020, having paid in full a year before.  Vantage canceled that tour ( understandably), but refused a refund, claiming it was a postponement, not a cancellation.  That tour was from Lisbon to Madrid.  We rescheduled for 10-15-21, which was from Madrid to Lisbon.  in reliance on this, we booked airfare and hotels.  I happened to check our portfolio the other day and discovered that the tour has been changed to start in Lisbon, ending in Madrid.  When I questioned why this happened and why we weren't notified, the email response said that was the itinerary when we rebooked last August (not a recent change).  We have enjoyed several Vantage tours, but their (lack of) customer service is the reason we will never travel with them again.

[Host Jazzbeau]

Moved to River Cruising forum.

 

Vantage has responded to this thread in the 'Other Ocean' forum:

 

[VantageDeluxeWorldTravel]

Thanks for posting your concerns. We do recognize that certain aspects are not within our normal scope of business operations, and we sincerely apologize for the delays, long hold times and other inconveniences you may have experienced as we continue to navigate through this on-going pandemic.

 

Most governments have enacted some sort of travel restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Our team has had to postpone, modify, and adjust tens of thousands of reservations each time a postponement occurred. While the majority of postponed journeys were due to government restrictions placed on travel, we also had to consolidate some trips due to ships being sold as well as other operational needs.

 

Due to the extraordinary number of reservations to modify and adjust along with the extreme volume of incoming calls and email correspondence, we simply were not able to call each reservation personally and discuss these changes. Therefore, we provided these updates via guest’s My Portfolio Account. These Trip Alerts appear in red beneath the greeting “Customer, Welcome to My Portfolio” directly after logging in. They are the first thing you see after logging in.

 

Our Reservations and Service Agents are trained to advise each caller about the My Portfolio Portal that is available via our website because that puts your reservation details at your fingertips 24/7.  Each guest that reserves with us is advised to register for their My Portfolio Account. Our agents will even assist you through the registration process, if needed.

 

We understand that since the pandemic struck, there have been many postponements and many delays. We recognize that each time a trip is disrupted that each component of the trip must be changed to reflect the newest travel dates. Guests that have reserved their flight arrangements using Vantage Air have not incurred any airline change fees for their postponed journeys. We strongly recommend our guests chose Vantage Air when they reserve their trip with Vantage.

[CPT Trips]

 

Vantage’s response above is full of corporate gobbledygook and really doesn’t address OPs concerns. Several years ago, we faced a similar yet much smaller scale (only a few hundred travelers) date change situation with Vantage. They were similarly condescending and intransigent in there telephone and written communications. It’s also interesting to note that Vantage has bombarded us with semi-tailored personalized marketing mailings weekly for most of the pandemic.

 

tl;dr - we got your money and we aren’t giving it back. Now it’s your problem to know when we cancel your tour, label it a postponement, and reschedule you. Don’t blame us if it costs you to change your air arrangements; you could have paid our inflated fees to allow us to set your air arrangements in any way that is easiest and most profitable for us.

 

The line that I deal with notified me in an email when they “postponed” our Spring 2020 cruise. It’s not difficult to set up an email shell and blast out semi-tailored emails to tens of thousands of customers. It was boilerplate email, good for most/all travelers similarly affected (regardless of itinerary or date) and laid out our options. We opted to delay our trip a year.
 

We received a similar email again later in 2020 when it was evident that they weren’t going to cruise in Spring of 2021. They also price protected us and offered an additional credit that could be used for any unpaid balance or as obc for a similar cruise (modified itinerary) in Spring 2022.