RoyalDOWN

[Azamazingal]

Around eight weeks before sail date, on a big promotion sale weekend, I booked a guarantee JS on Anthem for a 5-day short cruise. I paid £1,185 for two. Shortly afterwards all JS were “sold out”. Then I made a series of frivolous (weak) bids for a Grand Suite and above.

 

About four weeks later we got a call from our TA saying that RC had called her to say that there were no JS available. “Would we take a large balcony at 30% discount?” We said, “No.”

 

An hour after that she called back to say that RC were now offering the balcony for zero fare – just cruise taxes of £412 total. We said “Yes”.

 

A couple of days later, the App indicated that we had been allocated a good large balcony cabin and we could complete check-in and print luggage tags etc. We were told that the refund might take around four weeks.

 

Then RC e-mailed me to say that my RoyalUp bids were cancelled but that I could submit new ones. I assumed that that was because I originally had a JS but was now balcony. Having an extra £773 in my pocket (almost) I made a series of better (fair) bids.

 

Two days later RC cancelled my bids and said that I could re-submit them. I did. They cancelled my bids daily and I re-submitted them each time.

 

Three days after the first cancellation I found that RC had credited my card with £1,013. No new financial statement was available. But now my balcony seemed to be costing £172 or £86 each! Eventually my “status” was changed from JS to balcony and my RoyalUp bids were accepted. A revised invoice then appeared with the cruise cost as £86 per person.

 

Whilst on board we were notified that the RoyalUp bids were unsuccessful but we received a port tax refund of £11 each. So our cruse now cost £75!

 

 

I am interested to know if any of this has happened to anyone else and, if they know, what would have happened if we had declined their offer to pay just cruise taxes? Would they have gone lower, given us a GS or dismissed us?

[Biker19]

1 hour ago, Azamazingal said:

I am interested to know if any of this has happened to anyone else and, if they know, what would have happened if we had declined their offer to pay just cruise taxes?

You have a very rare experience, as the chances of being asked to be bumped is very small, especially in the COVID era when cabins are plentiful. What compensation you get varies, but likely they would have upped the offer (with some OBC), somehow found a JS or really bumped you. Obviously you did great as it is, since that level of compensation is already more than "normal" (pre-COVID, some would may taken the original fare reduction offer or some OBC)