Has anyone else had this Uniworld problem?

[Begete]

We have taken over 20 cruises on various cruise lines and determined that we were willing to spend the extra money to cruise with Uniworld. Everything about our preCovid Danube river cruise was perfect, to our taste and far exceeded our expectations.

 

So now that it is again possible to travel, we booked a cruise with Uniworld thru Province and Burgundy……according to their records, twice! They double charged our credit card, admit it was an error, verbally, but with two very large charges, our credit limit has been exceeded on, of all things, our COSTCO Visa, and Uniworld is unwilling to do anything about it…..saying, it “should” be resolved in about 30 days.

 

Since our bank froze this card, we have been receiving email from charities and vendors we authorize to charge our card each month telling us their monthly debit had been denied. We are further concerned about what this may do to our previously almost perfect credit rating.

 

Has anyone else encountered this kind of problem?

[Roz]

Can you pay down enough on the card so that automatic payments aren't rejected until you can get this straightened out, hopefully in less than 30 days?

[jeter55]

I just paid the balance of my july cruise Milan and the gems of northern Italy and they also charged me twice I immediatley called uniworld and amex and the problem was corrected in 3 days. So strange that this happened to you also, very upsetting I couldn't relax until I saw the refund. Hope this gets fixed I called everyday until saw I the credit.

[Begete]

Just wanted to update everyone. The duplicate charge was FINALLY removed yesterday….after nearly a week!

 

I am still upset because credit ratings are very important, and I never had a card refused before. If you are reading Uniworld threads, and are a client of theirs, you know how expensive their cruises are, especially when you have also booked your airfare and pre and post cruise extensions with them, so it never occurred to me that I would need to up the limit on my credit card to cover a double billing.

 

Roz, I am a retired credit card bank lawyer. There really isn’t anything YOUR bank can do about a “pending” charge. I did immediately pay the outstanding balance for April, but that still did not reduce the outstanding and pending charges enough to prevent the automated refusals of monthly donations. 

 

On the Facebook Uniworld group, there is some discussion about Uniworld, Viking and other tour providers in this class simply not providing the level of service we are accustomed to from them due to the effects of mass employee turnover these last two years.

 

Uniworld no longer provides the pre trip documents, luggage tags, etc. they used to provide. I understand these companies must all be hurting financially, but without the exceptional experience we grew to love preCovid which was based primarily on the total release from stress knowing your holiday was in conscientious, caring hands, I am not sure the difference in fees make this class of cruise worthwhile.

 

For example, we need to change planes in Paris for Marseille. I was told the hotel in which we were booked in Marseille was “attached” to the airport and an easy walk. In researching the hotel, however, I discovered that one needed to board a shuttle and it was a 10 minute drive. My husband will be 80 in a few months. Do they seriously expect us to lift heavy suitcases onto a shuttle? Will there be a Uniworld rep at the hotel to get us to the ship? No information has been provided,

and this is not the stress free experience we had on our last Uniworld cruise.

[Begete]

I think which customer service rep you get makes a huge difference. After posting this this morning, I called customer service and waited on hold for a half hour, but got to speak with “Cindy” who reminded us why we like Uniworld so much. She answered all our questions, and, more importantly, her answers were consistent with what we learned with our own research. When she did not know the answer to something, she said she did not know, and looked it up, unlike previous staff who simply said whatever they felt would pacify us.

[Roz]

@Begete, so glad to hear you got this straightened out.  Who needs the stress?

[stlrod]

I have found Uniworld to be very poor when it comes to handling money.  Getting refunds for our Douro cruise in April 2020 was a nightmare.  Nevertheless, I decided to book another trip (Milan/Venice) in July.  We decided to switch to a less expensive date in June and I'm still waiting for a refund of the overpayment 6 weeks after we made the switch.  I'm trying to temper my expectations after only being on Tauck.

Edited April 8, 2022 by stlrod

[Begete]

What an Easter present. Just notified by our credit card bank today via email that Uniworld’s having double charged our credit card for the cruise, pre and post cruise extensions and airfare thereby causing our card to be frozen because its credit limit had been exceeded for the first time in 50 years, caused our credit rating to drop 78 points!

 

The double charge was removed, but severe damage was done. What do you all think Uniworld should do to make us whole?

[Canal archive]

Hopefully you can get them to contact  the various reference agency’s and banks to restore your good references etc. They obviously have a serious problem with their banking facilities they should be named and shamed.