Travel Agent seems to have cancelled our cruise! Has anyone experienced this??

[juanarcin]

I have a cruise booked on the Panorama for Dec 10th. I booked several rooms for me and my wife's family, it will be a group of 14. Today while trying to  log onto my account it said it was cancelled. I called Carnival and they said my travel agent cancelled it! Said I had to get information from them. Turns out all our rooms are cancelled and refunded, I have no idea why.

 

We purchased through a popular CRUISE website, which I'm sure I can't name but all they do is CRUISE related sales... I've used them for every cruise I've ever had, and never had issues. However, everytime I call them they are experiencing higher than usual call volumes (yeah right), and say I can leave a call back number, then they call me back about a day or two later. I just did that but a day or two is a long time to wait while freaking out. wondering if anyone has had this happen? 

 

We set up this cruise pre pandemic, then it got cancelled, now we had a certain amount of time to use our credit or get it refunded with penalties. So we rebooked. I'm really concerned that they cancelled it and will give us back our money minus penalty fees. I'm also concerned that not everyone will go on this cruise if given the option again. it went from an exciting trip for everyone to a nightmare of not knowing if we would get our money back (during pandemic), to a very unenthusiastic "fine lets go before we loose the credit". My wife and I are super excited, but everyone else is a first timer and it just hasnt been an easy vacation planning experience for them. Now I'm just venting. hope this is a mistake as I havent seen the money refunded into our account, but I guess I have to wait a day or two to find out.

[klfrodo]

Hope it all works out for the best. Keep us updated.

[Mary229]

It sounds like they had a software failure.  This happened with the flight service my cruise line uses.  The software failed and many flights were canceled. When we finally go through they rebooked the flights and the additional fees were at their cost.  It was not pleasant but it was resolved. 
 

my best advice is to note their office opening hours and be the very first caller tomorrow morning.  Set your alarm. 
 

I am sorry you are going through this

[juanarcin]

On 6/16/2022 at 4:48 PM, Mary229 said:

It sounds like they had a software failure.  This happened with the flight service my cruise line uses.  The software failed and many flights were canceled. When we finally go through they rebooked the flights and the additional fees were at their cost.  It was not pleasant but it was resolved. 
 

my best advice is to note their office opening hours and be the very first caller tomorrow morning.  Set your alarm. 
 

I am sorry you are going through this

 

Still no answer or callback. It really doesn't matter what time you call, I'm convinced they are just putting everyone in permanent holds and only doing callbacks. It's been this way since covid started. Maybe it worked better for them and they left it that way? 

 

Either way I was able to work it out with carnival after speaking to them and explaining the situation. They gave me the same credit, the same perks, and the same rooms. Only bad part of it was that the TA had just informed me that prices dropped and was able to drop my price by 200.00. Carnival couldn't match that. But small price to pay to avoid the headache and waiting for TA to call. 

 

After 8 years of booking every single cruise through this site, they have finally lost me as a customer. I know it won't affect them at all, but it'll give me piece of mind. Only part that'll suck is that prepaid gratuities was an awesome perk to most cruises I've bought through them. That part I will miss. 

[Mary229]

52 minutes ago, juanarcin said:

 

Still no answer or callback. It really doesn't matter what time you call, I'm convinced they are just putting everyone in permanent holds and only doing callbacks. It's been this way since covid started. Maybe it worked better for them and they left it that way? 

 

Either way I was able to work it out with carnival after speaking to them and explaining the situation. They gave me the same credit, the same perks, and the same rooms. Only bad part of it was that the TA had just informed me that prices dropped and was able to drop my price by 200.00. Carnival couldn't match that. But small price to pay to avoid the headache and waiting for TA to call. 

 

After 8 years of booking every single cruise through this site, they have finally lost me as a customer. I know it won't affect them at all, but it'll give me piece of mind. Only part that'll suck is that prepaid gratuities was an awesome perk to most cruises I've bought through them. That part I will miss. 

Thank goodness you saved the trip. I am glad to hear Carnival stepped up. The days of online only agencies may be behind us, so many people just didn’t come back to work after the shut down.   I hope you have a wonderful trip. 

[ontheweb]

32 minutes ago, Mary229 said:

Thank goodness you saved the trip. I am glad to hear Carnival stepped up. The days of online only agencies may be behind us, so many people just didn’t come back to work after the shut down.   I hope you have a wonderful trip. 

Not just people not coming back; my TA is president of his online agency and told me with no revenue because of covid, he basically had to lay off all his employees. Also, when I told him his website no longer worked, his reply was that he could no longer afford the website. Tough times!

[juanarcin]

TA finally reached out to us on their own. Still havent responded to our actual request for a callback. Since we couldnt get ahold of them we rebooked the same rooms with Carnival directly. So today TA calls us and appologizes because our rooms "have been lost" they want to help us rebook our cruise but unfortunately can't be in the rooms we originally chose (they still didn't know that WE WERE THE ONES THAT REBOOKED THEM!)

 

This whole thing was a mess. We told them we were still in those rooms and at this point we just wanted to understand why we were cancelled. This is the reason, in case it happens to anyone else:

 

We booked our cruise before the pandemic. When it was cancelled due to the pandemic, we were offered cruise credit (amount included our deposit). the issue was that TA used that credit as our deposit, but carnival wanted actual cash as deposit. Apparently they had some back and forth between them and never included us. Carnival gave a deadline for us to put actual cash down on our cruise, TA figured we met that because our account had cash in it (from previous credit) so everyone just sat back and did nothing (including contact us to let us know). eventually the clock ran out and we were just cancelled. Oh well. now things are fixed so who cares, on with the fun!

Edited June 20, 2022 by juanarcin

[klfrodo]

Sorry you experienced this SNAFU.

 

As an FYI, Unless you have addressed the issue specifically, this TA is still listed in Carnival's computer as your official booking agent. So, even if you were to book another Carnival cruise on line, the current TA would receive the commission and be listed as official contact.

 

If this is not what you want, you need to have Carnival correct their database for this issue specifically.

 

And I'm sure, if I am mistaken, the fine people on this board will say so.  Either way, glad it has all worked itself out.

Edited June 20, 2022 by klfrodo

[juanarcin]

I 

Edited June 21, 2022 by juanarcin

[juanarcin]

2 hours ago, klfrodo said:

Sorry you experienced this SNAFU.

 

As an FYI, Unless you have addressed the issue specifically, this TA is still listed in Carnival's computer as your official booking agent. So, even if you were to book another Carnival cruise on line, the current TA would receive the commission and be listed as official contact.

 

If this is not what you want, you need to have Carnival correct their database for this issue specifically.

 

And I'm sure, if I am mistaken, the fine people on this board will say so.  Either way, glad it has all worked itself out.

 

 

Thanks for this info. I did spend a long time on the phone with the carnival agent when making the swap and she had to get a manager to speak to me as well so they could properly swap me from my TA to Carnival. So It seems like they may have handled this already. When my TA called me earlier they said they needed me to fill out a cancellation form for them. So I believe this should take care of everything, but now I'm wondering if I should call Carnival again just to double check...