Live from the Viking Sky (Ft Lauderdale to London) December 20, 2023 - May 6, 2024

[Hobson1754]

11 hours ago, Pappri said:

I sure wish #3 was how you state Andy - not on board the Viking Sky right now.  DW and I are SOOO frustrated and upset with Viking LA that we are now talking about getting off the ship.  ANY SUGGESTIONS on how or who we should talk to will be greatly appreciated.  We got the $3K pp pre-cruise credits and used those up when excursions were open for booking, even went over $700pp which we put on the CC.  Then the India overland became available a week later, which @Jim Avery recommended, so we purchased that for $2.5K pp on the CC.  When we diverted to Africa, we decided to cancel the India Overland and get a refund.  There were multiple pages of people on the waiting list, so it was easy to fill our slot and they paid Viking $5K cash to take our place.  Then our refund showed up on the TV as $5K non-refundable credit.  We paid the full amount via CC pre cruise.  We went down stairs to customer service, and they agreed that should’ve been refunded to the credit card or as refundable credit to the account.  After a week of constantly checking with them on the status (and having to re-explain the entire situation every time) they finally said they were unable to change it onboard and that they referred it back to LA.  We called LA last night at 9pm (8:30am pacific time) and the condescending lady could not explain how refunds are handled.  She changed the rules several times during the conversation when her arguments contradicted what Viking had already done.  We did receive some refundable credits onboard for excursions that were canceled that were purchased pre cruise with non-refundable credits.  We also received a direct payment to the CC a couple of weeks ago after Viking canceled the Europe excursions.  Those payments were $1Kpp so it didn’t account for the $6K total we put on the CC.  We even said that we would accept partial payment to the CC (to cover our actual CC expenditures and taking into account the refunds they sent) and the rest non-refundable - which is the most fair for each party.  NOT A CHANCE was their answer.  So we now have $7100 in non-refundable credit and 2 months left with nothing left for us to spend it on.  Viking not only keeps our $5K (actually effectively half that with the other refunds) but also got an extra $5K from the folks who took our place.  Anyone else on board getting ripped off?  Andy, I can see why you went hardline against the LA folks and every minute we think about this grow the same way.  We have 4 other cruises scheduled with Viking (including the longitudinal WC) totaling over $150K that we are now about cancel and go with another cruise line because of this and especially the condescending way we were talked to by the LA office.  Is the WC help desk still open and could they help or are we stuck working with LA?  Oh, and when I asked who do we escalate this to, like her supervisor, she said that they were all equal and didn’t have anyone higher to escalate to.  PLEASE HELP!  Poor Chris, our Explorers lounge bar keep, for having to listen to this and having to restock the Makers Mark.

Hi Pappri - if you paid a bulk of it on your CC, which they won’t refund, can you not contact your CC provider who should fight this battle for you - I know in the UK if we have issues with a company & have paid by CC they will take up the issue for you.

[Jim Avery]

It continues to amaze how bad Viking shore side experience is compared to the onboard service.  Shoreside acts like they are doing us a favor taking our money and "allowing'" us to sail on their ships.  I fully agree with Andy's take.

[Fellini]

30 minutes ago, Jim Avery said:

It continues to amaze how bad Viking shore side experience is compared to the onboard service.  Shoreside acts like they are doing us a favor taking our money and "allowing'" us to sail on their ships.  I fully agree with Andy's take.

agree too... seems envy or lack of management..

[Pappri]

12 hours ago, Clay Clayton said:

I presume you have spoken to Makesh?

Yep, no help at all.  Also talked with his boss, Sam, who is very supportive.  She doesn’t understand why the “shore” won’t help the boat fix these issues with the passengers.  Apparently we aren’t the only ones going through this.

[Pappri]

10 hours ago, Hobson1754 said:

Hi Pappri - if you paid a bulk of it on your CC, which they won’t refund, can you not contact your CC provider who should fight this battle for you - I know in the UK if we have issues with a company & have paid by CC they will take up the issue for you.

Had several bar folks suggest the same thing, and I guess that will be our next step. Sad that this is putting a bad taste on an otherwise awesome cruise.

[PeabodyMa]

@Pappri Talk with the Financial Officer. Often the financial officer can resolve the issue.

Edited March 23 by PeabodyMa

[Clay Clayton]

7 minutes ago, Pappri said:

Yep, no help at all.  Also talked with his boss, Sam, who is very supportive.  She doesn’t understand why the “shore” won’t help the boat fix these issues with the passengers.  Apparently we aren’t the only ones going through this.

Just FYI-as Hotel General Manager is everybody but the Captain’s boss. 

[Clay Clayton]

9 minutes ago, Pappri said:

Yep, no help at all.  Also talked with his boss, Sam, who is very supportive.  She doesn’t understand why the “shore” won’t help the boat fix these issues with the passengers.  Apparently we aren’t the only ones going through this.

Just FYI-as Hotel General Manager is just about everybody but the Captain’s boss. 

[Clay Clayton]

Mesh, damn wifi-couldn’t go back and correct. Meant to say as Hotel General Managsr, Mukesh is the big boss not Sam

[Pappri]

1 hour ago, Clay Clayton said:

Mesh, damn wifi-couldn’t go back and correct. Meant to say as Hotel General Managsr, Mukesh is the big boss not Sam

Gotcha.  I mistakenly thought you were talking about the 1 striper guy (forgot his name already).  Sam is the 2 striper who’s helping us work with the LA customer service folks.  So when that eventually fails we’ll go to the 4 striper

[Clay Clayton]

Loved seeing all the senior crew create a canopy for guests up the gangway yesterday when the monsoon season started early just as the last excursions were coming back. 

[PasadenaDave]

21 hours ago, Jim Avery said:

It continues to amaze how bad Viking shore side experience is compared to the onboard service.  Shoreside acts like they are doing us a favor taking our money and "allowing'" us to sail on their ships.  I fully agree with Andy's take.

I have also had hit or miss activity with the "Los Angeles" office.  Most recently in arranging flights LAX-Tokyo and Hong Kong-LAX.  The Los Angeles agent from her home in Phoenix with a dog barking was very helpful and efficient, as well as patient with me as I worked through having to log out of My Viking and reload to see the booked flights.  Confirmation of the booking showed up in email while on the call prior to it being populated in My Viking Journey.

 

Pre-Pandemic, I spoke with a local person from the office.  I do some consulting and some small organizations have the remote work issue dialed in.  The large customer or lack thereof service firms are sorely lacking.....but not always

[Clay Clayton]

Cochin/Kochi today-hotterenhell but interesting. Lots of guests doing the overland trip-six buses we were told. Numbers of participants has varied from 90-150. Guess we will see tomorrow just how empty the ship feels. While I hate we are missing our planned independent excursion to the Taj Mahal, I’m not sure I could deal with six days of this heat without the Sky’s air conditioning to come back to😂.

Hope our Neptune friends get their yellow bindi like we did and that unlike mine which sweated off quickly, it lasts awhile!

[Wavetripper]

Wowzer and Zowie that's hot.

A possibility of 200 doing the overland from Neptune is what I have heard. Could be very quiet onboard for a few days. 

[big_red5312]

Was told that 450 of us are still on ship.

[Clay Clayton]

According to the new Edgar (Amon?) at Verity’s KoffeeKlatch, 141 are off on the overland so there are 447 onboard for the next five days…with 463 crew so private yacht ratio!

Edited March 25 by Clay Clayton

[cruising denise]

On 3/23/2024 at 7:25 PM, Pappri said:

Gotcha.  I mistakenly thought you were talking about the 1 striper guy (forgot his name already).  Sam is the 2 striper who’s helping us work with the LA customer service folks.  So when that eventually fails we’ll go to the 4 striper

Yes,  we are having the identical issue.  I think you may be thinking of Danushka, who is in Guest Services and reports to Sam.  I'm also working with Sam on the identical issue.  We used up our $4K in preboarding credits on Sept 14th booking our shorex.  I have the printout showing which excursions were paid by credits.  Late Nov/early Dec, they offered the Sri Lanka overland safari for $1799/each.  We gulped but said "it will be our only time in Sri Lanka - let's do it".  Paid for it by credit card, which is clearly on our CC statement.  Final printout of shorex before boarding shows that they had "switched" the credit from the many excursions we paid in Sept, to this very expensive one, with the balance put onto the Luxor excursion (which we had also paid by CC in Dec).  I didn't pay this much mind at the time.

 

We have received back to our CC all the cancelled shorex including Luxor (for which they had "switched" a few hundred from our cc to nonrefundable credits - though we paid the whole thing by cc).  

 

Once we got notice that the Sri Lanka safari was being reduced from two to one safaris due to the itinerary change, but from $1799 we would only receive a $200 credit, we cancelled it.  And assumed it would be refunded as a refundable credit which would ultimately end up on our cc.  No such luck.  It's still sitting there as a $3398 nonrefundable credit.  In our case, we plan to apply it to the African safari we're doing but I'm still fighting it.  If something hiccups with the African safari and let's say Viking has to cancel, I'm still left with a large nonrefundable balance.  And we're disembarking in Cape Town so no time to spend it even if I could.

 

I have worked with Aman (Financial Officer who sits right by the Guest Services desk) and Sam.  First answer back from LA was that they could not make it into refundable.  These preboarding credits get "shuffled" by their "system" onto other excursions than what you actually intended.  These are the actual words that Aman relayed to me, which he had been told by the idiots in LA corporate.  "Shuffled".  I escalated back to Sam (waited until after Singapore since I knew they had a lot on their hands then), who got the same answer back again.  It is a "system" problem.  They can't do it but they will contact me after I get home (and my $3400 nonrefundable credit is wiped off the face of the earth).  No go - I pushed back to Sam, who has escalated to the Director of whatever incompetent department in LA this is.  I have not heard back yet but I suspect my next action will have to be the CC dispute.  Probably a total waste of time in my case since I am hoping the African safari does happen in which case the credit will get used.  But now it is a matter of principle for me.

 

And I agree about loyalty to Viking.  They are losing mine with these shenanigans.  I have two more cruises booked with Viking.  We invited two friends to come along on the first one, and three are joining us for the second one.  But if this is how they treat us, I will not be booking with Viking any more.  Which is a shame because as so many have pointed out, I love the onboard experience.  

 

We are also upset about the difference in treatment compared to Neptune although we paid the same amount as we would have on Neptune.  There is no question that in several places they got preferential docking locations.  They also had a world cruise with same passengers all the way after LA; we did not.  No disrespect to those who purchased segments.  We've made friends with some of them and wished that some of them had been on for the whole time.  But it is a different vibe.  And most importantly, we were explicitly told when we decided to purchase this cruise that after LA, no segments would be sold - people would be on together all the way through.  They should have been more truthful about the fact that segmentation was probably always on the table.  They were not.  

[cruising denise]

@Pappri   But I do encourage you to take this up with Sam.   This behavior on Viking's part is really unacceptable business practice.  The only other thing I am aware of is that they have instituted a policy stating that overland excursions are nonrefundable.  I can understand this, as they are making commitments for flights and such which may end up being nonrefundable for Viking.  But this was not the case back in Nov/Dec when I booked the Sri Lanka overland.

[Pushka]

Certainly do not wait until you are off the ship to get this fixed up. Many on our recent cruise were told an issue would be fixed once they all got home. It wasn't.  Divide and conquer maybe their strategy. 

Edited March 25 by Pushka

[MaryMH]

I’m going to be on Sky for next year’s WC. These issues are troubling.  I suggest posting about this on social media. There’s a Viking World Cruises group on Facebook. Not only should future cruisers be made aware of this, but Viking likely follows social media as well.

[Heidi13]

3 hours ago, cruising denise said:

Yes,  we are having the identical issue.  I think you may be thinking of Danushka, who is in Guest Services and reports to Sam.  I'm also working with Sam on the identical issue.  We used up our $4K in preboarding credits on Sept 14th booking our shorex.  I have the printout showing which excursions were paid by credits.  Late Nov/early Dec, they offered the Sri Lanka overland safari for $1799/each.  We gulped but said "it will be our only time in Sri Lanka - let's do it".  Paid for it by credit card, which is clearly on our CC statement.  Final printout of shorex before boarding shows that they had "switched" the credit from the many excursions we paid in Sept, to this very expensive one, with the balance put onto the Luxor excursion (which we had also paid by CC in Dec).  I didn't pay this much mind at the time.

 

We have received back to our CC all the cancelled shorex including Luxor (for which they had "switched" a few hundred from our cc to nonrefundable credits - though we paid the whole thing by cc).  

 

Once we got notice that the Sri Lanka safari was being reduced from two to one safaris due to the itinerary change, but from $1799 we would only receive a $200 credit, we cancelled it.  And assumed it would be refunded as a refundable credit which would ultimately end up on our cc.  No such luck.  It's still sitting there as a $3398 nonrefundable credit.  In our case, we plan to apply it to the African safari we're doing but I'm still fighting it.  If something hiccups with the African safari and let's say Viking has to cancel, I'm still left with a large nonrefundable balance.  And we're disembarking in Cape Town so no time to spend it even if I could.

 

I have worked with Aman (Financial Officer who sits right by the Guest Services desk) and Sam.  First answer back from LA was that they could not make it into refundable.  These preboarding credits get "shuffled" by their "system" onto other excursions than what you actually intended.  These are the actual words that Aman relayed to me, which he had been told by the idiots in LA corporate.  "Shuffled".  I escalated back to Sam (waited until after Singapore since I knew they had a lot on their hands then), who got the same answer back again.  It is a "system" problem.  They can't do it but they will contact me after I get home (and my $3400 nonrefundable credit is wiped off the face of the earth).  No go - I pushed back to Sam, who has escalated to the Director of whatever incompetent department in LA this is.  I have not heard back yet but I suspect my next action will have to be the CC dispute.  Probably a total waste of time in my case since I am hoping the African safari does happen in which case the credit will get used.  But now it is a matter of principle for me.

 

And I agree about loyalty to Viking.  They are losing mine with these shenanigans.  I have two more cruises booked with Viking.  We invited two friends to come along on the first one, and three are joining us for the second one.  But if this is how they treat us, I will not be booking with Viking any more.  Which is a shame because as so many have pointed out, I love the onboard experience.  

 

We are also upset about the difference in treatment compared to Neptune although we paid the same amount as we would have on Neptune.  There is no question that in several places they got preferential docking locations.  They also had a world cruise with same passengers all the way after LA; we did not.  No disrespect to those who purchased segments.  We've made friends with some of them and wished that some of them had been on for the whole time.  But it is a different vibe.  And most importantly, we were explicitly told when we decided to purchase this cruise that after LA, no segments would be sold - people would be on together all the way through.  They should have been more truthful about the fact that segmentation was probably always on the table.  They were not.  

 

It is most unfortunate that others are now experiencing similar issues with the incompetent management running the L/A Office. Hope you do get it resolved.

 

If it was a systems issue, why did the refundable and non-refundable credits work perfectly for us back in 2020. Sadly, it wouldn't be the first time the incompetent L/A managers speak with forked tongue.

[cruising denise]

40 minutes ago, MaryMH said:

I’m going to be on Sky for next year’s WC. These issues are troubling.  I suggest posting about this on social media. There’s a Viking World Cruises group on Facebook. Not only should future cruisers be made aware of this, but Viking likely follows social media as well.

Cruise Critic is also social media for a lot of cruisers.  Personally I don't have a FaceBook account but I give permission here for anyone who does, to copy any of my posts and alert people on FaceBook.  If I were you, I would be troubled.  What itinerary are they selling you?  Are they assuming that the MidEast troubles will be resolved?  One would hope so, but it does not appear that this go-round of war will be resolved any time soon.  If I were you, I'd be asking now what your recourse is if the planned itinerary cannot occur.  And be VERY wary of how any pre-boarding nonrefundable credits get applied.  Keep hard copies of everything.  

 

We have cruised with Viking since 2018 and have completed four cruises so far (not including this).  In addition, we had three booked which got cancelled:   1. due to pandemic  2. due to pandemic-related supply chain issues (Mississippi River Cruise - ship was not completed in time) and 3. Russia's war against Ukraine (Moscow to St Petersburg River Cruise).  In every case, they treated us very fairly and probably stepped up before any of the other cruise lines to refund every last penny, or give us the choice of 125% of FCC.  They also treated their crew very well from what I have heard.  They did the right thing all around.

 

This is why we are now so shocked to be treated this way.  There has been a sea change in the management of this company, from very honorable and doing the right thing, to well, how do I put it....kind of sleazy????  I NEVER expected this from Viking in my wildest dreams.

 

And as I said before, I love the ships, the crew are great, but this may be the tipping point for us.

[cruising denise]

Just now, Heidi13 said:

 

It is most unfortunate that others are now experiencing similar issues with the incompetent management running the L/A Office. Hope you do get it resolved.

 

If it was a systems issue, why did the refundable and non-refundable credits work perfectly for us back in 2020. Sadly, it wouldn't be the first time the incompetent L/A managers speak with forked tongue.

And indeed, why were they able to refund (as refundable) the portion of the Luxor tour that they "shuffled" to nonrefundable in December, two+ months after we applied all our nonrefundable credits?  It is really inexplicable.

[cruising denise]

2 hours ago, Pushka said:

Certainly do not wait until you are off the ship to get this fixed up. Many on our recent cruise were told an issue would be fixed once they all got home. It wasn't.  Divide and conquer maybe their strategy. 

The shoreside team is not helpful.  And that is putting it nicely.  I agree with you, make as much noise as you need to while you are on the ship.  It is sad that such a fine company has come to this.  I have to wonder if Mr. Hagen is aware of all of this.

[CCWineLover]

2 hours ago, cruising denise said:

Cruise Critic is also social media for a lot of cruisers.  Personally I don't have a FaceBook account but I give permission here for anyone who does, to copy any of my posts and alert people on FaceBook.  If I were you, I would be troubled.  What itinerary are they selling you?  Are they assuming that the MidEast troubles will be resolved?  One would hope so, but it does not appear that this go-round of war will be resolved any time soon.  If I were you, I'd be asking now what your recourse is if the planned itinerary cannot occur.  And be VERY wary of how any pre-boarding nonrefundable credits get applied.  Keep hard copies of everything.  

 

We have cruised with Viking since 2018 and have completed four cruises so far (not including this).  In addition, we had three booked which got cancelled:   1. due to pandemic  2. due to pandemic-related supply chain issues (Mississippi River Cruise - ship was not completed in time) and 3. Russia's war against Ukraine (Moscow to St Petersburg River Cruise).  In every case, they treated us very fairly and probably stepped up before any of the other cruise lines to refund every last penny, or give us the choice of 125% of FCC.  They also treated their crew very well from what I have heard.  They did the right thing all around.

 

This is why we are now so shocked to be treated this way.  There has been a sea change in the management of this company, from very honorable and doing the right thing, to well, how do I put it....kind of sleazy????  I NEVER expected this from Viking in my wildest dreams.

 

And as I said before, I love the ships, the crew are great, but this may be the tipping point for us.

so sorry this has completely spoiled your World Cruise.  Life certainly takes different turns.  Here is hoping that after you get back, you find a cruise line that fits your needs and treats you well.  Let us know.