Advice: Cunard Direct vs TA

[david63]

2 hours ago, Jim_Iain said:

 

With due respect,  I always book with an Agent and yes it is coming from somewhere, in my case It is coming from sharing his commission.   Cruising pays the highest commission  in the travel industry and many like mine that are high volume booking agents get even higher over-rides.    They attract more customers by giving back some of their commission and make up for it in Volume.  

I personally don't see it as my money coming back as If I didn't use an agent I would be loosing a 10% concession.  BTW mine is  also is willing to take it off the front end or send a check after the cruise instead of giving an OBC.

This is one of the major differences between US and UK travel agents - I have never seen, or heard, of a UK travel agent operating in that way.

[D&N]

27 minutes ago, david63 said:

This is one of the major differences between US and UK travel agents - I have never seen, or heard, of a UK travel agent operating in that way.

Many years ago before the internet and direct booking was so established, specialist agents would compete for business on ceefax and teletext by offering discounts of up to around 11%. Most people probably ended up paying same price. We got a very good deal on a Panama Transit including flights from/to Glasgow. The folk in next cabin had paid a bit more than us but got more OBC so we ended up paying exactly the same.

I don't think that exists these days. But it has been established by various comparisons that folk in North America are paying much more than UK guests and that may explain why US agents can offer discounts.

[majortom10]

8 hours ago, david63 said:

Bear in mind that OBC (with a couple of exceptions) has to be paid for by somebody and that somebody is normally the passenger. If you received no OBC from the TA then it is highly likely that the base price would be less. Most of the time OBC is your own money.

Not always it could be paid for by TA out of there commission they receive from cruise line to attract your booking.

[tlc1972]

OP here. 

Been a moment since I posted and wanted to circle back and thank everyone for their responses. I had no idea this would lead to nearly five pages of comments! But I do apologize for not replying or keeping up - life had other plans that took me offline for a couple of weeks. 

In any case, we ended up booking direct with Cunard. Not sure why we weren't able to select our cabins originally, but after clearing our cache/cookies the option was there (side note that we had not been selecting the lowest fare, already understanding that those fares usually prohibit cabin selection).

 

Now we just need to tie our bookings together, which I'm realizing a TA might have had an easier time with! 🤪

 

[Host Hattie]

Thanks for the update, have a great trip. 

[tacticalbanjo]

I now have a great 'booking direct can suck' story. We booked for the QA maiden directly and despite paying the bill back in November, they emailed today asking for more money. Almost certainly this is because our daughter would have been 1 for the January sailing but is now 2 and thus chargeable and to the Cunard computer system this probably looks like a huge discrepancy. But our booking confirmation for the rescheduled voyage confirms that she is free which is as it should be because it is not our fault that the voyage was moved back.

 

The call centre say there's absolutely nothing they can do and to email in. But we all know the email response time frame is much longer than the week we have to get this resolved before our voyage is automatically cancelled because we've missed final payment.

 

Having a travel agent to resolve this would be saving us a lot of stress right now.

[D&N]

1 hour ago, tacticalbanjo said:

I now have a great 'booking direct can suck' story. We booked for the QA maiden directly and despite paying the bill back in November, they emailed today asking for more money. Almost certainly this is because our daughter would have been 1 for the January sailing but is now 2 and thus chargeable and to the Cunard computer system this probably looks like a huge discrepancy. But our booking confirmation for the rescheduled voyage confirms that she is free which is as it should be because it is not our fault that the voyage was moved back.

 

The call centre say there's absolutely nothing they can do and to email in. But we all know the email response time frame is much longer than the week we have to get this resolved before our voyage is automatically cancelled because we've missed final payment.

 

Having a travel agent to resolve this would be saving us a lot of stress right now.

If you don't have this already, you could try it if you have difficulty resolving the problem:

executive.correspondence@carnivalukgroup.com

I think the president of Cunard UK is Katie McAlister and president Carnival UK is Sture Myrmell.

Individual emails should be in form: firstname.surname@carnivalukgroup.com

[majortom10]

12 minutes ago, D&N said:

If you don't have this already, you could try it if you have difficulty resolving the problem:

executive.correspondence@carnivalukgroup.com

I think the president of Cunard UK is Katie McAlister and president Carnival UK is Sture Myrmell.

Individual emails should be in form: firstname.surname@carnivalukgroup.com

President of Carnival UK is Paul Ludlow.

[tacticalbanjo]

37 minutes ago, D&N said:

If you don't have this already, you could try it if you have difficulty resolving the problem:

executive.correspondence@carnivalukgroup.com

I think the president of Cunard UK is Katie McAlister and president Carnival UK is Sture Myrmell.

Individual emails should be in form: firstname.surname@carnivalukgroup.com

We’ve already emailed the exec correspondence address as well as the normal email address (not that we’ve had a confirmation of receipt for either) but will try the presidents too for good measure. And maybe messages on LinkedIn plus ringing the call centre every day just in case someone can help us. 

[D&N]

2 hours ago, majortom10 said:

President of Carnival UK is Paul Ludlow.

Sture Myrmell hasn't updated his Linkedin profile. 🙂

He was in the post in spring 2022 and I didn't find an update in my quick search.

[D&N]

2 hours ago, majortom10 said:

President of Carnival UK is Paul Ludlow.

His published photo looks a bit like the models they use to illustrate what folk should wear onboard. 🙂

[alc13]

2 hours ago, tacticalbanjo said:

We’ve already emailed the exec correspondence address as well as the normal email address (not that we’ve had a confirmation of receipt for either) but will try the presidents too for good measure. And maybe messages on LinkedIn plus ringing the call centre every day just in case someone can help us. 

I’ve read that Facebook and Twitter can help.  I would try customer service again, too.  At least they should be able to escalate your request.
 

Good luck - dealing with large companies can be difficult.

[majortom10]

2 hours ago, D&N said:

Sture Myrmell hasn't updated his Linkedin profile. 🙂

He was in the post in spring 2022 and I didn't find an update in my quick search.

Sture Myrmell left Carnival Corporation and was replaced by Paul Ludlow in and was announced in May 2023.

Edited January 26 by majortom10

[tacticalbanjo]

After a whole load of emails and many, many hours on the phone we have got our issue resolved and do not have to pay for the toddler to go on the Queen Anne maiden. It was a very stressful few days worrying that I was either going to have to come up with an extra 25% of the fare rather unexpectedly and have a real fight to get it back or risk getting my trip cancelled because the contact centre staff couldn’t guarantee that Guest Relations would even look at my email before their 28 day max response time. 
 

I really had to push for the problem to get escalated. The contact centre staff did not want to put me through to a supervisor. It’s like they are told to just get you off the phone at all costs. The staff member I was speaking to just kept repeating that she couldn’t put me through to a supervisor, the supervisor would have the same answer anyway (to pay up, email in and no they couldn’t escalate) and they couldn’t help me further. I kept reiterating that I wasn’t getting off the phone without speaking to the supervisor. Eventually the staff member capitulated to opening a complaint and escalating it to a 48 hour call back. I kept insisting on speaking to a supervisor and sometime later, after making absolutely clear that I was not going to hang up, they put me through to the apparently only supervisor on shift who definitely wouldn’t be taking any calls.

 

The supervisor was immediately much more helpful, promised to look into the issue personally and personally give me a call back by the end of the next day. She called late afternoon today with the good news that the problem has been looked at and our fare reset to the fare as detailed in our original booking confirmations which we had fully paid. We have a reissued booking confirmation to say that we’ve paid in full. I’m still a bit nervous that the issue might pop back up without us noticing because we don’t know exactly what went on in the first place. 
 

The amount of hassle this has caused has soured my relationship with Cunard a bit and taken the shine off a trip we had been looking forward to since we got that slick card marketing pack. No one likes to feel ripped off and the fact that the contact centre staff completely refused to help and wouldn’t put us through to someone who could help until I’d made a total nuisance of myself makes me totally let down. It’s so far from the levels of service you get on the ships. I don’t think we will be booking directly again and instead book through our usual travel agent so that they can enjoy being a pain on the phone instead of me. 

[TowandaUK]

So sorry you had to go through this. Am pleased that Cunard eventually made the correct decision, but you should not have had to go through this. You are understandably feeling bruised and upset right now. I hope that once you set foot onboard that these feelings fade, and you have a wonderful time with your family.