Dinner seating Mistake - Update (I am FURIOUS!)

[sas80]

[quote name='Gixer']My ''hope for the best'' reply was because I believed my TA when they told me late was full and the wait list closed - Is there any reason why I shouldnt have believed them? [B]Do TA's generally make a habit out of being untruthful to their customers?[/B] If thats the case then it is something I was unaware of.

Anyway, the situation is now resolved, I have early seating, and I am in the process of dealing with my booking being transfered to RCCL, all's well that ends well ;)


lvtotrvl1 - with reference to your post, I was not looking for a cheap TA or a cheap price, I am sailing a 14 night Med cruise in an Owners suite, cheap doesnt factor into that equation.[/quote]

I want to sream a very loud YES in response to this question, but I realize that every TA might not be like the TA I just had....

The TA I just had made it a HUGE habit of telling me that "XX was not possible" XX == C&A balcony discount, XX == changing my table at dinner 2 weeks prior to sailing, I could go on....

then, all of a sudden, magically, he would "come thru" with the very thing he said he could not possibly do.... After I few of these instances I started to feel very confident that he was trying to come off as a "save the day" kind of TA....someone whom had enough pull to be able to influence people to get me the things that I wanted.

Trouble was that I had always previously called C&A and ran the scenario by them, after he told me "nope, 100% not possible". C&A had always told me "yup, totally possible, here is how he needs to do it".

So I never bought into his "act", but I never called him on his antics, either.

Then, this last cruise, I was supposed to be in a wedding at one of the ports of call. I brought my TA the wedding group booking (20 cabins in total) I was supposed to get a bunch of perks, as was everyone in the group.

Well, the bride and I had a falling out and I was booted from the wedding. No worries for me. This is when I asked to have my dinner table moved. All of a sudden I started getting the TOTAL cold shoulder from my TA. He barely responded to my emails.

When he "swooped in and saved the day" by emailing me and telling me that he had moved our table, he indicated that he had only moved DH and I and one of the other 3 couples that we were sailing with. I responded that I was appreciative of his efforts but we were actually sailing with people Y and people Z, as well as people X

here is what I got as a response:

[I][FONT=arial][SIZE=3]I'm NOT handeling this!! You and the <people Y> and <people Z> have been moved. <people X> was never added to the dining list for the group so they wouldn't have been seated with the group anyway.[/SIZE][/FONT][/I]
[I][FONT=arial][SIZE=3] [/SIZE][/FONT][/I]
[I][FONT=arial][SIZE=3]This case is closed! Everyone is sick to death of your antics and trying to stir up trouble only to cry "victim" in the end.[/SIZE][/FONT][/I]
[I][FONT=arial][SIZE=3] [/SIZE][/FONT][/I]
[I][FONT=arial][SIZE=3]You and your friends will not be seated with <bride and grooms> group PERIOD![/SIZE][/FONT][/I]
[I][FONT=arial][SIZE=3] [/SIZE][/FONT][/I]
[I][FONT=arial][SIZE=3]This ship has already been made aware of this entire situation and if I were you I would accept things as they are and enjoy your cruise. Any further drama or disruption of Kelly's group will result in the ship getting involved. [/SIZE][/FONT][/I]


Now, mind you, the bride and I had not had any contact at that point for about 2 weeks. There was no interaction between herself and myself and certainly no "situation" or "drama" going on (except what the TA made up in his own head)

As well, DH and I got ZERO perks for the cruise. Everyone else got theirs but ours had "magically" not been delivered to our room. We firmly believe that TA went in and removed them from our room himself because the room was unlocked (deadbolt out) when we got in there. We think our cabin steward left it unlocked for easy access for her and the TA went in and took our perks to "get back" at us. This theory was further confirmed when the on board group coordinator assured us that she had assembled our perk package and just didn't know where it could have gone too. our poor room steward actually told us that she didn't take it...I felt bad for her. The on board group coordinator managed to get us most of the perks again.

After the cruise was over we found out that this same TA had made reservations at a hotel in our name, against our credit card without telling us so we wer charged when he didn't cancel for us. I emailed him and asked him about the situation and he told me to dispute it with my credit card. (quality TA, eh?)

I also had a prior TA who told me that RCCL was refusing to apply the C&A discount. After 5 phone calls between myself and RCCL and myself and the TA, she finally relented and applied the discount....

Anyways, to answer your question, in my personal experience, TA's will do a WHOLE LOT MORE than just "lie" to you.

Someone on here once suggested that you have your TA do a 3 way call with you and RCCL, so you can hear exactly what they have to say and not have to rely on what the TA says they told them.

Good luck!

[cookiersmom]

Hi!
After all the help you gave us for our recent visit to the Falklands last Feb, I was sad to see your frustration, and happy to see that it is pretty much resolved.

We did the Med w/ our kids (who were, at the time, older than your girls) a few years ago and we loved it!
Hope you have a great time!

[Moeve]

OP you did say you accidently booked late and then you wanted to move to early. You were then told that the early spaces were all booked and there was no waiting list - right?? Before you get upset with me again I am trying to help you by explain what could very well be the problem

Well that is all possible for several reasons - none of which your TA could influence or even have knowlegde of for the simple reason that RCCL will not tell even him/her.
1) it could be a large group who reserves the whole main dining for themselves - TA cannot know because RCCL will not tell anyone if such a group / part charter is onboard because this makes it almost impossible to sell the rest of the ship.
2) the already mentioned Anytime Dining Option RCCL is testing in the Med. RCCl removed many seats from the reservation status - in some cases even entire floors of the main dining room leaving many passenger "displaced"at the time of booking. You TA will not know about this since this is still a test and therefore neitherduration nor the capacity is public knowlegde. Just talk to some of the TA Brillince cruisers. Many had "main dining" on their sail passes but when they got there, there were no seats available for them because of this Any Time Option being tested in an existing venue. Remember the number of seats in the main restaurant have not just miraclely doubled.

By the way it is possible that cruises ARE completely sold out more than 12 months prior to sailing. Jewel 15 May 08 was sold out 13 months ago and 5 months ago they were already looking for passengers who might be willing to give up their cabins for another cruise..........

Some of you are being a little unrealistic about what a TA can and cannot do for you. You forget this TA does not only have YOU as a client but normally a single agent will have several hunderds of clients on maybe as many cruises. To be honest the way some of you are talking I bet there are a great deal of TA out there who would probably not want you as clients either.

[sas80]

[quote name='Moeve']OP you did say you accidently booked late and then you wanted to move to early. You were then told that the early spaces were all booked and there was no waiting list - right?? Before you get upset with me again I am trying to help you by explain what could very well be the problem

Well that is all possible for several reasons - none of which your TA could influence or even have knowlegde of for the simple reason that RCCL will not tell even him/her.
1) it could be a large group who reserves the whole main dining for themselves - TA cannot know because RCCL will not tell anyone if such a group / part charter is onboard because this makes it almost impossible to sell the rest of the ship.
2) the already mentioned Anytime Dining Option RCCL is testing in the Med. RCCl removed many seats from the reservation status - in some cases even entire floors of the main dining room leaving many passenger "displaced"at the time of booking. You TA will not know about this since this is still a test and therefore neitherduration nor the capacity is public knowlegde. Just talk to some of the TA Brillince cruisers. Many had "main dining" on their sail passes but when they got there, there were no seats available for them because of this Any Time Option being tested in an existing venue. Remember the number of seats in the main restaurant have not just miraclely doubled.

By the way it is possible that cruises ARE completely sold out more than 12 months prior to sailing. Jewel 15 May 08 was sold out 13 months ago and 5 months ago they were already looking for passengers who might be willing to give up their cabins for another cruise..........

Some of you are being a little unrealistic about what a TA can and cannot do for you. You forget this TA does not only have YOU as a client but normally a single agent will have several hunderds of clients on maybe as many cruises. To be honest the way some of you are talking I bet there are a great deal of TA out there who would probably not want you as clients either.[/quote]

While I know that your explanation of possibilities is well intentioned, it just doesn't apply here.

OP had confirmation from RCCL that there was space available in early seating AND TA was ultimately able to move her.

I feel fairly confident that OP would not have posted this thread if RCCL had told her "oh, sorry, early seating is already booked solid" or "oh, sorry, there is a large group booked into the dining room for early seating, but we can put you in the wait list!"

We all know that having a particular dining room seating get completely booked up early on is definitely a possibility (albeit rare) but that simply wasnt the case here. It just feels like OP's Ta was being lazy, lazy, lazy!

[Host Karen]

Glad to learn from the OP that the problem has been resolved and she got her desired dining time. This thread is closed.

Karen
[EMAIL="HostKaren@CruiseCritic.com"]HostKaren@CruiseCritic.com[/EMAIL]