Nearly blew my top with Fred

Rang the Shore Tour line on Friday to ask when Booking started for cruise in July. Told 9.30 this morning, Saturday.

So up early at 7.30 and thought let's see if bookings open.

Booked first two days in Iceland no problem, then got to third and fourth day, and all trips were showing SOLD OUT.

As one of the trips was a must and nearly the point of the cruise steam was coming out of ears.

How come the tours sold out two hours before they were due to go on sale I asked myself.

Kept checking and every time I checked status changed for each trip.

From sold out, to unable to book until 4 weeks before cruise, to limited availability.

Then at nine tours we wanted came up as bookable.........

Fred's IT Department must be as good as my last Companies and that is saying something.

Just hope trips are registered, they say they are on My Cruise.

Relax with a coffee now.

I, too, am extremely frustrated with Fred for a similar reason. The tours for our July cruise were released today and I have managed to book 3 out of the 4 we want to do. The 4th one showed as available on the web site but, when I tried to reserve a place, I got a message saying 'unavailable, contact the shore excursion line'. When I tried to do this I found that it is closed over the weekend......not good public relations! Come on Fred, you can do better than this.

Hi soccceref ........ Is the cruise the Greenland cruise. If so that's the cruise we had trouble with this morning. I got a message saying one tour was sold out and to ring and go on a wait list. Twenty minutes later it said limited availability then twenty minutes later I could book it.

I would keep trying if I was you.

A Shore Tour lady told me on Friday that the system was having problems. No kidding there, and to be shut at weekends defies belief.

Good luck....

We never bother with ship excursions as they are vastly overpriced. In most destinations you can find local operators that are a lot cheaper. Part of the fun is the research.

Agree with you london normally, but research has indicated that in the Greenland ports all the tourist trip boats are taken by the Cruise Ships. May be wrong but wasn't prepared to risk it.

Hi 1160451 - yes, it' s the Iceland/Greenland cruise and I will follow your advice to keep trying on the web site.

Londontowner, I appreciate your contribution but get fed up with people telling me to book excursions independently. As it happens, we do both ship and independent tours. I often do solo tours as my HD and I have different interests and mobility levels and I feel much safer in those circumstances doing something organised by the ship

We have contacted Fred a few of times over the last couple of weeks, partly because we are going to elderly relatives in a couple of days time so will not have the internet.

I was originally told the trips would be on sale on the internet by last Monday and the cruise books were being printed and should arrive Thurs or Fri this week. Rang again last Monday, (spoke directly to shore tour that time) and were told the cruises would not be bookable until Friday (yesterday) and cruise books should arrive Thurs or Fri this week. Our cruise book arrived Fri, so they got that right from the start, but no trips bookable. Rang again and told they were loaded overnight Thurs/Fri and the system 'fell over', so they would be loaded Fri night. We had tried their site a couple of times a day for the last week or so and know that most functions on the website were not functioning and there was an announcement of a scheduled closure for essential maintenance from 8pm Wed to about 9am Thurs. So something has been going on with their web site.

With the knowledge we had, we were not convinced the system would work today, so asked what the alternative was. We were told we could use post, but were thinking that one tour in particular could be sold on the net before the post arrived and was processed, so my husband asked about sending a fax, (we would have had to go to a library or somewhere for that). We were told that was OK but also we could scan the order form and send that in by email, which is what we did and booked two trips yesterday. One was showing from last night when things were being loaded on their site, but the other one is not showing even now, yet our account has been debitted!!! Feeling concerned, and not being able to contact by phone, we tried to book that trip this morning, but the system told us that the tour we wished to book overlapped with one we had booked and gave the (slightly different) tour times. We tried to book tour departure B5 and we are booked on B3 which was not on the site as available. We now assume we have been booked, but that our tour departure has not been loaded on to the site, (poss because it is booked up) - hence it is not showing. Well that is what we think............

I suspect shore tours will be inundated with calls on Monday morning!

We received e-mail confirmation of the trips we have booked, but nowhere does it tell us the times of the trips we have booked.

Not too bothered what the times are but usually they give you the times.

Hope the Ships IT system is a touch better.... :-)

We did get an email confirmation, but their email did not name the trips which were booked, although it was sent as a reply to my husbands initial email, which had the scanned copy of our booking form attached. We were also charged the correct amount of cash, so it looks OK, just that the ice fjord trip is not on manage my cruises when we click 'booked trips', which we would prefer to see. It would seem logical that they would not load all of the trips though as I was told yesterday that they have 12 departures (presumably B1 to B12). We did ask for a morning departure.

We only found the time when we tried to book the trip again this morning. The site showed the time, and departure number, of the trip we are booked on along with the time of the trip we tried to book this morning. We (B3) go at 8.30 - 10.46 and B5 overlapped that, leaving later and taking less time so it must be on a faster boat. We did the same with our other booked trip, (Traditional Greenland), this evening and it seems it is from 8am to 9.30am and the 'Tastes of Greenland' tour which we did a attempted booking for was for exactly the same time. I would prefer something a bit later really, but it will give us time to do something else that day - I have also posted on the roll call site.

It is very frustrating. We are booked on Oceana going to the northern lights next March and trips are already on sale. We booked a couple about a week ago with the full knowledge of times etc. before we booked. P&O now have our money to hang on to for most of the year as well as giving priority to people who have booked earlier, which you would expect all companies to want to do. I suspect Fred are going to be trying to change people to preferred departure times etc. because of the haphazard way the trips have gone on sale. Also, they are just encouraging people to wait for anchor prices if they have as much chance of booking limited availability trips as anyone else.

Perhaps the money they are saving on cutting out Theme Nights could go to actually producing an efficient Shore Tour System ......:)

Just to give Fred credit where it is due.

I posted on their Face book page about what I described as the shambles of the Greenland Shore Tours.

A very pleasant young lady from the Shore tour Dept rang me the day after and asked if I had managed to book all the tours we wanted.

She explained in great detail the problems they had encountered last week and the efforts she had made on Saturday morning to add Tours within the constraints of the system.

We had a nice chat and I felt she was genuinely concerned. Didn't feel fobbed off.

Roll on the 7th....:)

Just to give Fred credit where it is due.

I posted on their Face book page ......

It's amazing how much better companies respond to Customer criticism if it's is made in public!:)