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UK passengers charged on price drop


julieh
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i have a cruise booking for October 2018 I noticed the price had dropped £50 per person so asked Princess to change the price on my booking

 

I was informed by Southampton that to change now there would be a charge of £100 and you can only make one charge per booking. Obviously it was not worth changing!

 

Does this apply to USA passengers?

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Never heard of such a thing. But if your cruise is not till October 2018' date=' can you not just cancel it and then rebook at the new price? Or is there also a fee for cancelation?[/quote']

 

 

 

Yep we will loose our often hefty deposit if we cancel and rebook.

 

 

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£50 per person is not a lot of money in comparison to total cruise cost. I suspect price reductions are often significantly more than this on many cruises.

 

If you want to strike a blow to the differential way in which UK/US bookings are handled you could always wait until you are on board calculate your daily deficit and tell them at Reception that you are having auto-gratuities reduced by this amount because of this issue unless the staff improve their service level sufficiently. This should set the cat among the pigeons.

 

Personally I just stick with any price changes.

 

Regards John

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Our 14 night Med cruise has dropped in price by more than £1200 since we booked in Nov. We had a mini suite for 4 booked and when I rang Princess they were prepared to reprice for me for a fee of £150 but all the cabins for 4 are sold out so they couldn’t and cancelling would mean the loss of our £900 deposit. However what I was able to do was move to 2 new mini suite staterooms and although it was £200 more I am also getting $200 more OBC so I am really happy I checked the new price as we now have 2 cabins pretty much for the price of 1!

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We so sometimes have sales that have a no deposit refund clause. Often to take advantage of a reduced fare they must actually cancel our booking and rebook under the new sale or discounted rate. In these cases we too would loose the deposit which is often $100per passenger.

 

Not sure about the 1 change per booking thing you describe as I don’t understand what your saying there. However in the case I described anyone booked in the cabin would have the same loss should they rebook to the new rate.

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I rant about having different terms and conditions in UK and Australia from USA, at every opportunity I get. It seems so unfair.

 

However..no one appears to take the slightest notice !!!

 

The only way to change things is to vote with your feet and cruise with a different company...which one I'm not sure.

 

Sadly I am not ready to 'jump ship' at the moment.

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I rant about having different terms and conditions in UK and Australia from USA, at every opportunity I get. It seems so unfair.

 

However..no one appears to take the slightest notice !!!

 

The only way to change things is to vote with your feet and cruise with a different company...which one I'm not sure.

 

Sadly I am not ready to 'jump ship' at the moment.

 

There is one way and one I have done this in the past is to remove gratuities at reception and tell them I will pay gratuities in the future when those in the UK get same booking conditions with Princess than those in US.

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We so sometimes have sales that have a no deposit refund clause. Often to take advantage of a reduced fare they must actually cancel our booking and rebook under the new sale or discounted rate. In these cases we too would loose the deposit which is often $100per passenger.

 

Not sure about the 1 change per booking thing you describe as I don’t understand what your saying there. However in the case I described anyone booked in the cabin would have the same loss should they rebook to the new rate.

 

Simple really once you have booked your cruise you can only ask to change your booking once and with an admin cost. Whenever we cancel a cruise in the UK however far in advance you lose the deposit unlike in the US so that has to be taken into account when cancelling due to price drops to see if it is worth it.

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I rant about having different terms and conditions in UK and Australia from USA, at every opportunity I get. It seems so unfair.

 

However..no one appears to take the slightest notice !!!

 

The only way to change things is to vote with your feet and cruise with a different company...which one I'm not sure.

 

Sadly I am not ready to 'jump ship' at the moment.

 

I thought this was due to laws in your country? Dont you have advantages we dont? Such as recovering your monies after final payment if you cancel? Except deposit?

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I changed my booking and saved £600 as well as moving from an inside to a balcony deluxe and an extra $100 credit. I did have to pay the £100 charge and am hoping it doesn't drop again as was said earlier only 1 change allowed without having to lose deposit.

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£50 per person is not a lot of money in comparison to total cruise cost. I suspect price reductions are often significantly more than this on many cruises.

 

If you want to strike a blow to the differential way in which UK/US bookings are handled you could always wait until you are on board calculate your daily deficit and tell them at Reception that you are having auto-gratuities reduced by this amount because of this issue unless the staff improve their service level sufficiently. This should set the cat among the pigeons.

 

Personally I just stick with any price changes.

 

Regards John

 

There is one way and one I have done this in the past is to remove gratuities at reception and tell them I will pay gratuities in the future when those in the UK get same booking conditions with Princess than those in US.

I understand your complaint but this response hurts the wrong people. I don't believe your stateroom steward or your dining room waiters had anything to do with the decision on your booking conditions, so why punish them. Your statement at the Passenger Services Desk will not be passed on to Corporate. Instead, your stateroom steward and dining room waiters will suffer.

 

If you don't like the Princess booking conditions, then you don't have to book a cruise on Princess. However, if you decide you want to sail on Princess dispite these terms, don't punish your stateroom steward and your dining room waiters. They will provide excellent service to you and they deserve their pay.

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There is one way and one I have done this in the past is to remove gratuities at reception and tell them I will pay gratuities in the future when those in the UK get same booking conditions with Princess than those in US.

 

Good thinking..sounds like a plan..as long as this gets passed on to Corporate Headquarters.

 

No doubt many people will rant about 'stiffing the crew'

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I thought this was due to laws in your country? Dont you have advantages we dont? Such as recovering your monies after final payment if you cancel? Except deposit?

 

Not that I am aware of. if you cancel after final payment you lose your money. There is a sliding scale of charges you need to pay, starting straight after booking.

 

We do have ABTA and ATOL protection in case the company collapses..if we have booked a package holiday.

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I understand your complaint but this response hurts the wrong people. I don't believe your stateroom steward or your dining room waiters had anything to do with the decision on your booking conditions, so why punish them. Your statement at the Passenger Services Desk will not be passed on to Corporate. Instead, your stateroom steward and dining room waiters will suffer.

 

In political struggles a protest may be made in a multitude of ways. Anmer had nothing against Emily Davison in the struggle for equality it ended in her demise. Emily was simply trying to make a protest against something which she believed was wrong.

 

I see no reason why anyone should not tell reception that they are deducting say $7.86 from their daily auto-gratuities because UK/US booking conditions are not equal and they have calculated that this will put things back to equitable. This is a way that the message will be relayed upwards and if enough people did it they might well change the rules eventually. Auto-gratuities were brought into the UK sector we believe due to a stand off near strike of a huge proportion of staff on a cruise line. This was because a large number of UK cruisers were not tipping at all. If huge numbers of UK cruisers followed this procedure it may have an effect on cruise line policy, do not forget that Princess ex-Australia have tip inclusive prices for example. The cruise line has noticed that you cannot trade world-wide successfully with one set of rules but they will accommodate if their hand is forced.

 

I have never followed the practice I have suggested and always leave auto-gratuities on and tip extra in a minor way if I feel inclined. If I were to tell Reception that I was reducing my daily auto-gratuities amount by $7.86 a day, and explaining why, you can bet your bottom dollar that I would be giving cash in lieu to at least that amount direct to the crew as it is the cruise line I should have a grouse with not the staff.

 

Regards John

Edited by john watson
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I thought this was due to laws in your country? Dont you have advantages we dont? Such as recovering your monies after final payment if you cancel? Except deposit?

 

Not that I am aware of. if you cancel after final payment you lose your money. There is a sliding scale of charges you need to pay, starting straight after booking.

 

We do have ABTA and ATOL protection in case the company collapses..if we have booked a package holiday.

 

A court case a few years ago defined a cruise as a package holiday

 

ABTA is a trade association there to serve the travel agent and tour operators paying members. It will help consumers but only in the interest of keeping the good name of their members. They also run the insurance scheme in case of member failure.

 

ATOL is just an operators licence and insurance scheme.

 

No legal reason why we can not have non refundable deposits, change cabins with no fee and price drops.

 

But there is no legal reason why travel agents, tour operators and cruiselines should offer us any of these.

 

When the big 3 tour operators with a few other smaller members started ABTA back in the 1950's they were the ones that agreed deposits were non refundable and it has just carried on from there.

 

If you read back to some of the older threads when the American cruiselines started taking off in the UK you could get price drops but the cruiselines soon realised that there was no requirement to offer them.

 

Some one did take a cruise line to small claims court and won as he proved that even though he cancelled after final payment the cruiseline was able to sell his cabin at no loss to themselves and the man was awarded a full refund.

The cruise line could have contested in the courts but if they lost it would mean that they would have to by law refund customers if they sold their cabins at no loss to themselves. The cruise line was not prepared to take the chance on losing.

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We recently noted a drop in price for a Suite guarantee and asked our travel agent to try and secure this ( booked and aft balcony emerald deck - for a couple of hundred more we could get the suite) We were charged the same £50 a person change fee and told they would do it this time but not again. Now I realise they would do it only once on a reservation.

 

I often read of people changing over and over on their US based reservations as the price goes further and further down and I feel a little jealous.

 

Also, perhaps a little off topic, but I continue to torture myself by looking at the prices for our upcoming cruise and see that they are currently advertising a "sale" price and the balcony is now higher than it was yesterday and more than we paid for the Suite guarantee? I sincerely hope they are giving some major OBC to offset.

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All you have to do with auto gratuities is inform guest desk is that you don’t want to pay.

 

They will normally say come back last day of cruise, no problem you go back last day and repeat request and it gets credited.

 

 

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I thought this was due to laws in your country? Dont you have advantages we dont? Such as recovering your monies after final payment if you cancel? Except deposit?

 

Not quite, in the UK they are covered by the package travel regulation 1992 (and later revisions) that means that they get protections in some cases if the cruise line fails to produce the described vacation (major deviation vs minor deviation as defined in the regulation). This does provide some additional cost and risk to the cruise lines for sales in the UK.

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There is one way and one I have done this in the past is to remove gratuities at reception and tell them I will pay gratuities in the future when those in the UK get same booking conditions with Princess than those in US.

 

Then they should modify the UK sales like they do for some Australian based cruises in Australia and include gratuities in the fares. They won't because they are listed on US exchanges and US regulations require gratuities to be optional. If they are not optional they get different tax treatment and must be included as revenue, instead of now where they pass outside of the accounting system as long as they are fully distributed to the crew and optional. So in some ways you benefit from a US tax regulation, but are negatively impacted by the UK PTR.

Edited by RDC1
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Inland revenue would have a field day if the gratuities were bundled into the fare in the UK.

 

Optional gratuities are not subject to tax if paid outside the UK.

 

Compulsory gratuities are taxed regardless of who they go to.

 

NCL get around this by stating that the drinks package and the gratuities are a free gift.

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