First Time to Transfer to TA -- info

[rwadam]

Hello,

 

Since I've seen numerous threads questioning transfering a booking to a TA I thought I'd describe my own experience. I had booked 2 cabins on the Solstice 11/6/11 Eastern Caribbean. I had also booked 2 cabins on the Millenium for a 5 day Western Caribbean right before this cruise. As we know, Celebrity decided to keep the ships in the Mediterranean longer next season and therefore rescheduled or cancelled a number of cruises including our Solstice cruise. When Celebrity called me about the cancellation they offered me $200 obc per cabin to take a later Solstice or Eclipse Caribbean cruise. That did not work for us timewise. Thanks to Cruise Critic, I was already aware of the situation and we had decided instead to forego the Caribbean and book the Equinox Eastern Mediterranean in October 2011. I informed the Celebrity Redeployment person of this and I booked our cruise, with $200 obc per cabin offer in tact (which I thought was more than fair considering it was a year in advance).

 

I'd read many posts about folks transfering bookings to TAs for obc or getting great group rates, etc. I've never used a TA before and I know you can't mention TAs on this site. I emailed a CC member whose many posts I'd read and asked if she'd recommend her TA. She did. I communicated with this TA and then I decided to transfer the booking of this cruise to this TA -- for a couple of reasons. First, our first cruise (the Solstice cruise) had been cancelled and it might happen again, and second, the 3 times I dealt with Celebrity customer service on the phone, each time, although the reps could not have been nicer, they simply did not know what they were talking about and I knew more than they did just by being a Cruise Critic regular. I thought it best to have a travel agent handle this (not inexpensive) cruise -- and to verify that I'd gotten my obc offer from Celebrity and to troubleshoot for me if anything happens between now and next October.

 

There was that recent 60-day transfering policy issue. I made my initial booking on Sept. 26th and I didn't want to deal with "am I grandfathered or am I not grandfathered," so I made sure the bookings were transferred by today and they were! The agent took care of everything and we are all set. The $200 obc per cabin because of the rescheduling has been confirmed (as well as the obc the TA gave us). Also, for the poster who asked about My Celebrity -- I have been able to log on and see the cabins registered and our reservation, no problem. The only difference is that it now has our TA listed as well. Now we are going to sit back and relax. We are booked in Aqua Class for this cruise and I am really looking forward to our cruise next October!

[biker1972]

Sounds like it is going just the way it is supposed to :). And the extra OBC will be nice. You can still book shore excursions, specialty dining reservations etc. without the TA.