Oceania website is untrustworthy

[rubysue]

I know this topic has been discussed ad nauseum on this board, but I must describe the latest strange things that have happened on the O website when I go in to manage reserved cruises (e.g., look at excursions, see if culinary classes are available).

 

We have booked two shore excursions for our upcoming September cruise (Continental Connoisseur). The correct excursions show up in the cruise summary, at least so far. However, if I go in to "shop" (look at excursions), a summary of my previously selected excursions over on the right hand side of the screen in a white block is completely wrong and includes excursions that would not even be offered on our cruise.

 

For example, we have booked and paid for "Bruges on your own" and "Seville on your own" (I don't want to get into a discussion of the merits or not of booking these excursions - we have booked them for a variety of reasons outside this discussion). The other day when I went into the shopping mode to look for more excursions, our already booked excursions changed to some tour in Porvoo, Finland and something else in Amsterdam (two ports not on our cruise). Today, our previously booked excursions changed to "Leisurely Venice" and "Highlights of St. Tropez". We're not going to either port on this cruise.

 

This is bizarre, to say the least. It does cause some concern that these booked and paid for extras can change to something else depending on what screen you are in on the O website. I hope we get the excursions we paid for.

[rubysue]

Gee, all the views and no comments

 

Has anyone else noticed this discrepancy?

[airmike2]

I haven't had any situation like that, but when I went online to fill our our passenger info form, it kept on crashing on me, giving me error messages, to fill our our family of 4's info it took me 3 different tries using 2 different browsers.

 

Also when I went to make dinner reservations, when I added the other cabins to the reservation it said something to the effect of the guests you are trying to invite have not been finalized, which is wrong all 3 cabins have made final payments already! I finally had to call the 800 number to book the dining reservations!

 

Maybe clear the cookies and history in your browser and try again?? Or I would call the 800 number and confirm.

[esther e]

As with airmike2, I often have to change browsers for one reason or another. Also, the site could be in the process of sorting itself out. Give it a few days and try again.

[Don P]

There's no way RubySue's experience was isolated. That reduces the cookies issue or thinking that it is computer specific. Best thing to do is to notify Oceania and periodically check your account with further notification if it doesn't get corrected in a couple of days.

[Sail2?]

It sounds like it might be an issue on Oceania website's end. Just guessing, there is something wrong with their display logic as what you see on the website is most likely made up of various smaller programs that pull in and display the information from a database. It could be that the coding is incorrect so the translation on what you booked is mis-matched to the actual description. Without knowing how the website was designed, its hard to say what is the problem. Best way is to take a screen shot and email to Oceania and have their IT department that manage the website look into the issue.

[rubysue]

Thanks for the good feedback. I like the idea of doing a screen shot to show the problem. I would guess that perhaps several tours have the same ID number in their database, but those numbers should be tied to an itinerary number.

 

As long as the invoice information is correct, I guess I'm not too worried about it, but it's just another flaky issue with their website.

[wripro]

My advice: have your TA call O and book your excursions directly making sure he gets an email confirmation.