Contact Email for Viking Cruises UK

[arlowood]

Not sure if anyone can help with this but I seem to be going round in circles.

 

Background is that we are UK based and my wife and I are booked on the Viking Orion cruise leaving Civitavecchia on 22nd July and finishing in Barcelona on 29th July.

 

I recently had a hip replacement operation and would much prefer to have an aisle seat on any flight to make it easier to stretch my legs if I experience any discomfort. Our out bound flight(s) are with KLM from Birmingham UK to Rome via Amsterdam. I've had no problem accessing our booking and making seat selections on those flights.

 

However our return flight is with Vueling from Barcelona direct to Birmingham on Sunday 29th July.

 

I accessed our booking on the Vueling website. We have apparently been allocated seats 24 E & F (ie a middle and window seat) for our return flight - not really a very convenient set-up for me. I tried to select alternative seats but there is a statement that the details cannot be changed online and that the booking agent must contact them to make any changes.

 

I firstly spoke to our travel agent who made the original booking and they contacted Viking Cruises UK to ask them to do the seat swap. We eventually got a reply which effectively said that Viking could not do it.

 

I was surprised but contacted Viking UK directly and again asked if they could make changes. The contact I spoke to said "no" that they were blocked from making any online alterations. She suggested I speak directly to Vueling. Eventually got through to Vueling only to be told that they could not alter the seating plan and that the request must come from our UK agent who booked the flights.

 

So effectively I'm in a nightmare loop. The only possibility is that on the Vueling website they request the email address of the booking agent as well as the 6 digit flight booking reference number. If I can find out the Viking UK email address I may be able to "pose" as them to get this change done.

 

The alternative suggested by one contact was just to wait until check-in on 29th and request a change then. However I'm not confident that I'll be able to get an aisle and middle seat at that late stage.

 

Anyone out there know the email address tha Viking UK would use for flight bookings - a long shot I know but worth a go.

[Haworth]

You may have this information already, but our air tickets came from this address

 

 

notification@vikingcruises.com

 

 

If you have any questions regarding your Air Schedule please contact us at 020 8780 7900 and we will be happy to assist you.

Reservation Hours: (GMT)

Mon-Fri: 09:00 - 19:00

Sat: 09:00 -17:00

Sun: 10:00 - 16:00

You could also try

sam.perry@vikingcruises.com

[Peregrina651]

You may have this information already, but our air tickets came from this address

 

 

notification@vikingcruises.com

 

 

If you have any questions regarding your Air Schedule please contact us at 020 8780 7900 and we will be happy to assist you.

Reservation Hours: (GMT)

Mon-Fri: 09:00 - 19:00

Sat: 09:00 -17:00

Sun: 10:00 - 16:00

You could also try

sam.perry@vikingcruises.com

 

 

And if this doesn't work, contact the folks at tellus@vikingcruises.com. Be sure to include your booking number and your phone number (with country code since you are contacting a US office). And then get a new TA, because the one you have is happy to take no for an answer when she needs to push harder to get you the seat you need. (good thing you aren't flying from the US).

[arlowood]

@Haworth -many thanks for the prompt response. I will give that email address a try but I suspect that it may exclusively be one that is used for US based reservations. I have found addresses that seem to originate from their UK offices and they all seem to be *-*-uk@vikingcruises.com. So my suspicion is that the correct address will feature "uk" somewhere in it

 

@Peregrina651 - thanks also for your input. The phone number you provided is the one I have already been in contact with so I'm guessing they are supposed to be the experts on flight reservations.

 

If I have no success with any of the above, I will email the "tellus" or the sam.perry address

[Haworth]

@Haworth -many thanks for the prompt response. I will give that email address a try but I suspect that it may exclusively be one that is used for US based reservations. I have found addresses that seem to originate from their UK offices and they all seem to be *-*-uk@vikingcruises.com. So my suspicion is that the correct address will feature "uk" somewhere in it

 

@Peregrina651 - thanks also for your input. The phone number you provided is the one I have already been in contact with so I'm guessing they are supposed to be the experts on flight reservations.

 

If I have no success with any of the above, I will email the "tellus" or the sam.perry address

 

Sam may be your best bet, he is a UK customer services rep who we met at a Viking event.

[arlowood]

I had a quick go on the Vueling website and called up the "Manage Your Booking" page - link below

 

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AvTYOG9TwUwn9Bde6xZt9HA3Wnjc

 

 

Put my Booking reference in the required box and tried the "notifications" email address in the "Purchasers" box. This failed to respond. The booking reference got a green tick but the email box had a red cross and a message about an incorrect email address or something like that.

 

I then tried another email address that I had truffled out of the internet - namely info-uk@viking ************. When I pressed the "Go" button I briefly got a green tick in both the booking reference box and the email address box before, after about 2 secs, the email box then showed a red cross and a message about an incorrect address.

 

My suspicion is that the address is correct but the Vueling site detected that the IP address did not match with the originating server at the Viking offices so it rejected the submission.

 

Armed with this information I will go back to Viking UK and "suggest" that they give it another try

[arlowood]

Just a quick update to round off this topic.

 

Called Viking UK again this morning and the young lady again stated that she could not access the seating plan on the Vueling website. She claimed that Vueling allocated seats at the time of booking and did not allow these to be changed.

 

Thought this was very strange as the "Manage Your Booking" page on the Vueling website clearly had a seat selection option listed.

 

Anyway - long story short - my contact offered to email their flight booking unit to see if they could be more successful. Odd - as I thought she had already spoken to someone in that section.

 

Finally got a call to confirm that they had been able to secure me an aisle seat (16D) with my wife in 16E across that aisle. She made it sound as if they and Vueling were doing us a huge favour in allowing this change. She also stated that no further changes could be permitted???

 

So folks - rant over. Just slightly miffed that it took so much effort on my behalf to make a relatively simple alteration.

 

On second thoughts - just wondering if Viking are gouging really cheap deals with Vueling that make them unwilling to be flexible about seat selection/allocation

[peasmith]

We were going to book a cruise a year or so back for one of the Viking Ocean ships but were told all the spaces had been taken up with their 'good' airlines but were offering flights with Vuelling which I were told were the Spanish equivalent of Easyjet - not that I have anything against Easyjet but for the price of the cruise I would not have expected a budget airline. Good luck and enjoy your cruise.

[arlowood]

We were going to book a cruise a year or so back for one of the Viking Ocean ships but were told all the spaces had been taken up with their 'good' airlines but were offering flights with Vuelling which I were told were the Spanish equivalent of Easyjet - not that I have anything against Easyjet but for the price of the cruise I would not have expected a budget airline. Good luck and enjoy your cruise.

 

Yes - Viking make a big point of only using scheduled carriers which is a bit of a pain in our case. Our closest airport is East Midlands(EMA) in the UK (abt 15mins away) and we could fly direct to Rome on Jet2 and return from Barcelona direct to EMA on Ryanair. Jet2 is viewed as a budget airline but we have flown to Cyprus and back with them and we rate them as highly as some scheduled carriers. Ryanair is definitely bottom of the barrel in the budget stakes but on a return 2hr flight I would not be too bothered.

 

With Vikings scheduled-only policy, we have to travel to Birmingham and fly KLM via Amsterdam or Lufthansa via Frankfurt or Munich. Split journeys are always a pain and Schipol airport is not for the faint hearted. On one previous trip our aircraft taxied for 30mins after touch down to reach the allocated gate.

 

Having had a quick look it appears that the Vueling flight is a code share with Iberia so that perhaps gets around the "no-budget" constraints.