OLife Choice

[Jeffxx]

Booking online for the ten day Mediterranean cruise leaving May 15, 2019.  I was confused, and agents on the phone were no help or made it more confusing.   When I tested to get a price last week, the first page showed "cruise only" at $4399/person for a B3 suite.  I clicked "available".   On to the "Fares" page.  Now it's $4699.  What?   I called Oceania and the guy said, "you must have picked an amenity".  I said I hadn't.  He didn't have any other ideas. 

 

Yesterday, same pricing increase of $300 at "Fares".  I picked a suite then to the "free" OBC options.  I picked the three excursions and internet.   Price stayed the same at the pay page:  $4699/person.  I paid the $1500 deposit.  A summary page appears and another $300/person had been added to the bill.  What?!   I called Oceania and the lady looked at it and said that the excursions are not complimentary, they're $300/person.  I said it sure looked like they're free.  "Is the internet free?"  "Yes".   She said, "I can delete the excursions for you and credit your bill $600.  You have until Feb 14 to delete."  I said I'll think about it and hung up.

 

In the meantime I lost the online bill window and couldn't get it back.   Now I download the invoice I got in my email.  The extra $600 is gone and it looks like I still have the excursions, noted as "free".  Good.  I wonder if I cancel the excursions if the price will go down to the first advertised price of $4399/person.  Like someone wrote, maybe it does take some work to get that first lowest price.

 

The lady said I have until Feb 14 to cancel the excursions, otherwise no $600 credit   Looking at the poorly worded info in the "cancellation of ancillary items" section, I got in the email, it looks like I have up to 60 days before the cruise to do so.

[Mura]

This may be a good reason for using an experienced Oceania TA.  Unfortunately, we aren't permitted to make recommendations of TAs here.  I don't think I have ever booked a cruise through Oceania itself although we DID do so with O's predecessor, Renaissance.

 

Mura

[Cruise Junky]

I just booked last night. We would have paid $700 cdn extra for Olife,  $600 OBC, six excursions or beer and wine with lunch and dinner. We only have two sea days and are are cruising major wine areas. If we’d taken the Olife for $700 we’d have paid to upgrade, being another $650 approx cdn for 12 nights. For a total of over $1300 for drinks for two for 12 nights.  We decided to decline all Olife and bring on  our own wine and pay the corkage. Figure we can find some good stuff in Barcelona, Lisbon, Oporto and Bordeaux 😜

 

you definitely need to do the math and it’s pretty easy to see on Oceania’s page.  First page shows with flights and Olife and with nothing, then the second page after picking a category shows you with Olife. 

[LHT28]

2 hours ago, Jeffxx said:

Booking online for the ten day Mediterranean cruise leaving May 15, 2019.  I was confused, and agents on the phone were no help or made it more confusing.   When I tested to get a price last week, the first page showed "cruise only" at $4399/person for a B3 suite.  I clicked "available".   On to the "Fares" page.  Now it's $4699.  What?   I called Oceania and the guy said, "you must have picked an amenity".  I said I hadn't.  He didn't have any other ideas. 

 

Yesterday, same pricing increase of $300 at "Fares".  I picked a suite then to the "free" OBC options.  I picked the three excursions and internet.   Price stayed the same at the pay page:  $4699/person.  I paid the $1500 deposit.  A summary page appears and another $300/person had been added to the bill.  What?!   I called Oceania and the lady looked at it and said that the excursions are not complimentary, they're $300/person.  I said it sure looked like they're free.  "Is the internet free?"  "Yes".   She said, "I can delete the excursions for you and credit your bill $600.  You have until Feb 14 to delete."  I said I'll think about it and hung up.

 

In the meantime I lost the online bill window and couldn't get it back.   Now I download the invoice I got in my email.  The extra $600 is gone and it looks like I still have the excursions, noted as "free".  Good.  I wonder if I cancel the excursions if the price will go down to the first advertised price of $4399/person.  Like someone wrote, maybe it does take some work to get that first lowest price.

 

The lady said I have until Feb 14 to cancel the excursions, otherwise no $600 credit   Looking at the poorly worded info in the "cancellation of ancillary items" section, I got in the email, it looks like I have up to 60 days before the cruise to do so.

 

A good reason not to book online 😉

With the "cruise only" fare there are no free excursions  so something is not right  there

You will get the free internet  1 account per cabin

[bigmjh]

5 hours ago, Mura said:

This may be a good reason for using an experienced Oceania TA.  ...

Mura

👍👍👍

[fishr]

Were going on an Oceania cruise out of Venice in November. We haven't decide yet whether or not to let them arrange our air or let our travel agent do it (for no fee). We're not in a gateway city so no matter what it's going to be a complicated and exhausting flight. I assume that if O books our flights we have no choice as to schedule etc.We want to arrive a couple of days early so if Oceania books our flight they will charge us a couple of hundred bucks extra. I don't get that since it costs them nothing extra to book a different flight for us! However they'll waive this fee if we stay in their designated pre-cruise hotel-at ten times the cost of booking the hotel ourselves! We also haven't decided on OLife or not. The drink packages would be a waste for us since drink very little. I'm getting the impression that taking the shore ex's or using the OBC to buy shore ex's isn't such a good deal either. We have PPG through our travel agent.

[PaulMCO]

Free air is never free.  I has always been a gimmick.  The same with deviation fees -- it costs them near nothing.

[fishr]

I realize that the "free" airfare isn't "free". My TA told me that O is charging us $1300 cdn each for airfare. The question is whether or not he can do it cheaper for us. We want Premium Economy and O won't give him a price on that until the end of Feb. so we'll see then.

[rallydave]

7 minutes ago, fishr said:

Were going on an Oceania cruise out of Venice in November. We haven't decide yet whether or not to let them arrange our air or let our travel agent do it (for no fee). We're not in a gateway city so no matter what it's going to be a complicated and exhausting flight. I assume that if O books our flights we have no choice as to schedule etc.We want to arrive a couple of days early so if Oceania books our flight they will charge us a couple of hundred bucks extra. I don't get that since it costs them nothing extra to book a different flight for us! However they'll waive this fee if we stay in their designated pre-cruise hotel-at ten times the cost of booking the hotel ourselves! We also haven't decided on OLife or not. The drink packages would be a waste for us since drink very little. I'm getting the impression that taking the shore ex's or using the OBC to buy shore ex's isn't such a good deal either. We have PPG through our travel agent.

Sounds like you have an excellent understanding of how complex O makes booking a cruise.  As we have seen on this thread as well as many others the confusion all too often ends up costing the customer money that they really didn't understand.

[LHT28]

9 minutes ago, fishr said:

I realize that the "free" airfare isn't "free". My TA told me that O is charging us $1300 cdn each for airfare. The question is whether or not he can do it cheaper for us. We want Premium Economy and O won't give him a price on that until the end of Feb. so we'll see then.

check the prices  & routing  now  then you will  be in a position to make an informed decision 

I use this site  to check routings

https://matrix.itasoftware.com/

Unless O has a special for PE seats  I would  book your own flights

You could  pay the deviation fee  & choose your flights   then book a hotel for a lot less  than O package  but  with O you are in the back of the plane  still

If you want BUS or PE   back to booking your own

 

 

[chuckcarole]

We always take the SBC and use it to help with gratuties.

[fishr]

39 minutes ago, chuckcarole said:

We always take the SBC and use it to help with gratuties.

Our gratuities are being paid by the travel agency.

[LHT28]

Just now, fishr said:

Our gratuities are being paid by the travel agency.

if you will not use the excusrions, drink package or OBC from O Life  perk

take the Cruise Only  fare  & book your own flights   then you get the dates & times that suit your needs

[Jeffxx]

We're gonna stick with the three shore excursions.  Looks like it pencils out with most priced between $120 and $200.  Might make an effort for private trips on other days, or if you take at least two more O trips you get 25% off on them.

 

Didn't explore the air deal, assuming there'd be schedule and seat class preference compromises.

 

Our one stop economical ticket, Seattle to Rome by Condor, was simple.  One stop Florence to Seattle was another matter.  Expedia listed a ticket: Luftansa to Frankfurt and Condor on to Seattle, but clicking it got me "not available".  Neither airline offered that package.  Wound up buying the legs separate.

 

The one after or before Oceania's cruise hotel offer price I saw was ridiculously high.

[RJB]

On 1/31/2019 at 10:32 AM, Paulchili said:

Dave - you should specify that YOU always take the cruise without O Life.

We usually DO take the O Life with excursions as we can almost double the value. In other words, if O Life offers 4 excursions then we pay $400 more for the cruise but get excursions that are valued between $700 - $800 by choosing the most expensive ones we like.

Some places private tours are difficult (Africa, Myanmar, etc) or expensive (Japan) and ship tours are perfect in places like that.

We don’t mind O excursions and usually do a combination of ship’s tours and private ones.

As always, YMMV 🙂

We usually do the same as you.  Best value for us.  And take the air credit off the top as we always do our own air.  Business on miles mostly.   The credit varies as to where the cruise starts.  From Miami a small credit and from Europe and Asia much larger.  But I am sure that pricing is all built into the cruise fares.  AS I said in other posts we have found the O Life tours to be very good for the most part and will continue to use them. 

 

[Mura]

Just to throw our choices into the mix re oLife options.

 

On several cruises we have taken the ship tour option and haven't been disappointed, but we did choose the tours so that the surcharge on the cruise fare was far less than what the tours would have cost if we were paying for them.  This was much easier when oLife came onto the scene, however.  (The surcharge on the base fare was far less then than it is now.)

 

Even so, in November 2017 we came out ahead by taking a few tours courtesy of O.  If you target more expensive tours, you can come out ahead.  Buying the cheapest tours does NOT.

 

On our last cruise I think we just took the OBC even though we already get plenty because of gold status on O and our TA's contributions. But we don't want the drink package for reasons I've often mentioned, and prefer to buy a bottle from the wine list.  If I'm getting an overpriced Montrachet with OBC, I'm still getting a nice wine!  When I did that the sommelier was very impressed with the choice ...

 

We have very rarely taken the "free" air and if we do, we buy the deviation because we come in early and leave late.  But since these days we opt for biz air, it doesn't pay to use O's air.  We DID use their biz air a couple of years ago (LRH to JFK) because it was to our advantage to do so, and on one open-jaw flight we did their upgrade to PE which worked out fine.  But mostly we buy our own air.

 

We'd NEVER take O's hotel packages given the outrageous pricing.  Plenty of others have commented on that!

 

I have to say that there was one cruise over O's existence (a few years ago) where the hotel price was per room rather than per person.  But that was the only time I've seen that kind of pricing.

 

I've mentioned before a fellow passenger checking into a Marriott-brand hotel (but without the Marriott name up front)  in  London who'd booked O's hotel and was really upset when he discovered it was a Marriott since he as a high-level member.  His wife didn't seem so distressed ... but of course he paid at least twice as much for the hotel than he would have had he booked it on his own, as we did.

 

Mura

 

[nonnifanoe]

You have to look at the excursions offered to you.  We have done both excursions options and OBC.  If there are excursions that you want to take that exceed the OBC amount then do that.  We used the excursions on a Mediterranean cruise, but found the OBC was better for the Carribean cruise.

[ORV]

I think the problem that has been mentioned is that the OBC is usually a dollar for dollar match on the difference in price. All you're doing is paying for something in advance. With either the drink package or the excursions you can get more value than the actual cost. 

 

Having said that it all depends on each persons/couples needs and wants. 

[GeezerCouple]

1 minute ago, ORV said:

I think the problem that has been mentioned is that the OBC is usually a dollar for dollar match on the difference in price. All you're doing is paying for something in advance. With either the drink package or the excursions you can get more value than the actual cost. 

 

Having said that it all depends on each persons/couples needs and wants. 

 

Right... given that the OBC was an exact dollar for dollar match, and we really wouldn't have used the other perks, it was much better to get the reduced fare and *know* that we had saved that much, regardless of our on board spending.

 

But this time, given the number of port days (no sea days at all), I checked for any potentially appealing excursions, and indeed... this time there were several that were almost twice what our credit would have been.  Between the two of us, that was only 4 days of excursions.  We may well add another one or two days with O excursions... or maybe not.

We may have been able to arrange similar excursions ourselves for less, but it would need to be less than about half the O price to really "save" anything.

 

There's already plenty of planning involved for the other days, plus our days in Barcelona pre-cruise, and then about 10 days in Italy afterwards.  This seemed a good time to give a few O excursions a try.  IF they are too much "big bus" or spend too much time waiting and waiting for stragglers at the cost of missing something nice... we'll have that information for the future about how O tends to handle excursions.

 

When we've had the "opportunity" to pay in advance for OBC, or pocket that same amount to spend as we please... we kept the money in our own pockets, thank you.  (If they gave at least *something* more in OBC than the credit allowed, that would change things, as long as it was an amount we'd expect to use.)

 

We'll see 

 

GC

[Paulchili]

1 hour ago, GeezerCouple said:

We may well add another one or two days with O excursions... or maybe not.

Remember, if you add a couple excursions beyond your “free” ones, they will be at a 25% discount if booked at least 14 days before sailing. The number needed for that discount varies with the length of the cruise.

[GeezerCouple]

1 minute ago, Paulchili said:

Remember, if you add a couple excursions beyond your “free” ones, they will be at a 25% discount if booked at least 14 days before sailing. The number needed for that discount varies with the length of the cruise.

 

Ah - thank you, very much!

I did not realize this!

 

And they are refundable up until a couple of days (48 hours?) before the excursion, IIRC?

For a 14 day cruise, how many needed, beyond the "included ones".

 

(Thanks again!!  )

 

GC

[Paulchili]

Probably only 2 more needed on a 14 day cruise but you should check with TA or O. It should also be listed on “My booked cruises” under YWC (?).

The O Life included cruises are not cancellable (might be exchangeable); the additional ones can be cancelled but if you fall under the minimum extra required, you would lose the 25% discount on other extra ones.

Edited February 14, 2019 by Paulchili

[fishr]

On 1/30/2019 at 4:25 PM, pinotlover said:

If you don’t have Pre Paid Gratuities, then the OBC can go towards paying those. Oceania shore tours are horrendously overpriced. Check your Roll Call or do a little search to evaluate tour options. 

 

Non drinkers , without PPG, can be better off taking the OBC so to pay those gratuities, and then booking the ship tours of choice with the remaining dollars. The remaining group tours wound be out of pocket. Oceania ship tours are normally priced about 2X what one will pay for an identical tour arranged privately or via their Roll Call.

I'm a bit new to the forum. What do you mean by Roll Call?

[LHT28]

2 hours ago, fishr said:

I'm a bit new to the forum. What do you mean by Roll Call?

The roll call is   a forum where you will meet others on the same sailing

You can share tours or just get to know your fellow shipmates before the cruise

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/321-oceania-roll-calls/

look for the ship you are on  then scroll down the list of sailings  until you find your date 

then post there

If you have trouble  finding your sailing post the name of the ship & date & someone will point you to it

 

[fishr]

10 minutes ago, LHT28 said:

The roll call is   a forum where you will meet others on the same sailing

You can share tours or just get to know your fellow shipmates before the cruise

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/321-oceania-roll-calls/

look for the ship you are on  then scroll down the list of sailings  until you find your date 

then post there

If you have trouble  finding your sailing post the name of the ship & date & someone will point you to it

 

Thanks. Will do.