Best ever deal Australian Style Frustration

[kate59]

To the other Australians here - please let me know how you got the deal and how much per day was it.

 

I have been trying to get it for over a week but Princess Australia keep telling my TA we can't have gratuities included it is only for Drink package and wifi. Is this because they are already included??? no still coming up in cruise personaliser to prepay and not on our travel summary as already paid. Looks like I will not be paying them?

 

It is worth it if gratuities are included for us as we don't drink much alcohol or use up our lite quota of wifi. But would work of with the coffee and mock-tails.

 

Once again Princess Cruises stuff us Australians around.

 

Anyone got any ideas, please.

 

[Aussie Gal]

If your cruise leaves or returns to one of the ports in Australia, then your gratuities are included. If it leaves from a port overseas and doesn't return back to Australia, then you pay gratuities and it is added each evening to your account.  Simple as that.

Jennie

 

[kate59]

29 minutes ago, Aussie Gal said:

If your cruise leaves or returns to one of the ports in Australia, then your gratuities are included. If it leaves from a port overseas and doesn't return back to Australia, then you pay gratuities and it is added each evening to your account.  Simple as that.

Jennie

 

Sorry Jennie, you missed the point of the post. I know how the gratuities normally work in Australia, my cruise is around the Baltic and it is about us Australians not getting the same offering on the best Ever Sale.

[OzKiwiJJ]

Princess US sales usually aren't available to Australians. At the moment we have the "Oceans of Offers" sale which allows you to choose between a basic fare price or one that includes drinks and WiFi. Unfortunately Princess doesn't take into account the fact that Aussies book cruises outside of the Australian region. Go figure! 🙄 The only way you could get the "Best Ever Sale" offers is if you booked through a US TA. 

[Pharry]

The interesting this about this sale is that it is on Princess Aust site and the prices are in Australian dollars. Our travel agent is looking into for us, fingers crossed 🤔🤔

[OzKiwiJJ]

Which cruise? All I could see is the Australian sale worded as:

"Oceans of Offers

Our Best Sale Ever"

 

which may not be the same as the US "Best Sale Ever".

 

Hope your TA can get a deal for you though.

Edited January 7, 2020 by OzKiwiJJ

[datone]

I hear you Kate 59.   This is the one bugbear I have with Princess.   They never take into account that we cruise overseas in any local promotions.   For instance the 3 for free sale.   Our sale does not include free gratuities as one of the 3 things - all very well if cruising locally but if you are cruising overseas you have to pay the tips.   The latest sale (Oceans of Offers) is a joke.   You are not really getting anything - pay the lower (usual) fare or pay more and get drink package and wifi so in a way you are paying for your own extras anyway.     I'm not a big drinker and have free wifi  being elite so not much use to me.   I am doing my own promotion for my upcoming cruise.    As I booked during the US 3 for free sale and couldn't take advantage of this because I'm Australian I have decided to have my own promotion - it's called give yourself free tips and be on a par with many of your fellow overseas cruisers.   

[leck57]

3 hours ago, kate59 said:

Sorry Jennie, you missed the point of the post. I know how the gratuities normally work in Australia, my cruise is around the Baltic and it is about us Australians not getting the same offering on the best Ever Sale.

 

Only just today I have written to my TA about this. In all the emails and booklet I received in the mail, the Oceans of Offers includes the Beverage package and the Net, not gratuities. I have asked my TA to find out the cost per day for us to get this deal for the two cruises we have booked, one being the Baltics in July. There are other threads on here about people doing this and what the daily rate is for each of the inclusions.

As gratuities is not mentioned in the deal in Aust I have given up on that. I long ago gave up expecting us to get the same deals as US travellers but I have been pleasantly surprised that after all these years we now have a chance of having the beverage package included. Perhaps Princess realised that they were losing out to other lines that give us this option. As we like a drink without being drunks, and we use the Net, then we have to work out if the extra cost is worth it, which on first glance it is. Firstly though, I have to see if my TA can get Princess to let us add it on our booked cruises. I've already re-fared the Baltics cruise recently when I noted the fares had dropped $250pp for the cabin next to ours.

[Pharry]

49 minutes ago, OzKiwiJJ said:

Which cruise? All I could see is the Australian sale worded as:

"Oceans of Offers

Our Best Sale Ever"

 

which may not be the same as the US "Best Sale Ever".

 

Hope your TA can get a deal for you though.

OzKiwiJJ, we were able to get the beverage and wifi package but not the gratuities at a really good price. We are wine and coffee drinkers so this suits us. We refared a couple of months ago when there was a price drop so that difference takes care of part of the gratuities. 

[Pharry]

30 minutes ago, leck57 said:

 

Only just today I have written to my TA about this. In all the emails and booklet I received in the mail, the Oceans of Offers includes the Beverage package and the Net, not gratuities. I have asked my TA to find out the cost per day for us to get this deal for the two cruises we have booked, one being the Baltics in July. There are other threads on here about people doing this and what the daily rate is for each of the inclusions.

As gratuities is not mentioned in the deal in Aust I have given up on that. I long ago gave up expecting us to get the same deals as US travellers but I have been pleasantly surprised that after all these years we now have a chance of having the beverage package included. Perhaps Princess realised that they were losing out to other lines that give us this option. As we like a drink without being drunks, and we use the Net, then we have to work out if the extra cost is worth it, which on first glance it is. Firstly though, I have to see if my TA can get Princess to let us add it on our booked cruises. I've already re-fared the Baltics cruise recently when I noted the fares had dropped $250pp for the cabin next to ours.

leck57 we were able to do this. The extra cost has been added to our booked cruise to Alaska, we also refared when i noted a price drop. We like a drink also, the cost worked out to be $A370 per couple for us. Your cost will depend on your fare. Hope you get a good deal. 

[kate59]

22 minutes ago, Pharry said:

leck57 we were able to do this. The extra cost has been added to our booked cruise to Alaska, we also refared when i noted a price drop. We like a drink also, the cost worked out to be $A370 per couple for us. Your cost will depend on your fare. Hope you get a good deal. 

How many days is your cruise, our offer was $410 per person for 12 days,  so not worth when we don't drink much. 

Thanks

[Pharry]

10 hours ago, kate59 said:

How many days is your cruise, our offer was $410 per person for 12 days,  so not worth when we don't drink much. 

Thanks

Our cruise is for 7 days. We would have at least 2 glasses of wine each, I drink coffee would have 2 speciality ones a day, my husband only has juice plus bottled water.  It works out to roughly $A26 per day each, 1 glass of wine is approx $A17. This also includes wifi which is approx $A14 a day. Hope this helps. Enjoy your cruise. 

Edited January 7, 2020 by Pharry

[subaru94]

11 hours ago, leck57 said:

 

Only just today I have written to my TA about this. In all the emails and booklet I received in the mail, the Oceans of Offers includes the Beverage package and the Net, not gratuities. I have asked my TA to find out the cost per day for us to get this deal for the two cruises we have booked, one being the Baltics in July. There are other threads on here about people doing this and what the daily rate is for each of the inclusions.

As gratuities is not mentioned in the deal in Aust I have given up on that. I long ago gave up expecting us to get the same deals as US travellers but I have been pleasantly surprised that after all these years we now have a chance of having the beverage package included. Perhaps Princess realised that they were losing out to other lines that give us this option. As we like a drink without being drunks, and we use the Net, then we have to work out if the extra cost is worth it, which on first glance it is. Firstly though, I have to see if my TA can get Princess to let us add it on our booked cruises. I've already re-fared the Baltics cruise recently when I noted the fares had dropped $250pp for the cabin next to ours.

We are the same as you booked a cruise then the Oceans of Offers came up, works out to $35 Australian extra, which I think is quite good, although we are not big drinkers, we worked out husband having 3 beers, me 2 drinks, glass wine and maybe night cap along with specialty coffees comes very close to the amount, you also save on converting from USD to Australian which takes a fair chunk of money.  Our cruise is for 23 nights.

Edited January 7, 2020 by subaru94
adding length of cruise

[OzKiwiJJ]

14 hours ago, Pharry said:

OzKiwiJJ, we were able to get the beverage and wifi package but not the gratuities at a really good price. We are wine and coffee drinkers so this suits us. We refared a couple of months ago when there was a price drop so that difference takes care of part of the gratuities. 

Well done, however that is the standard Oceans of Offers deal which is available for cruises booked from Australia. The OP appears to be asking how to get the US equivalent (Best Sale Ever) which does include gratuities. 

 

I looked at refaring one of our cruises under that deal but the downside to having a drinks package is that you can only get wines by the glass and we had a couple of bad experiences with that side of it. In one case the white wine, a pinot grigio, we wanted was out of stock and there was nothing we liked to replace it on the old wine list - I can't drink sauvignon blanc, the chardonnays were horrible (very acidic) and the riesling was too sweet. Another time we had a very slow wait team and barely managed to get one glass of wine with dinner let alone a second glass - this, of course, meant we lost value on the package. Even though the deal gives you very cheap drinks packages we now prefer to buy wine by the bottle in the MDR and get the coffee package.

[kate59]

On 1/7/2020 at 7:30 PM, Pharry said:

The interesting this about this sale is that it is on Princess Aust site and the prices are in Australian dollars. Our travel agent is looking into for us, fingers crossed 🤔🤔

We can get the offer but as of yesterday the prices have gone up on the cruises I have been following. But we can only have free wifi and the drinks package (neither worthwhile for us) but the Gratuities are not included for overseas cruises for Australians. I have written to Princess several ways and a week later no response - so this tells me in my mind gratuities must be included in our price for overseas cruises - so in future do I remove the gratuities??? would be interesting if every Aussie removed them and wrote that Princess will not give us free gratuities on the promotion so we must have pre paid them.

[kate59]

I cancelled my booking for this cruise and rebooked it under the Oceans of Offers with a different TA, only on the best price. 

I ended up saving A$290 pp on the cruise cost and got an extra US$100 onboard credit.

 

You do have to check deals around as Princess have put their price up on their Australian website for this cruise, so their prices for best price and value are inflated compared to what they were and what we can get with specific cruise TAs.

[leck57]

3 hours ago, kate59 said:

I cancelled my booking for this cruise and rebooked it under the Oceans of Offers with a different TA, only on the best price. 

I ended up saving A$290 pp on the cruise cost and got an extra US$100 onboard credit.

 

You do have to check deals around as Princess have put their price up on their Australian website for this cruise, so their prices for best price and value are inflated compared to what they were and what we can get with specific cruise TAs.

 

It is quite typical of all lines to put up prices to cover promotions like this. However for my Baltics cruise the prices dropped a month ago by $250pp and I had the booking re-fared. Then this sale came out but fortunately the cruise cost stayed the same. At any rate I asked my TA to see if the drinks package and Net could be added to my current booking under the Oceans of Offers and he advised we could for $690 for the two of us. Worked out at about $31 pp per day, great value for us.

[subaru94]

20 hours ago, kate59 said:

I cancelled my booking for this cruise and rebooked it under the Oceans of Offers with a different TA, only on the best price. 

I ended up saving A$290 pp on the cruise cost and got an extra US$100 onboard credit.

 

You do have to check deals around as Princess have put their price up on their Australian website for this cruise, so their prices for best price and value are inflated compared to what they were and what we can get with specific cruise TAs.

You did well as it is showing up sold out?

[justafem]

On 1/7/2020 at 4:51 PM, OzKiwiJJ said:

Well done, however that is the standard Oceans of Offers deal which is available for cruises booked from Australia. The OP appears to be asking how to get the US equivalent (Best Sale Ever) which does include gratuities. 

 

I looked at refaring one of our cruises under that deal but the downside to having a drinks package is that you can only get wines by the glass and we had a couple of bad experiences with that side of it. In one case the white wine, a pinot grigio, we wanted was out of stock and there was nothing we liked to replace it on the old wine list - I can't drink sauvignon blanc, the chardonnays were horrible (very acidic) and the riesling was too sweet. Another time we had a very slow wait team and barely managed to get one glass of wine with dinner let alone a second glass - this, of course, meant we lost value on the package. Even though the deal gives you very cheap drinks packages we now prefer to buy wine by the bottle in the MDR and get the coffee package.

What I've done in those situations is pick up a glass of wine on my way to dinner and order another at seating.  That way you've got the drinks you want, within the scope of the plan.  If by chance you do get a second glass during dinner, it's a win.  Hey and you can always slip out and grab another glass at the bar and bring it back too!