purchasing shore excursion with OBC

[jjduck]

We have "the" big box company as our TA.  Also have a large obc from Celebrity.  We booked an excursion directly with Celebrity, only to find that it was charged to our credit card! So we quickly cancelled and Celebrity says we will be refunded "in a few days".   BTW, what is a reasonable wait time?  Have read many horror stories here.

 

Do we need to go thru the TA to book the excursion using a ship obc?

 

Any help is very much appreciated.

 

thanks,

Noreen

[groryjm]

The system on the Web site has changed slightly and by default and your card will be selected as the payment method. You need to select an amount of OBC to use for the transaction. 

It used to automatically use OBC first so it is easy to just click through and not realise. 

[keesar]

2 hours ago, jjduck said:

We have "the" big box company as our TA.  Also have a large obc from Celebrity.  We booked an excursion directly with Celebrity, only to find that it was charged to our credit card! So we quickly cancelled and Celebrity says we will be refunded "in a few days".   BTW, what is a reasonable wait time?  Have read many horror stories here.

 

Do we need to go thru the TA to book the excursion using a ship obc?

 

Any help is very much appreciated.

 

thanks,

Noreen

If you want to use your TA OBC, you will have to wait until you are on the ship.  Otherwise, you can use the Celebrity OBC in advance.  Just make sure you choose the correct way to pay.

[sydbarrett]

I just cancelled one and I had my refund the next day.

[Jim_Iain]

The best way to tell if the Celebrity OBC was applied is to go to the excursion page and at the top near the shopping cart it will show how much OBC you have to spend per-cruise.    If nothing you can either pay to block the reservation and then when onboard ask the excursion desk to cancel and recharge it to your OBC or just buy in onboard. 

[jjduck]

Thank you everybody for your help.  Much appreciated!  We will give it another go and see what happens.  Aloha,

[39august]

I have always called X to have them apply my ship OBC to anything I wish to purchase before boarding. Never a problem with that. 

[jjduck]

thanks, 39august.  going direct to X sounds like a plan.  

[Arizona Wildcat]

3 minutes ago, jjduck said:

thanks, 39august.  going direct to X sounds like a plan.  

Except for a long wait on hold.  You just need to do it carefully on line

[LGW59]

49 minutes ago, Arizona Wildcat said:

Except for a long wait on hold.  You just need to do it carefully on line

It's really not that difficult.  I just opened my cruise planner for upcoming cruises, each reservation shows my total OBC at the top right of the individual reservation.  While there really is not very much in the planner to offer yet, there is the airport transfer to the ships.  Did a mock reservation up until the time to click "reserve".