Changing a UK booking

[uktog]

I have a booking made onboard placed with a UK agent for late August 2023. The deposit has been paid. Circumstances have changed a little and we might have to be home then. 
I know if we cancel I would lose the £3600 and the reason is not covered by insurance. However I have identified a cruise for April albeit slightly cheaper though the same number of days that I could do. Would Viking allow such a change for a fee. I cannot work out from the paperwork I have if they would 

[Haworth]

A quick question, was it booked during Covid when the "change guarantee" was in place?

[uktog]

2 minutes ago, Haworth said:

A quick question, was it booked during Covid when the "change guarantee" was in place?

Good question it was March 2022

[KBs mum]

A decent agent will swap it for you, your contract is with them, not Viking. Viking let us swap our booking (booked direct) and deposit to a different itinerary, we basically asked nicely and hoped for the best

[uktog]

Thanks.  My experience of agents is they will only do what the cruise line will permit them to do - and I am keen to find out is moving a deposit to a different itinerary permitted.  Unfortunately it does not look like we were covered booking in March 2022 by risk guarantees unless someone tells me otherwise

[photopro2]

The first thing to note is that Viking do not have to allow the change and in a worse case you might lose the whole of the sum paid if you cancel.

 

That said, the very good news is that (while it is not guaranteed) Viking will allow you to make a change like this if they possibly can. In fact I was surprised to find that they even go so far as saying exactly this in their terms and conditions for UK bookings.

The reason I say that they are likely to be as helpful as possible is based on the following paragraphs from the T&Cs

 

C1.1 If you want to change your travel arrangements in any way you or your Travel Agent must inform us in writing as soon as possible. We will try to help you, although we cannot guarantee that we will always be able to do this as changes are subject to availability at the time. Please note that typically changes to scheduled flight tickets are very restrictive and may not be possible without having to cancel the original flight and rebooking.

C1.2 Where we can make a change, we will charge for any additional services, facilities, or other items changed, at the price which applies on the day the change is made. In addition, we reserve the right to apply an administration charge of £100 for each person on the booking together with any further costs we incur, for example with our suppliers, in making any change.

 

I suggest that you use this link https://www.vikingcruises.co.uk/terms-conditions to read through the T&Cs for yourself, to Vikings credit they are written in fairly straightforward English, not legalese. Armed with this information you can then talk to your travel agent tomorrow.

 

One thing to be careful of is to make clear to your agent that you don't want to cancel the booking at this stage, but that you are just enquiring about transferring the deposit over to a new booking. I have read on this board about people who were caught out by an overenthusiastic agent who canceled the existing booking first before setting up the new booking which messed up Viking's system and lost them their money.

 

Good luck with this and do post again to let us know how you get on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[uktog]

Thanks will do, hope to speak with our agent in the next few days but as its a bricks and mortar operation I want to go in and sit beside them and talk through options