One tour after another cancelled with just 36 hrs notice

[phillipahain]

Passengers can only cancel tours with at least 48 hours notice but same does not hold true for Seabourn 

 

We carefully booked all tours at start of 65 day cruise using up a large non refundable OBC 

 

After the cancellation of 2 ports and now late in the day rolling cancellation of total of 7 tours at very short notice with no other tour that is remotely interesting or available 

 

Non refundable OBCs are a nightmare and since shops stock of anything remotely usefull is pretty much nill or wildly overpriced 

 

Extremely unamused at Seabourns attitude of use it or loose it  ....since cruise finishes Dec5th 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[jsiegel]

If you can't find an opportunity to use your OBC, you can donate it to the crew welfare fund so that at least it won't revert back to corporate.

 

Jackie

[adoctor]

Sorry to hear about this. What is the reason for 2 ports and all these tours being cancelled?

[tjcox9]

Just a thought...........If you have a need for some nice binoculars, you can always buy one of the Swarvoski ones that are in the shop. 

[phillipahain]

Norfolk Island should never have even been put on itinerary since only about 1 in 20 attempts at landing succeed 

New Plymouth was sadly severe bad weather 

 

Shop stock of perfume etc almost non existant 

 

Yes did ask about crew welfare fund ,,,answer was NO

 

Bottom line was the original Itinery was drastically changed and replacement itinerary must have been put together by a bunch of 18yr olds at Head Office with zero travel experience and then Destination services onboard  left to attempt to pick up the pieces  hence when the magic 17 passenger cut off was not achieved for a tour it was cancelled 36hours before hand with virtually no other viable choices left and only suggestion of Private Tours at between 1k and 2k !! 

 

 Head Office in Seattle needs a shake up 

 

[saminina]

Drink more wine.

[cruiseej]

9 hours ago, jsiegel said:

If you can't find an opportunity to use your OBC, you can donate it to the crew welfare fund so that at least it won't revert back to corporate.

 

If these are non-refundable OBCs, then they cannot be donated to the crew fund. Only "real" money can be refunded or directed to the crew fund. 

[CalmSea]

One thing I learned from reading the postings on this board regarding excursions and OBC. I would pay for my excursions before the cruiise. Once on broad, I  would go to the Square and asked  to change the excursion charges to whatever OBC I had. Whatever I had paid beforehand now became refundable OBC's. In my experience, if an excursion was cancelled for whatever reasons, I got back refundable OBC's, even though it had been changed and was now paid for by non-refundable OBC's. I wonder whether that is Seabourn's usual practice, but it may be the better way of using up OBC's.

[phillipahain]

Definitely not what is being done now 

[tjcox9]

9 hours ago, CalmSea said:

That was one thing I learned from reading the postings on this board regarding excursions and OBC. I would pay for my excursions before the cruise. Once on broad, I  would go to the Square and asked  to change the excursion charges to whatever OBC I had. Whatever I had paid beforehand now became refundable OBC's. In my experience, if an excursion was cancelled for whatever reasons, I got back refundable OBC's, even though it had been changed and was now paid for by non-refundable OBC's. I wonder whether that is Seabourn's usual practice, but it may be the better way of using up OBC's.

We were told how easy this would be to do by many online and our PCC as well. Well, not so easy since noone in the Square customer service area seemed to have any idea what we were talking about. Multiple trips later, we were able to get it resolved and expected it to be returned to credit card on file if we did not spend it. Try as we might, we could not spend it all, and over two months later we got a physical check in the mail.

 

I know others have had  an easier time doing this and hope we will in the future as well!

[cruiseej]

We've never had a problem getting Seabourn Square to have the accounting person switch our prepaid excursions to use whatever promotional OBC we have, generating refundable OBC which gets refunded to our credit card after the cruise. (Well, it can get complicated if there are canceled excursions or partial credits issued, but they seem to get it straightened out within a day or two. And it definitely helps if you have printouts of your transaction history, and your invoice showing your OBCs; sometimes they have to check in with the home office if some OBC didn't transfer to the ship correctly.)

 

@phillipahain You seemed to indicate you booked excursions using your non-refundable OBC. So if excursions are canceled, they get refunded to your non-refundable OBC. In most cases, OBC you accrue prior to a cruise isn't refundable. If it's from the cruise line or your travel agent or their consortium (e.g. Virtuoso or Signature), it likely isn't refundable (unless your TA paid for it in hard cash). That's different than what @CalmSea described, where the excursions were purchased and paid for in advance by the traveler; those excursions are refundable, whether canceled by the traveler or the cruise line.

[CalmSea]

I just want to fill in some details about my recent experience on the Quest whose itinerary was vastly affected  by hurrican Fionna. When I got on board, I asked to switch our prepaid excursion with the non-refundable OBC's. It was done the next day, and all my OBC's were then listed as refundable. At that point, my booked excursions had not yet been cancelled,  because they were for ports in the later part of the itinerary, which had not yet been changed. A couple of days later, the whole itinerary was changed, and all our excursions were cancelled. I noticed that all the refunds to the OBC were listed as refundable. So, the net result seemed to be that  my non-refundable OBC had suddenly became refundable. I didn't know whether this behaviour was normal or whether accounting had giving up tracking refundalbe vs non-refundable OBC's at that point, because of the massive number of cancelled excursions for the whole ship. 

 

We did managed to scramble and booked some excursions which used up all the initially non-refundable OBC's. So, I didn't managed to cash in any of the non-refundable OBC's. 

[phillipahain]

Unfortunately before this vastly altered Grand Cruise started there were no tours to purchase even if we wanted ...for at least 3 weeks even on the cruise they were still listing and selling on Source tours that were part of the original cruise ....when tours were finally listed they were not complete ...hence we managed to get a copy of their" Tour Bible ." So we could book at the desk......lo and behold recently we discovered they had suddenly added another excursion in Melbourne 2nd Dec ,,,but it was today before we got a cancellation of the one we had boomed and theres no suitable replacement ....all they keep repeating is book a Private Tour at xxxxxxx price ...!!!