Must everything be so difficult?

[canadarocks]

Just venting folks... but after spending 6+ hours getting a great Black Friday deal that my TA could not get, I attempted to get the booking switched over to her. As final payment is due soon, we both knew time was of the essence. HA can take forever to transfer bookings (1st hand experience here), so she transferred me the necessary form and instructions and I filled it out and sent it to HA immediately. We have done this before. This was a few days ago.

 

Last night at 9:56pm I received an email from HA stating that they could not transfer the booking. Initial Panic.. but knowing that Final Payment was soon, I was upset, but prepared for the worst news in that there probably wasn't enough time to do the transfer.

 

Then the next lines of the email, too convoluted and confusing to share here..... said that my Travel Agent should contact them orally to allow the switch. Because they really don't want me to miss out on using my TA. 

 

Forwarded the email to her.... utter confusion on her end as the transfer form has always been "the way things are done with HA". But she called and now all is right with the world. The point of this post? If all she needed to do was call..... why on earth put us both through the hassle of the transfer form?

[Mary229]

Sorry it was rough.  I spent the day sending nasty notes through the website feedback button. 
 

 

[albingirl]

That is terrible. No one should have to do jumping Jack's here. You have more patience than me. 

[canadarocks]

1 minute ago, albingirl said:

That is terrible. No one should have to do jumping Jack's here. You have more patience than me. 

Thanks. The 6+ hours saved me almost CAN$1300. The TA transfer got me CAN$350 in OBC. Totally worth it, but Holland America used to be SO much easier to deal with. 

[Don Kehote]

In the last few months, I have noticed a sharp decline in the ability of almost every HAL rep I have spoken to.  Whether that ability is to assist with a booking question, or to help fix a problem, it's not a pleasure to call there now.

[Mary229]

5 minutes ago, Don Kehote said:

In the last few months, I have noticed a sharp decline in the ability of almost every HAL rep I have spoken to.  Whether that ability is to assist with a booking question, or to help fix a problem, it's not a pleasure to call there now.

I have never been so glad to have a competent travel agent as now.  It seems that the agency reps (wholesale) are still competent the retail side is a matter of luck.  I have had good and I have had bad.  It shouldn’t be that way. The website is far more disturbing as no matter what browser, which device I use  I can never complete my tasks in a single day. 

[dockman]

so OP travel agent could not get the deal so the HAL rep figured it out and did all the work and now the booking gets transferred to the agent who will make a nice commission??  i guess the first question is WHY was travel agent not able to get on the phone or online and get the deal for OP and do the work?

 

One of these days the cruise lines are going to get very tired of paying their agents for doing bookings and dealing with clients and then wham it all gets transferred to agent who gets a nice commission check after most of the work is already done....once upon a time travel agents got paid for selling a cruise and handling all the communications and questions with the client...fair enough as saves the cruise line from having to pay their staff to deal with it. But is if fair for an agent who has no involvment with client until after it is all sorted and booked to come in right before final payment and say give me a commission?

[Banditswife]

The struggle is real.  

I thought the transfer to a TA was through a form we fill out & send in.  So that has changed now?   Luckily our TA usually has the answers to new policies... but if they keep changing the rules...

[canadarocks]

@dockman There was no HA “agent” doing any work at all in this case. All me. Everyone I dealt with at HA was extremely nice, but also extremely clueless. My TA and I have now figured out where the glitch was in her getting me the discount.
 

Your stance might be valid in some situations, but not at all here. 

Edited November 23, 2023 by canadarocks

[oakridger]

OP, why couldn't your TA get the "great Black Friday Deal" in the first place which caused you to spend hours on the phone with HAL instead in order to get it?  I realize that issue isn't the gist of your post but I'm curious about that.  Can  let us know the specifics better please.

 

Thanks,

~Nancy

[REOVA]

18 minutes ago, dockman said:

so OP travel agent could not get the deal so the HAL rep figured it out and did all the work and now the booking gets transferred to the agent who will make a nice commission??  i guess the first question is WHY was travel agent not able to get on the phone or online and get the deal for OP and do the work?

 

One of these days the cruise lines are going to get very tired of paying their agents for doing bookings and dealing with clients and then wham it all gets transferred to agent who gets a nice commission check after most of the work is already done....once upon a time travel agents got paid for selling a cruise and handling all the communications and questions with the client...fair enough as saves the cruise line from having to pay their staff to deal with it. But is if fair for an agent who has no involvment with client until after it is all sorted and booked to come in right before final payment and say give me a commission?

HAL always let's you transfer to your own TA after booking but it's usually done with a form that the TA and customer sign to agree to the transfer terms. If you've ever booked a cruise with an onboard future cruise consultant, it's then transferred to your own TA. Both the onboard consultant gets credit and your TA gets credit, which mine provides me a nice discount and/or OBC. So while you can look at it as my TA didn't do a thing, but it's the way HAL works (there is a time limit and some restrictions). 

[canadarocks]

Nancy, of course. Full disclosure. The fare I ending up booking (to get the CAN $500 saving) was a non-refundable deposit. Normally my TA never even considers those and didn’t realize that’s what I was seeing. She knows me well and knows I don’t book those fares. And normally I don’t. But we had FCDs and final payment is very soon. The “glitch” was on my end. 😁

[oakridger]

On the two or three occasions I have transferred to my TA after I booked online myself, she still had to do all the follow up duties such as submitting final payments, watching for upgrade offers, tracking any itinerary changes, etc.  Had something gone wrong with the cruise, she would back me up on whatever I needed!  So, the TA still had "work" to do.

 

~Nancy

[canadarocks]

Exactly. And that is just what I trust mine to do moving forward. A good TA is priceless! 

[mawvkysc]

When I recently transferred a booking I gave the TA some info. They filled out the form and emailed the form to HAL with  a CC to me. The TA said the CC let HAL know I agree to this transfer. Maybe if you had emailed it to HAL with a CC to the TA it would’ve had the same effect. 

[canadarocks]

Ya did exactly that. Sent to HA, copied to my TA. My guess is that it takes so long for HA to do the paperwork transfer, we would have been past Final Payment by the time they did the transfer. Hence the “oral” request. 😆

Edited November 23, 2023 by canadarocks

[dockman]

1 hour ago, canadarocks said:

@dockman There was no HA “agent” doing any work at all in this case. All me. Everyone I dealt with at HA was extremely nice, but also extremely clueless. My TA and I have now figured out where the glitch was in her getting me the discount.
 

Your stance might be valid in some situations, but not at all here. 

would seem to me that everyone you dealt with at HA was indeed "doing" or at least attempting to do some work and they no doubt are paid by HA to speak direct with clients....if they are clueless that is even more reason to have a competent travel agent handle all the dealings.......still don't understand why your agent could not have handled the entire transaction dealimg with HA agents who are hired to deal with agents (and not necessarily direct with clients) as that is after all a big part of why agents get paid commissions..

 

my point is that sooner or later this commission payment to agents system will change and not be as agent friendly....you can;t have it both ways that your agent handles all the dealings and then say "except in this case or that case"....

[doone]

That's very frustrating, glad it all worked out.

[ontheweb]

6 hours ago, dockman said:

 

my point is that sooner or later this commission payment to agents system will change and not be as agent friendly....you can;t have it both ways that your agent handles all the dealings and then say "except in this case or that case"....

I remember reading a post by @Hlitner once about a cruise line that adopted that strategy, only direct bookings and no use of travel agents. They soon went bankrupt. Perhaps if he sees this post, he can give the name of the cruise line.

[Hlitner]

1 hour ago, ontheweb said:

I remember reading a post by @Hlitner once about a cruise line that adopted that strategy, only direct bookings and no use of travel agents. They soon went bankrupt. Perhaps if he sees this post, he can give the name of the cruise line.

That was Renaissance Cruise lines.  They had 8 ships, R1-R8 which are now referred to as the R ships.  The vessels are still sailing with Oceania and Azamara.   Renaissance only allowed direct bookings, had a ship-wide no-smoking policy, and had a 16 year old minimum passenger age.

 

Have

[ontheweb]

3 hours ago, Hlitner said:

That was Renaissance Cruise lines.  They had 8 ships, R1-R8 which are now referred to as the R ships.  The vessels are still sailing with Oceania and Azamara.   Renaissance only allowed direct bookings, had a ship-wide no-smoking policy, and had a 16 year old minimum passenger age.

 

Have

And they are no longer around.

[Mary229]

I think there is an even split now between those who like self service everything 🙋‍♀️ and those who like full service and/or need full service. If a website is fully functioning I am inclined to buy more services as a one stop shop. HAL makes that difficult and so loses some of my business.  

(Yes, I am happy to have my TA but as I have said in the past that is a family obligation and after much trial and error I found an agent in the family business who I enjoy working with, if there was no obligation I would be a self serve customer)

[*Miss G*]

7 minutes ago, ontheweb said:

And they are no longer around.

 

But not because of their booking system.

[Hlitner]

16 minutes ago, ontheweb said:

And they are no longer around.

Sad failure.  My understanding it was a combination of bad policy and bad luck.  To being with, the company was somewhat under financed.  Their no children policy was, perhaps, ahead of its time but limited their market.  And by not using travel/cruise agencies, they did save paying commissions, but alienated the travel agent industry that handled about 80% of cruise bookings.  And then 9-11 caused many folks to stop traveling/cruising and they could not survive.  

 

One interesting thing about that line were their ships.  They all had the same exact design, right down to the soap dishes.  This was done by the owners with the thinking that crew members could easily move between the ships with no need for additional training.  DW and I actually had breakfast with the marine architect (a British gent) who designed the vessels, and he told us the tale.   He actually sketched out the ship design on a restaurant napkin (while out to lunch with the owners) and that led to the order for 8 identical vessels.  The lounge area outside the alternative restaurants was designed to look somewhat like the London men's club where they had that luncheon.  That Marine Architect was also the person who came up with the design for the Sovereign of the Seas (the first ship with a large atrium) which led to him being knighted by the Queen.

 

Hank

[ontheweb]

9 minutes ago, *Miss G* said:

 

But not because of their booking system.

It was a contributing factor.

 

If getting rid of the cost of doing business with travel agencies would help the bottom line, don't you think at least some of the present cruise lines would try that?