More Strange Excursion Issues

[gnome12]

2 hours ago, Gourmet Gal said:

Interesting.  On my “My Activities” page the total and unit prices are 0.00 for my excursions that were previously included but now they are select.  Seems to be no consistency.

No consistency at all. I have not seen what @Joanzzzz shows, one of my 2 is between your and hers.

[RetiredandTravel]

17 hours ago, Gourmet Gal said:

Interesting.  On my “My Activities” page the total and unit prices are 0.00 for my excursions that were previously included but now they are select.  Seems to be no consistency.

 

I'm under the impression that they are "flying by the seat of their pants" with these excursions.  The system lets you waitist an excursion and book another included available (backup) but charges you for both, one should be included .  When we waitlisted the system didn't tell us they added new time slots.  I went back and deleted a few days and rebooked with what we wanted. When we booked the cruise in Feb (Dec cruise) one port had no inlcuded excursions now it does.  Its very important to keep checking. 

 

Edited April 12 by RetiredandTravel

[Joanzzzz]

We’re hoping optimistically that this small, but slightly tarnishing, problem will be solved with SS commitment to client satisfaction, and that any input, even critical, will be used to enhance their client overall enjoyment, and not ignored as if all they care about is cutting costs and adding profit.  We don’t usually get as annoyed about stuff like this, but this felt badly done and needed someone to explain it to us, because charging for something that was once included, only made us feel as customers we were being stiffed to enhance corporate profit.  Even if one in ten customers across an entire fleet were having this added expense, it would add up to a tidy bit of extra profit.

 

I was in the tourism industry in one of the largest tourist areas in the world.  Customer service agents have it hard.  They take all the flack and yet have to stay with corporate dictates and decisions, even the ones that have obvious inconsistencies.  They have to adhere to the corporate line, usually made by high-up folks who’ve never dealt face to face with an actual customer.    In the days I was in tourism our customer service folks were told to never promise what you can’t fulfill, because disgruntled customers rarely return  – they usually tell ten friends and their family of their disappointment, who also tell friends  -  so it benefitted the company to always make sure the client experience was as satisfactory as it could for them, within reason.  That was in the days before social media was as huge as it is today and everything could be posted yet even then we cared about customer feed back.

 

Regardless of our outcome on this, we hope once we are on board, away from corporate hiccups and cost cutting ideas, we will fully enjoy the service and staff on board because we always believe it’s the staff and crew who are any cruise brands biggest assets.

[Gourmet Gal]

Prior to SS including excursions in the fare I rarely booked ship’s excursions and found my own private guides as needed in most ports - usually for less than the ship’s group tours.  It almost seems not worth the trouble to book these crowded SS bus tours anymore except that we’ve already paid for them!  The company is really just pushing me to only consider cruise lines that do not include excursions.  

[gnome12]

Well, now the Næroyfjord Cruise that was originally an included excursion, then became a select excursion with the price crossed out and no charge on My Activities has now been cancelled and replaced by a very similar excursion on a different (but nicer and more environmentally better) cruise boat. I will now definitely be charged for it. I hope that the timing will work for my Flåm railway reservation. It should; SS has a Flåm railway excursion at 2:55 PM, which is the second of the 2 trains that I have booked.

[Gourmet Gal]

27 minutes ago, gnome12 said:

Well, now the Næroyfjord Cruise that was originally an included excursion, then became a select excursion with the price crossed out and no charge on My Activities has now been cancelled and replaced by a very similar excursion on a different (but nicer and more environmentally better) cruise boat. I will now definitely be charged for it. I hope that the timing will work for my Flåm railway reservation. It should; SS has a Flåm railway excursion at 2:55 PM, which is the second of the 2 trains that I have booked.

So that’s a bait and switch!

[gnome12]

27 minutes ago, Gourmet Gal said:

So that’s a bait and switch!

Sort of. I don't think that the wooden boat they had initially chosen is allowed to run any more. But they have added a visit to the Viking Village in Gudvagen.

[gnome12]

I was just comparing a previous version of the Tour Programme for my cruise (saved in December 2023) with the current one. The previous version clearly showed Included Excursion and Select Excursion headings, with prices for included excursions showing as N/A, and showing prices for select excursions. I just saved the most recent Tour Programme, and now all excursions are under Shore Excursions and all have prices with them. I realize that this might have something to do with the new fare category, but if you are supposed to have included excursions you can't tell anything from this document any more. I realize that you have to be on My Silversea to see this document, where it is easy to see the included excursions (and find out how few of them are left, since many that were formerly included are now considered select), but I still find it a bit irritating.

[drron29]

I got a call from the onboard Shore Concierge after my survey complaint about late cancellation of excursions. Was told one for operational reasons and the other for lack of interest.

At least an apology.

[Gourmet Gal]

All this has me wondering if the excursion dept. has been folded into the greater RCL excursion sales/operations.  Would make sense for the bean counters to do so and hopefully this disarray will diminish with time.  Perhaps the same realignment has happened with the hotel bookings as well as there have been plenty of last-minute hotel changes.

[Texas Tillie]

41 minutes ago, Gourmet Gal said:

All this has me wondering if the excursion dept. has been folded into the greater RCL excursion sales/operations.  Would make sense for the bean counters to do so and hopefully this disarray will diminish with time.  Perhaps the same realignment has happened with the hotel bookings as well as there have been plenty of last-minute hotel changes.

 

Probably so. The air department was done last fall and there were any number of problems at the time.

[BBGrace273]

Quick question. Several of you have referenced downloading hard copy of your chosen excursions. Am I missing doing this somewhere? Or are you just screenshotting each one individually?

[Joanzzzz]

9 minutes ago, BBGrace273 said:

Quick question. Several of you have referenced downloading hard copy of your chosen excursions. Am I missing doing this somewhere? Or are you just screenshotting each one individually?

This is how I did it when I had booked my cruise a year ago.  Do a search for Silversea cruises in a search engine and right underneath the main heading, there is a sub heading "Find a Cruise"...click on that.....select the month your cruise is on...and select ship...see small picture of the cruise chosen........click on details (at the bottom of small picture) for that cruise, then click on Itinerary and excursions, and go through each day's choices.  I copied the text for each shore excursion day, and all the details of each excursion.  I did this initially so I could take it out and read it rather than keep having to go refer to the website.  I pasted it to another document in Word and printed it out......and  also saved it and am glad I did.  When I did this at the time of booking and compare to what is now being posted under shore excursions, it has changed and many of the once included tours are now selected ones.  Hope this is what you meant and it helps you.

[Gourmet Gal]

There is a Tour Program that is downloadable and printable in My Silversea.  Go to your booking and then Shore Excursions.  You can highlight or select your chosen excursions and create a new document that can be stored in your files accessible on your phone.

[gnome12]

1 hour ago, BBGrace273 said:

Quick question. Several of you have referenced downloading hard copy of your chosen excursions. Am I missing doing this somewhere? Or are you just screenshotting each one individually?

On My Silversea when you select shore excursions you can print off My Activities from the top menu. This doesn’t give details of the tours, but lists what you have selected. You can also print off (lots of pages) the entire tour programme from the same menu. I have saved multiple copies ( at different dates) of My Activities. You can also screenshot each chosen activity from the timeline. If you click on the i in a circle for any excursion you can get more details. You can copy and paste that into another document. 

[RetiredandTravel]

On 4/12/2024 at 12:06 PM, RetiredandTravel said:

 

The system lets you waitist an excursion and book another included available (backup) but charges you for both, one should be included .  

 

 

 

I contacted SS Shore Concierge and they took off this charge.  The error was corrected and they apologized.  All good.

 

[Joanzzzz]

On 4/16/2024 at 6:57 AM, RetiredandTravel said:

 

 

I contacted SS Shore Concierge and they took off this charge.  The error was corrected and they apologized.  All good.

 

After over two weeks dealing through Silversea Resolutions and awaiting a reply from Shore Concierge, in desperation we contacted our TA who passed our concerns about shore excursion charges to her company's contact at Silversea.  The very next day we received news that one of the charges cannot be changed as their system (Silversea) does not allow them to do this before sailing (in a month's time?) but Shore Concierge will ask the ship to void the charges for one of the discrepancies, presumably when we are on board..  So, hopefully this will all be sorted when we get on the ship.  We are now waiting to hear about the other one we questioned.  We must say that although Shore Concierge took two weeks to deal with this after being it was passed to them at the request of the lady in Resolutions, she must have flagged it as she contacted us twice during that time to let us know she had emailed them again and would let us know the answer.   Hopefully in the coming days we will hear good news about our other discrepancy.    

[RetiredandTravel]

They changed it in the system for me.  Its now zero.  In my opinion the current excursion seelction system needs to be much more robust, its very basic.

 

 

[Joanzzzz]

6 hours ago, RetiredandTravel said:

They changed it in the system for me.  Its now zero.  In my opinion the current excursion seelction system needs to be much more robust, its very basic.

 

 

I have to admit I couldn't believe why, in their words, a "leader in luxury cruising" company, does not have the capability to communicate within a system where their own people cannot change a month before sailing, yet their customers can log on and delete or add themselves.  Then again, I'm presuming the system which customers log on to will link to the main system, and I'm also presuming that Shore Concierge must have some way of (hopefully) communicating that we need to have the charge voided to the ship.  Surely such a large company can't be running on such a dinosaur system.  

 

I hope that since changing this for Shore Concierge staff seems to be difficult on the system, that voiding our charge does get communicated to the ship, or we'll have to spend more time lining up at Shore Excursions on board trying to sort it out again, because this has already been a totally frustrating experience and it's still not completely fixed.  For sure I'm taking a print out of the emails received.