Booking onboard problem!!!

[jonmar]

Just returned home from the 10 day Caribbean and while we had a great time, there was one problem that riled me. My wife and I attended the sales office after the 'book onboad' brochure was delivered to our stateroom. It does indicate the benefits of booking onboard including onboard credit etc. It also says that this booking can be transferred to your personal travel agent. It also says these benefits are combinable with other offers. So, we give the sales office the date of a crossing we are considering next May. He gives us the fare, which was a bit more than we paid for our last crossing. He then advises us the onboard booking amenities are not available for that voyage because the price is 'so low'. Then we suggest two other dates, one another crossing, one a Caribbean next winter. None of these voyages provided for the onboard booking amenities ie, onboard credit. In each instance we were told the price was 'already really low'. I left the sales office feeling like this whole system is a scam. I pick three voyages completely at random and am told they are such a good deal that the OBC does not apply. I even showed the guy the brochure detailing the benefits of booking onboard and that there was NO asterisk to cover this sort of behavior. In any case, we didn't book anything, although we had planned on booking at least two.

[lannp]

I had trouble while booking on board. Cunard's computers were always down. It took 3 visits to the sales office before the deal was done and then I received a letter in my cabin saying they could give me the confirmation number but not the paperwork.

Since I was remaining on board for a b2b, the paperwork did finally arrive the following week.

And after the first visit I received a note stating the fares for the requested TAs and I almost fainted when I saw the price for the return TA. It was triple that of the price going over. The office then admitted they didn't know where that fare had come from and everything was finally sorted out.

[Cornus]

Whenever we're on board we always book a future cruise, just to have the benefit of the on board credits associated with it. However, we often don't know which future cruise we'd like to book, so we just book a non-specific future cruise which is good for four years. Once we're home and have decided which cruise we'd like to take next, we just book it and ask to have the non-specific on board booking applied to it. We've never had a problem doing that.

[jonmar]

That was what we were going to do. Until we were told that the voyages we were considering were not eligible for the onboard credit. Basically, we were going to make an open booking to take advantage of the OBC, and decide later which voyage we would take. While asking about prices on voyages we were considering, we were told that, BTW, no OBC for those trips, because the prices were already really low. Whatever. This just turned us off the whole process as it seemed like bait and switch. We have written Cunard about it.