p27159

By the way, my wife was reading a Facebook page, dedicated to our specific cruise, and somebody posted something where they had a slightly different, but still somewhat similar, thing happen to them. We’re going to see if we can get more details from them…

Thanks for this information, including the barcode trick. I am assuming the horizontal axis in the graph is number of days before the sailing date? In other words, about half of all guaranteed cabins are assigned within a month of the sailing date (with the caveat that this may be somewhat old information)? I’m wondering if the fact that I have been a “problem child” for them with my complaint, will they decide to screw us over and assign ours last, and put us in the least desirable locations? before this cruise, I’m pretty sure I have always picked my own cabin, at least as far back as I can remember, and go to various websites where they showed the ship floorplan, and they point out some “problem rooms”. But I am not sure how much a lot of that really matters to us anyway. We tend to stay up on the later side, and wake up on the earlier side (we don’t “waste” much of our experience with a lot of downtime!), so most of the noise issues I see people complain about probably wouldn’t even impact us all that much.

I just got back from the travel agency, and was told they could not take over my reservation since I had already paid in full (I didn’t have an option to do otherwise, I’m guessing because I booked it less than two months before the sail date). She brought up on her screen what is probably the same 4 passenger balcony state room for $7700 that the cruise line was trying to offer me. I’d rather stick with what I have than to do that. Question: do you all know when I can expect to get cabin room assignments (how many days before the sailing date?) for a guaranteed cabin? Thanks for all of the advice I have been given. This post got off to a rocky start, but finally settled in much better!

Thanks for your comments. Asterisk noted. I didn’t know that I could cancel a nonrefundable flight within 24 hours. I just learned something new on that one, because I just did a Google search and confirmed that is a DOT regulation. You may be right that they can argue that I could have mitigated the damage this way. What change fees are you talking about? At this point I really have no good options, except what a previous comment said, and maybe it’s not too late for a TA to help me out. I’ll report back here after I return from AAA.

Thank you so much for the suggestion. I think I’m going to run down to AAA today to see if one of their travel agents can help.

Thanks for your comments. I don’t know why you say the gratuities should have been a “tip off”. How should I know what they are supposed to be? I was pricing other cruises around that time, and the dollar amounts were within similar ranges, so I disagree with your assessment there. The travel agent thing is now a lesson learned, but didn’t realize that this kind of thing happens often enough that a TA would be necessary. I book my own flights, hotels, etc. all the time.

True, I just hope he or she won’t realize the full situation that we aren’t really doing what the cruise lines want us to do as far as who is staying in what room (if they care at all).

What you said about the room separation is likely the reason for them splitting up the adults. It’s funny because on our last cruise, the kids had their own room and even though they were next door, we hardly saw them at night so it hardly mattered. We all had WiFi and could contact each other whenever we needed to. The kids are mature enough so having them in a different part of the ship doesn’t bother us but I understand why the ship cares for liability reasons. The problem with swapping room keys would be that the room my wife and I end up with will have 2 twin beds, not exactly what we would want (at least not what I would want lol). I now see the advantage of a TA. I never had a problem booking on my own before on several previous cruises so I didn’t see the need. Now I do, and I learned that maybe the hard way if I can’t get this resolved. Even if I go to court and win, it’s a hassle.

Thanks, I am still here as you can see.

Not exactly. I went through all the screens, and before I made payment the second time, that’s when I called them. They said if that reservation went through for four passengers, they would cancel the first one I did for two passengers. Except the second one also ended up being for only two passengers. So I asked them if they could fix it by whatever means they had at their disposal. Again, their “solution” was to put us all in one cabin, and then charge us more than what they cost for the two cabins were! Our kids are 18 and 16, not sure if this matters, but none of the agents we spoke to mentioned anything about that. They may even want to split me and my wife up, so each of us stays with one kid. That’s not an ideal arrangement for us, but they would have no way of knowing if we swap room keys.

Thank you. I had never booked a guaranteed cabin before this time either. But that doesn’t really sound too good if someone signs up or passengers, and they only hold a two passenger cabin. Sounds like they’re opening themselves up to people not having a place to stay, which kind of goes against the concept of a “guarantee”. I know you were just speculating, so thanks for trying to spitball this.

Thanks for your remarks. I am definitely sticking around for help, although I can’t come back here every couple of hours or so, I might pop in and out after a day or two with stuff that’s going on.

Thanks for your commiseration. Yes, it was a very good price, but within the realm of reasonableness, as compared to some other cruises I had looked at. I am pretty sure that the law treats Internet offers that are OBVIOUS errors differently than those that look like they are reasonable, like this one.

I was hoping that was how it would have worked, except that they weren’t willing to make that correction, even though I emailed the screenshots, and they received it in real time as I was talking to them, and then, even after being escalated to a higher level customer service rep, they didn’t feel any obligation (or at least as a gesture of Goodwill to somebody who has taken a few RC cruises in the past) to do anything either.

That’s funny!