Royal Caribbean changing cruise price after paying

[Mum1976Mum]

So, we have just about scraped the money together for a holiday in July. Lots of holidays out of our price range but managed to book a 7 day cruise around Norway for 2.7k - 2 adults, 2 kids. Booked it yesterday morning, paid in full, all good. I booked the hotel, parking, pet sitter etc. yesterday afternoon all non refundable. Got an email at 9pm last night to say price was wrong on website, price would not be honoured and offering me $100 in onboard credit (which we don’t need).

So this morning they still haven’t got in touch to tell me how much more I will have to pay if I don’t cancel. I phone up, it’s £1500 extra!!! I’ve now been on hold to speak to a supervisor for an hour but they say they won’t be able to do anything.

What on earth do we do? If we cancel we are £500 out of pocket. Any advice welcome. I’m so sad.

They are giving you a credit and offering you chance to pay extra

otherwise they will simply cancel if you decline

simple as that 🤷‍♀️

Ask mn to mine this to legal you will get better advise there. There are a couple of lawyers on there that give advise and are brilliant

Are you certain that you are not being scammed? Are you calling their main number and not through a number sent in the email?

I ask because although it's common for retailers to add that they can correct pricing errors on the website in their t&cs (whether that is enforceable depends on whether the terms were made clear during the ordering process), RCI does usually have decent customer support. Plus you have a confirmed booking that you have already paid for in full. If you had only paid a small deposit, I would say they had a better leg to stand on.

As others have done, I've done a search and price seems correct (and actually pretty fair for a Norwegian cruise for 4 in an inside stateroom)

I honestly didn’t think £2.7k wasn’t a normal price for a 7 day cruise somewhere wholly before the main school holidays

You're right, it's not - if that's just for one stateroom it's far too expensive unless you booked a suite or something

That said, if you end up not going it could be a lucky escape; cruising's a mess at the moment, with standards dropping through the floor in their attempt to claw back what they lost during Covid. I've just come back from usin g P&O for the first time (never again ) and am hoping for better with Oceania in October, but time will tell

The mystery deepens!!! The cruise is being advertised at the original price on 3rd party websites as well! Surely they can’t claim this is a website glitch!

My view is that this could be an unfair contract term and that RC won't want this tested in court so are fairly likely to settle a small claim for the £500 out of pocket expenses. But you seem to be the expert, what would you do?

Screenshot the incorrect price on their website OP & share & tag company on twitter!

Honestly, I don’t know what to make of it all now or where to go next.

So I would look at holidays you can book for £2700 for that week if that is your limit.

Book it.

Not sure how much your hotel is - you might lose that money unless you can use it in conjunction with your new holiday

What a scam of a company. Write on their socials as much as possible (suspect its already full of complaints) and tag them. If you have time, can try and write an email copying in as many of their executives and employees as possible (and local media email in the same email). You can usually find out the general format of their company email addresses - and then if you search on LinkedIn you can find out the individuals responsible for (e.g their general legal counse) and insert their name. Bit of a faff but I did it with a broadband provider and got my issue resolved within days plus some compensation. Going on their complaints line or writing to a general email address usually does nothing.

Also get your credit card/bank involved involved if you can.

I wonder how many people are affected by this error. I wonder how often they make the mistake in the opposite direction and refund?

So can a company just advertise a 'bargain', allow customers to book it at the advertised price, and then later claim it was an 'error' and the customer now has to pay the 'new' price or have the whole booking cancelled? That seems wrong.

@Desperatelyseekingcommonsense I think this is good advice

OP, do you have legal expenses insurance as an extra on your home insurance? If so, they would probably cover this type of issue

If you do end up cancelling the holiday and claiming against RC, you'll be expected to try to mitigate your losses eg cancelling pet sitter without delay

I can't believe those few posters saying just pay the extra. It's fifteen hundred quid extra! That ain't hay. OP explained they just about scraped the original price together, plus associated costs. This £3,200 holiday is now going to cost £4,700. RC have tried to sweeten it by saying the customer can recoup $100 of that frankly massive increase on onboard extras that they weren't planning on using anyway. Tell me again why she should be humbly grateful for this concession
"They didn't have to" just doesn't cut it.

This happened to me with Thai Airlines. Booked flights, they cancelled them 2 months later after trying to charge us an additional £200 each. They refunded. The flights are still, 2 months later advertised at the price I originally paid. It is a scam.

I'd write asking them to either honour the booking or reimburse your expenses incurred due to their error with the threat of small claims court if not. It may be in their t and C's but that doesn't necessarily mean a court would agree. Up to them then if they want to chance it or not.

Yes, my credit card company confirmed this to me yesterday.

Just because it’s in the contract doesn’t mean it’s legal. OP is a consumer and is entitled to extra protection under the law. The right of a trader to change the price after the contract has been formed or to unilaterally cancel the contract when the same right doesn’t exist for the consumer are on the grey list if you look at the guidance for unfair contract terms. On the face of it you could make a case that royal Caribbean are operating in bad faith given they are still advertising at the wrong price.

I know the OP has agreed to the terms but that unfair clause would need to be highlighted in Red with a big red hand pointing to it at checkout before sufficient notice has been given.

Prices “FROM”

Op go on FB and find Broadway travel cruises

they have some great offers on there and they are very responsive to messages

I’m pretty sure they’ll find you something within that price range

Agreed

if the term is deemed ambiguous or unfair to the consumer - then can be
but

you don’t think RC booking terms and conditions haven’t been poured over by lawyers

I very sorry to hear this OP and it must have blighted the whole holiday for you. I would have a quick search for other holidays in same time period for £2700 and see if you can find anything else. Whilst you could go through all the claims and paperwork to try to recoup the difference it will be time consuming and a faff, depends if you have the time and stomach for it.

it seems like an absolute scam and it has definitely put me off ever booking with them.

And they’re not alone!

check out your next holiday booking t and cs and see what the companies right to cancel is

But it's not prices FROM if they've confirmed to OP that the lower price is an error, is it? They've told her that price is incorrect. So how is it acceptable for them to continue to adver that low price as a possibility when they have told her it's a mistake?