Viking River Cruises

We booked a river cruise to LyonFrance in 2024 for a sailing in August2027. At the timewe were told the final payment was due in February2027. Butnow I get an email the full payment is due nearly 2 years ahead of the sailing or 21 months. That isin my opiniona long time for this company to hold onto nearly $20,000 and I'm not happy about it. I think this kind of behavior smacks of arrogance and misleading information. Careful in your dealings with them.
FortunatelyCelebrity is about to kill Viking in Europe for river cruises.

This company has virtually no real time technical support. I have been locked out of MyViking login since 12/8 and get nothing but lame excuses from Customer Rep (not tech support). They don't seem to have a mechanism for promptly escalating to technical support. Was supposed to be fixed in a week. Plus they make you do all the work to try to fix the problem. I've spent hours clearing cachetrying different web browserschanging password and using different devicesall to no avail. They tell me to try to be patientbut no one ever gets back to me with progress. First time Viking Cruiser...not exactly inspiring confidence.

The three of us - my husbandI and our son - took a Danube River cruise on Viking Baldur from Budapest to Passau the week before ChristmasDec 17-252023. It was cold and raining or pouring most of the days. Howeverdespite the miserable weatherour overall experience with Viking was fairly good and I would give it 4 stars if not an extremely unpleasant event that took place the last night and a return airport transfer poorly planned by Viking.

Unfortunatelyour on-board feedbacks and my on-line review sent to https://www.vikingrivercruises.com/contact/cruise-review.html have been ignored by Viking. This is sad and reflects poorly on the company's reputation.

1. About the event of the last night that resulted in three not-so-happy passenger feedbacks which Viking hasn't acknowledged in any way.

We stayed in Passau. Heavy rains caused floodingso the ship was docked about 5 km (3 miles) from the city center. My husband and I went on a morning shore excursion and returned soaked throughso we rested in the afternoon. Our son was slightly sickso he slept though the morning and then took Viking's shuttle bus to the city center in the afternoon. He planned to return to the ship with the last shuttle bus at 5:30pm. He was at the bus stop explicitly suggested by the bus driver 10 mins earlier waiting for the bus that never showed up. At 5:30pm he sent me a message saying that there was no bus and he was the only person at the meeting point. I immediately went to see the cruise directorMarcowho said "If there is no bushe should take a taxi. It is only 10-15 euros". To my surprisethe cruise director didn't even try to find out what happened to the shuttle bus or call our son. He left me to deal with this situation and returned only when I asked the receptionist to find him.

It was our son's first time in Europe. He didn't feel comfortable taking taxi in an unknow location at night. He also didn't have cashhis phone was not on an international planand his phone's battery was about to die. All he knew that his foot could eventually take him to the ship as long as his phone was on. And he started walking. HoweverMark insisted on taking a taxi. Our son sent a text with his location and asked Mark to call the taxi company they normally work with. Marco tried to call the taxi once but they didn't answer his call. Our son was waiting... The second time the cruise director called for a taxi because I asked to try againand it was unsuccessful again. By this point I was told that Viking would reimburse our taxi expenses... Hmm.. Then Marco started insisting that our son was in the pedestrian area where a taxi could not go to. It was untrue -- our son was on the road leading to a bridge and cars were passing by. Then Marco advised our son to go to a cafe or the Christmas market and ask anyone to call for a taxi if there were no taxis. There were no taxis. It was dark and raining. The cruise director was preoccupied with anything but trying to get our son back to the ship. I was exchanging messages and tried to call. Marco kept insisting on getting a taxi and not walking to the ship because it would be unsafe considering the weather conditionsdarkness and the need to pass a bridge and a tunnel separating the ship from the city. The least I wanted to hear from Marco was a threat to file a report on us for not following his directionsso Viking would not be responsible for our son's safe return. He was completely unhelpful.

Anyhowour son walked back to the ship. He returned at 6:55pmwettiredupset but just on time for dinner. The rest of the night went uneventful -- really uneventful -- because no oneneither the cruise director not the receptionistbothered to apologize for this ordeal or check if everything was alright. A simple apology would go a long way here...

2. About a return airport transfer from Passau to Munich (about 3 hours) provided by Viking.

My husband and I were returning to our home in Floridaand our son was returning to his home in Wisconsin. Our son's flight was only 15 min earlier than ours but Viking put our son on the bus leaving at 6:00am while our bus was leaving at 7:00am.

We asked Viking to move our son to our 7:00am bus twiceso we would go together. Besidesour bus was not full -- there were seats available. HoweverViking refused to move him to the 7:00am bus explaining this by a limited luggage space. "What if someone would have four suite cases?" said the cruise director. Welleach of us had only one medium-size suite case. If in fact anyone would have four suite casesI guessit may be possible to take one smaller item inside the bus.

On the other handit was possible to move the two of us to the 6:00am bus if we wanted to go with our son. And we ended up taking this offereven though I am not a morning person and early wake-ups don't serve me well.

Wellunfortunatelythis added an hour to our wait time in the check-in queue at the Munich airport because we had our first connection in Amsterdam and a check-in for a Schengen zone flight can be done only two hours or less before the flight. I guessthat could be the reason we were originally placed on the 7:00am transfer...

3. What we liked the best:

- very comfortable beds and clean cabins

- well planned shore excursions

- a very professional and nice receptionist

- some very friendly and with a good sense of humor personal in the restaurant -- Andrei was the best

- durable huge umbrellas provided by Viking

4. The food was okbut not great though (this would cost 1 star under normal circumstances).

- We would prefer quality over quantity -- fewer choices but tastier meals. Not every dish was tastyand some of them were definitely a miss. On a positive sideit was never a problem with ordering something else as long as the kitchen was still open.

- The Austrian dinner was kind of a disaster -- a never-ending long line to get any meat and not enough fruits. When I was ready for a desert and went to get fruitsthe fruit plate literary had one slice of orange6-7 single grapesand 5-6 small pieces of cantaloupe. When I ask if we could get more fruitsI was told "Nowe already served two plates.". Hmmm... Btwthese plates were not big by any standards.

- It would be good to be able order a medium-done (not only well-done) burger. It would be good to get a medium-rare ribeye steak when it is ordered "medium-rare" and not "rare".

- It would be good to be able to order an espresso for no charge after a meal in the restaurant. Only regular coffee is served in the restaurant with no change. Btwcoffee machines in the hall by the lounge make much better regular coffee than the one served in the restaurant.

- There were no fancy meats (like lambfilet mignonetc.) or seafood on the menueven once. These items could enhance the overall experience.

5. About shuttle buses provided by Viking.

It would be best to have Viking's representatives at the shuttle bus drop-off /pick-up locationsso no one gets "lost" and everyone can see where to go. We were on several cruises (ocean and river)and this is a very common practice.

I sent my review to Viking Cruises at https://www.vikingrivercruises.com/contact/cruise-review.html three weeks agoand then I posted it as "Being left behind on the last day of a cruise" at TripAdvisor.com and CruiseCritic.com. I also contacted our travel agent and forwarded my review to her. So farViking River Cruises has been ignoring us. At this pointwe don't have high expectations for Viking. HoweverI would say at least an apology would be more than suitable here.

We are receiving many promotional emails from Viking and have been asked to vote for Viking as the best river cruise company (https://10best.usatoday.com/awards/travel/best-river-cruise-line-2024/viking-river-cruises/). I wish they are more concerned about how to become the best one.

We booked a cruise and paid a deposit which I understand is non refundable. We were also charged $1498.00 for insurance. We cancelled the cruise three weeks later and were told that we still had to pay $1498.00 for something that we never used.This makes no sense and very unfair to do this.We received no service for this insurance and we should not have to pay for nothing.My recommendation will be to stay as far away from Viking cruise lines as possible .

Booking Number: 7457903 dated 02-May-23

Short version: Booked trip with Agent Coaster Coe who no longer works for Viking and specifically informed him that our air travel preferences are Business class due to health issues. Apparentlyhe booked the trip indicating "Economy" despite our instructions and booking an AA-Veranda Suite with Viking Air Plus service. Today I called Viking Air to make flight arrangements and was charged a $2,100 per passenger "Upgrade Fee" for moving from economy to business class! I have spent hours on the phone with Viking Air and River Cruises with no resolution but have been well versed in their "policy"! This is our second similar trip with Viking and I feel I/we have been the victim of the front end agents failure. Please make this right Viking.

I booked a river cruise and then brought four new customers to viking with the promise of a $400 referral discount. Prior to the credit being applied I cancelled and rebooked a cruise to take advantage of lower airfare being offered to the very customer I referred - then later the referral discounts were denied. Note that the discounts had not been credited at that point which the salesperson confirmedand the salesperson assured me they would be applied when the four entered their information. Today I was informed this had been reviewed and denied. In other words - I brought you $15000+ worth of additional business with the promise I would receive a $400 referral credit - and You never actually gave me the credit. I was lied to and misled. This needs to be corrected immediately.

Please refer to the email attachment. This wayyou will be informed of the facts in the exact same manner as Viking.

I'm restating a few items because when I hit submitI received a warning that my message was too short to be noticed and would likely be passed over.

The email describes:

My 1st attempt to resolve the matter via phone.

My 2nd attempt was to ask to speak to the supervisor.

My 3rd attempt was via email. To dateI've received no response from Viking.

The 2nd attachment verifies payments of over $12,000 to Viking.

Of the $12,000$6,000 was unearned - $5,200 for the guest who had to cancel + $820 for the 2023 Christmas trip that was cancelled.

We were unable to travel to Israel for our paid-for pre excursion as our flight was cancelled due to the escalation of violence on Saturday October 7. Viking is refusing to reimburse using the excuse that they had still had to pay their workers. We claim that we have paid for a service that they did not deliver. Our travel insurance says we can’t make a claim against an act of war. The money involved would mean little to Vikingbut it was a substantial amount to us. Any ideas?

In early September our daughter made a $100 deposit on Romantic Danube for me and my husband. Told we had thirty days to cancel before payment due. Elderly husband felt trip too much for himso phoned Viking on 9/17 and spoke with agent Paul who told me that we would receive a refund of $698 out of the $948 billed. He went and checked during the conversation and confirmed that the travel protection and deposit would be refundedwith Viking retaining $250 of the the $948 paid.

On September 30 my daughter still had not received any refund. I phoned and spoke with agent "Royalty" who said no refund would be given. She then transferred me to "Saith"a supervisor?who absolutely quoted the party line and would not budge an inch.

Definitely not great customer serviceand removes any interest in future travel on Viking. There are too many alternatives.

Regretfully,

Mary K Dana [protected]@me.com

Reservation 7586383 for Viking Egil 30Mar2024