Customer ReviewsforAmerican Discount Cruises & Travel

Be careful with this company. They run a scam, bait and switch operation. They advertised a free drink package. However, as you go through the steps to book the cruise the site drops the beverage package off your reservation and never tells you. We checked out after choosing a room with a beverage package and when we called to confirm the details we found out no drink package was on there. Then they tried to upsell us to get us into the package we originally were told we were purchasing. We canceled the trip due to their shady business practices. I would not recommend doing a trip with this company.

We have thoroughly reviewed this situation and appreciate the opportunity to provide details regarding what our detailed records show actually happened.During a call on February 3, **** with one of our staff members, the customer indicated that he had booked a cruise through our web site with the assumption that it included a drink package and Wi-Fi package. Upon receiving his confirmation, he stated that the drink package and Wi-Fi offer was not included. Our representative advised that the reservation was booked under a Cruise Only promotion, which is less expensive than the price that includes the drink package. Our representative explained that our web site narrows the offers available once a category cabin and pricing is chosen. It initially shows all possible offers for the sailing the customer is interested in, as at that point it is unknown which specific category and which specific fare type the customer will end up choosing. There are explanations to this effect along the way (during our web site's quoting and booking process) explaining this.Our representative saw that the customer decided to choose the **** *****" experience, in a Deluxe Balcony accommodation type and advised that she believed the drink package was not included with the selected ***** rate. The guest stated that they understood the information provided; however, did not see anything in the Terms and Conditions that say that the ***** experience was excluded from the offer.Our representative walked the client through the booking process on our web site; both (simultaneously) recreating the reservation on our web site together to review. Each confirmed that on Step 2 of the booking process, the bonus offer of Up to 40%, free drinks and Wi-Fi" did show, and both confirmed that upon clicking for more details, it explained that the offer was valid on new bookings 2/1-2/7/24, for select MSC voyages. They then moved to the next step on our web site and upon getting to Step 3 and choosing the cabin category of BA Deluxe Balcony *****, our representative confirmed that the offer of free drinks was not available for this reservation. The guest then recreated the reservation again; this time choosing another experience in the Junior Balcony accommodation and again, the offer of free drinks was confirmed not available. After further review, our representative confirmed that the offer of free drinks does not show for the balcony category/pricing chosen. The guest questioned as to why it shows on Step 2 as a bonus offer. Our representative again explained that Step 2 shows all offers available for the entire sailing and that once you begin narrowing down your search by category, price and stateroom, the offers available for the category / price chosen will show and that the offer he wants is not showing on the category / price that he is choosing. Our representative confirmed that Step 2 mentions moving forward to see what offers would qualify and that not all offers are combinable with category cabins / pricing chosen. The customer continued to mention that it says they qualify on Step 2 and it does not mention on Step 3 that the offer is no longer available.Our representative advised that while the lowest price (that wasn't combinable with the drinks and Wi-Fi promotion) is what the customer booked), we could request that they be moved to the promotion that included those perks, but the pricing would increase (about $400 more) as the lower price the customer booked wasn't combinable with that offer. The customer then said that he would have to discuss with his wife, if they wanted to move forward with that option. After a brief review, the customer ended up asking our representative to cancel the reservation and refund the deposit they made. Our representative then sent the customer ********** Letter of Cancellation to complete. The form was completed, sent back and our representative confirmed receipt. The cruise line has confirmed this cancellation, and a full refund is being processed by the cruise line.For clarification purposes; if, when going through the booking process, a customer does not see an offer they want appearing on Step 3, we recommend that they reach out to us before confirming the booking. This allows us to review the booking details with the customer directly, confirm the available offers, and clarify what our customer is booking prior to payment processing to confirm the reservation. In addition, upon reviewing a reservation on Step 5 of the booking process, any promotions included on the reservation will be clearly listed. In this instance, neither Step 3 nor Step 5 showed that the customer had selected and/or qualified for the drinks and Wi-Fi promotion.While ********** is always certainly more than happy to clarify promotional offers for our customers, when choosing to make a reservation online, it is the customer's responsibility to ensure they are reviewing their reservation details in full prior to inputting their payment details. If they are unsure about anything they are seeing, they should reach out to us for clarification prior to making a reservation.Based on the above, we believe that we did everything we could to clearly explain what promotions are possible, as well as what promotions are qualified for (prior to a purchase being made).

HORRIBLE customer service! 40 minute ON HOLD every time I call. I booked a cruise on the phone June 11th. I only booked this way because their website required it to get a Military appreciation offer from **** The rep I spoke with was LOST. Put me on VERY LONG HOLDS 3 separate times. She was supposed to connect me to an experienced agent and did NOT. She took NO NOTES in my folder. Most importantly, she never told my my deposit was non-refundable. ADC had a better price the very next day (by $259) on the same category cabin. I called every day this week to request the cheaper fare. Finally got thru on Thursday. Spoke with a manager (*****) and her fill-in several times on Thursday and Friday. Now they tell me I it is too late to get the better rate even though it is still on their website. Maybe if they answered the phone on Monday or Tuesday it wouldn't have been too late. The better rate was for past customers. I told the original agent my meriner number and every agent since ****** said it wasn't inputted on my original reservation. So I kept giving it to each subsequent agent. They say it is ***'s policy to have the deposit non-refundable. I say they should be obligated to disclose that and the first time I heard about it was when my confirmation email came on Monday - 24 hours AFTER the charged my card. I have been trying to fix this ALL WEEK LONG. Basically they say *** won't change the reservation and if I cancel and rebook at the better rate, *** will keep the original deposit as a penalty. I guarantee that if I cancel and rebook the cruise, it will be with a different company. AVOID AMERICAN DISCOUNT CRUISE AND TRAVEL IF YOU WANT ANY CUSTOMER SERVICE!!!

We sincerely value our clients feedback regarding their recent booking experience with **********. We believe that his concerns have been resolved at this time. During a phone conversation on 6/19, one of our managers advised ****************** that we were able to pull the call he had with ********** on 6/11, while he was actively on our agencys website trying to book. We were able to confirm that during that call he indicated that he was on Step 5 of the booking process and just had some questions regarding the onboard credit he was seeing and how to get the military onboard credit promotion. Our representative placed him on hold twice to verify the information, during which she was able to address his onboard credit questions, and indicated that once he completed the booking through the website, he could contact ********** back for us to ensure the military onboard credit promotion was added. He indicated during the call that he would do that after completing the reservation on our agencys website. At no time during that call did our representative take any information from ****************** in order to confirm the reservation. So based on the recorded call, we confirmed with ****************** on 6/19 that ********** was not involved in booking his reservation, and that based on our records it was booked by him on our website. We were also able to follow up with Holland America as a courtesy on 6/19 to check again if they would be willing to give a different decision in regards to Mr. ******** price drop request that we handled on 6/15 when he first brought it to our agencys attention. We verified that the promotion he saw on 6/15 was still available for a total of $2227 for the category N, so we called and Holland America once again confirmed the promotion was for new bookings only, but we asked to speak with a pricing specialist (just like we did back on 6/15), to see if any exception could be made to their policies. Fortunately, this time a cruise line representative was willing to make a onetime exception on 6/19 for us. As a result, the reservation was re-fared to the new total of $2227. Under this promotion, an additional deposit of $300 was due to confirm the promotion. ****************** provided a card to process the additional $300 deposit on 6/19, and it was confirmed. His reservation is now booked under the total price of $2227 for the reservation, which is the pricing he initially asked for on 6/15. With this lower pricing, he is still receiving $75 onboard credit for the room from the cruise line, and our onboard credit did lower to $100 for the room. These gift changes were advised to the guest on 6/19. Based on this information, we do believe this matter is now resolved to the guests satisfaction.In regards to the hold times that ****************** mentioned, we checked our phone system for any calls from 6/11 to 6/19 with ******************. None of the call records with his phone number indicate hold times near 40 minutes. The longest hold time we found was 20 minutes (on just one call). Regardless, we are currently hiring significantly more customer service staff members as we continue to grow, with the goal of becoming even more efficient. Our average hold time was under 7 minutes over the past month, and we anticipate that improving even further soon.

I have booked a cruise with this company for ****. I am very concerned about what I am going to get, but I guess I will have to make the most of it. I have received errors on their site when using features oI was even able to duplicate the *** coding error several times but the company didnt even care to know how it was being done I called three times and all 3 times ended up speaking with someone called cruise who has about as much customer service as a tree.I emailed in my concerns only to get a 5-paragraph email back that basically showed no ownership, no real desire to fix the situation, and was generically signed vs someone actually taking responsibility for the email sent.I hope things get better than this, but maybe the ****** is mine to learn I have taken 10 cruises now, used 7 different agencies because I cant find a single one who provides a consistent customer experience.

Hello Shelton, Thank you for reaching out to share your feedback regarding your recent experiences with our agency. We truly value your feedback, and we were sincerely disheartened to hear that you have been disappointed with the service we have been providing. We strive to provide the best customer service we can. Since the time that you’ve posted your feedback, we understand that one of our managers has reached out to discuss your concerns, and we have clarified some options to help make your travel planning experience smoother with our agency going forward. However, we did want to take a moment to address your concerns here as well. In regards to your concerns about booking through our website, please note that we did forward the information you provided regarding the error messages you received to our IT department to further review what was occurring on our website that was preventing you from making a reservation. As we explained to you via email when the matter was brought to our attention, often such error messages are due to technical issues on the cruise line’s end, which is not something our agency can directly fix or override. We believe that to be the case here, based on the contents of that message. Our IT department has informed us that they are not seeing the error occurring currently, so most likely it was a bug on the cruise line’s end that was resolved. However, they will continue testing on our end and if they find an ongoing error they will bring it to the cruise line’s attention if they believe the error is on their end. We apologize if the way our agency handled this matter was not up to your expectations. At the time that you were experiencing the error and brought it to our attention, a receptionist on our team advised that we could have a travel agent work with you directly to book your trip. Unfortunately, when you reached out all agents were assisting other clients at that time. With that in mind, we did take any information you provided on your trip request and added it to our sales team’s queue, to get in touch with you as soon as they were available. All sales inquiries are addressed in the order they are received, and we do aim to address these as quickly as possible. Due to an unexpected increase in quote requests, along with longer than usual processing times with the cruise lines, it has been taking longer than usual for our agents to respond to all inquiries. This is certainly not ideal for our agency, and we are doing everything we can to lower this processing time (including continuing to hire additional sales team members), as we certainly understand the time-sensitive nature of booking requests. Your particular request was within our queue for less than 24 hours when you followed up on the request. At that time, we were able to have a member of our sales team provide you with a quote for your requested cruise, while our support team also addressed your concerns regarding our processing times, and clarified the above information in regards to how our longer processing times are temporary and are actively being worked on to be improved. We did indicate that if you still wished to book with our agency after reviewing the quote, to let us know. We did not receive a response from you regarding that. However, we do show that you chose to book the cruise on our agency’s website instead. We sincerely appreciate your business, and thank you for choosing to make the reservation with us! From that point in time, our records are showing that you called in to speak with a representative to obtain clarification on using gift cards on your cruise. Our representative did provide you accurate information on how the gift cards could be used on the reservation in the future. However, as you explained during a follow up call with our management team, we understand that you felt the information provided on that call was not delivered confidently, so you had doubts regarding the accuracy of that information. We value this feedback and our agency is in the process of internally reviewing that phone call, to do additional training to ensure that going forward future clients will feel confident in the information they are receiving from that staff member. Since our management team has followed up with you directly, it is our understanding that you do feel more comfortable with our agency at this time. We hope this level of comfort and trust continues throughout the remainder of your travel planning experience, and with any future travel plans that we can book for you! If you have further concerns please do not hesitate to contact us directly at [email protected], or calling 1-866-214-7447. You may also choose to contact the specific manager that you are directly working with at this time.