Travel Agents

Don't count too much on the travel agents reponding to your ads. I had mine posted for a week and didn't get a reply. They should've emailed me and told me that they couldn't find a cruise to match my request. Instead they ignored my request altogether.

[LisaK]

Liz - are you talking about the bargain finder on this site? If so, then that is so very unusual - they have always responded to all of my requests in a timley fashion. Report it to the site managers.

[Jim Bragg]

What one needs to do to get the very best responses is be as specific as possible about the date, ship, cabin, air if needed, # of people, and anything else you can think of that can make it easier to come up with accurate priceing for you. Whenever I have used it I have gotten a half dozen or more responses but understand that occasionally nobody has a deal on a certain ship or date so responses are few.
Jim

[Kuki]

IF, for some reason no agents have responded to a post in "Bargain Finder" the system is not set up to send out e-mail.
It is set up so there are no direct responses to the poster... to avoid people posting getting spammed or bothered by agents.
Once TAs do respond to a post, there is still no direct contact, until the poster chooses to persue it.

As well, there are no Travel Agents who work for the site, checking the Bargain Finder postings. It's just a convenient means of putting shoppers and agents together.

And I believe in most cases can be very effective!

[Luanne]

We used the Bargain Finder and though we only recieved one email, she turned out to be very efficient and we are using her for our Alaska cruise. She has kept in touch with us since we booked this cruise in May. I would use her services again.

Luanne

I posted an ad giving all details, ship , date, cabin cat, even that I was Celeb. past passenger (over 5 cruises)

Did not get a single reply.

Hi! I am a travel agent and I have responded to maybe 20 requests on this site. I usually chose to respond to certain ones for one or more of the following reasons:

1) I felt that I could find a good deal for them for what they were requesting.

2) They were very specific in what they wanted. It is very helpful when the date, cruise line, number of people, type of cabin, number of people in a cabin, airfare required and budget is included.

3) They were a group. Travel agents can almost always get very good group rates and I really enjoy working with groups.

I am sorry that you did not receive the responses that you were looking for. I wish sometimes (but in no way expect) that people would respond back to my quotes with a thanks for your time but your price was $10.00 or $50.00 more etc. This would allow me to assess a little better whether or not I really can help many people on these boards.

I am sure that there are many agents on this board, including myself that would love to help you or others on this board with a cruise.

Thanks for giving us agents the opportunity!

Sincerely.
Gina

P.S. from above

To give you an example. I went through the roughly 90 request for quotes from Saturday and Sunday and chose to try and repond to 16 of them.

Sincerely,

Gina