I have now been on hold for 2 and 3/4 hours waiting to talk to someone at Tauck. I have also emailed. Our Travel agent doesn't either. Final payment for a September trip is due on Thursday and we have no clue if it a go or not. Any Suggestions?
What trip are you scheduled on? My Aug 29th Switzerland trip's final payment was moved to July 30th. I'm surprised you haven't heard anything about your trip.
Be sure to check your dashboard on the Tauck webpage. As Kathy points out, they are moving payment dates for some trips and your payment date may have been delayed.
If all you want to do is make your final payment, you can do that from you dashboard (assuming that feature is working, I know it was down for a while).
More Time – For April, May and June 2021 departures, final payment will not be due until 30 days prior to departure. For all tours and cruises departing between July 1 through December 31, 2021, final payment will not be due until 60 days prior to departure – giving you more time and flexibility should your plans change.
Also, like Ken said - check your dashboard for more info.
I think your dashboards is out of date, it’s 60 days. I’m going to look at my dashboard with my trips now to see how it looks. Monday apparently is supposed to be Tauck’s busy day
Karen1672 - We are also going on the Rhine and Moselle on September 1, 2021. We have our flights on AA and British Airways from Tucson. However, they changed our return flight and now will have one night in Chicago before returning to Tucson the following day. After the Rhine and Moselle we are taking Switzerland: Europe's Crown Jewel. Our TA is taking care of all payments for us.
I was on hold for 3 hours and gave up. I called back and pressed the number for making a payment ... and my call was immediately picked up. Got all of the information I needed... now try to find some flights that will not have a lot of connections. Still not sure if I want to be a "Guinea Pig" for this trip. Thinking it will be a giant " Covid "experiment in travel.
We have just been on with Tauck and the call was picked up in less than ten minutes. We had free time, we had intended to call tomorrow but wanted to see what wait ti,e was like. We were looking to book our flights for Israel Jordan March 2022. The flight inventory Tauck had was lousy, eg connections to Frankfurt and then Munich on the outward journey, yes three connections. She looked up the regular public flight inventory and found the same flights as we had this year that were of course canceled. These flights were $800 less each than we would have paid this year. So our flights are now booked….but of course Israel is still closed to American tourists and there has been all the fighting too….we await events to unfold.
Pretty sure we are going to reschedule for 2022... for lousy connections our air fare is over 10 grand for business. Waiting to hear from our TA to see if she has a magic wand.
Wow! We paid $2300 roundtrip from Tucson many months ago. Tauck had an airfare of $3100 but we decided to go with AA and British Airways. We had to pay BA extra for our seat assignments even in business class which only came to an extra couple of hundred. Hope your TA can help you.
We were on the Sept. 1 Rhine/Moselle cruise(re-scheduled from last year) and had Business class flights through Tauck for $3300 round trip from Orlando. Due to the uncertainty in Europe we cancelled and booked a US tour instead. Hope you have a great journey.
We did not book them and that is what is available at this point. Our travel agent advised us to wait ... so here we are. I think we will probably cancel and rebook for next year... too much uncertainty at this time.
Prices vary from day to day, you could try again another day. Also If you call Tauck, they may still have contract prices available, especially if others are canceling.
I'm not at all surprised the call center is swamped. Watching the EU making its decisions and then seeing Tauck start announcing more tours opening up, I called them last Mon with a couple of important but not urgent questions. Got thru right away. I knew if I waited I'd be competing with loads of people finalizing or making airline reservations, etc.
Isn't anyone using Tauck's "call-back" feature? The last time I did, they called back when they said they would. I didn't have to wait on hold and could continue doing whatever I was doing around the house.
There did not appear to be a call back feature yesterday.
Tauck isheavily promoting their 2021 tours right now but obviously need more staff. I wonder if they are going to start opening for phone calls at the weekend again? Right now, with tours opening up, their are only five days a week for people to call instead of seven which was always the norm.
Alan , yesterday my AAA agent called Tauck and did the call back feature. She got a return call in about 35 mins and we got our air all booked for next May river cruise. They are very busy.
I unfortunately called on Monday and the call back feature was not working... when I did get through on the Payment line they answered immediately and could not fathom why I would on hold that long. I simply needed answers that day.
So I was correct, there was no call back feature on Monday.
Karen, your Travel agent told you to wait to book flights…..I’m not sure I understood that if Tauck was going to book them anyway. You don’t pay for flights until the final payment. If the tour gets canceled, then Tauck deals with all that.
Sometimes it is cheaper to book flights independently, but since this whole Pandemic thing started, we are lettingTauck book most of our flights. We did wait longer than usual , but not much for a tour that is March 2022.
I believe you can also change your mind and cancel Tauck arranged flights without penalty up until ticketing which is only a few weeks before. I haven’t tried doing that, but maybe others might know if that is also doable
Karen, did you have to pay for your trip now, or was it indeed not until 60 days?
We are also having problems getting answers to our questions from Tauck. In addition, we are getting different answers from different reps, so now we are contacting hotels for hotel questions and checking things out ourselves. Hopefully, all this confusion will stop soon, because we're getting concerned that this mess may impact the quality of the tours. We are trying to get air quotes for our April Japan Trip, but we had a rep. tell us they are not booking 2022 flights yet. Another rep. quoted us extremely high airfares...much higher than those online. One person tells you one thing and the next one tells you another. Now, we are considering cancelling the Japan Trip due to all of this. At this point, we aren't sure the Japan Trip will even happen due to the problems with vaccinations there. Time will tell, but it is very frustrating dealing with Tauck right now. We have 3 trips booked now, but are unsure about the quality of these. Up until now, we have been very pleased with the Tauck product, but things need to improve quickly. Hopefully, Tauck is reading the postings on this travel forum.
All the travel companies are swamped. It is not just Tauck. I have talked with them fairly easily using the ‘call back’ feature. I usually use the ‘make new reservation’ option.
Comments
What trip are you scheduled on? My Aug 29th Switzerland trip's final payment was moved to July 30th. I'm surprised you haven't heard anything about your trip.
We are booked for Rhine Moselle northbound September 1 2021... so no clue what is going on ...
Be sure to check your dashboard on the Tauck webpage. As Kathy points out, they are moving payment dates for some trips and your payment date may have been delayed.
I just checked and it looks like your tour is scheduled to restart in September so, to me, it looks like a go.
https://www.tauck.com/guest-travel/tours-running-in-2021
I hope you get thru to speak to someone soon though!
If all you want to do is make your final payment, you can do that from you dashboard (assuming that feature is working, I know it was down for a while).
This also shows that your final payment is due 60 days before so that would be this Thursday for you.
https://www.tauck.com/guest-travel/flexible-booking-policy-2021
More Time – For April, May and June 2021 departures, final payment will not be due until 30 days prior to departure. For all tours and cruises departing between July 1 through December 31, 2021, final payment will not be due until 60 days prior to departure – giving you more time and flexibility should your plans change.
Also, like Ken said - check your dashboard for more info.
I have checked my dashboard and they are expecting payment on Thursday. My real problem is finding flights... connections are awful right now... I
I think your dashboards is out of date, it’s 60 days. I’m going to look at my dashboard with my trips now to see how it looks. Monday apparently is supposed to be Tauck’s busy day
Mine looks up to date, but my first tour is March next year.
Karen1672 - We are also going on the Rhine and Moselle on September 1, 2021. We have our flights on AA and British Airways from Tucson. However, they changed our return flight and now will have one night in Chicago before returning to Tucson the following day. After the Rhine and Moselle we are taking Switzerland: Europe's Crown Jewel. Our TA is taking care of all payments for us.
Noreen
I was on hold for 3 hours and gave up. I called back and pressed the number for making a payment ... and my call was immediately picked up. Got all of the information I needed... now try to find some flights that will not have a lot of connections. Still not sure if I want to be a "Guinea Pig" for this trip. Thinking it will be a giant " Covid "experiment in travel.
Karen1672 - Hope to see you on the cruise.
Noreen
We have just been on with Tauck and the call was picked up in less than ten minutes. We had free time, we had intended to call tomorrow but wanted to see what wait ti,e was like. We were looking to book our flights for Israel Jordan March 2022. The flight inventory Tauck had was lousy, eg connections to Frankfurt and then Munich on the outward journey, yes three connections. She looked up the regular public flight inventory and found the same flights as we had this year that were of course canceled. These flights were $800 less each than we would have paid this year. So our flights are now booked….but of course Israel is still closed to American tourists and there has been all the fighting too….we await events to unfold.
Pretty sure we are going to reschedule for 2022... for lousy connections our air fare is over 10 grand for business. Waiting to hear from our TA to see if she has a magic wand.
Wow! We paid $2300 roundtrip from Tucson many months ago. Tauck had an airfare of $3100 but we decided to go with AA and British Airways. We had to pay BA extra for our seat assignments even in business class which only came to an extra couple of hundred. Hope your TA can help you.
We were on the Sept. 1 Rhine/Moselle cruise(re-scheduled from last year) and had Business class flights through Tauck for $3300 round trip from Orlando. Due to the uncertainty in Europe we cancelled and booked a US tour instead. Hope you have a great journey.
Karen, who booked your flights? I just can’t believe those prices!
We did not book them and that is what is available at this point. Our travel agent advised us to wait ... so here we are. I think we will probably cancel and rebook for next year... too much uncertainty at this time.
Prices vary from day to day, you could try again another day. Also If you call Tauck, they may still have contract prices available, especially if others are canceling.
No excuse for such poor customer service from Tauck!
I'm not at all surprised the call center is swamped. Watching the EU making its decisions and then seeing Tauck start announcing more tours opening up, I called them last Mon with a couple of important but not urgent questions. Got thru right away. I knew if I waited I'd be competing with loads of people finalizing or making airline reservations, etc.
Isn't anyone using Tauck's "call-back" feature? The last time I did, they called back when they said they would. I didn't have to wait on hold and could continue doing whatever I was doing around the house.
There did not appear to be a call back feature yesterday.
Tauck isheavily promoting their 2021 tours right now but obviously need more staff. I wonder if they are going to start opening for phone calls at the weekend again? Right now, with tours opening up, their are only five days a week for people to call instead of seven which was always the norm.
The one time I used the call back feature I never got a call back. Waited a couple of weeks then called them.
Hmmm, maybe once they see who is calling they make sure they call me back in just a hour or two.
Alan , yesterday my AAA agent called Tauck and did the call back feature. She got a return call in about 35 mins and we got our air all booked for next May river cruise. They are very busy.
I unfortunately called on Monday and the call back feature was not working... when I did get through on the Payment line they answered immediately and could not fathom why I would on hold that long. I simply needed answers that day.
So I was correct, there was no call back feature on Monday.
Karen, your Travel agent told you to wait to book flights…..I’m not sure I understood that if Tauck was going to book them anyway. You don’t pay for flights until the final payment. If the tour gets canceled, then Tauck deals with all that.
Sometimes it is cheaper to book flights independently, but since this whole Pandemic thing started, we are lettingTauck book most of our flights. We did wait longer than usual , but not much for a tour that is March 2022.
I believe you can also change your mind and cancel Tauck arranged flights without penalty up until ticketing which is only a few weeks before. I haven’t tried doing that, but maybe others might know if that is also doable
Karen, did you have to pay for your trip now, or was it indeed not until 60 days?
We are also having problems getting answers to our questions from Tauck. In addition, we are getting different answers from different reps, so now we are contacting hotels for hotel questions and checking things out ourselves. Hopefully, all this confusion will stop soon, because we're getting concerned that this mess may impact the quality of the tours. We are trying to get air quotes for our April Japan Trip, but we had a rep. tell us they are not booking 2022 flights yet. Another rep. quoted us extremely high airfares...much higher than those online. One person tells you one thing and the next one tells you another. Now, we are considering cancelling the Japan Trip due to all of this. At this point, we aren't sure the Japan Trip will even happen due to the problems with vaccinations there. Time will tell, but it is very frustrating dealing with Tauck right now. We have 3 trips booked now, but are unsure about the quality of these. Up until now, we have been very pleased with the Tauck product, but things need to improve quickly. Hopefully, Tauck is reading the postings on this travel forum.
All the travel companies are swamped. It is not just Tauck. I have talked with them fairly easily using the ‘call back’ feature. I usually use the ‘make new reservation’ option.