If you find someone who has paid their deposit and then decides they dont want to go I have no problem with them transferring their reservation to you. You'll need to make your own arrangements with that person to cover their deposits and then pay their balance. What I cant do is trade off no shows to walk ups unless it's a prior arrangement between themselves. Lets say 3 couples don't show and we have two walk up couples - how could I decide which two couples I'd offset the walk ups too and which one misses out, or should I refund each of the three no show couples 2/3 of their deposit? It gets messy. Standby guests still pay full amount. It wouldn't be right to offer a discount to standbys - or we might end up with 20 people on the confirmed list and 50 on standby After all, standby or not it's still the same trip. Re Refunds: The sign up threads and payment page always mention that our refund policy is to refund in full with 48 hrs notice, and usually I'm lenient with that and refund with 24 hrs notice. However, with sold out cruises I've normally been turning people away for weeks so even with 48 hrs it usually does not give me enough time to find replacements, since any replacements are likely to be already away from email contact. If deposits were refundable with zero notice (i.e. no shows) then we'd have a bunch of people playing it by ear and deciding on the day whether they wanted to go dependent on how drunk they got last night, what time they went to bed and whether there are a few clouds in the sky and it might rain later. That would kind of defeat the object of the deposit which is having an accurate representation of the number of people attending so we can plan accordingly. Best advice is, if you are sure you want to go and want a guaranteed space then pay a deposit. If something happens; you miss your flight, get bumped to Desire, get sick etc. then let me know via email or PM asap and I'll refund you. If you are not 100% sure you want to go and want to play it by ear, then rely on the chance of a walk space and run a risk of missing out.
In the end, Steve is a businessman....but even more importantly a family man. All of your conditions are certainly very reasonable and definitely responsible when it comes to taking care of a family. Thanks for being as lenient as you are!
