retired_to_cruise_215

You are right on all accounts. I always get the insurance, God forbid we have to use an air ambulance. We will never forget this experience and will continue to tell it as long as someone is willing to listen. The rest of the cruise was not as enjoyable as other cruises. A text notification system would bring them up to the 21st century.

Thanks for your kind words.

I was told by my travel agent that for that sailing, Costa did NOT offer a flight package, in fact, they didn't even offer airport transfers. We flew Air France/Delta from Atlanta via JFK, Paris. We enjoyed the AF lounges very much, but had our excitement with the January 11 Charlie Ebdo mess on the way to Mauritius. On the way back we encountered snow cancellations in JFK. So, we got stuck in Paris for 10 hours and had to get rebooked to Atlanta, instead.

Airlines in general are very helpful when the system is interrupted for any reason. In addition, they do not distinguish passengers whether the reservation was made through a third party, or through their web site; the airlines see the passengers as their reason for being and subsequently take care of all passengers with rebooking, meal vouchers, and hotel vouchers. After talking to several sources, I see that Costa treated passengers different whether they booked through Costa or through a third party. Shame on them by not caring if any paying passenger is not informed in time of boarding changes!

We were on the way to the port on a dirt road while it was raining and the taxi driver stopped the car and said there was no ship. I asked how do you know? He said that if the ship was there, it would be right in front of us. He said that the coast guard might know what is happening; so we drove there.

While at the coast guard station we called MSC and spoke to Anoop who was very nice but had no idea what we needed to do. So, we were in total shock in a foreign land where very few people speak English, it was raining, we were 10 hours jet lagged. So, we decided to go back to the hotel and stay there until we had contacted a Costa official.

The ship also boarded passengers on Reunion Island, other passengers were intercepted at the airport in Dubai, and the rest I don't know. I do agree with the ship's passenger relations officer who said that maybe Costa should not sell that cruise in the U.S. since there are so many time zone differences.

The local contact we needed was Coquille Bonhaire. If their number or name had been provided to us in the documentation, it would have helped a lot.

Bottom line, we had to call the U.S., we had to get a hotel, we had to book our flight to Seychelles. All Costa had to do was get thousands of dollars for a 14 day cruise, and yet only provide a 10 day cruise. It must be nice to be Costa!

Costa can set up the same automated notification system as the airlines. The number of passengers is not a factor when it comes to computers. Costa has no problem notifying thousands of passengers that they can book excursions or buy drink packages. The notification through travel agents works when there is time for the notice to make it to the passenger. In my case the time difference prevented that set up to work and yet, Costa could have easily texted me. As far as what could have happened, that only applies for future incidents and does nothing to aliviate what already happened. If the time difference makes the notification system to NOT work, then Costa needs to only sell on the local time zone, or as the old saying goes... Buyer be ware!

By the way, tHere was no local number on my documentation. It had an emergency number, my daughter's!

The greatest number of passengers that were to board in Mauritius were from France and Italy. So, they could call back to their travel agent or Costa in Europe since there were only three hours difference. I actually witnessed other passengers in the hotel lobby calling their travel agents/Costa in Europe. I don't speak French or Italian so I could not make out any of the conversations; I asked a taxi driver if he knew what was going on and he said that they were all going to the airport to see if they could get a flight to Seychelles. I had no idea they were told about a charter plane; I thought they were going to try for a scheduled flight. With the time difference, I could not get a hold of anyone in the states until the charter plane had actually left.

Here are the facts as I see them:

1. Costa knew that the ship would not be there Monday, on Sunday afternoon.

2. Costa knew that the travel agencies and U.S. Costa offices would not open for business until Monday evening Mauritius time, Monday morning Central time.

3. Costa had my cell number, email address, and my daughter's phone number.

4. There were just a few U.S. passengers and contacting us would not have been too much of a burden.

Costa office personnel and Costa crew members have shown that they don't care and none of them has said the word sorry to us.

Costa can learn from airlines on how they text and email passengers when changes occur.

Here is the original plan: My wife and I booked a Costa neoClassica cruise to visit some exotic locations on the Indian Ocean off the East coast of Africa. The cruise was to start on Mauritius on January 12, 2015 and for the next 14 days visit the Seychelles, Madagascar, Reunion Island and back to Mauritius. To ensure that we did not miss the ship, we flew into Mauritius the day before, January 11, 2015.

Here is what actually happened: On the cruise scheduled day we took a taxi to the port where we discovered that the ship was not there! The taxi driver took us to the Coast Guard station where we were told that the Costa ship was not in port because it wanted to avoid cyclone Bansi; the guardsman had no idea what we needed to do to catch up with the ship in the Seychelles. We had the taxi take us back to the hotel where we had spent the night before. Due to the time change, we could not contact our travel agent, or the Costa office in the U.S., for another seven to eight hours. So, I asked the concierge to connect me with Air Seychelles; subsequently, I reserved seats on the next available flight to the Seychelles. The flight was not for another four days on Friday January 16. Eventually we had our daughter talk to Costa in the U.S. and she gave us a phone number of a company in charge of handling this issue for Costa in Mauritius. Since it was late evening by then, nobody answered their phone; however, when I called the number the next day, I was told that They had contracted a plane to fly 270 passengers on the night before and that we missed it; so, they needed to get guidance from Costa in Italy as to how to handle our situation. By the afternoon we were told that Costa wanted us to stay in our current hotel until Friday when we would take the flight we had booked. On Friday January 16 when we arrived at the Seychelles airport, nobody was waiting for us and I had to find out what company took care of the Costa business in the Seychelles so that we could be driven to the ship. When we arrived at the ship nobody was waiting for us and it was clear that nobody missed us or cared whether we ever got to the ship or not. When I asked for a statement from the ship explaining why we did not board as scheduled so that I could file it with our claims, to the insurance and to Costa when we returned home, I was told that I had to hand write an explanation and the ship crew would certify it. Even though, Costa had my cell phone number, my email address, and my daughter's phone number, they left it up to us to find out why the ship was not at the Mauritius port on the scheduled date, we had to book our own flight to catch up with the ship, we had to arrange for our own hotel for the four days we were left behind on an island with cyclone warnings and subsequent high wind and rain.

This is what we wish had happened: When Costa realized the ship was not going to be at the assigned port on the original boarding schedule, a text message, or email, with a phone number to call for instructions would have saved us great mental trauma and many sleepless nights.

NOTE: our scheduled boarding port was Port Louis, Mauritius, but actually boarded on Victoria, Seychelles.