Oriana cruise cancelled?

Just read 6 January cruise cancelled for 3 week technical maintenance.

Is this correct or just a rumour?

We are an Oriana for 4 nights on 3 December, Are we likely to have technical problems?

Just read 6 January cruise cancelled for 3 week technical maintenance.

 

Is this correct or just a rumour?

 

We are an Oriana for 4 nights on 3 December, Are we likely to have technical problems?

It is correct P&O have sent letters out. I think it is a propulsion problem. Must be major if it is to take 25 days.

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P&O's statement

We apologise to those guests due to travel on Oriana's X801 but our technical team has advised us that it is necessary for Oriana to undergo a three week technical maintenance from January 6 2018. As a result we will be cancelling this cruise.

We have contacted all those affected guests today and we are extremely sorry for the late notice and disruption.

Paul Ludlow. Senior Vice President, P&O Cruises

Looks to be right. 5% reduction on an alternative cruise offered. A travel agent has posted elsewhere to say it is only that cruise that has been affected. Hopefully your cruise will be OK but it is as you say due to mechanical issues.

Currently on Oriana. We have had no delays and all arrivals have been on time. Excellent cruise so far.

Brian

It will be interesting what they will do with the spare time as X801 was a 50 night cruise.

A real shame for anyone affected and a very strange situation.

Why would they go ahead with cruises in December if there is a technical maintenance issue that needs 25 days outage to get sorted?

We were booked on this and our letter arrived after I had read these posts. they are offering 5% of the price we paid for this cruise towards another to be booked by 31 December 2019. It also states they will award us the 500 Peninsular points we would have had and refund all monies if another cruise is not suitable at the moment. They have offered other Caribbean cruises but they are not suitable. The reason we booked this was it was for 50 nights, not the destination. We are having decorators in and it was arranged for whilst we were away so now we shall have to put up with that disruption too.

Just managed to cancel our special trip travel insurance as it was just within the 14 day cancellation period. At least that was easy. Now to get the money from P&O for the unnecessary Esta we just got through, plus our refund. As we paid in full two months ago I will also be asking for some interest on the money they have had from us. Hope this all goes through more easily that the problems some people had getting their money back when Adonis was sold from under them.

Pat

We are booked on the christmas and new year cruise on Oriana returning on january 6th 2018. Hope there won,t be any problems while on our cruise.

We are on the 7th December Canaries cruise. Assume they won't be expecting problems!

 

Just managed to cancel our special trip travel insurance as it was just within the 14 day cancellation period. At least that was easy. Now to get the money from P&O for the unnecessary Esta we just got through, plus our refund. As we paid in full two months ago I will also be asking for some interest on the money they have had from us. Hope this all goes through more easily that the problems some people had getting their money back when Adonis was sold from under them.

 

Pat

Good luck with all of that.... but don't hold your breath.

This is a bit rough on anyone who got a particularly good price on the cancelled cruise, isn't it? 5% of the price paid isn't going to go too far if the price of the replacement's increased by more than that, as it may well have.

Or am I missing something else P&O may have offered?

Facebook is going ballistic with complaints. This was a 50 night cruise so people have got lots of extra expense associated with an extended absence from home. P&O Facebook staff not coming across very well. One guy is suggesting opening a specific Facebook page or Twitter account for affected people to consider taking joint action. [emoji15]

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Not connected with this specific issue but I must say that P&O have a problem refunding money promptly. After a complaint we ended our recent Azura cruise with a credit balance on our ship account. I am having trouble getting this money refunded, I've been told 4 times that it has been refunded - but it hasn't yet.

Lets hope that everyone booked on this cancelled Oriana cruise get refunded in full promptly.

Why would they go ahead with cruises in December if there is a technical maintenance issue that needs 25 days outage to get sorted?

Probably down to the availability of the contractor doing the maintenance work. They are not available now, but are in January.

Good luck with all of that.... but don't hold your breath.

It will be interesting what they will do with the spare time as X801 was a 50 night cruise.

Clearly P&O are planning for a major overrun.

absolutely gutted! they are not budging on the compensation either, pretty poor.

Good luck with all of that.... but don't hold your breath.

Yes, indeed good luck with getting money out of P&O. We are currently in dispute with them regarding a cancelled cruise on Adonia in 2019. 3 weeks before they announced the sale, we swapped our Azura cruise to Adonia, both out in the caribbean at the same time. Following the announcement we asked our TA to get us back to our original booking on Azura (after all we had only swapped from one ship to another in the fleet! sailing on exactly the same dates!). Well, they are having none of it, whilst we can go back on Azura, it will cost us the current price, not the price we agreed when we booked it earlier this year. We have written to Paul Ludlow twice now, even copied in David Dingle. He doesn't even have the courtesy to reply to us, our replies come from someone in Guest Relations. Our saga continues, are we are still waiting for our £900 deposit to be refunded.

I hope that those who will now miss out on their Oriana cruise are more successful.

Probably down to the availability of the contractor doing the maintenance work. They are not available now, but are in January.

I think I read it’s when the dry-dock is available.

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UK bookings package holiday regulations kick in and if they are offering an alternative it should cost no more than the current one.

ask if they will offer one of the longer Jan options.

Also you can claim all your expenses so if you booked non refundable hotel or transport etc separately make a claim.

if they try to claim they are not liable throw the package holiday regulations at them and a complaint to ABTA for breach of code of conduct.

spread the word to FB and T i don't do them.

Special late deal cruise on Oriana being released on Friday 24th November 2017.

This evening tonight Tuesday on TV on a popular cruise Chanel. Oriana cruise for I think they stated 12 day cruise leaving 6th January 2018 will be released for sale this coming Friday at a very low price. Price cant be released until Friday. Can’t wait to see where it’s going or the cost. Must be fitting a short cruise in before it goes to be repaired.

Feel sorry for people who have had their 50 day cruises cancelled.Happened to us this year when they cancelled Adonia.

Alex White, VP sales, Carnival UK, said:

“We understand how disappointing this is for our guests but our ships sail 365 days a year and they do occasionally require unplanned maintenance, the only available slot for us to undertake this work is in January.

Via agents, we have written to guests and advised that there are four other similar cruises that sail to the Caribbean from Southampton early next year, including all of the information and itineraries for these departures.

P&O Cruises will be paying agent commission on X801 cancelled sailings. If agents are able to transfer guests on to an alternative sailing they will also receive their standard commission on the new booking plus the commission on the X801 booking.”

Nice to know they're looking after their agents by paying them double commission - but paying out virtually nothing to the ones who've really been messed about and inconvenienced, their long-suffering customers!

Alex White, VP sales, Carnival UK, said:

 

“We understand how disappointing this is for our guests but our ships sail 365 days a year and they do occasionally require unplanned maintenance, the only available slot for us to undertake this work is in January.

Via agents, we have written to guests and advised that there are four other similar cruises that sail to the Caribbean from Southampton early next year, including all of the information and itineraries for these departures.

P&O Cruises will be paying agent commission on X801 cancelled sailings. If agents are able to transfer guests on to an alternative sailing they will also receive their standard commission on the new booking plus the commission on the X801 booking.”

 

Nice to know they're looking after their agents by paying them double commission - but paying out virtually nothing to the ones who've really been messed about and inconvenienced, their long-suffering customers!

Hasn't been a good year for P&O and their customer relations

- taking payments twice earlier in the year and not handling the aftermath very well

- the Adonia debacle - poor compensation, taking ages to pay refunds

- and now Oriana, with again poor compensation

There are probably other occurences I have forgotten

Sadly, in recent years particularly, P&O have a very poor reputation over such issues. Many American cruise lines offer a free replacement cruise as well as a full refund when they cancel but P&O offer 5%! As another poster has said above, for a 50 night cruise, pax will have incurred additional expenses as well as having had to make a lot of designated arrangements for this specific cruise. As much as I am pretty loyal to P&O, I feel their attitude over this is 'We're cancelling your 50-night cruise that you have undertaken a lot of planning for and are really looking excited to. We're not giving you much compensation - tough - get over it'. Very poor.

Andrew couldn't agree more. They cancelled our Adonia cruise, so we could have the money back or book another cruise with 5% discount. Only problem was all the cruises we wanted for that time of year (next April) were a lot more expensive than when we booked. I think we should have got the launch price.