Terrible experience with NCL so far!!!

[swedish weave]

Are you serious. They allow someone whose child got cancer to cancel or change without penalty which goes against their passenger contract, the public finds out and what do you think the person whose mother died or their husband hand a heart attack will do when they are told no, NCL will not make an exception for them as well. It is discrimination clear and simple and the media will be all over it like white on rice.

 

You gotta be kidding !!! There is a vast difference between the media and lawsuits.

 

Most decisions made by company officials do not get to the media, anyway.

Edited November 25, 2015 by swedish weave

[13seth]

Having read your original post and the varied replies, I am sure this won't make a bit of difference to how disgruntled you are feeling.

 

Without discounting how you perceived the customer service to be lacking, there seems to be quite a bit that was handled poorly with your reservation - starting first with your own actions and those of your travel agent (no matter how much you think they were going "above and beyond" to help you).

 

Neither you nor your travel agent comprehended the stipulations of your booking and the attempts to modify it. You booked something you didn't want when you were advised what you wanted was supposedly no longer available. That was your first mistake. If you were confident, based on your own knowledge, that what you wanted was available you shouldn't have booked something different without doing more due diligence. You should have investigated (or been told) the ramifications of any future modification of your booking under the terms at the time you made it.

 

Many here have explained the ramifications of your attempted booking modification and no matter how much you feel it's "just a change in rooms" it isn't handled quite so plainly by the cruise line.

 

You also failed to investigate the amenities available for gym, spa, sauna, etc and the hours of operation of those facilities. Basing your expectations on past experience on other cruise lines is another shortcoming you set upon yourself.

 

Most of your disappointment lies with yourself and your travel agent. That disappointment was magnified by the cruise line not providing a remedy that was satisfactory to you and made your frustrations worse by feeling as if you were dismissed. And to a large degree, you were.

 

The lesson here is if you don't clearly understand what you are booking, aren't getting exactly what you bargain for and chose an agent clearly inadequate to handle your business, you can't really place sole blame on the cruise line failing you. You failed yourself. Just because you are "paying thousands of dollars" does not absolve you of being an informed consumer and obligate the cruise line to capitulate to your every desire with a smile and a "No problem!".

 

I'm sure its small comfort, but now you know what you are faced with when dealing with this particular cruise line and your particular travel agent. In the future, you can act accordingly.

 

I already agreed that I should have spent more time before booking, but that does not excuse the customer service rep from putting me on hold for hours, not following through on what she told me she would do, ignoring messages and phone calls, etc.

As far as investigating the amenities, I am still unable to find information on the fitness room, hours, locker room, etc on the NCL website, but when I found out I didn't get mad, just paid another $600 and will take this into consideration when comparing prices for our next cruise.

I am not peffect at booking cruises obviously, and already mentioned that I will use this as a learning experience for future cruises. I still think that I should have been dealt with more professionally by the supervisor and have not had a similar experience on any other cruise line.

[Demonyte]

... have not had a similar experience on any other cruise line.

 

Have you tried to downgrade your cabins after final payment with other cruise lines? How that has worked out for you?

[CruiseMomCT]

Your NCL horror story is very similar to mine. NCL's attempt to either stuff a whole family into one room so they can make more money on their other rooms or trying to scam more money with such an ambiguous cancellation policy fee.

 

I spoke directly to a NCL supervisor to work with changes that needed to be made to downgrade our family's room from an FOV to two interior cabins so we could have more space (and that extra bathroom:D). She was absolutely awful. Lies, avoiding phones calls, scare tactics. No integrity what so ever. NCL made me feel like all they wanted was more money.

 

From reading this thread, I know that many of you will argue about downgrades and upgrades or what not. Please, let's not go there because I have read the the cancellation agreement, and unless it's written there or on the NCL site, I will not let hear say convince me that this rule exists.

 

Because, in the end after given lies and the run around, they did have the authority to bypass charging me the additional fee. They just took hours of my life on hold and waiting around my phone for call backs for them to do so.

[Kingofwylietx]

The whole thing sounds like a fiasco, for sure. I interpret plenty of blame to go around, mostly to the TA and OP. NCL's fault lies mostly for taking so long to respond to different inquiries.

 

I book directly with cruise lines (not just NCL). I might pay more, but I can always speak to them and get things handled VERY quickly. I've never had a booking issue. I have called many times to ask questions or upgrade a cabin.

 

I think the OP saying his company makes exceptions is irrelevant here. Surely, being a small business owner, he is aware that an advantage he offers customers is that he can make exceptions and can react nimbly to changing circumstances. Large corporations don't work that way. They have rules and policies that are developed over time (and out of necessity). Employees are trained on these policies, to provide consistent customer service. Some large companies have a dedicated individual or department for dealing with special circumstances and high touch clients....I'm pretty sure NCL does not have one. My company was small 20 years ago, any CSR could do anything to help a customer (with mgr approval). Today, we have policies and rules....we have largely outgrown our ability to be as nimble as we were back in the day. A lot of that has to do with our accounting, purchasing, and sales systems. The computers won't let them do just anything they want. We have processes in place to meet documentation and accountability requirements and help the company behave in an efficient manner. That said, from the top, we can make anything happen....the lower you go in the organizational pyramid, the less they can do autonomously.

 

All things being equal, the TA should have the same prices as NCL direct. By booking with a TA, you lose the ability to speak directly with NCL....but gain a discount or OBC. This time, the tradeoff didn't work out so well, because the OP probably would have been happy to pay that amount to not have the negative experience.

 

In any case, it looks to be pretty well sorted now. I wish you a great cruise and better fortune in the future.

[Stace894]

I hope after all of that your family enjoys the actual trip. I have to say, though I loved the Crew/Staff on board the Dawn on our first cruise with NCL this past October,,,the Initial staff at the dock put me off immediately.

 

My husband and I arrived early for check-in, as we usually have done on Carnival and Disney. We don't mind hanging out in the terminal to get on the ship earlier. We were literally the first people into the terminal and the woman greeting people asked me if I had sailed with NCL before. I happily said, "No, this is our first trip with you". My first mistake. Instead of saying,"Thank you for sailing with us" she shuffles thru her numbers for the boarding groups and hands me a 14. Now I get that there is priority boarding for certain groups... I figured we would be maybe 3 or 4....but 14!

 

I was not happy about this and as I was the first person to actually check in I mentioned this to the person who was going thru my registration. They didn't seem surprised but were not happy about it either. They very nicely took my 14 and gave me a 2.

 

As I said,, really bad first impression but the rest of the staff made up for it and had a wonder rest of the trip.

 

so first lesson,,, always say,, "No" when asked if its your first trip on NCL. The people handing out the numbers do not have a list to go by and if I get up early, I should have some benefit for it.

[EaglesWin]

It was $350 back on the two balconies (the OP's current, modified booking). We don't know what the TA's offer was on the insides, because the OP never actually managed to book those. And remember this is a 14-day cruise, so the fares are high (and the TA's kickbacks can be accordingly higher).

 

I just offered a theory. We won't know unless the OP asks the TA and they admit to it.

 

Basically, the TA was "unable" to book the cabin the customer wanted and sold them a more expensive trip.

[FranknBeans]

Sorry just too long to read.

[skylock]

I already agreed that I should have spent more time before booking, but that does not excuse the customer service rep from putting me on hold for hours, not following through on what she told me she would do, ignoring messages and phone calls, etc.

As far as investigating the amenities, I am still unable to find information on the fitness room, hours, locker room, etc on the NCL website, but when I found out I didn't get mad, just paid another $600 and will take this into consideration when comparing prices for our next cruise.

I am not peffect at booking cruises obviously, and already mentioned that I will use this as a learning experience for future cruises. I still think that I should have been dealt with more professionally by the supervisor and have not had a similar experience on any other cruise line.

You are still not getting the fact that because you used a ta, ncl did not have to speak to you at all.

 

When you use a ta, you are putting the ta in charge of your booking.

 

Any problems, questions, concerns or changes are suppose to go thru your ta. Apparently you got a very poor ta that did not know what they were doing.

 

All this being on hold with ncl is something your ta should have been handling in the back ground. After the ta got the information, only then should you have been notified of the results.

 

People often ask why whatever cruise line will not talk to them directly, well this is a perfect example.

 

I think the problem started with your wife not being on the same page as you. Then you have a poor ta, who clearly does not understand their job.

 

The only blame I would put on ncl is because they spoke to you at all.

 

When you can get rid of some of your anger and place the blame where it belongs, you can start making sense of what happened.

 

The entire bottom line is, your ta did not know our even perform their job. That is where most of your anger should be directed, not at ncl.

 

I am assuming when the ta was first contacted you explained what you wanted. When they said what you wanted was not available, I think you're ta did a poor job of offering other options. Maybe they tried and your wife misunderstood. But whatever, the deal was done.

 

Personally, in your case, I think you need to forego any small savings and go straight to the cruise line themselves.

 

I speak from experience. There is nothing a ta could offer me to make me give them control over my booking again. You have been burned once. Let it be a good lesson. I let it happen 3 times to myself because I wss all for using a ta, before I smelled the coffee because I had had a very good ta for many years and had been quite spoiled even though I didn't realize it at the time. That wss until she died and I had to find another one. I am sure there are good ones out there, but they are too hard to find in my opinion, so no amount of savings will make me go that way again.

 

And finally, hearing what you are and have gone thru, I just wonder how happy you are with your small savings now.

 

Keep control of your booking and if you have to use a ta, transfer to them after you have gotten all the details worked out with the cruise line.

 

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

[MsTabbyKats]

Post deleted because I agree with the post right above.

Edited November 25, 2015 by MsTabbyKats

[mjkacmom]

I hope after all of that your family enjoys the actual trip. I have to say, though I loved the Crew/Staff on board the Dawn on our first cruise with NCL this past October,,,the Initial staff at the dock put me off immediately.

 

My husband and I arrived early for check-in, as we usually have done on Carnival and Disney. We don't mind hanging out in the terminal to get on the ship earlier. We were literally the first people into the terminal and the woman greeting people asked me if I had sailed with NCL before. I happily said, "No, this is our first trip with you". My first mistake. Instead of saying,"Thank you for sailing with us" she shuffles thru her numbers for the boarding groups and hands me a 14. Now I get that there is priority boarding for certain groups... I figured we would be maybe 3 or 4....but 14!

 

I was not happy about this and as I was the first person to actually check in I mentioned this to the person who was going thru my registration. They didn't seem surprised but were not happy about it either. They very nicely took my 14 and gave me a 2.

 

As I said,, really bad first impression but the rest of the staff made up for it and had a wonder rest of the trip.

 

so first lesson,,, always say,, "No" when asked if its your first trip on NCL. The people handing out the numbers do not have a list to go by and if I get up early, I should have some benefit for it.

 

Doesn't that person work for the port, and not NCL? I thought they just changed vests. The earliest boarding numbers are reserved for priority guests, suite guests, VIP's, previous guests... Heck, we arrived at the NYC pier at 9:45, and got #24!

[NLH Arizona]

My husband and I arrived early for check-in, as we usually have done on Carnival and Disney.

At Carnival and Disney, is it then first come first served and they don't have priority boarding for their previous guests, suite passengers, etc.?

[Barb Nahoumi]

I think you need a new TA, but I can maybe help you understand the room price thing.

 

Your wife booked ov. You can not downgrade to insides. You can upgrade which is why ov to balcony wss no problem.

 

To go ov to inside, as that is not allowed, you need to cancel and pay any cancel penalties to do that.

 

I am very surprised your TA could not explain that to you.

 

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

 

I didn't know that either. Thank you for explaining it. In other words it costs more to downgrade.

[Arzeena]

I think you need a new TA, but I can maybe help you understand the room price thing.

 

Your wife booked ov. You can not downgrade to insides. You can upgrade which is why ov to balcony wss no problem.

 

To go ov to inside, as that is not allowed, you need to cancel and pay any cancel penalties to do that.

 

I am very surprised your TA could not explain that to you.

 

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

 

And also it seems the booking was made within final payment period, hence the "cancellation charges". IMHO, OP needs a better TA.

Edited November 25, 2015 by Arzeena

[13seth]

I hope after all of that your family enjoys the actual trip. I have to say, though I loved the Crew/Staff on board the Dawn on our first cruise with NCL this past October,,

T

I am sure we will enjoy the trip one way or another. I was surprised by the horrible experience with the NCL supervisor but I am not angry, it was an agrivating situation I had to go through but that's life.

 

Good to hear that you had a great experience on board with the staff. I Look forward to hopefully having a similar experience and although we may not use NCL in the future, we are all very excited and feel very fortunate to have booked a 14 day cruise!

[hawkeyetlse]

Because, in the end after given lies and the run around, they did have the authority to bypass charging me the additional fee. They just took hours of my life on hold and waiting around my phone for call backs for them to do so.

They have the authority to do whatever they want. It's their company. That is not the issue. The issue is, what are you entitled to according to the booking conditions. It sounds like you got something you were not entitled to (switching out of your OV after final payment with no cancellation penalty), and all it cost you was a couple of hours on the phone. That's a couple of hours of your life to save thousands of dollars. I wish everyone's time could always be so productive.

[Kingofwylietx]

T

I am sure we will enjoy the trip one way or another. I was surprised by the horrible experience with the NCL supervisor but I am not angry, it was an agrivating situation I had to go through but that's life.

 

Good to hear that you had a great experience on board with the staff. I Look forward to hopefully having a similar experience and although we may not use NCL in the future, we are all very excited and feel very fortunate to have booked a 14 day cruise!

 

That's a great way to look at it. The hassle should be over.....and you'll soon be enjoying a great 2 week vacation.

[abe3]

Need to find a better TA.

[SeaShark]

Need to find a better TA.

 

Couldn't agree more.

 

A good TA would have told the client "Let me call NCL and take care of this for you and I'll call you back when it's all taken care of. That way, you won't have to sit on hold the whole time."

 

I can't understand why a TA would have a client sitting on hold waiting. :(

 

To me...that is a red flag.

[missintuitive]

Glad to see you can help one customer, but with NCL it would probably be thousands...where do you draw the line. Letting the customer service department use discretion on who they want to help and who they wouldn't, would result in a ton of lawsuits. Why help one, if you aren't going to help all.

 

 

 

You know what they say when you assume!

 

 

You ask where should they draw the line? IMHO the line should NOT be drawn when a request to postpone (Not cancel) a trip is based on a child being diagnosed with cancer. This is a rare occurrence. The parents may not have vacation time available to support the child through treatment and take a vacation. I doubt there would be thousands of exceptions of this type requested. In fact, the rarity of the situation is exactly why media picked up the story.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Pugzila1022]

It's 2015 and soon to be 2016 ... who uses a TA anymore? :)

 

When you find a good one, you will know the answer to that question.

[Pugzila1022]

I agree, it sounds like this was entirely the fault of the TA.

 

\QUOTE]

 

When he said the TA wanted to conference him in with NCL I knew where the problem was. A good TA should never ever do that. It puts the customer in a position of dealing directly with the cruise line, and that is something that the TA is supposed to do to earn their commission. A good agent knows how to get things done, and should have easily been able to work out this problem without causing so much drama.

[Pugzila1022]

I am not peffect at booking cruises obviously, and already mentioned that I will use this as a learning experience for future cruises. I still think that I should have been dealt with more professionally by the supervisor and have not had a similar experience on any other cruise line.

 

I read through the entire first post. I don't blame you for being frustrated, but as others have pointed out, you may want to took for a better agent. You should never have been put into the position of having multiple calls directly with NCL trying to fight the battle to get the rooms you want. A really good agent can get that done for you, and you will avoid the stress.

 

Hopefully now that things have settled down, you will be able to put this bad experience behind you and have a fantastic time on Breakaway. It's a great ship with lots to offer in the way of entertainment and specialty dining. I look forward to your review when you get back.

[Josher61]

OP,

I feel your frustration. It seems like an awful lot of aggravation for something that seems so simple to you, the customer. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. As many have pointed out, I think a lot of the problem rests on the shoulders of the TA. BUT, I know you think the TA was helpful. In reading your post carefully I noted a few glaring points that lead me to believe, or assume (as I know I shouldn’t lol but I do), your TA was possibly less than a tad upfront from the get go and then was just outright wrong or incompetent. I do think that the first time your wife called the rooms were indeed available, but not through the TA’s inventory of a group booking. So they sold your wife something else and thought that would be that. But it wasn’t. Once you started calling back and questioning things, they had to place the blame somewhere. I know this sounds like the TA is being dishonest, but believe me, worse things have happened. They don’t want to admit their role in what I would call dubious practices, so rather than do that, they do the “dance” and blame someone else. In this case, NCL.

 

Then you mention the TA didn’t think it was right that NCL charge for a “downgrade” in room. That right there tells me they aren’t competent. And from there on things got worse. Having your TA engage you with NCL is just wrong. It’s simply not the way it works. I am actually surprised that NCL would talk to you at all. I understand those conversations and calls were not pleasant for you. Reading between the lines a bit (and again making a few assumptions) I suspect the TA’s supervisor had to get involved somehow and convince NCL to talk to you because they knew they were in the wrong and couldn’t very well just come out and say they did wrong by you, so they continued with the incompetence and at some point enlisted NCL to “explain policy”. I don’t know how large the TA online company is but they may have a bit of pull with NCL and managed to get them to “break their silence” and deal with you directly. As a customer, this is not an answer for you, I know. But the “behind the scenes” of how the agency relationship works between TA’s and cruise lines is very straightforward. If booked through a TA, they are paid the commission on the booking and the cruise line does not deal directly with the passenger. It's just the way it works. There would have been some serious arm twisting to get NCL to even talk to you. I know you may think this is a good thing....but really, it wasn’t. (see below for my reasoning)

 

Unfortunately, there are no guarantees in this business (or in any) that ensures competence and well versed product knowledge. I truly believe your TA was not forthcoming in explaining the “rules” when you booked. Maybe through lack of knowledge and expertise on their own part, hence the wrong statements made to you, or just from a lack of desire to do a “good thorough job”. While I was reading your post, a number of times I kept thinking....it doesn’t work that way. Why is the TA not explaining it properly? Some of the statements your TA made are just wrong. After reading some follow up posts and your responses here I thought about something else. You say you are in business and you would never treat a customer that way and I understand that for sure, as I am as well, and I value my clients above everything. So if I may....a little example to explain what I mean from my above comments about why this situation was handled incorrectly. Frequently when dealing with new clients or just hearing stories of others in my field, I will often hear things like: my person was so good, my person had to do this when X happened, my person went to X for this for me etc. They are raving about "how wonderful" their person is. I cringe. Because what it means is really this: their person is lousy. Those clients had no reason to ever be involved in whatever issue they are discussing. But because their person chose to involve them and make them aware of issues, they are left feeling or thinking that their person did a wonderful job, when in reality, their person did a lousy job for them even knowing about the problems or issues or for getting them involved with the problem solving. That should all be handled “behind the scenes” with a final resolution being presented to the client when completed. Often I shake my head and think it’s actually almost misleading that clients feel they are dealing with someone competent and wonderful because of X problem. In reality they are dealing with someone lousy who should never have let the problem occur in the first place or in the worst cases, they caused it to happen. But once it did, to allow it to escalate the way it can and then to involve their clients in the resolution to the extent they did (other than receiving the clients approval for said resolution) makes it even worse. The best “service” to provide to a customer is one that is relatively problem free, or at the least, leave the client feeling/thinking it was. Does this make sense? Sometimes we perceive the person as helpful when in reality they are hindering you.

 

I know you are defending your TA and I understand that. As a consumer myself, I might think my TA was good too if they were battling for me. But experience tells me there is more of a problem on the TA side that caused the issue to begin with and made it worse with the terrible drawn out resolution. Maybe in time you will come to see it this way, I don’t know, but I hope that at some point you are able to reflect on all this when you are not frustrated and see maybe part of the issue was indeed the TA. It’s hard, when as consumers, we go out and “hire” a professional, we expect them to be just that; a professional. Unfortunately, that’s not always what we get. There are incompetent people in every field. I guess that’s why personal recommendations etc mean so much in business. You know that yourself, running your own business. Your reputation is all you have. But in the “online world”, reputations don’t mean as much, each client is replaceable with a click it seems.

 

Anyway, sorry for my long response, I just wanted to hopefully shed some light and perhaps have you consider the possibilities from a different perspective. Does any of this negate how you feel? Of course not. But it may help in the long run at a later time when reflecting back. I’m not absolving NCL or blaming you or blaming your TA (well I am) but what’s done is done and you certainly seem to still have a very positive attitude going into your cruise on the Breakaway. I hope you and your family enjoy your vacation! Its sure sounds like you worked hard for it!!!

Edited November 26, 2015 by Josher61

[Golfin55]

Are there cliff notes available for the novel?