Sir, That's Not Fecal Water Flooding Your Cruise Ship Stateroom, That's Brown Glue

[photodoodle]

There is a report on the NCL board of passengers from a series of cabins that did not have AC. The way the story goes is that they were each offered $150 OBC. On disembarkation day, the passengers had a sit down in the lobby. They wanted a free cruise. Reportedly, NCL called the Coast Guard in and they were hauled off.

Oh my! I wonder if the cruise lines have collectively decided that $150 is the standard buyoff amount for an "inconvenienced" customer. This is hardly enough when you've sweltered your way through your vacation, or worse, had the stinky seepage.

That's why I think these kinds of discussions are important. Sadly, the passenger who had a bad experience may or may not be made whole. But future passengers may benefit if the cruise lines learn that shoddy treatment of passengers will be publicized. It's not exactly the cover of Time, but people who read travel & cruise boards are important to the reputation of a line.

These two stories show how difficult it is to judge another passenger's response to a bad experience. Some say the person who accepted the $150 buyoff for the sewage problem was too passive. Some will say a sit-down on disembarkation day is too aggressive. I think it's important that we be supportive of other passengers: one because this is a passenger-centric venue, and two because sharing information is how we can influence cruise lines to continue to improve.

[Juanita462]

We will never set foot on the Statendam again - we spent 11 of a 17 day cruise smelling horrible sewage smells through most of the ship. We were lied to repeatedly - found out 2 years later from someone who worked on that ship that a valve had broken and flooded the crew quarters with sewage. Imagine living with that for 11 plus days. But why lie about it - only one crew member was honest and said he wasn't going to lie, that there was a sewage smell. all the rest said "what smell"

 

Also there has been noro on all three cruises that we took on the Statendam - over two weeks on a longer cruise. I keep watching the sanitation reports and they obviously are not reporting this as none of our cruises were reported as having noro when there was - and not just a few, I think it was 69 pax and 39 crew.

 

There is no excuse for not moving those pax to other accomodations - however they manage it. How dangerous to stay in a room with raw sewage saturating the carpet.