Thaumas

On 9/29/2023 at 3:27 PM, Megabear2 said:

You booked in March 2023 for March 2024 or was it March 2022 for March 2024?

17 hours ago, Supersun said:

We have had similar issues. I booked in February 2023 to travel on 27 October 2023 for 3 weeks. Our return flight was on PE and agent confirmed the same. No flight details were sent till late September 2023 which was on Charter flight Mareth Aero standard seats. They refunded me the extra pain without letting me know. I was unable to contact P&O and there was no reply to my emails. I managed to get through just before the start of the cruise and I was told no refund and I will loose all my money (over £5000). Further, received an standard email stating the same. Referred us to T&C. We are now on Arvia. I will take it further once we return. They have supplied recordings (though not all very cleverly) as I also asked for subject access. P&O staff are trained to deceit their old / regular passengers for new cruisers. Majority on Arvia and first time cruisers. Loyalty is out of the window plus service overall is extremely poor. We have been cruising since 2011 on P&O and celebrity. This will be our last P&O cruise. 

 

I hope my reply is not deleted as Carnival / P&O have a lot of clout.

I have told the P & O Guest Support Representatives that P & O should have offered full refunds to those people affected by this. I hope that someone, somewhere, will be prepared to take them to court. I understand that it will hinge on whether the removal of PE flight option is a “significant change” to the booking - this can only be determined by a judge apparently.

As for my situation, my wife and I have decided to go ahead with the booking on the basis that we are prepared to put up with the discomfort for the sake of the cruise (it’s a transatlantic, so no return flight). Unfortunately the recordings of my booking phone calls with P & O did not make it crystal clear that the booking was conditional on the availability of PE flight seats. I am still angry at the way P & O have treated their loyal customers, and won’t be cruising with them again.

You say you are now on Arvia but will take it further when you return - I wish you the best of luck!

On 9/30/2023 at 10:46 AM, Megabear2 said:

As I said way back in this thread the real conundrum is not those individuals who are already booked but the effect this decision will have to future bookings, ie the cruises still on sale - and there's a lot of them.  Once the dust has settled on the bookings made P&O is clearly going to have customers having a crisis of confidence in them.

 

The sensible thing to do would be to put their hands up, say we are sorry for how we handled it both with the agents and those booked.  

 

I've just revisited the list of flights involved: there appear to be 40 in total.  If every PE seat has been booked on these flights (and I doubt that is the case) we are looking at 63 passengers per flight which means we have a maximum 2,520 people affected.   If each person has paid in full their £409 supplement, again doubtful, P&O have already committed to refund £1,030,680 due to not being able to offer this cabin.  Given that a large number of these 2,520 people won't have paid their balance we are looking at most being on a 10% deposit.  Using my own cruise as an example at a cost of £6378 plus £818 PE supplement (total £7196 for 2) we are looking at £719.60 deposit for PE customers and using £1,300 as the entry cost for a basic inside saver cabin plus £818 PE supplement (total £3418 for 2) we are looking at £341.80 deposit if they have PE.  This gives us an average of £530.70 deposit and we know that many of the deposits will not be 10% (my own is £300, Pastyfeet's was £200) but for this exercise we will work on 10%.

 

If every one of those 2,520 people were given back their deposits P&O refunds £1,337,364 in full to the PE passengers across the season.

 

We have therefore already refunded/awarded

 

£1,030,680 already refunded

£189,000 in OBC granted

 

If we allow free cancellation of PE passengers we can add at a rough estimate another £1,337,364 to those figures.

 

Faced with these losses which are at the least £1,219,680 adding a rough estimated further £1,337,364 to the loss is inevitably going to be fought.

 

What P&O now need to consider is whether the damage to their brand and the confidence of the future passenger and travel agents is worth this £1.3m or so.

 

Answers on a postcard ...

On 9/30/2023 at 10:46 AM, Megabear2 said:

Here’s my answer Megabear2:

The cost of this PR disaster to P & O is far higher than the cost of agreeing to full refunds to those affected. In my own case, we have done 11 P & O cruises and are Mediterranean tier Peninsular Club members. If P&O persist in their current approach, there is no way I will ever cruise with them again. If, however, they accept that they unilaterally made a significant change to my booking and agree to give me a full refund with an apology, then I might just use them again. In truth, however, we prefer Celebrity.

 

Yes I have had the cost of the premium seats refunded, but to the balance payable, not to my credit card. I’ve also been offered an additional £75 on board credit. So why am I not happy?

Just the prospect of a long flight (apparently 1.5 hours longer than more modern aircraft) with the absolute minimum legroom (I have two replacement knee joints), and with only 23kg hold luggage allowance per person for a three week cruise! 

So, Jean Lyon and Winifred 22, suppose you had booked a superior deluxe balcony cabin on a P & O ship, and some months before the cruise they informed you that cabin class was overbooked, and you will be in the smallest inside cabin, but they were going to refund you the difference. 
Would you be happy?

“They never agree carriers”  - true, but isn’t it implicit that if they’re offering Premium Economy flight seats, they should be able to provide them, whatever the carrier? 
“How were they to know that they would have to use a different airline?” 
Airline plans will be determined months, if not years ahead. In fact it’s entirely possible that the plans for Maleth were known about when I booked the cruise. It’s bad business practice to offer something that you may not be able to deliver. It’s also potentially unlawful. If consumers from the USA were treated in this way, P & O would soon have a class action slapped on them.

Yes, I booked in March 23 for the cruise in March 24 - sorry, i seem to have posted twice. There was a message about loss of connection, so posted again🙄

Here is my dilemma: 

My wife and I have cruised with P & O in the Caribbean on many occasions in the past - we are Mediterranean level Peninsular Club members. We’ve always elected to pay for Premium Economy as I view this as the minimum level of discomfort that I’m willing to put up with. Other people have different feelings about this - I’m only stating my preference here. 

Last March, I booked the Arvia repositioning cruise for next March. I booked directly with P & O over the phone, and I made it clear that the booking was conditional on PE flight seats being available. I was informed that they were indeed available, and paid the extra £200 per person premium.

We were, in fact, on the Arcadia when I received the infamous email regarding the change to Maleth Aero, cattle class only. This is simply not acceptable to us, but when I complained to P & O, I got the inevitable raspberry - nothing in our Ts & Cs specifies flight carriers etc etc. - if you want to cancel you’ll forfeit your deposit etc.

It seems to me that P & O are riding roughshod over basic contract law, and hiding behind their Ts & Cs. This is why I believe someone should stand up to them. The offer of PE was there (although who knows whether the person I was talking to knew about the forthcoming changes of carrier). I accepted their offer and paid the extra. This seems to me more than enough evidence to make a Section 75 chargeback claim as I used a credit card to make the booking. Additionally, I have made a Data Subject Access Request to P & O - requesting them to supply a recording of the booking phone call. They are legally obligated to provide this within one month. I believe this will be sufficient evidence to confirm that the booking was conditional on PE flight seats being available.

Will we be sailing with P & O again? Guesses on a postcard please!

Here is my dilemma: 

My wife and I have cruised with P & O in the Caribbean on many occasions in the past - we are Mediterranean level Peninsular Club members. We’ve always elected to pay for Premium Economy as I view this as the minimum level of discomfort that I’m willing to put up with. Other people have different feelings about this - I’m only stating my preference here. 

Last March, I booked the Arvia repositioning cruise for next March. I booked directly with P & O over the phone, and I made it clear that the booking was conditional on PE flight seats being available. I was informed that they were indeed available, and paid the extra £200 per person premium.

We were, in fact, on the Arcadia when I received the infamous email regarding the change to Maleth Aero, cattle class only. This is simply not acceptable to us, but when I complained to P & O, I got the inevitable raspberry - nothing in our Ts & Cs specifies flight carriers etc etc. - if you want to cancel you’ll forfeit your deposit etc.

It seems to me that P & O are riding roughshod over basic contract law, and hiding behind their Ts & Cs. This is why I believe someone should stand up to them. The offer of PE was there (although who knows whether the person I was talking to knew about the forthcoming changes of carrier). I accepted their offer and paid the extra. This seems to me more than enough evidence to make a Section 75 chargeback claim as I used a credit card to make the booking. Additionally, I have made a Data Subject Access Request to P & O - requesting them to supply a recording of the booking phone call. They are legally obligated to provide this within one month. I believe this will be sufficient evidence to confirm that the booking was conditional on PE flight seats being available.

Will we be sailing with P & O again? Guesses on a postcard please!

Ok, I’ve resolved my problems with P&O now. I’ve transferred my booking to another cruise - in September 2023. (If Covid is still with us then I might slit my throat 😀). This is actually about £300 cheaper than my earlier booking and I will be getting a refund, although I might have to wait 3 to 4 weeks for it. As this is a new booking, I will be able to cancel it under standards terms & conditions. So at any time up to 91 days before departure I will be able to cancel it and sacrifice only the standard deposit for the cruise. In theory, I could cancel it next week (although I’m not going to do this). So I have gone from a situation where I might have cancelled the original cruise and sacrificed 100% of the full price to one where I could cancel the second cruise and only sacrifice the deposit on the second cruise. In essence, I am making a long term, interest free loan to P&O. I think I owe them that for their very reasonable flexibility. Full disclosure: I am a Carnival shareholder.

Hmmm, I notice that the same cruise on Iona, in Jan 2023 is several hundred pounds more expensive, so no chance of surplus refunds for me…..

In case it’s of interest here, I have a booking for the 2 week cruise on Iona, starting 29 Jan, going to Gibraltar, Portugal & Spain. After initial contact through the P & O Facebook page, I was advised to ring P & O if I was thinking of cancelling. My balance was paid at the end of October, so according to the Ts & Cs cancellation would mean losing the full cost of the cruise. I have now been offered a rebooking. (This is not the same as a FCC, because it has to be done in the next ten days). If I transfer my booking to another cruise currently on sale, the amount paid so far will be transferred to the new booking. This can be any cruise, including fly cruises up to March 2024. If the cost is less than the amount already paid, they will refund the difference. Here’s the interesting bit: If, within 90 days of departure with the new booking, I decided to cancel, I would then get a refund of the balance paid, ie I would only lose the original deposit. That’s as far as I understand it anyway.

Has anybody got a crystal ball I could borrow please?

On 9/30/2021 at 5:18 PM, pward123 said:

We were on this cruise and have had a couple of days to reflect. Overall, for us it was somewhere between good and very good, with some bits slightly better than that. We had a corner aft and felt The Retreat concept works well. The Retreat Lounge reminded us of the Business Class Lounge of a decent airline and perhaps that's what's intended. The Retreat Sundeck was very pleasant if you have the weather and will be fine in the Med or the Carribean. We enjoyed eating in Luminae once some early service issues had been resolved.

 

However, we had too many issues to rate the cruise any higher. I won't list them here (I might if I write a review) and there was nothing truly major but we only had two days of the cruise that didn't involve asking the Concierge or Suite Manager to resolve some problem or other. Maybe we were just unlucky.

 

We did enjoy the cruise and it was good to be travelling again.

 

Almost all seemed to wear masks when on the move but mask wearing whilst seated and in the theatre was mixed and there was no enforcement, just the occasional reminder (one used the word 'recommend') to wear masks from activity staff. We seemed to have slightly more 'reminders' towards the end of the cruise and we wondered why that was the case.

 

Celebrity have made some interesting choices on mask wearing. They are content to have a busy bar of unmasked people (Martini Bar, I'm looking at you) but they wanted us to wear masks in the Sky Lounge which is airier and tables are a distance apart...? I would be interested in their risk assessment for that. Also on the large, spacious ship it was half capacity. On shore excursions capacity on coaches, which are a more confined space, capacity was 75%. Again, I would be interested in their rationale - the cynic in me says it's about money.  

I agree about the somewhat variable approach to social distancing, particularly with regard to coaches on shore excursions. Typically (and this must be on instructions from Celebrity) one out of two seats was blocked on one side of the coach. However, all seats were in use on the other half of the coach. This meant that we found our heads were about 2 feet away from those of the people in front and behind. Yes, everyone was wearing a mask, but social distancing was non existent. The only way to have dealt with this would be to block off every other row. But guess what, this would halve the capacity of the coach and probably doubled the cost of the excursion. There is a difficult conflict between social distancing and commercial restraints.

Also, the ship was apparently at half capacity, but it certainly didn't seem that way when trying to find a vacant table in the Ocean View.

In advance of joining the Celebrity Silhouette this Saturday, we had our PCR tests this morning, courtesy of Celebrity's agent, Eurofins - no results yet.

It seems the least that could be expected I guess. The risk should be low, but it’s still a risk....

We are on the NCL Bliss, from New York, starting this Sunday, 1st Feb. I asked the NCL UK office what precautions they will be taking. They will be screening everybody before boarding. Anyone who has been in China in the last 30 days will not be allowed on board, regardless of whether they have symptoms or how long they have been in the US.