Cancelled Cruise (three threads merged)

We were notified 6 weeks ago that our August cruise on the Ryndam had been chartered and we no longer had a holiday, no sorry or apology. We have only found out now that they will refund the deposit or transfer to another cruise but we have to pay any extra for the other cruises and possibly the cost of reissuing the airfares. No compensation. Is this fair? I feel that their "valued customers" are not valued. The company has ruined what would of been another fabulous holiday with them. Is there anyone else out there that were booked on this cruise and how did they go with Holland America? Does it matter which country you are in? :mad:

So wrong

When RCI cancelled our 12 day cruise last year they moved us to a 15 Panama Canal cruise (which was priced at 25% higher fare), gave us a $400 OBC, and paid change fees for airline tickets.

You may need to fight for what you deserve.

Rumors of what we were getting were far less than what RCI ended up offering.

I would go to the cruise meet thread for your cruise to see what others are being offered.

Woody

Welcome to Cruise Critic.

HAL has cancelled other cruises. People were offered another cruise at the same price on the ship ship. Some have been offer an entirely different cruise / ship because a certain itinerary was no longer available. People was offered the money needed to change airfares. Many got a little shipboard credit.

Check with your Roll Call here:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=319

Your TA should be contacting HAL and working on this.

Unfortunately cruises are canceled from time to time but the norm would be to get some OBC or other small "inconvenience" compensation such as so much off another cruise. I would not think your home country should matter but anything is possible.

Is this fair?

HAL keeps encouraging cruisers to post on their Facebook page. Perhaps you could raise this issue there too.

They do seem to view FB as a PR tool, so perhaps it can be one for you too.

.

Hello all,

I think that HAL's letter writer should learn to calm down its client, and not to shocking them.

Because the "dry" manner they inform there clients is not really the "state of the art" to proceed…!!

When our July 2012 Ms Amsterdam cruise was canceled / chartered, we got a letter from HAL with a surprising style because they say "this is an important update" => which was in reality a dry shoot-out !!!

And I could also read "if you cannot elsewhere in 2012 YOU should select to cancel ?!? -> should I laugh

But o.k. after the surprising impersonal and strange letter style, Seattle did thereafter a good job with brave and did help us correctly with a change-over to another cruise.

That HAL did ruined my 60. Birthday planning’s is finally another story….

Smooth sailing to all off you

G E R D

Our marvelous cruises : :)

MS Ryndam – Wayfarer – March 1997

MS Noordam - Transatlantic Island Hook - April 2001

MS Volendam - Southern Caribbean - April 2002

MS Volendam - Westfarer Caribbean - April 2004

MS Prinsendam - Windmills & Waterford – September 2004

MS Westerdam - Western Caribbean - April 2005

MS Statendam - Hawaii Circle - September 2005

MS Rotterdam - Vikings and Czars – July 2006

MS Veendam - Southern Caribbean – March 2007

MS Volendam – Panama Canal – April 2008

MS Noordam – Mediterranean Enchantment – September 2009

MS Nieuw Amsterdam - Mediterranean Inaugural Cruise - July 2010

MS Nieuw Amsterdam - Mediterranean Empires - July 2010

MS Ryndam – North Cape Splendors - June 2011

193 days - 42'587 Nm :

Future Cruises : :p

7 days MS Volendam – Glacier Bay Inside Passage, July 18, 2012

14 days MS Amsterdam – Alaskan Adventure, July 27, 2012

.

I'm an NPR junkie, so I am pretty sure your cancelled cruise was the one "A Prairie Home Companion" took over for August 18th. If that's the case, they are selling the cabins directly on their website. No idea how those fares compare to what you had already agreed to pay/paid, but they still have insides and outsides available, according to this page...

http://www.eminj.com/2012APHCCruiseWesternEurope/StateroomPricing.cfm

So, to the OP, if you were planning on going in an outside or inside, and this was a "dream" cruise for you, you may still be able to go! You'll probably have to put up with A Prairie Home Companion as your entertainment, though, at least on some nights, I would think.

I've commented many times on this subject in the past few weeks but this completely steams my clams!

It is a huge slap in the face! They sell you a cabin at a price, they expect you to stand on your honor and pay them, but because of a bulk sale they cut you loose! :mad: Where is the honor, the dignity, the character of HAL?

Apologists will jump in here and say "every other lineelse does it", but that doesn't make it right. If everyone else was denigrating the person with a lisp, doesn't make it right if you did it. Wrong is wrong.

By defending that action and spending your money after it happens to you, it is the beaten spouse syndrome... you take it and keep going back.

I am not condemning HAL at all, our next major cruise is with them in the fall, but I am condemning the industry wide insult.

Derek

When we had something similar happen our TA went to bat for us and worked with HAL and we got a truly tremendous deal as a result. Have your TA give it a try. If you did no have a TA it may be much more difficult.

A cancelled cruise is a bummer, but it can have a great outcome if you remain calm, cool and use the approach - OK, now how can we work this out in a lemons to lemonade manner.

Play 'em at their own game - book later! We always book well within 6 months of sailing date, sometimes 3 or 4 months and still get what we want. No benefits to booking early, except to the cruise line.:D

I'm an NPR junkie, so I am pretty sure your cancelled cruise was the one "A Prairie Home Companion" took over for August 18th. If that's the case, they are selling the cabins directly on their website. No idea how those fares compare to what you had already agreed to pay/paid, but they still have insides and outsides available, according to this page...

 

http://www.eminj.com/2012APHCCruiseWesternEurope/StateroomPricing.cfm

 

So, to the OP, if you were planning on going in an outside or inside, and this was a "dream" cruise for you, you may still be able to go! You'll probably have to put up with A Prairie Home Companion as your entertainment, though, at least on some nights, I would think.

Thanks mmr923 for that information. I appreciate it.

We booked a cruise for August this year and then was notified at Xmas that the boat had been privately chartered to someone else and we no longer had a holiday. After 8 weeks of extremely bad customer service we were offered some ship board credit and assistance with changing our airfares. So far so good but then we were told to pay almost $1400 extra for the other cruise Holland America had booked us on (and not going to all the ports we originally were visiting). I am not sure I should be grateful for what they offered or very upset as we cannot afford the extra cost (and so we have cancelled our holiday)!! We are very, very disappointed.

Losing a cruise to a charter is not an uncommon subject on cruise boards. It happens with usually enough time to allow for alternate vacation arrangements.

Are there no other lines that have a route closer to the original? There are so many destinations out there - if you explore them you may well find a completely different cruise equally intriguing to the one you lost.

If you have your heart set on a cruise it is disheartening to lose it, but it can happen in a lot of ways. Sometimes weather or other circumstances eliminate a port of call, or maybe two and these were the ones you booked the cruise for. It happened to us.

I hope you don't lose your vacation altogether as appears to be happening. I am curious about the fare differential though...are they substituting a longer cruise?

Smooth sailing...

We booked a cruise for August this year and then was notified at Xmas that the boat had been privately chartered to someone else and we no longer had a holiday. After 8 weeks of extremely bad customer service we were offered some ship board credit and assistance with changing our airfares. So far so good but then we were told to pay almost $1400 extra for the other cruise Holland America had booked us on (and not going to all the ports we originally were visiting). I am not sure I should be grateful for what they offered or very upset as we cannot afford the extra cost (and so we have cancelled our holiday)!! We are very, very disappointed.

Would you consider the itineraries of other cruise lines, such as Celebrity or Princess, for example, for August of this year! :)

We booked a cruise for August this year and then was notified at Xmas that the boat had been privately chartered to someone else and we no longer had a holiday. After 8 weeks of extremely bad customer service we were offered some ship board credit and assistance with changing our airfares. So far so good but then we were told to pay almost $1400 extra for the other cruise Holland America had booked us on (and not going to all the ports we originally were visiting). I am not sure I should be grateful for what they offered or very upset as we cannot afford the extra cost (and so we have cancelled our holiday)!! We are very, very disappointed.

That would certainly shock me as well. Why so much more? Seems to me that HAL would try to find something "even Steven."

In the end though it probably is better that you were bumped off of a charter, I can think of several that I would not want to cruise with - especially if I were not allowed to join in.;)

This is the third or fourth thread you have started about your complaint. Maybe you could get the hosts to consolidate them all into one for us.

This is very disappointing---it has happened to us and we did take what was offered in exchange. It cost a little more but was six days longer than we had first booked. The generous onboard credit offset the extra cost and after we got over the initial disappointment we had one of the most memorable cruises ever with a lovely CC couple we had met on a previous cruise.

When you book cruises well in advance, as we do, you have to do it with a thought to the fact that it may be chartered out and be ready to go with the flow. When we first booked our b2b next November we did it as 2 cruises as that was the way they were offered. A few months later when it was published that the two cruises were also being offered as a 14 day cruise, we switched to that one. That way, if one segment gets chartered out we will not be stuck with just a seven day cruise that we don't want. They will have to cancel the whole 14 days for us and then we will look around. As time goes by it becomes less likely that this will happen as a charter group needs lots of lead-in time to fill the cruise.

I am always sorry when I hear this has happed to someone and feel bad for their disappointment but in the end, there are plenty of other cruises from which to choose and plenty of time in which to do it.

Hope whatever vacation you substitute is wonderful.