nightly all-night-long noise from drilling, hammering & metal cutting

[italiandream]

Due to a cruise from hell I am forced to reveal my experience on MSC Fantasia. Cannes embarkation, 30 May 2016, Med cruise, 1 week, starboard midship, room with a balcony. Imagine this: night after night all-night-long noise from drilling, from metal being hammered, from metal pipe cutting and other, jagged, nerve-shattering grinding and scraping sounds, made by various heavy duty construction tools emanating from somewhere on board, sounding like it was in the floor and walls surrounding the cabin. All this work was after dark, through the night hours. I am not exaggerating when I say that the first three nights of our cruise were wrecked, and we were exhausted. MSC's cool, un-smiling P.R. suits at reception told us that emergency works were needed and nothing could be done except they could offer us a bottle of Prosecco (€5) gratis. We did not drink the delivered bottle. We left it, unopened in our stateroom when we disembarked. The noisy emergency, we were told, seemed to be only a nightly emergency as the sleep-loss noise stopped at dawn and resumed after dusk, day after day. After many visits to reception to complain, and many similarly motivated phone calls too, a one-stripe steward at reception took over from the suits. He told us the work could not be done in port, nor during the daytime – as the staff had other things to do then. Some emergency! More usefully, an exasperated member of staff, herself a steward on board, but not on the reception leash, confided in us and in our neighbours (other people from cabins, starboard midships, between 11158 and 11198) that she herself had not slept well on-board for some time due to these nightly cacophonies. She told us the same happened weekly. It beggars belief. What on earth can they be doing then, working all night, out of port, for such a length of time? Whatever, the result was that after 3 nights we had suffered no sleep and my partner and I were at our wits’end with unsatisfactory results at reception. After 3 nights of work and endless phone calls and visits to the aforementioned staff, we made a further, last visit to reception and stated we would take legal action once home. The noises stopped that night. They moved to the daytime after that. So, why could the work not have been done during the day before we had to threaten action once home? From Thursday onwards, after the initial three sleepless nights, we were left more or less in peace, with only one or two short occurrences of midnight hammering. Alas, we were so exhausted that by later in the week that we decided we could do no more excursions, and we tended to stay in bed a lot, catching-up on sleep during daytime. We missed out on breakfasts due to the problem. We'd ordered and paid for the deluxe in-cabin meals but due to being so tired, and sleeping late in the mornings to catch-up with rest, we had to cancel the meals. I give my MSC experience a 1-star review due to the hell of the first three days, and the insult of being offered a bottle of Prosecco for those 3 sleepless nights. We will be taking further steps to get recompense so all should be well in the end, much though we paid for it in stress and lack of sleep, and anxiety - not what you expect on a thousands of Pounds cruise holiday. Now to get some real recompense...

Edited June 9, 2016 by italiandream

[Capricruiser]

Wow, must have been an awesome emergency. You and the others on the corridor have grounds to demand your money refunded or a free cruise in my opinion.

[mairead224]

I'm all about seeing the bright side but that would have drove me nuts!!! I agree you should definitely take this further.

[riclop]

Totally unexcuseable.

[BermudaBound2014]

Very unfortunate- I wish you all the best dealing with Msc. Please come back and let us know the resolution.

[verodoodle]

Could have been handled much better, but if you were unable to sleep at night with the noise how did you manage to sleep during the day when they moved the work to the dayshift :)

Edited June 10, 2016 by verodoodle

[dst87]

This sounds horrendous. I'd love to know how you get on with this issue.

 

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