HAL Customer Service - New Cuba Cruises

[Jemima]

We did book this Veendam 14 day holiday cruise with a HAL PCC and no TA is involved. We did not receive any notice from HAL. We only received the confirmed booking with no mention of a change in the cover email.

[knittinggirl]

As someone who was booked on a Christmas cruise on the Veendam, I found out by accident (Google earch) that the cruise was dropped in favor of the Cuban itinerary. This took both myself and my travel agent by surprise.

 

As my wife and I are destination based cruisers, we had our hearts set on the southern caribbean so this shortened cruise was a non-starter. We are currently looking at competing options. We fall into that small group of people who cruise to enjoy the destinations and are willing to book months in advance to ensure a spot.

 

While I appreciate the need for HAL to meet new business needs, someone failed to consider the impact on customer relations. I am now twice as likely to drop HAL from consideration for future cruises. They needed a strategy on how to handle the customers that were already booked.

 

Does anyone else feel that this was a serious lapse in customer service?

 

thanks,

DH would be furious! He's informed me on no uncertain terms, that he doesn't want money to go to Cuba, period.

 

Transfer the booking!

[Jemima]

...

Now, since in this case it was HAL who effectively 'canceled' the cruise, an argument could be made that the customer should not have to bear the expense. I believe HAL didn't call it a cancelation, but a change of itinerary.

Gets messy, doesn't it.

 

The old cruise and new cruise have different booking numbers. None of the ports are the same. The old cruise had 10 ports: Half Moon Cay, Grand Turk, San Juan, St. Thomas, Guadeloupe, Saint Lucia, Grenada, Barbados, Martinique, Saintt Maarten, The new cruise has 7 ports: Cozumel, Costa Maya, Key West, Havana (overnight), Cienfuegos Cuba, Montego Bay, and Cayman Islands.

 

Also, while it looks like we are being slightly compensated by a fare reduction, that isn't so. The new fare is exactly the same as the old fare when divided by the number of days (14 days old cruise, 12 days new cruise). The new cruise is actually more when port taxes are included.

Edited May 29, 2017 by Jemima

[3rdGenCunarder]

The old cruise and new cruise have different booking numbers. None of the ports are the same. The old cruise had 10 ports: Half Moon Cay, Grand Turk, San Juan, St. Thomas, Guadeloupe, Saint Lucia, Grenada, Barbados, Martinique, Saintt Maarten, The new cruise has 7 ports: Cozumel, Costa Maya, Key West, Havana (overnight), Cienfuegos Cuba, Montego Bay, and Cayman Islands.

 

Also, while it looks like we are being slightly compensated by a fare reduction, that isn't so. The new fare is exactly the same as the old fare when divided by the number of days (14 days old cruise, 12 days new cruise). The new cruise is actually more when port taxes are included.

 

So if there are two booking numbers, what happens if you look up your cruise under the old booking number?

[ninefishes]

I have posted our experience regarding this whole changed itinerary ordeal. Although we did received two emails as mentioned in my previous post, I wonder whether for some people the first one ended up in their Spam folder? I just realized the first email we received on May 23, which served as a notice of the coming up changes, shows No Sender, No Subject in my mailbox. Depending on what email server one uses, it's likely that it arrives in the Spam folder. That's why some of the above posts saying they only received the revised confirmation email (which is a normal one).

 

Just a thought, could be wrong.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

[bUU]

That makes sense. I often have to ask folks to whom I've sent email to dig it out of their spam folder.

 

This message may have been entered using voice recognition. Please excuse any typos.

[NeverStopLearning]

I did hear back from my TA and she did find one email in her spam folder. No mention of which email it was; notification or confirmed booking,

 

So to be fair, HAL did try to reach out to us to explain the change. Furthermore HAL is processing our full re-imbursement. So I will give them credit. They did try and they are processing our refund as fast as they can.

 

I will give them full marks for a good recovery, and I will acknowledge that I was a bit quick on judgement. I hope that they are able to sell out the cruise.