Cunard's Coronavirus Cancellations/Refunds (Merged threads)

[juicyjuju]

1 minute ago, mygreyhound66 said:

#juicyjuju - how can this sailing be happening?  since the US has banned cruises, then the ship will not be in our ports!  Shouldn't your travel agent be telling you this?  something doesn't sound quite right here..........can you please come back and update us a bit more on this?  I am waiting to be cancelled on a transatlantic for June 7th, perhaps you may want to wait a couple more days?  didn't someone say that we may hear a bit more by the end of the week?   many thanks....

I and the TA know it won't be sailing but Cunard is insisting it is.

[deck chair]

Hi!  May I please refer readers to the Chris Elliott site.   He is one of the world's best consumer advocates.  www.elliott.org.

The site can answer many questions especially regarding charge backs.

Deck Chair

[tv24]

11 hours ago, juicyjuju said:

My TA just called Cunard to file for a refund for me. We are supposed to be sailing on May 29th 2020 from San Francisco to Vancouver, which obviously can't happen due to Government bans on cruise ships in both the U.S and Canada.

Cunard told him the cruise is sill sailing but if I would like to cancel I will only have to forfeit 50% of the full fare I have paid. They advised me not to wait until April 30th to cancel because then I will loose 75% of my fare. So shady!!!!!!!!

I am trying very hard to not blow my top.  Really rotten business practice.  Really rotten customer relations.  Are they deliberately trying to ruin their future business, should they ever sail again?

[IB2]

11 minutes ago, tv24 said:

I am trying very hard to not blow my top.  Really rotten business practice.  Really rotten customer relations.  Are they deliberately trying to ruin their future business, should they ever sail again?

Why?  
 

They are keeping cruises as listed partly out of hope, because their business desperately needs a resumption.  Partly because, when cruising becomes possible again, those decisions are likely to come at short notice and they don’t want to find they are allowed to sail but have cancelled too early, or have cruises with no passengers.  And partly because, like every other business, their administration is crippled by lockdown and is already swamped dealing with earlier cancellations - as we can see from the stories in this forum.  There is no point adding another batch of people chasing their refunds if they are still overwhelmed with dealing with the first lot.

 

The rest of it is simply a reminder of the normal cancellation terms, to make sure that the customer makes any decision knowing the implications.  Which is better than leaving people to cancel not understanding the consequences.

 

Of course, best judgement is that there won’t be any cruising for ages, probably for most of the year.  That doesn’t mean there won’t come a time when its being allowed to resume comes as a surprise.  I believe I was the first here to say that the industry was going to be closed down, and if you look back through the comments you will see that some people didn’t believe me and a couple were very unhappy, even though that decision followed just a few days later.

Edited April 23, 2020 by IB2

[tv24]

6 minutes ago, IB2 said:

Why?  
 

They are keeping cruises as listed partly out of hope, because their business desperately needs a resumption.  Partly because, when cruising becomes possible again, those decisions are likely to come at short notice and they don’t want to find they are allowed to sail but have cancelled too early, or have cruises with no passengers.  And partly because, like every other business, their administration is crippled by lockdown and is already swamped dealing with earlier cancellations - as we can see from the stories in this forum.  There is no point adding another batch of people chasing their refunds if they are still overwhelmed with dealing with the first lot.

 

The rest of it is simply a reminder of the normal cancellation terms, to make sure that the customer makes any decision knowing the implications.  Which is better than leaving people to cancel not understanding the consequences.

 

Of course, best judgement is that there won’t be any cruising for ages, probably for most of the year.  That doesn’t mean there won’t come a time when its being allowed to resume comes as a surprise.

There are not going to be any shocking and surprising resumptions of cruises between San Francisco and Canada for May 29, just 5 weeks from now unless there is an amazing act of God that erases the virus.  I understand that the Cunard staff could not tell this TA/customer that the cruise was cancelled because it is not yet cancelled.  But they could have simply said wait and see and ask for patience.  Instead they just repeated the cancellation forfeitures and thus made a customer unhappy.  Meanwhile the delays in Cunard's announcing the inevitable cancellations are making so many customers question Cunard management's intentions about holding our thousands of Pounds and Dollars paid for cruises that will not sail.

[IB2]

10 minutes ago, tv24 said:

There are not going to be any shocking and surprising resumptions of cruises between San Francisco and Canada for May 29, just 5 weeks from now unless there is an amazing act of God that erases the virus.  I understand that the Cunard staff could not tell this TA/customer that the cruise was cancelled because it is not yet cancelled.  But they could have simply said wait and see and ask for patience.  Instead they just repeated the cancellation forfeitures and thus made a customer unhappy.  Meanwhile the delays in Cunard's announcing the inevitable cancellations are making so many customers question Cunard management's intentions about holding our thousands of Pounds and Dollars paid for cruises that will not sail.

Aside from the difficulties of running the business with so many staff at home, the difference between refunding everyone straight away, and holding cancellations to the last minute and taking some time to return the cash could easily be the difference between survival and the business going under.  We may not like it, but it isn't difficult to understand.

[Host Hattie]

I'm closing this thread as things have now moved on.

Thank you for all your contributions and please continue your discussion on the new cancellations sticky.