A PAN for Princess on MSNBC

[flamomo]

I found this as part of a critique of the travel industry written by Christopher Elliott, naming companies that travelers should blackball. Unfortunately he chose to zero in on Princess' customer service. We know from postings that they aren't perfect, but I wonder if y'all feel this is warrented. Recommending in print that a company be blackballed seems pretty strong.

Princess. Picking a cruise line for this list was the biggest challenge. There’s no way to independently verify the number of complaints about cruises. The Federal Maritime Commission doesn’t issue a regular report on the number of grievances it gets in the same way the Transportation Department publishes an airline report card. And even if it did, I’ve found that cruise complaints tend to be among the most frivolous — long laundry lists of nitpicky items that don’t always rise to the level of legitimacy.

 

 

 

 

It isn’t even that Princess generates more grievances than the others. (I asked Princess spokeswoman Julie Benson, and she said the cruise line hadn’t experienced any recent surge in complaints.) It’s that when passengers do complain, the company’s attitude often seems to be dismissive. And that doesn’t exactly encourage customers to book another sailing on The Love Boat. My colleague Anita Potter documents the company’s apparent indifference in a recent column in which a passenger is wrongfully denied boarding and then ignored when she asks for a refund of her expenses. Princess is remarkably consistent. Even my requests for assistance on behalf of other travelers are usually met with a “we’ll look into it” followed by a long silence. One reader recently referred to its passenger relations department as a fortress. That’s a good way to put it.

[flamomo]

Sorry for duplicating what someone else posted. I didn't see it till after I posted this.

[spongerob]

What the author basically says is, "Although I have no data to make objective comparisons, I'm making a list anyway, and will use anecdotes and isolated examples so I can fill the required column-inches." National Enquirer does more research than that!

 

Fortunately, almost no one watches MSNBC, and I think that alone tells the real story.

[Colo Cruiser]

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=612691