NCL Breaks More Than One Ship

Apparently the Norwegian Dawn also had similar problems, according to this CNN iReport.

Another Cruise Liner Breaks Ships

You may have heard lately Carnival also breaks ships.

I count my blessings that my experience wasn't as bad as the traumatic experience these folks had. But what's scary to me is that my experience came close - as we were running on only partial propulsion. I wondered, for two days, whether propulsion would fail entirely and we'd be stranded. But that, NCL's dishonesty, and missing a port was only worth returning the port fees for one stop to me, I suppose.

$200 on-board credit, which I'll never use

I'll keep this short, and I'll post an update when I get some more time.

I received a letter today. As stated in the voicemail the letter was dated February 5. It was postmarked February 10. I can kind of see it being written on a Friday (which February 5 is) and then missing the mail. How it sat 2 more days not being mailed is beyond me. Maybe the propulsion system on the NCL office mail system broke down, and they had to stop in Saint Thomas to fix it. *eyeroll*

The letter included:
1. More apologies
2. Reminder that we'd already been compensated $75 on-board credit.
3. An offering of $200 on-board credit.

To their credit, they continue to be very polite. It does make me think twice about wanting to continue to pursue reasonable compensation. And then I think about how they kept us in the dark on the ship, the anxiety, and the fact that a 2-year-old ship's vital systems should not be breaking, and it sure as heck should have replacement parts on-board! It was a computer; it's not like you need to dock a ship to fix a computer! The bad experience, the lack of reasonable compensation, plus the overall decline in food quality on the ship gave me a bad experience, so why would I choose Norwegian Cruise Line again? What good is $200 non-transferable credit if I won't sail with them again! $200 isn't larger than their typical discounts they offer to book a cruise. And, remember this is on-board - how much money does this really cost them? The cost of drinks or food bought with it? Yeah, sorry, I'll pass.

The letter was signed by Marie Silva, the woman who I've been speaking to about this. To recap, according to the staff on the ship Norwegian Gem, she is the customer service representative responsible for the entire Gem. I was kind enough to leave her name specifically off this blog, however, I see no reason to withhold her name now. I'll leave her phone number off the blog, for now, as she has been 95% polite.

So, that's it for now. While I collect my thoughts for the next post, I'm going to start telling people about this blog.

More Calls

So I called Friday, and my contact had been out of office, so I left a voicemail message.

No word back, so I called again today. Got voicemail, left a message, got a call back about an hour later. I was on another line, but got a lengthy voice message. Apparently a written response was sent out February 5, which, I suppose, would be exactly 15 business days, even though they had said "days", not "business days", and that I would "hear back" in that time, not that they would take that time just to decide.

Then my contact stressed two points:
1. She provided a general office number to call that "anyone there could help me". This is despite the ship's officer specifically giving me her name and contact number. She mentioned this twice in the message, so I'm guessing she's tired of dealing with me.
2. If I wanted to send an "additional" request to them, I could submit another written response. This was a bit vague - I mean, if I was satisfied with their response, I wouldn't need anything else from them. I am now doubtful that they did anything else for me. At the same time, it was a voice mail, so maybe she simply could not give details on the phone.

So, now I'm waiting for a letter in the mail. If they outright deny any additional compensation, I will have to start promoting this blog, and start thinking about a YouTube video.

Ten to Fifteen Days

It is now fifteen days since I faxed NCL my complaint letter. On the assumption that they meant "business days" when they said "10 - 15 days" to get back to me, I will wait until mid next week before calling and asking what's up.

However, I am now publishing all of my posts so far.

Postcard

Today I received a postcard from NCL's Customer Relations Department. It was a form postcard, with an automatically printed label of my mailing address that was placed askew on the front.

In cutesy freestylin' font on the back, it reads:

"Dear NCL Guest; [sic]

This is just a quick not to let you know that we've received the correspondence you sent.

We're now in the process of checking into the matter and we'll write you back as fast as we can.

Thanks for your patience - and thanks for taking time to contact us.

Best regards,

Noweigan Cruise Line
Customer Relations Department."

It was postmarked the 22nd, meaning it took literally a week plus one day between the time I faxed them and the time to mail this. To be fair, they'd already called me (after I called them first), so this postcard was more of a formality.

p.s. Nice misuse of the semicolon.

Confusion and Lack of Confirmation

This morning I woke up and found out that there was a "pending" charge of about $500 from NCL. 15 minutes on hold later than morning, and I found out that this was a temporary charge that was applied on the last day of the cruise before our bill was settled, and it takes 72 hours for it to disappear. I'm glad we applied it to the credit card and not the checking account, else there'd be $500 less to spend while that cleared. As a side-note, the customer service rep wasn't very patient explaining this with me - like he explains it all the time and I should know better or something.

Still no confirmation that the fax was received. Called the representation that I spoke to on Wednesday, left a message to call or email me back and confirm receipt of the fax. I don't want to end up two weeks later only to call and find out, "Oh, sir, we never got that". I'll call again early next week.