NoFlyGuy

On Ventura we usually book the superior balconies cabins and are happy to pay the extra.

Nothing to do with balcony size, it's more to do with the bathroom.

As ever it's personal choice but 14 days is about my limit to not having a bath.

How I miss Oriana where we could book a bog standard sea view cabin with shower over bath. Don't know if I would have coped on our 50 night cruise in 2017 otherwise.

Of course I know It's different for those that need specific cabins because of disabilities.

She's just turned North East now. Heading back to Southampton I presume.

21 minutes ago, majortom10 said:

You wont upset me we all have different views and opinions but IMO P&O do not come near to Cunard and QM2 is a very special cruise liner. We love sea days so love doing roundtrip TAs but appreciate sea days are not everybodys cup of tea. Having cruised nearly 50 times with P&O, Cunard and Princess since 1997 and again only my opinion but in preferential order would put 1) Cunard 2) Princess 3) P&O

Just goes to show that we are all different. Even if, before covid-19 , we all thought the same there would only be a few cruise lines remaining. As always, each to their own.

12 minutes ago, No pager thank you said:

Yes, I must admit one of the most disappointing aspects of the whole thing is how people on FB are being treated at times.

 

First, you have the group who think that P&O are actually listening, beyond trying to get any dialogue offline.  This group think, for some reason, that they will get direct, tailored support instead of being relayed to one or more of the pre-approved list of responses, as determined by the Social Media team.  Good companies would have a web chat by now to help with this group.

 

Next, you have the group who I would say come in to the "not familiar with computers," category; best way I can describe it.  Reading the messages, you can see that some are vulnerable, they aren't familiar with "netiquette" and don't even what a "mod" is.

 

It's completely unnecessary for anyone to take advantage of vulnerability in such circumstances by giving people false hope, misleading information, or in some cases tacking on to them for direct criticism. 

 

In this, I do criticise P&O directly by telling them that they are one of a few companies offering refunds; shocking behaviour and I'm glad that it is being called out by those who know better.

 

This is particularly true when the support from others is inspired by some sort of misplaced belief that the entity they are defending would treat them any more favourably were roles reversed.  I have found that genuinely upsetting to see, when if nothing else the current circumstances are encouraging us all to look out for one another.

 

Whether or not you do buy P&Os line and excuses, or if you think that they are no better/worse than others, this is poor form and it makes me sad to think that these people will still be on the passenger roll call when the crisis eventually ends.

Governments around the world have been putting their countries into lockdown and destroying their economies. It makes the financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent sovereign debt crises ( who can forget Grexit and the piigs economies) look like a damp squib.

I'm 66, so post war, but can't remember anything like what it's happening around the world now.

Most sections of the economy here and elsewhere are suffering but the hospitality/travel industry more than most and within that the cruise industry will probably be the last to recover fully.

As someone still waiting for a partial refund I'm not saying that P&O have covered themselves in glory but when the dust has settled I think they will be neither the best nor worst of any travel company.

I'm still happy to book P&O going forward but everyone can, quite rightly,  make their own decisions

Stay safe everyone.

We will not be deserting P&O for holidays.

If Carnival UK were the only travel company taking ages to refund customers I might think otherwise.

As is obvious by my username we don't fly, that rules out a whole host of cruise operators.

We like the option to cruise year round, another bunch out of the equation although we could use some during the summer eg RCI and we  have done so in the past.

We like freedom/my time dining so that now precludes Fred and CMV and also Cunard unless you pay a huge premium.

Price, P&O may not be the greatest offering but even if all the above was satisfied we couldn't justify paying £300 to £400 pppn.

How much better can the food or entertainment be to justify those prices?

Luckily we all have the choice, each to their own.

Pleased to hear that refunds are starting to come through both on here and the Facebook P&O groups.

Day 60 for us tomorrow but I don't expect anything to appear on my CC account.

As I've posted before we are lucky being retired so we don't need the cash urgently, hence not chasing them up.

I was going to write I've got better things to do with my time than hanging on the phone but, of course, that's not really true given the restrictions we are all facing.

Truth be told it's Covid-19 apathy!

22 minutes ago, Selbourne said:

Oh, OK. Everything’s fine then 🤔

I didn't say everything was ok. Still awaiting our refund, but quoting a sample of less than 200 when tens of thousands of cruise cabins has been affected, is hardly either helpful or representive.

18 minutes ago, Selbourne said:

Well it’s not just here, Facecloth and Which? Magazine where P&O’s previously loyal customers are giving them a bashing. I just happened to look at TrustPilot and the last 36 reviews, bar none, have ALL been one star, with many saying that they would have given zero or even minus scores if they could! Overall, based on all reviews to date, they have now dropped to one and a half out of five. What a terrible fall from grace for a company that has previously traded on its great service levels. 

I just had a look at Trust Pilot. True they got 1.5 stars but that was based on 194 reviews. Hardly a consensus. 

18 minutes ago, terrierjohn said:

The Captain on Ventura during our behind the scenes tour was asked about this, and he gave the answer that most sailors refer to this whole area as Biscay, even though its name is Fitzroy.

Perhaps I was being a bit pedantic. My main point was that you are in the North Atlantic ocean in autumn in a temperate maritime climatic zone so the weather and sea conditions can be anything from a flat calm to a nasty storm There's simply no way of knowing 5 months out. I suppose It matters not whether you are in sea area Biscay of FitzRoy.

I always start to look at windy.com a few days before any of our cruises to get an idea of what conditions to expect. Can't do anything about it, but I like to know.

13 minutes ago, terrierjohn said:

But that whole sea area is referred to as Biscay.

Most cruises, if you are going to the Med, Canaries or Transatlantic, are in sea area Fitz Roy not Biscay.

La Coruna, you may just enter Biscay but normally you would have to visit ports like Santander, Gijon, Bilbao or La Rochelle to really have done the BOB.

We've often found the sea conditions off the western coasts of Spain and Portugal to be worse than Biscay or Fitz Roy.

I also admire your optimism.

As an aside most cruises don't cross the BOB - they skirt it by 50nm or so. A better question is what's the North Atlantic like in October. Agree with others could be anything - just pot luck.

37 minutes ago, Bin man said:

Hi Jeanlyon did you post p and o freephone no someone I Know just spent £26  on phone call I said I'm sure you posted a freephone no 

Ouch!

I've only called once to cancel 2 cruises on the 17th March. Used my 'unlimited' mobile rather than land line as I had a long wait.

Can't remember what number I called and obviously not everyone has unlimited calls tariffs on their mobile.

1 hour ago, terrierjohn said:

Andy,

Monster or not  we find that the Voyager and Freedom class ships flow far better than any of the P&O ships we have been on, which is all except Oceana. Whilst many still do get lost on them, we found their design was so superior that we find it hard to understand  how Princess ever designed their ridiculous Grand class.

Prices now are far higher than P&O, but when we booked our only 2 cruises with Royal Caribbean they were comparable, as were all our Celebrity cruises we did up to 2016. 

Finally Celebrities Soltice class is a similar design platform to the above Royal ships, and if you ever see a competitive cruise offer for any of these ships, you ought to give it a try to see just what you're missing.

We've only cruised RCI and P&O and only since 2011.

Of the two we prefer P&O overall.

In terms of loyalty benefits we are diamond with RCI and Ligurian with P&O .The balcony discount on RCI is useful but the happy hour free drinks on RCI is of no use to us as we would never book an RCI cruise unless they were including the premium drinks package. Their drinks prices are exorbitant with a gratuity added on top! Of course they up the cabin prices to an extent when they through in the drinks package. The 10% onboard discount with P&O is useful in keeping our bar bill down.

Also P&O sail from the UK year round (or at least they did until recently!).

Not saying we would never book another RCI cruise but all our forward bookings are with P&O. How many go ahead I have no idea. 

26 minutes ago, Eglesbrech said:

The recent cancellations and the way they have been handled have really annoyed some pax. While those opting for FCCs seem to have been treated fairly well, those requesting a refund have not going by the number of complaints on here and elsewhere.

 

Broken promises about refund timescales, lack of communication and a general refusal to answer perfectly reasonable questions eg which date have refunds be made up to.

 

So will this impact future booking or will people huff and puff for a it - then book again next year?

I'll huff and puff. After our two cancellations still got 5 booked from December onwards. Might have to cancel one or two with dividend income drying up.

But hey/ho we are alive and well!

21 minutes ago, staygulf said:

P and O are just laying off 400 staff. How long do you propose to wait? 

As long as it takes. It's not my business to know your personal circumstances but as I posted yesterday, I feel for those who need a refund to help ends meet rather than to book a new holiday in 2021. There's no way P&O can know these people.

I'm sure we will get our refund in due course and it will just go back into our holiday account, which it came from .

1 hour ago, staygulf said:

Decided that better course would be to sue, get judgment by default as they aren’t responding to anything, then send in the High Court bailiffs. Notice before action was sent last week

 

Each to their own. As I posted last night we'll sit and wait it out. 

In case you hadn't noticed, the world's a different place to what it was a few months ago.

Troubling times for all of us.

I have the greatest sympathy for those, whether they post on here or not,  have found themselves in financial hardship and really do need their refunds to come through quickly. Whether chasing P&O or any other holiday organisation for that matter helps, then good luck.

We are now at day 55 but not expecting anything to happen soon. Having already paid for our cancelled cruise we can afford to wait. If it gets to July and nothing is forthcoming I will probably then at least phone or email P&O. Until then I'll just sit it out. 

32 minutes ago, wowzz said:

Raab has just said you can only  meet family members in a park, not their garden. 

Problem is if you meet family members in their garden you may all be tempted to go inside if the weather's not too good or it starts to rain.

Can't do that if you meet in a park.

Seems to me the major message was to get more people back to work even in non essential services, subject of course to social distancing measures being adhered to by employers.

Whilst I understand the problem with balancing the damage to the economy with all the grief that that will bring down the line, with controlling the spread of the virus. It's a bit of a catch 22.

The worry I have is that while the number of daily deaths as shown by the 7 day moving average has steadily been declining,

the number of daily positive tests has been fairly constant.

Yes we are testing more and It might not be 100,000 a day but has increased but where are all these 4,000 or so a day showing positive picking up the infection?

We just go out for walks around the village and will still be distancing at least for some time.

Managed to get supermarket deliveries so far, so lucky us.

34 minutes ago, pete14 said:

Sadly, in terms of reported deaths per reported cases, our rate of nearly 15% puts us second behind Belgium. This of course does not include the large number of people who have self diagnosed without a test having been done and recovered (in all countries). We are told that our figure is higher because we now include deaths in all settings not just in hospital but this was done through the choice of our government. There are so many variables in any of the stats and in how countries choose to compile their figures but there is no denying the fact that tragically we are not doing well.

Latest figures I have for deaths per 1m population for some major countries are:

USA 242, France 403, UK 465, Italy 503, Spain 566 and Belgium 740.

So, not good, but not the worst and we are counting all deaths where Covid-19 is suspected to have played a part.

Can't comment on the others.

1 hour ago, Tommart said:

Yet another testing foul up I'm afraid.  And as the Telegraph says (and this is a government supporting paper!), the UK has failed to meet the 100,000 a day testing target every day for the last week, and only 'met' it once ever by posting 40,000 testing kits to people at home to fiddle the figures!

 

No wonder we've got the second highest death rate in the world after the US, a much larger country.  This is a tragic performance by our government, for which they should be deeply ashamed.  We'll see what the PM has to say later today, but I guess he'll be saying how well we've done, as usual.

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/05/09/lab-issues-force-government-fly-50000-coronavirus-tests-us/

Strange you mention the US but fail to mention less populated countries that have a higher death rate than the UK.

14 minutes ago, P&O SUE said:

Yes, me too. Was only one excursion but I cancelled it and could see it on my credit card statement within hours.

Same for us. We cancelled two excursions on 16th March for our 15th May cruise and were refunded quickly as usual.

Cancelled that cruise and our 28th June cruise the next day by phone, both were direct bookings.

Needless to say no refund yet but we are only at day 51 and are lucky as we can afford to wait it out.

7 minutes ago, Joseph Bloggs said:

Best of luck with that one. I presume you have factored in the speed at which at which the law proceeds. I think you will find that the wheels of justice roll slower that those of P & O. As for the threat of a winding up order Carnival will no doubt be quaking in their shoes. Legitimate as your claim may be the legal system will be snowed under with all the claims, insolvencies, etc. I doubt that yours would be prioratised.

Too true.

We all want our refunds and, as stated before, some need them more than others. Not to book a future cruise sometime in the distant future, but just to help make ends meet in these difficult times.

Sadly P&O cannot know the personal circumstances that their guests find themselves in.

Others are in greater need to us and so I wont be chasing or taking any action. I'm sure we will get our refund in due course.

1 minute ago, wowzz said:

I'm interested to see your evidence for that, compared to how many people have died due to not being able to access medical treatment for cancer, transplants etc.

Seems some of you are never going to agree. I don't know whether he's brilliant or flawed. Bottom line he did something stupid and, rightly,paid the penalty. As for the timing I have far more urgent thing to think about.

Slightly more on topic I worry about some of the things we are all now told to believe are essential in tackling this pandemic.

As a former computer programmer I don't like anomalies.

Many have stated that we started testing too little and too late. Maybe - but then you have to explain the situation in Japan.

They have done very little testing even by UK standards but have hugely less deaths even in a country with over a 100m population. If testing is so important, explain why?

Then there's Sweden - no lockdown that most other countries would call a lockdown. Yes, their outcome so far is worse than their Nordic neighbours but it's hardly catastrophic and they have been able to keep far more parts of their economy going.

Why is Cofid-19 not rampant in Sweden? 

Just me musing.

7 hours ago, terrierjohn said:

And yet most countries in the world are struggling to get adequate supplies, do you think every government should be flogging themselves, wearing hair shirts, and making groveling apologies?

Very true. Isn't hindsight a wonderful thing! People moaning now about the Nightingales not being needed.

What would have been the reaction if the NHS had not been able to cope with the cases?