UKstages

there are many lovely things about the prima. there are also nasty, atrociously ill-conceived and executed things. do a search here for "prima" and acquaint yourself with the good, the bad and the worse. nobody can predict whether you'll like the ship. try it and see for yourself. i personally would never sail it until they fix the known noise problems in an unspecified number of rooms. get one of those rooms and you may lose many days of sleep. avoid those rooms and you have a greater likelihood of having a great time... as long as you don't mind aimlessly roaming around the ship looking for seating or waiting to dine in restaurants or be served at bars.

the indian food onboard the prima is excellent. i assume some can be found in the buffet, but i haven't eaten there yet. the "tamara" station in the indulge food hall serves authentic indian cuisine, although not all dishes/condiments are at all meal services. all the indian food i have had in the buffet on other NCL ships has been top notch.

i've never had anything lost and no damage to my items when NCL does the laundry. those tags, however, when you pull them off... THEY can cause damage to more delicate items.

thanks. i was already scheduled to change rooms for the second half of the back to back. i'm in a mid-ship "family balcony" on this leg, which looks a lot like a regular balcony room to me. the rooms on the prima, and i have unfortunately seen several, tend to be larger and quite comfortable, with larger bathrooms and spacious showers. i have no way of knowing how quiet my new room is, however, despite it being the second day of the cruise. and that's because there have been several deviations to the itinerary caused by weather conditions. (the same conditions which presumably caused all that creaking and popping... sever wind and very high waves). on the prior cruise, we skipped the icelandic port of isafjörður and - as reported by others upthread - we called on reykjavik a day late. we were supposed to have overnighted in reykjavik at the end of the cruise and had a full port day, with the cruise ending the next morning. instead, we pulled into reykjavik at 3 AM, with the cruise ending a few hours later. communication of the changes was poorly handled. but they did offer 25% FCC on a future cruise and 50% should you choose a european holiday. on the current cruise, they once again have canceled the call into isafjörður, but also canceled akureyri, which we did manage to visit last week. so, this cruise began with an overnight in reykjavik and a departure time of 10 PM on the second day of the cruise. this did afford back to back cruisers (there are nearly 400) the opportunity to go on a tour or explore the city. communication of the itinerary change was good for those coming on board, but very poor for the back to back cruisers. anyway, the point here being that i have no way of knowing whether the room is good for sleeping, as we haven't started moving yet. given it's mid ship location on a higher deck, i'm going to say that it'll be just fine. i should mention that when i spoke to the assistant GM a few days ago, she indicated to me that she and the GM would make time for a drink or a meal with me on this second cruise. they are interested in hearing my perspective on all things prima. i would welcome the opportunity, but intend to do absolutely nothing to bring that about. she wants to talk to me... she certainly knows how to find me.

since when is asking for a room to sleep "a high level of compensation?" kindly go back and read this again. i think you may have missed some key points, namely that what i initially and repeatedly asked for was a room to sleep in, which is exactly what they gave me... after being subjected to this for three and a half days. and this was not a garden variety case of "lost sleep." this was NCL-endorsed, authorized and approved sleep deprivation for three and a half days... more similar to POW torture techniques than simply missing a few hours of sleep. this was not the common creaking we've all experienced in rough seas... this was not a little tossing and turning by a sleepless malcontent... this was incessant, persistent unwelcome loud noise that prevented anything from being done in the cabin. thanks for your kind words. just to be clear, these were not noises to which one would become "accustomed." some in this thread have posited that this was just a little noise, like the type routinely heard in cruise cabins. it was not! it was all-consuming and deleterious to one's health. and several others have come along to corroborate this, with one saying he "almost went mad" and that it affected his "enjoyment, mood and attitude." it is - apparently - a serious design flaw with the prima and affects a considerable number of rooms. the challenge here is that nothing is being done to rectify the issues. I think i said upthread that NCL's strategy - with everything - is to apply a quick fix... they almost never address the underlying issue, so the problem happens over and over again. these kinks won't magically work themselves out. NCL would have to decommission the rooms, break open the walls and fix whatever structural defects are in there. so, assuming they even want to do that, they would probably have to wait for the first dry dock opportunity. you know the way they say your mileage may vary? you mileage does indeed vary considerably from mine. i don't have the depth of your cruise experience, but i have quite a few under my belt. i have never experienced anything like this ever before. no creaking, popping or other noises have ever kept me from sleeping for three days and inspired me to sleep on the bathroom floor of my cabin. and while i can acknowledge that different people have different tolerance levels for unwelcome noise and inconvenience, i'm pretty darn sure that anybody who endured this would be kept awake. this was not common creaking and rattling. and, again, the problem and the degree of severity was verified by NCL. that's a vital part of this story that many seem to forget. also: i had on noise canceling headphones and could still hear the noise! they are now. it didn't start out that way. talk about customer service nightmares! all the early adopters (including me) complained and complained and complained about generation one of this product. the batteries did not last through the night. bose denied the problem existed, but kept sending out replacement products when people complained. i went through six pairs before bose did a complete product recall, discontinued the product and refunded everybody's money in full. and then they reengineered the product and came out with gen two about a year later. thanks. i plan to write something up a few days after returning home... not a trip report per se, but a bunch of miscellaneous observations, some to do with the prima, some to do with generic NCL stuff. it's not all bad! there are some wonderful stories and anecdotes about great service, great food, great comedians and many people going the extra mile to make my vacation memorable. and then there was the cruise next fellow who began his conversation with me by saying "look, sir, i don't want to get into an argument with you." THIS.

not being unreasonable, no. however, you should have no realistic expectation that they will bend the rules for you. keep at it, escalate the concern, and reach out to corporate executive offices, in miami. i personally think for things like this, you’re better off contacting NCL directly, rather than through a TA.

yes. but the right hand essentially denied there had ever been a left hand.

thanks so much for your observation. but you’re using fuzzy math, at best. platinum is the middle level, for sure, but this isn’t about levels, it’s about points. the points and where you fall in the range tell a different story. i myself have repeatedly posted about the large number of new platinum members due to double and triple points promos. but please understand, i'm not saying platinum is an elite level... NCL is. they position it as an elite level with enhanced benefits. also, if you’re going to quote me, it may be fairer to quote the entire sentence, in which i also refer to my ruby CAS status. ruby status is achieved by running $175,000 through slot machines or $350,000 through video poker machines, which is what i most often play. CAS ruby is an elite level that trumps latitudes platinum any day of the week. or at least it should, if NCL recognized the value of its casino guests outside the casino and they synched latitudes status with the casino rewards program, which they don't. (in fact, one of the latitudes levels shares a name with one of the CAS levels, but they have no shared benefits or coordination. how dumb is that?) speaking of which, i’ll be latitudes sapphire in a few days at the conclusion of this first leg of my B2B. i do very much look forward to your recalculating the math and somehow minimizing my sapphire status. `thanks in advance!

for privacy reasons (my own), i won't reveal that until the end of the cruise. but it's a club balcony room, which narrows the field considerably.

other than that, mrs. lincoln, did you enjoy the play?

oh, geez. i see i have an email from corporate that came in today. i took a quick glance. it appears to be very much a pro forma canned response. they kind of lost me when they referred to me as a “shareholder.” i am not. and they seem to have got other key details wrong. sheesh. i’m still a bit loopy. i’ve been sleeping well in the new room, but i had such a deficit that i’m still not fully recovered. in fact, i fell asleep on a tour bus yesterday. i didn’t have the most engaging tour guide, but that had very little to do with it. so, i’m going to go enjoy the rest of my cruise(s) now. you kids behave yourselves. i’m sure the usual suspects will be along soon to tell me what a nutter i am and also how brilliant i am. i’m sure there will be those who will demand to know why i let this go on so long and others who will wonder how NCL could let this go on so long. i think marc spijkerboer is likely to see increased traffic to his linkedin profile. and i’m sure it won’t be long before cruise critic runs a feature article on how to make your ship’s bathroom floor the most comfortable it can be. they will reveal shocking details on which lines have the most spacious floors and which have oversized toilets that obstruct the footprint and pose an obstacle to a good night’s sleep. and some forum folks, i’m sure, will want to know how much i tipped the security officers who stormed the new room and interrogated me. i adore you all. (except for the ones i have on ignore... them, not so much.)

a couple of addenda before i go on my sleep derived, marginally merry way… when i went to get the key to the new room, the guest services agent was unsure of what to do and how to process the request. he saw all the notes, he knew he was supposed to give me a card, but he didn’t know how to go about it. he went in the back, then came out, then went in the back again. and then he said, OK, here is your new card. and he gave me a new blank card with no imprint. and he wrote the room number down on a piece of paper. i went to the room, a balcony cabin one deck below my first room, and it was fine. i did note that there was excessive fan noise in the bathroom, so i was hoping that i wouldn’t have to sleep there… but other than that, the room was fine. the next day, there are loud and insistent knocks on my door (despite it having the ”do not disturb” indicator lit). i answer the door and am greeted by six people, including two security officers. they don’t identify themselves, but immediately hit me with a barrage of questions: “why are you in this room? who gave you a key to this room? when did you get that key? when did you move to this room? where did you come from? is anyone traveling with you? what was your prior room? have you been here the whole time?” apparently, the guest services agent who gave me the key didn’t process the key properly. and the gang of six descended upon me to find out what was going on and, geez, i dunno, just a guess, extricate me from the cabin and send me to the naughty room? i have no freaking idea. at this point, let me just pause to say: how can one company be so incompetent and so clueless and cause so much discomfort and inconvenience at nearly every customer touch point? (i have lots more examples of incompetence and lack of attention to details onboard the prima, including one that happened that same day with the excursions team. i’ll tell you more about that when i gather my thoughts, and write another post about the good the bad and the indifferent with this ship, but – for now - let me just say that the excursions team will look you straight in the face and lie, lie lie till they are blue in the face and then deny that they are blue and say that they're actually yellow and suffering from jaundice… and then hand you reissued excursion tickets to make up for their mistake [which they won’t admit to]. what they neglect to point out is that those excursions have less preferred oddball times that require you to change all your dinner reservations and make you miss featured entertainment.) the next day, a certificate for crossing the arctic circle arrived to the new room, with somebody else’s name on it. correct room, wrong guy. how does THAT happen? was there somebody in my room earlier in the cruise? did they assign a random name to this cabin because their “system” requires a passenger name be assigned to a cabin so that six people don’t barge in and interrogate you? my money is on the latter. and rather than fix the system, they provide a stopgap patch that will get them through the next few days, but that will guarantee that this will happen again to another passenger. that’s really the problem… there’s a lot of flying by the seat of your pants onboard NCL ships… and they never solve the underlying problem. they just fix whatever is wrong in the moment. there is something to be said for that… but it won’t ensure the long-term viability of the company.

as for that $500 credit… i have a couple of issues there. the first was already stated up thread. it is a very small fraction of my spend on this cruise, when you factor in casino action. but because casino operations and ship operations don’t really have anything to do with each other… the people making this decision don’t recognize my value as a casino customer. i’m not really an NCL customer. i’m a casinos at sea customer. but casinos at sea can’t make good when the ship screws up. the second thing about that is… it’s unclear if it came from the ship or was corporate’s idea once they got involved, if indeed they got involved. that in itself is not a problem. what is interesting is that nobody on the ship… on the scene… is authorized to offer a $500 credit? that is remarkable. remember what i said upthread about empowering your people to make good decisions on their own and get the job done? you deprive somebody of sleep for three days and you first have to get in touch with corporate over a weekend to authorize a gesture of good will… whether it be $500, 1K, 2K or a generous amount of monopoly money… a.k.a. free slot play? really? whatever happened to hiring good people and trusting them to do the job they know how to do, until and unless they screw up? they got this. at least that's the way it's supposed to work.

so, let’s unpack, shall we? three and a half days of relentless noise that kept me from sleeping, culminating in having to bed down on the bathroom floor. umpteen complaints, er, i mean… expressions of my disappointment and concern: two visits to guest services, two phone calls from the manager of guest services who claimed she was the GM’s assistant, six conversations with my cabin attendant (you have only heard about one of those), two conversations with casino hosts, zero calls from the actual GM (nobody gets to see the wizard!), one call from the actual assistant GM, four misdirected paper messages and one more visit to guest services to get a new key for the second room (more about that later). and in the end, what did i get? EXACTLY WHAT I ASKED FOR THREE AND A HALF DAYS EARLIER. plus $500 “for my troubles,” as the saying goes. miami, we have a problem. at least one problem, possibly more. if the assistant GM is to be believed, and their policy is in fact to give people an additional “sleeping room,” then there is a major problem in training and communication. why is the person who is asked to resolve frontline customer concerns and communicate with customers seemingly unaware of that policy and why does everybody steadfastly refuse to budge from this erroneous position for more than three days, during which a customer is driven batty from sleep deprivation? i believed her and i was aghast at how simply this was ultimately resolved. but i was also quite angry inside (you may appropriately select that red face now). i felt like the enemy i had been fighting for there and a half days was a straw man. i was raging against the machine and there was no machine there… there wasn’t even an abacus. i was discussing this with a friend who pointed out the whole thing might be BS. there is no “additional room” policy, he said. they reversed course, he said, because they ran it up higher and somebody said this was crazy or because corporate got involved because of your email or because nobody ever actually spoke to the GM and once he learned about this he said, enough! or because somebody actually did look at your revenue tab and said, crikey, this is not somebody we want to annoy. take your pick. the assistant GM told you that they have a policy and a mistake had been made because it was easier to explain than three days of intentional obfuscation. is that the case? i don’t know.

i wrote all the posts above before this next thing happened, but i decided to post them as a contemporaneous account of what transpired. it seems to me that people who frequent the NCL forum on cruise critic might want to know that there’s a decent chance they could lose sleep on the prima or wind up sleeping on the bathroom floor. and there’s an even greater chance they could lose more sleep as they tried to resolve a customer service issue. and the preceding posts provide the necessary context to understanding this next bit. not twenty minutes after i finished writing all that, i received a voice mail from a woman who identified herself as the “assistant GM.” sheesh… they’re everywhere, these so-called assistant GMs! i looked her up. turns out, she’s the assistant GM! score another one for NCL! i called her back. she said she was very sorry at what had happened and that she understood that i had been offered “an additional sleeping room” and had refused. i was gobsmacked. i said, “um, gosh, no, that’s not what happened at all. i was told i would have to move to another room and relinquish my ability to use my originally booked room. i was told this repeatedly.” and then i explained that she has a much bigger problem than inconveniencing one guest. it appears that there is widespread misunderstanding about requiring people to give up their stateroom to move to another in a situation like this. she said, “that’s not our policy. not at all. we do this all the time under these circumstances.” we then had a brief conversation about how this happens on the prima during rocky seas and how, yes, there are a number of rooms that are so affected. it was quite a cordial conversation that went on for a few minutes more. then she ended with: “of course, you can keep your original room. this would be an additional room for sleeping! also, we would like to give you a $500 credit.” i said thanks and told her that i thought $500 was a little thin for three lost days of my vacation, with three sleepless nights culminating in a stint spent in the fetal position on my bathroom floor, and especially when viewed against my actual spend on the cruise thus far. (yeah, i actually did say that.) but i did thank her once again. and i asked if this were to be FCC or OBC. she said it would be a credit on the bill and it was authorized by the folks at corporate in miami, so it would take a day or two to be reflected on the bill.

as i mentioned up thread, i’ve been in customer service and customer problem resolution for decades and that’s not what this tracker - which is a relatively new tool – is used for. it just isn’t. now, a company can choose to use and apply a different label and purpose to a business tool if that’s what it wants to do. but everybody has to be on the same page and understand what it means. i suspect that not everybody at NCL is or does. so, you likely have a frontline customer service rep who is saying the customer is red-faced “angry” and everyone who handles the concern subsequently accepts that the customer is red-faced “angry” because there it is, right there in the incident repot in the CRM software. and that, in turn, invariably leads to negative attitudes and opinions about the nature of the customer concern – and the customer – before the executive resolution team even begins to tackle the problem. the salient point here is that it is very hard to be treated fairly once you’ve been branded as an irate customer. no matter what you do or say is likely to change the company’s preconceived notion of you, even if that notion is based on corrupt data. and you know what so often happens? they treat you as an irate customer… and so you fulfill their prophecy and become one! not because you’re normally prone to angry outbursts, but because you’re exasperated at the seemingly inappropriate responses delivered without empathy, apology or genuine understanding.

now, i do have a theory as to how this all happened. not the noise problem… they had some clowns build a new ship for them and the QA team was asleep at the wheel. that’s how that happened. no, i mean the somewhat lackluster customer service response. remember the nice fellow who took my initial incident report? he might be a part of the problem. i believe he may have misused a customer sentiment tracker in NCL’s CRM software, due to poor training or a simple misunderstanding. the sentiment tracker has a graphical interface that uses a series of five “faces” ranging from a smiley face to an angry, nay, furious, nay, IRATE red face with steam escaping from it. And the frontline rep is supposed to choose one of those faces that most closely resembles the customer’s current state of mind or mood. i asked the rep who first took the incident report on my situation which face he had chosen for me. he said “this one” and pointed to the red IRATE face, with the guy blowing his cool. I asked why he chose that one. “i’m calm, i'm polite, i’m expressing a legitimate customer concern. shouldn’t my mood be, gosh, i dunno, maybe this yellow face over here, the one next to the smiley face?” he said, “actually, sir, the face indicates the severity of the problem, not how angry the customer is.” um, OK, but... no, it doesn’t.

as day 7 began, i was loopy. i couldn’t sleep in the observation lounge because it was closed overnight. i couldn’t sleep on my balcony because it was too cold. i couldn’t sleep in the room itself because of the constant noise. i had been up for thirty something hours once again, but managed to get two hours sleep during the night and as morning approached i got another two hours sleep by bringing two pillows and a top sheet into the bathroom and making a little bed on the tile floor: my head near the shower door and my legs adjacent to the toilet. hey, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it! i don’t recommend it for those over 5’8”, but it was the best sleep i had in three days, i kid you not. i would not be surprised if NCL dropped those images of lobsters and champagne and water slides in their forthcoming brochures and switched them out for images of their guests in fetal positions on the bathroom floor. freestyle cruising means having the freedom to sleep anywhere and any way you like! when i woke up - fresh as a daisy – i went down to guest services again. it was 5:30 or 6:30 am, i can’t remember. i spoke to a lovely woman, truly capable of expressing empathy. i asked her to pull up my account and i guessed that there would be some notes in there. indeed there were! it took her a few minutes for her to cycle through and get caught up. she explained that a room had been found for me! a balcony room one deck below my current room, i believe she said. i told her i had no idea this had happened, how would i have known? she said a message was left for me. i said i received no such message. i also told her that in the past day, i had received three notices for other rooms with similar room numbers. one was an invitation to a dinner with officers, one was a message and one was park west spam. i delivered the invitation and the message to the other cabins myself. and i tossed the park west advertisement. my point was that it was entirely possible that my message had been misdirected. it happens all the time. anyway, at this point… who cares? let’s just get a key to my new room, so i can get some proper sleep! then she said she couldn’t give me the key to the “new” room until i moved out of the old one. ruh-roh. i explained yet again why that was neither fair nor advisable: i had not had much sleep, i would be moving rooms for the next cruise and it really wasn’t fair to ask me to move again just five days later, i had laundry out waiting to be delivered, but most importantly, i had port days coming up… the noise problem did not exist while in port and we were overnighting in reykjavik, leaving an entire night for me to enjoy the club balcony room that was rightfully mine. she said, let me go in the back and check. she came out a few minutes later and said, no, i would have to move and lose access to the original room. i asked her to document our conversation by placing comments in the notes field and then i began to walk away, but i came back to ask her why marc’s picture is on the note to the GM box if he doesn’t answer customer queries or concerns. she said, “oh, no, he absolutely does.” i felt like i would be telling her that santa claus did not exist if i continued the conversation, so i said thank you and left. i walked away, got all the way to the other side of the ship, then turned back and went back to guest services. i said, “please write in the notes to have whoever addresses this problem look at the revenue tab on my account.” yeah, i played the revenue card for the first time in this ordeal. look, every customer deserves to be treated well and be given what they paid for. but there’s a class system at most businesses (the latitudes program, the casinos at sea program and the entire haven “ship within the ship” concept is built upon this notion) and the value of all customers is not equal. so, yeah, i politely suggested that if someone looked at the revenue tab on my account, they might think differently about depriving me of three nights of sleep.

as for who calls whom… in customer service, it doesn’t really matter, provided the problem gets resolved or the task gets taken care of. but if it doesn’t, it matters a great deal who makes the call. the GM’s refusal to get his hands dirty by talking to an actual customer experiencing a serious service lapse demonstrates either a total lack of understanding of the complexity of the problem or an alarming ability to remain aloof amidst the chaos his team had created. frankly, if he can’t be bothered to call a customer, perhaps he should try spending a night or two in one of those noisy rooms to see how debilitating it can be to be subjected to that minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, night after night. most importantly, if he had taken the time to make a three minute or thirty-minute phone call, it would demonstrate that he genuinely card and that he is dedicated to owning the problem and providing resolution. and sometimes, in those three minutes of discovery, you might just learn that the problem you thought existed doesn’t really exist. or you might learn that you have a different problem entirely. perhaps people claiming to be your assistant are misrepresenting the company’s position or not delivering the message you think she is. the point is: spend time with your customers. and not just the ones with compliments. you’ll learn far more about your business and your employees from those lodging complaints than you will from those praising you. by the way, these folks know everything about you. they know where you are and where you’ve just been. they know where you have dinner reservations and when you’re riding the go karts. they know when you’re in the casino. (they also know if you’ve been good or bad and, yes, it is on your permanent record. every NCL customer has a profile that includes your cruise history, your spend, your projected lifetime value and any notes that staff have made about your preferences, your demeanor or your transgressions. this is common for hospitality firms.) rather than using fifty-year-old and four-hundred-year-old technology to communicate via voicemail and paper message, why not just go to where they know you are or will be, have a five minute in-person conversation and be done with it? they have your cell phone number, they know who is using the internet, they know who is using the app. why not simply push a message to you rather than dragging the process out over days by leaving endless voicemails and paper messages, neither of which are easy to get when you’re out and about the ship? it’s exasperating. oh, and i’m not running a school for GMs here, but a fruit basket always works. nobody really wants them, nobody really eats them, but it’s a gesture, ferchrissakes. you screw up, you send a fruit basket. (note: this does not work for wives, just disgruntled customers. you’re on the hook for roses for your wife.) i should probably mention here that being the good cruise critic doobie that i am, i also reached out via email to katty byrd, vp of guest services at NCL corporate in miami. call me a sentimental fool if you will, but i thought she might like to know what was going on onboard her newest vessel. do you think i should have emailed katy perry, too? ; )

the good news is that i was able to get three hours of sleep that night. yeah for me! the bad news is that – as day 6 of my 11-day cruise began - i was still exhausted. and yet i waited that next morning - like a schoolgirl with a crush - for marc’s call. it never came. needless to say, no rooms were shown to me. in fact, i didn’t hear from anybody at all until about 2 pm, when the “GM’s assistant” called once again. she said she waited till 2 pm to call because she assumed i would be sleeping. i told her she didn’t understand the problem if she thought i could sleep. she said that she had spoken to marc and that he said i must move if i wanted a new room. i said that made no sense whatsoever. and reiterated the reasons why. she had no response. if she offered some legitimate reason why i couldn’t have use of the original room, while using the other room for sleeping, i’m sure i would have stood down and agreed to move. but she couldn’t offer me a reason because there is no reason. other than, perhaps, marc said no. and that’s why i guess i needed to talk to marc. that’s the thing folks. if you’re going to ask your customer facing people to properly manage customer dissatisfaction, you have to empower them to make decisions on their own. they can’t defend decisions that don’t make sense, that they can’t explain or that that they don’t understand. this woman couldn’t explain to me why i couldn’t do the thing she was explicitly told i couldn’t do. i told her she was asking me to move to a lesser room with fewer services without any compensation. i also said i was disappointed that marc didn’t call me himself as promised. she said no such promise was ever made. i said it was… by her, in our last conversation. she said it was not. i said it was. she said it was not. i’m not terribly proud of what happened next. i told her that it was in fact promised by her and that i had been waiting for his call and then i told her that our conversation was over and i would await marc’s call. and i hung up on her. yeah, just three hours of sleep over more than 48 hours will do that to you. i don’t recommend it. hey, isn’t this one of the things they do when they torture prisoners of war? stick them in a room and play unwanted sounds until they can’t take it any longer?

with regard to the room not being previously identified as having this problem… geez, i don’t know. i asked my steward about it and he said, yes, he hears that all the time when he’s in there making up the room. isn’t that interesting? as far as i’m concerned, if the steward knows about it, NCL knows about it. NCL has a bigger problem than structural defects in the wall if they haven’t trained cabin attendants to report problems with their rooms. but back to the sorcerer's apprentice… she said she could indeed move me to another room (which, in truth, was not exactly what i asked for. i had asked for a room to sleep in.) but OK, kindly make like sandy dumbrowski and tell me more, tell me more! she said that all the “mini suites” were sold out, but that she could move me to a “studio” cabin. i asked if these were the inside cabins for solo travelers. she said yes. i said that would be fine, i needed a place to sleep… i hadn’t slept all night! i also said that i assumed i would keep the club balcony room as a base of operations. this is quite common in a customer service recovery situation like this in the hospitality industry. you get the person what they need – in this case, a room to sleep in – and everything else gets sorted out after that. in fact, i spoke to somebody to whom this sort of thing happened on another NCL ship and they gave her a room across the hall. and she was free to go back and forth between the two rooms. my brother is the GM of a resort hotel and he confirms this happens all the time. it’s much more difficult when the property or ship is sold out, of course, but usually an accommodation of some kind can be made. i explained that i was in no condition to move to another room after not having slept all night… and the club balcony had a much larger footprint, was good for hanging out in during port days (since there was no noise when the ship was docked) and also had a few benefits, including a free bag of laundry. and, knowing what i know about the way NCL ships operate, i explained that trying to get those benefits, or even messages or “treats” or laundry delivered to my new stateroom would be problematic at best. she insisted this had to be a move. they could only arrange for me to move to another room and i would no longer have access to my former room. (when i say they could “arrange” it, i don’t mean to imply that they offered assistance for the move… nope. i would be on my own with that. i just meant they said they would “arrange” to give me a new room.) frankly, that seemed unreasonable to me. it’s not like they needed the room for another guest. (the ship sailed under capacity.) and i would lose all the benefits of the booked room. she explained again that the “mini suites” were sold out and so i could not move to another “mini suite.” i understood this, i accepted this and at no time did i ever insist on being moved to another “mini suite.” all i asked for was a place to sleep. she said she actually did have other vacant “mini suites,” but that they were designated as “noisy” and could not be offered to me. (she referred over and over to these “mini suites” and i think this is a serious branding and marketing challenge for NCL. they spent all this money to rename the “mini suite” to “club balcony” and yet they can’t get their long-term employees to play ball. it must be frustrating.) she then said she could offer me what she called an “ocean view” room instead. i asked her to tell me more about that. “that’s a room with a small window?” i asked. no, she said. an “ocean view” room has a balcony. hmmm. uh, OK. i said that would be fine, too, but that i really needed to keep my original room as a base of operations. it was also at this point that i realized that maybe she wasn’t the best communicator. not only had she been imprecise in what she said to me, but i didn’t have a high degree of confidence that my concerns were being communicated properly to marc, the GM with the smiling face, who seemed to be the decision maker here. since i know marc has good people skills, i asked to have marc call me. she said he would and that he would be able to show me available rooms the next morning. so, i felt like a modicum of progress had been made there at the tail end of that call. a glimmer of hope! but i was still stuck in my uninhabitable room for another night. and i hadn’t slept all night… at that point i was probably up for 34 – 36 hours. i will just pause for a moment to say that i have devoted most of my professional life to senior leadership positions in training and customer service and sales. i have worked extensively in the philippines, with 48 trips in the last ten years. i understand thought organization and idioms unique to the filipino community... and even i couldn’t understand what she was saying to me. this was not an accent problem… i heard the words she was saying… they just didn’t make much sense.

much later that evening, about six or seven hours after i lodged my first complaint, i received a voicemail from somebody who described herself as the “GM’s assistant.” she wanted me to call so we could get the matter resolved. and so i did. and she then introduced herself once again and said she was the manager of guest services. OK, whatever. I thought she was the GM’s assistant, which i should take great pains to point out is very different than being “assistant GM.” i suppose that anybody who works in a managerial capacity in furtherance of the GM’s goals is a GM’s assistant, much like mickey mouse, who wasn’t really a sorcerer, but a sorcerer’s apprentice. so yeah, it’s a bit of a stretch, but sure. the GM’s assistant. let’s work with that. i just needed a place to sleep. could she help? turns out, she could! at least i thought so, but then i wasn’t so sure. she admitted noisy cabins due to structural flaws were a big problem onboard the prima from day 1. just to clarify, this really is related to high seas. in stormy weather, in high seas, when the ship is rocking, these cabins have an internal structural flaw that makes the internal walls and support structure creak in the most annoying way. (that’s my layman’s explanation. if an engineer were actually sent to my room, he or she might have a different explanation.) you might go on the prima and be placed in one of these rooms and never have a problem. you might be hard of hearing or have a high tolerance for pain inflicted on your ear drums. so you might never complain. indeed, that seems to be NCL’s revenue-based strategy behind the sale of these rooms… some people won’t mind and for those that do, we’ll sort it out later. she apologized for the inconvenience, but she did say that my room had not been previously identified as being problematic in this regard. please note: she didn’t apologize for NCL booking me into the room, she didn’t apologize that the problem wasn’t resolved and she didn’t apologize for the seven-hour delay in getting back to me. she apologized for “the inconvenience” and that they had no comparable room to offer me.

and then, guess what? the most remarkable thing happened. somebody did indeed get sent to my room! score one for NCL! he was a very nice gent, a warm and affable fellow who spent maybe 90 seconds in the room and, apparently, verified that the problem exists and that the noise is pretty much continuous. score one for the aggrieved customer! he told me that an engineer would be dispatched to my room to fix the problem. (clearly following the script… i heard that earlier the same day… perhaps i am wrong... perhaps there IS an executable plan!). he handed me his business card which listed his title as “2nd steward pax.” have you noticed that everybody likes to hand you their business card onboard NCL ships, but they all have job titles that don’t make much sense to anyone who doesn’t work on the ship, and they rarely correspond to the task at hand? anyway, have you ever tried to call these folks? it usually begins a volley of voicemails that doesn’t get resolved – if at all – till the end of the cruise. again, if at all. (when i arrived on my cruise i already had four voice mail messages! turns out, they were for the previous guest in my room. i didn’t listen to the messages, because that would be a violation of privacy and i care about guest privacy… apparently, NCL doesn’t. but i sure do wish i had listened to them… maybe there was one addressing the prior guest’s noise complaint. maybe that’s why an engineer never came to my room to fox it! maybe it’s because he had been there on the prior cruise. hmmm.)

so, doubting that an engineer could actually fix this problem, i grabbed one of those “Dear GM” notes that you’re supposed to fill out for the GM’s attention and drop in a clear plastic box as if you’re entering a draw for a door prize. In this case, the GM is a friendly and engaging chap named marc spijkerboer. i know he’s friendly because he’s smiling in his photo which adorns his box. I know he’s capable because he has decades of experience in the hospitality field on both land and sea. (it’s true… i looked him up! his linkedin profile lists strategic management thinking, people management and motivating skills, planning and organization and training and development as core competencies. we have a few things in common, marc and i.) so if marc wants me to drop him a line to get my problem resolved, i’m more than happy to do so. marc’s da man! now, i know you’re going to find this hard to believe after the previous forty paragraphs or so, but i provided a concise summary of the problem and simply asked for a sleeping room that i could use to, well, sleep. i dropped it in the box.

now, i had read about prima noise complaints similar to mine in this very forum. but i had dismissed them as the whining of cantankerous curmudgeons who can just never be pleased and who blow up the most minor of inconveniences for dramatic effect. i mean, c’mon, who would believe that they could build a new ship with a large number of rooms with this very problem believe, my friends! turns out, this is no exaggeration. the noise is real and i can vouch for its ability to completely destroy your sleep, disrupt your cruise and turn you into a zombie. the noise is maddening and ever present. and what is so disturbing and so disappointing is that management doesn’t really have an executable plan - after more than a year of dealing with this known defect - to manage customer dissatisfaction when this happens. they still can’t acknowledge how bad the problem is and provide reasonable accommodation, both in the sense of actual lodging (a quiet place to sleep) and a customer service “accommodation” for the incredible inconvenience and as an acknowledgement that an major portion of your vacation has been taken away from you.) at about 10:30 am on day 5, the first of four consecutive sea days as we crossed the atlantic, i went to the guest services desk to report the concern. i spoke to a nice gentleman who didn’t seem the slightest bit surprised at this complaint, as he probably hears it frequently. how many rooms are there like this? i asked: is it 12? 15? 30? 125? 275? he wasn’t talking, nor is anybody else, but i did learn that these rooms are flagged in NCL’s system as having noise problems. presumably, that’s so they can sell them last or not sell them at all or sell them at a deeply discounted rate… you know, as if there were a slide running through your balcony. (i know, i know, like something so crazy could ever actually happen!) i asked why NCL would book this room at all. and i asked why NCL would place a platinum member or a ruby CAS player in this room (that’s not to say that all guests shouldn’t have access to a quiet room, but there are supposed to be some privileges that come with status and while a quiet room isn’t one of them, you’d think latitude members who hold elite status wouldn’t normally be booked into a room with a known defect such as this). he entered all the info in his computer and said that somebody would be sent to my room. why, i asked? these were not his exact words, but he essentially said it was to verify that that this was a real problem. and i found that surprising, because after a year of dealing repeatedly with this issue on the prima, it’s a pretty safe bet that if somebody comes to you and says their room is uninhabitable because of constant noise, and that they haven’t slept all night, they’re probably telling you the truth. i asked what the next step was and he said an engineer would be sent to my room to fix the problem. i thought this was a load of hooey (can i say “hooey” on cruise critic; if not, phooey on them! i should be able to say “hooey,” gosh darn it. what has this world come to?). when i touch the walls and the ceiling in my cabin there is no noise. it’s an inside job. to put it another way, just like in all those horror films, the calls are literally coming from inside the house.