The Pears

Dear Fletcher,

Thanks very much for your post. Yes you are right it would have been very difficult to organize a bus trip with such short notice. Perhaps Noble Caledonia would have done better to cancel as some passengers who remained with the amended cruise were very negative on Trip Advisor about the bus trips and changed itinerary and service in general.

I suppose the fact that industry practice is that full compensation is not made if the whole package is not bought through the cruise company would explain why Noble Caledonia was so arrogant and dismissive of our disappointment and loss. Unlike the UK passengers who received full compensation for all aspects of their trip we only can claim for our repatriation flight back to Australia under our travel insurance.

Recent cases in Australia in the Federal and NSW Supreme Courts may change the situation. It has been held that foreign companies can be subject to Australian Consumer Law even if their only dealings with Australia are online and another case, where the cruise company changed the itinerary due to flooded rivers, held that the major change meant that the cruise was not fit for purpose, that there was a reduction of value of the services and the traveller was compensated.

Those of you thinking of booking a cruise with the UK company Noble Caledonia may wish to read of our experience before spending a lot of money with a company which seems to have no regard to customer relations or satisfaction. Their ships include the MV Island Sky, MV Caledonian Sky, MV Hebridean Sky, Serenissima and a number of river cruisers.

We had booked a very expensive cruise in July 2018 on the MV Caledonian Sky, owned by Noble Caledonia. The cruise offered a circumnavigation of both the South and North Islands of New Zealand.  We flew into Queenstown NZ on 19 .12.19 and had a welcome dinner on 20.12.19  where we were told to check out early next morning for our bus ride to the boat at Milford Sound. However on the morning of embarkation we were told the boat had left Milford Sound because of a finding of biological matter on the hull which required cleaning outside NZ waters and we would, they hoped, embark in Auckland, on the North Is.  on 27.12.19. The entire Southern Island cruising was cancelled with an offer of bus trips in its place. If passengers decided to go home instead, most UK passengers who booked the entire package through Noble Caledonia were offered full refunds and repatriation but if you were from outside the UK only the cruise package would be refunded with you having to repatriate yourself and with no refund of any airfares. We had asked to book the entire holiday through Noble Caledonia but were told we had to do our own flights if outside the UK.

We took the option of returning home and did not accept their revised itinerary which proposed an alternative bus tour of part of the South Island with embarkation in Auckland on 27.12.19 for a cruise only around the North Island of NZ.  We flew out of Queenstown and arrived home in Australia on 22.12.19. We immediately we sought a full refund from Noble Caledonia as they had failed to provide the promised cruise and we had suffered loss as a result. It took over a month for them to respond to our enquiries and they finally only did so because the NZ travel agent made many representations on our behalf.

Noble Caledonia has rejected our claim for full reimbursement despite a situation where they failed to deliver anything like what they promised. They repaid only the cruise component. We found their attitude dismissive and arrogant and warn other passengers to think carefully before booking with Noble Caledonia as we felt they did not have the interests of passengers at heart and were not interested in assuaging our very real disappointment and financial disadvantage caused solely by their actions. In all our years of travel around the world we have never struck a company that appears to be so willing to turn its back on its passengers.