LindaAndBillTravel

Actually, the cruise contract says "We are not liable forany loss or damage to baggage or property unless caused by our negligence or misconduct". Since the grounding was caused by their negligence, its seems they are liable.

I'm having a very frustrating experience right now with Windstar. We were on the Star Pride when it ran aground on December 22nd. Passengers were evacuated to land and the crew packed our luggage for us. We were missing several items. We notified Windstar immediately, filled out their claim form, and told them in writing exactly where everything was in the cabin. It's over 6 weeks later and the only thing Windstar will tell me about our missing belongings is that they have no information. The can't (won't?) tell me if they recovered anything from my cabin, where the recovered belongings are (other than that they are not in Seattle), when they will have any information, when they will declare the items as unrecoverable, or if they will be reimbursing us if the items never show up (I'd hope so). There seems to be only one person handling everything related to the grounding, and that person's responses have only been that she knows nothing. Requests to speak to a supervisor have been refused. Emails and voicemails to the general customer relations contacts on their website have gone unanswered.

My insurance won't do anything until Windstar puts in writing that the items are lost, but the policy also says all supporting claim documentation needs to be completed in 90 days. Half of the 90 days has already gone by and I have no confidence that I can get an answer one way or the other from Windstar given the communication so far.

Does anyone know of any regulations that apply to this situation? Is there a governing body that I can make a complaint to?

We are also long-time Royal Caribbean brand cruisers (D+) who recently tried our first Windstar cruise. Our impression of Windstar matches pretty closely with yours. We also found the food and most of the staff (the folks at lower levels who you interact with most frequently) to be great, but communication and some senior staff members were appallingly bad.

Seems like your insurance is more flexible than mine if they only want confirmation that you notified Windstar. I wonder if an email read receipt would work for you? My insurance wants something in writing from Windstar stating that the items are lost and that Windstar will not be reimbursing me before they will pay out.

IMcG666 and slgantman - Did either of you have belongings that were still missing? They haven't been able to tell me what was found or even when they would have any idea what was found. I feel like 6 weeks should be more than plenty of time to be able to tell me if my stuff was found even if it takes a while longer to get it back to me.

Did you get full refund ? We did not ... Not good

Were you on the Dec 19th Star Pride sailing too? We received a full refund for the cruise fare plus taxes and fees. We did not receive a refund for our pre-purchased shore excursions. We ended up disputing the shore ex charge on the credit card because I couldn't get any answer from Windstar on when those refunds might happen and I wasn't inclined to float them a loan until they could be bothered to get their act together.

What if you have a $5000 future cruise credit and want to book a $5000 cruise? My read of the terms is that I would have to pay $1000 out of pocket for the deposit even though my future cruise credit should cover the full amount of the trip.

Got our future cruise credit certificate in the mail today. It is good through 1/11/2018. Here are the terms and conditions for anyone who is interested:

It appears from the terms that the credit cannot be used for the deposit, so even if I pick a cruise for the same amount as the one we were on, I still have to pay Windstar money and will lose some of my credit. Is that everyone else's read on this?

We were on the 12/19 sailing and received our refund on 1/19. No future cruise certificate that we were promised though.

Did you book directly or through an agent? We were told that since we booked with a TA the refund would go to them, not us.

 

Did the check arrive with any terms attached?

 

About the future cruise time frame, one correspondence I have refers to "within the next 12 months" and another to "during 2016." I'm a stickler for T&Cs and do date have nothing from WS but an email correspondence that is totally non-specific.

We booked directly. The check did not come with any terms.

I am at the point where I'm inclined not to use the future cruise certificate. It's a shame since it is all their after-the-fact customer service issues that have made me feel that way, and not the ship grounding itself.

I've been trying to get a credit for an overcharge since Jan. 6th. I started with a "shipboard credit" of over $ 2800.00 (I was on the starpride that got grounded) and had to re-book everything at the last minute. Several e-mails and phone calls not returned.

Terrible customer service, I don't care what the season or reason. Every customer should have their call or e-mail returned within a day or two at the most.

Their customer service is the worst I've ever experienced.

I must say, this was my first ever cruise and the booking agent informed me I was "setting the bar very high" Maybe we have different levels of luxury, but Windstar is not it!!!

Agreed. Try emailing jillian.wikstrom@windstarcruises.com. That is the only thing that has gotten a response for me.

We received our refund check yesterday, but no future cruise credit information. Did anyone else receive anything in writing about the future cruise credit? I'm interested in the terms & conditions, like how long we have to use it.

For anyone who has been trying to get in touch with Windstar Guest Relations via the email or telephone listed on Windstar's website with no luck, here is a direct email address for the guest relations person: jillian.wikstrom@windstarcruises.com. She did reply to emails at that address reasonably quickly on Friday.

For anyone who was on Star Pride who is trying to find out about shore excursion refunds, they will not be included in the refund check you will be receiving. The reason given was "We haven’t received the onboard billing yet. Any shore excursions that had to be cancelled will be refunded from onboard billing." This apparently applies even if you had booked the shore excursions before leaving home instead of onboard.

For anyone wanting to know what is going on with missing belongings, the response was "I am presently waiting for the shipment to come to Seattle for me to sort through and mail out to our guests. Everything found was placed in bags marked with the room number, so I will be able to know who gets what. I will be taking pictures of the belongings and emailing it to the guests to make sure their belongings are correct before I send the shipments." She was unable or unwilling to provide any time frame for when they expected the belongings to arrive in Seattle, or how long she expected it to take once they arrived.

Interesting development...we got an email from Windstar today with a survey to fill out regarding how the Star Pride accident was handled. Some of the questions seem to display little understanding of what happened, but maybe it is a standard form. Curiously, one of the questions asks if there was any specific examples of passenger behavior I wanted to comment on, but no question about if there were any specific examples of crew behavior I wanted to comment on.

Passenger Survey.pdf

I don't think Windstar customer relations is answering anyone's phone or email messages right now. I was on the Pride when it ran aground and have been trying to get some answers from customer relations for weeks with absolutely no response.

I just got off the phone with a reservations rep who informed me that our refund check was printed, but they only send checks out on Fridays so that would be the soonest ours would be mailed. The refund check was only cut for the amount of the cruise, and did not include our untaken shore excursions. He originally told me he would just refund those to our credit card, but then came back and said we would have to wait for a separate check to be cut to refund those because they had to "talk to the ship" first. Huh?!?

He also let me know that personal belongings arrived in Seattle over the weekend, but he was unsure how long it would take to sort through things and get information for specific cabins.

Where is this coming from? I haven't seen any posts saying people aren't "savvy", or that they made "poor personal decisions". I do agree that this isn't going to be cleared up overnight and that people need to be patient.

This is coming from posts like #102 and #105.

I also think good PR would be a Windstar Rep. posting to this thread with updates.

Or even a bulk email to impacted passengers with some status updates would go a long way. Certainly, there must be a number of people who have the same questions and some bulk email updates could address a fair number of the calls and emails they are getting.

Shame on all of you who weren't impacted by this for implying people who are having issues now are not savvy, made poor personal decisions, are a minority opinion, or are too impatient. If it happened to you, you would likely be feeling differently. People come here to seek information, help, or even just a sympathetic ear. Insulting people who had their holidays impacted by a negligent carrier (and yes, the accident was their fault, so they are negligent) is completely non-helpful.

Travel savvy comes with time and experience. Some folks bought Windstar's travel policy not understanding what it did or didn't cover. Lot of people do this until they or someone they know gets bit by this. And there are a lot of travel insurance plans out there that do not cover trip cancellation due to maintenance issues of a common carrier, which is how this will be classified. You might end up being bit by this too since the ship running aground might not have been a scenario you ever considered would happen.

As for there only being a few people complaining out of all of the impacted people...there are only ever a small percentage of passengers who participate on Cruise Critic. I don't recall seeing anyone who was actually impacted saying Windstar's customer service has been great. Maybe that's because it really hasn't been. And reservations staffing isn't the problem. You can get through to reservations. The department you can't get a hold of is customer service, and customer service can and should be supplemented by management for something like this. At this point it seems unlikely that they are trying to remedy issues in chronological order since we were on the Pride sailing when the accident occured. My guess is that they might be responding to those in the highest cost cabins first. I say this because that is how they dealt with the situation on Isla de Coiba -- the most expensive cabins got evacuated to the first ship that arrived, leaving the elderly, infirmed and children waiting for the second ship, including an elderly man who had to be laid out on the sand while we waited because he couldn't sit on the hard plastic chairs any longer.

I was on the Star Pride sailing when the grounding happened. I've been trying for 2+ weeks to get a phone or email response and have heard nothing. I am still assuming (maybe naively) that I will get my refund check in the next week as promised and that it will be correct and include all monies paid, including a refund for shore excursions we never got to take. What I really want to know is if they have found my missing belongings and when they will be returned to me. I tried calling the reservations number just to get a live person, and was informed that there is only one person handling all of the customer relations for this. That is absolutely ridiculous.

I had a friend on this cruise. They said it was handled poorly and no one said anything about a future cruise payment. They actually slept on loungers on the beach one night!!!

DH and I were on this cruise. I am in complete agreement that it was handled poorly. Very poorly. However, we were told about the future credit, both verbally by staff while still on the beach at Isla de Coiba and in the letter we were provided once we reached the hotel they took us to in Costa Rica. And we were not on the beach overnight. Passengers were transported to one of two ships that arrived to rescue us. One arrived at around 8:30 pm and the other at around 10:45 pm.

It does not surprise me that Windstar has told people one thing and then changed their tune later. They were doing that to the Star Pride folks from the very beginning.

I can't even get Windstar to return my phone calls or emails about my missing belongings. I was told by a reservations rep that they have only one person handling all of the refunds, etc due to the Star Pride incident. IMO, when something like this happens, people up the food chain need to realign resources and if that means those higher ups need to pitch in and make phone calls themselves, then they should be doing it. I'm not overly impressed. This is a real shame because up until the accident, we were very pleased with our first Windstar cruise. We wouldn't have held the accident against them when considering future travel plans, but we will certainly be taking the customer service fiascos into account.

I would be very upset about items not retrieved from my cabin--ID and credit cards and cash, jewelry, my camera gear, etc. If they are going to pack guests items, a member of security should go in and clear the safe into a plastic bag with a seal that shows if it has been broken, and sign across the seal to show who packed it. You would think this would be SOP.

Our understanding is that cabin attendants packed items not in the safe, and the security staff opened the safes separately. Certainly, the items from the safes came over to the Breeze separately from the packed suitcases. The items from the safe were in ziplock bags with attached inventories. We had to sign stating we received them. The inventories seemed thoroughly done -- they had even opened my wristlet and included the cell phone that was in it on the inventory. Nothing was missing from our safe contents, but we did witness one lady telling a staff member that all of the cash was missing from her wallet.

Still missing items not in the safe though. No update from Windstar. I wish they'd just tell me I'm not getting them back so that I could go ahead and replace things I would rather not be without.

As far as damage, we were told by the guest relations manager that the hull had a watermelon sized hole and 4 smaller holes. She also implied that the captain was being detained by Panamanian authorities. The only officers we saw on the island were the doctor, bar manager, guest relations manager, and cruise director/activities manager (not sure his exact title). The bar manager, Richie, was by far the best at communication and understanding how to appropriately calm fraying nerves. I hope he gets some recognition from Windstar.

We spoke with some of the Star Breeze passengers. It seemed like they weren't getting great communication either. In some ways, the Breeze passengers are worse off than those from the Pride. At least we are now someplace where we can see the sights and continue enjoying our vacation. I know there are people on the Pride who will disagree with me on that, whose valuables weren't all returned, or who had medical issues that made 14 hours on Isla de Coiba very uncomfortable, but we're going to go with the flow and enjoy our free vacations.

Thanks ChalupaMama for the update. Who is the Captain?

I can't recall the captain's name right now, but I can tell you he was Italian. Next cruise we'll be looking for a Scandinavian captain, I think.

Things are still pretty disorganized here, and communication has been a disaster. Everything we've been told has changed, sometimes multiple times. For us, this has been the most frustrating part.

We have been given 3 nights hotel with daily breakfast, plus dinner last night. They've got a company helping planning excursions for those who are interested. Other meals are proving challenging given the holidays, but the hotel concierge managed to hook us up with something. So we're making the best of it and we'll have great stories to tell.

Speaking as a passenger from this ship, it seems as though folks here on Cruise Critic got better info sooner than we did. Things are quite disorganized here, but most of the staff (particularly the staff of Star Breeze and Richie, the bar manager from Star Pride) are trying very hard to take care of everyone.

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