KeithJenner

Did you know that Kevin Sheehan was on undercover boss when he was NCL CEO. A few years ago obviously, and I think it’s fair to say that the general opinion of NCL management (based on comments here) has changed quite a bit since then.

Yeah, my cruise last year was far from wrecked from not being able to drink on the first day. It was a fantastic cruise. However, that first day would have been nicer if we had been able to have a beer when some of us from CC met up before sail away (in fact some people didn't bother due to the weather and not being able to have a drink). We would have liked to have had a glass of wine before our meal, rather than just getting our first one as we started eating. The cruise as a whole would have been better if we hadn't had that issue. There is something between "it's no problem at all" and "my cruise was ruined" and you can still be a long way from the latter opinion and still be thinking that your leisure money could be better spent elsewhere. In the current climate NCL need all the customers they can get. As my cruise line of choice, I want them to succeed, and stuff like this doesn't help in any way. That is why I find it so frustrating. As I've said before, frustration is the main thing that I associate with this sort of thing, and was very evident on our embarkation day last year. NCL's response to the issue has just added to that frustration. I fear for the brand if this sort of thing carries on happening. And to be clear to the easily confused, absolutely none of this means that I hate NCL.

It seems very odd for someone to do that though. I can't see what is in it for them. Maybe I'm missing something, but I would also consider that it could just be an IT error. Do NCL store credit card details? I don't think they do in the UK, so it seems a very odd thing for a hacker to do (i.e. try to upgrade your cabin and pay for it for you). As I say, I may be missing something here.

Interesting, howls of outrage about people suggesting that NCL may be lying now turns into enthusiastic “the passengers are lying” posts. No evidence provided. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

That’s interesting. I had been thinking it was a shame that you hadn’t seen the paper as that would explain it. Maybe there was a deal then, although I’d have thought it would have been mentioned here, as that sounds like exceptional value (basically free if you get both the discount and OBC). Not wanting to doubt what you say, but that does sound too good to be true to me. Posts from people who have been confused after a conversation with cruise next reps are not uncommon.

Obviously we can’t comment on the specifics of your conversation onboard, but the deal is basically that you pay half price for your vouchers. So if you buy $1,000 of vouchers they will Cost you $500 (the discounts are different for Haven ones. Sounds like either the rep explained it incorrectly or you misunderstood them.

More likely than anyone lying in this situation is just that the message hasn’t got through to all the staff on the ship.

I’m no expert on this but I’d have thought that it being in Europe could make this harder. I don’t know where the main embarkation port is, but it’s likely to be within the EU, whereas Turkey is outside the EU. That in itself may complicate things (although, as I say I am just speculating).

It depends on a number of factors, and isn’t necessarily just up to NCL as there may be restrictions about people joining the cruise in Istanbul. At least Istanbul is a port where embarkations do happen (even if not currently by NCL - I’m not sure whether they do use it for embarkation at the moment). I have seen staff joining and leaving the ship at Istanbul, so it appears that NCL May sometimes use it to embark staff. I certainly wouldn’t just fly there in the hope that I got onboard as it is probably even less likely to work if you just turn up. On the other hand, from reported experience on here about similar things (usually people wanting to disembark early) it seems that a common response from NCL shoreside staff is that they can’t say for sure what will be allowed. It is possible that NCL won’t discuss this directly with you and to start with I think you need to push on your TA to try to get further confirmation from NCL as to whether he will be able to board. If they don’t get anywhere then you can always try calling NCL yourself to see if they will help. I suspect that it will be quite a frustrating exercise and there is no guarantee you will get a resolution unfortunately. Even if you find that others have done this, it doesn’t mean that your experience will be the same, especially if that experience is in different ports. NCL visit Istanbul fairly regularly, but not as much as some other ports so there may not be much experience for people to report on. Good luck.

Well I don't know about anyone else, but if we are going out for a meal in the evening then we often decide not to have any wine with the meal because we can always nip down the pub for a couple of pints at lunchtime instead. It's basically the same really isn't it? In fact, I think I may just cancel the beverage package on my next cruise and instead we will get our transfer to stop at a bar in Civitavecchia at lunchtime before boarding and then we don't need to worry about ordering any wine at Moderno in the evening. 🙂

NCL said it and you have no solid evidence to disprove it so the only reasonable course of action is to believe it. 🙂

I am perfectly happy to allow them to get away with a mistake, or whatever it was. That is exactly what I did last year in Athens. However, this is not one NCL person who made one mistake. It is an ongoing story of these mistakes, or whatever they are. For NCLs own sake they need to find out how to stop this keeping on happening.

The previous times that this has happened, once the message started to go out that it was sorted it was reflected very quickly on the ships, so hopefully that will be the case here as well.

Just to be clear, the story regarding being given insufficient time to make a required payment is something that was told to a passenger and, in the opinion of many, doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. If someone chooses to believe it then that is their choice, but it is very much pushing it to say that it is something that we know. Especially when you consider the fact that others have repeatedly had their opinions questioned for lack of evidence. Apologies to the moderators of my previous way of responding fell foul of forum rules.

Which begs the question as to why you keep insisting that people who are critical of NCL on this one issue hate them, or think they are evil. If you want people to move away from this binary approach then perhaps you should stop doing it yourself.

It’s interesting that when a new cruiser comes along and complains that their holiday went wrong, there are usually a group of people on here telling them that it is their fault because they missed something. However, when it’s the cruise company that forgot the form it’s all ok apparently. 🙂

Well firstly, I wouldn’t run NCL because that isn’t my thing, but a company like NCL should have review processes and anything like this should be fully investigated through those systems and improvements identified and managed. When it went wrong on the Jade last year the whole process should have been reviewed and improvements made. Then when it happened again on the Gem it should have caused a further review with higher level management involved and any further improvements made. Then, there was Gibraltar when they could have another look it this before we got to where we are now. This isn’t rocket science, and it is very relevant that other lines aren’t having these problems because it shows that it is something that competent professionals can do without messing up once, let along twice, three times or however many times they are up to now. They aren’t very good at this, and they really need to get better. That is basically what I have been saying all this time. If you don’t care whether they get better then that’s your issue but I’m certainly not going to accept that. And just to clarify, I’m not saying that NCL are greedy or cheating anything, I’m just saying they seem to be rubbish at ensuring they do the correct admin to provide their customers with what they promised. That’s not a good look for a multiple billion dollar company.

And that excuse is acceptable once, maybe twice, but not as many times as this has happened to NCL. if it is down to administrative issues then get on top of them so that it doesn’t keep on happening.

You read it wrong. It was any speciality restaurant (left side) or 4 items at those specified (right side). You could have gone to Cagneys, Onda or Le Bistro.

Have NCL made a comment regarding the tender port? All I’ve seen is some mention by people, including me, that it is a tender port, but I haven’t seen anything from NCL (although I could easily have missed something else amongst all the other posts here).

Sounds like there was some confusion somewhere. They can be used in any restaurant, as per the details above.

I’m not sure how NCLs model has changed. As far as I am aware they have not charged tax in the UK for a few years now. Admittedly I have usually had the package (so may have just missed it), but I didn’t think they were charging. I thought they changed sometime around 2015/16.

This is certainly a possible explanation of what is happening, but it does still beg the question as to why is keeps happening and what reassurances future cruisers can have that it won’t reoccur on their cruise in the future. Someone at NCL needs to make sure that they have a firm hold of the ball.

I believe they were serving in Leith. Possibly complicated by it being a tender port, but usually that wouldn’t make a difference even though they tender in from quite a way (still within the Firth of Forth obviously). See post 550. It isn’t clear whether it being a tender port was put forward as a reason.

Good point, I’d forgotten about that.