staygulf

Not sure whether to cancel our 26 July cruise now 🙁

We’re on the 26July sailing. Not sure whether to cancel. Having spent nearly 18 months being ultra cautious as my wife is on the extremely vulnerable list I’m not sure it’s worth taking the risk. 

1 minute ago, PhotographyDave said:

Was supposed to be cruising on Iona with 3 other adults in September. It's been cancelled by P&O many many months, but still no sign of a refund (4 adults, 1 booking, 2 rooms, 1 payment up front on credit card) even though i asked for one.

 

Lord knows i'd like to enjoy my refund, but who knows when? i may have to go in heavy to them with 7 days notice, then credit card company on charge back unless i get it.

 

Not pleased!

Send them a 7 day notice before action detailing the whole series of events including your communications. It worked for me. Got a refund 6 days later. 

46 minutes ago, Harry Peterson said:

Thanks, Annie.

 

It’s my daughter’s refund due from lastminute.com, and she’s added to those appalling Trustpilot reviews. You’d think twice about booking with them after looking at the reviews!  All the appropriate actions taken, short, so far, of court action, but they simply won’t pay up. S75/chargeback claims will inevitably succeed, but Halifax are very slow too. 
 

Your comments on your own claims are interesting. My son is in a similar situation, with a similar claim against the insurer. S75 isn’t appropriate for him, certainly, and we both think it will end up with the Financial Ombudsman Service.

You need to send them a Notice before Action and a filled out County Court claim advising them that you will take action within 7 days if they do not pay up. Worked for me. You must be prepared to follow up the threat, it’s a simple no cost process

Just now, drsel said:

So I guess that you stay in the gulf?

No. I have a holiday home in St Aygulf on the French Riviera. 😊

4 minutes ago, drsel said:

Hi Selbourne, is your name Selwyn and are u from Bournemouth? I have been there and have cousins in Poole.

My giant US Agency is the sole P&O agent for the whole of North America (that's what they told me).
They gave me a fabulous discounted price for Oceana, $420 pp for a 7 night Cruise, including all port fees and taxes. Quiet an unbelievable rate.
Unfortunately the ship was sold.

But they were so fast and efficient, they refunded me in just 6 days after informing them that the ship was sold.

I take it from your question to Selbourne that you are a doctor and your name is Selwyn? 😂

10 minutes ago, wowzz said:

Although in this particular case the TA was American.

And that makes a difference? I don’t think so. The regulations cover non UK organisers also 

5 minutes ago, jeanlyon said:

I'm surprised P&O had that as a booking if your agent still had the deposit, but glad you got it back.

I think if the TA is bonded under the Package Travel Regs the money can be held in trust and not paid over to P and O

1 minute ago, drsel said:

in this day and age, why don't they use direct bank transfer instead of sending checks by post !

Because they wouldn’t then be able to use the “cheque’s lost in the post” excuse

27 minutes ago, Eglesbrech said:

Celebrity gets mine as they repaid in under 40 days. It was supposed to be in 30 so not perfect but certainly still  a lot less than the P&O timescales. We were in the second  batch of Celebrity cancellations. 
 

We were in the first batch for P&O and the delays were pretty poor, promised 45 days, then 60 and neither timescales were met. Reading these posts and elsewhere it seems that they are picking up a bit of speed for the newer batches. My second later cancellation (Batch 3 I think) with P&O was certainly repaid much more quickly than the first one.
 

There are still repayments outstanding from the first lot though, which makes no sense.

 

I wonder if when your cruise was cancelled / you applied for a refund has had an impact on how quickly it was repaid? Based on my experience it has but one swallow does not make a summer.

 

The good news is that so far the cruise companies seem to be surviving.

Agreed, it probably has, but then you shouldn’t have to request a refund. It’s an automatic obligation for the cruise company to issue a refund and within 14 days. All this nonsense about requests for refunds and FCC is completely made up by them and ABTA so that they had a reason (illegally) to hold on to customer monies. 

1 hour ago, Adawn47 said:

I know I'm only guessing, but surely they all have to be singing  from the same hymn sheet? Same company, same agenda I would have thought. Unless they can proceed however they like providing they all reach the same outcome.😞

Avril 

I've just been looking on the Princess forum and I beg to differ with you.  They might not be getting the bad "British" press as they are nearly all American or Canadian, but the posters are being treated the same as us. 

That’s too bad. I can only speak from my experience and Princess were much quicker at refunding me although I did have to threaten the TA with a winding up order. P and O were threatened with legal proceedings and then refunded. But it’s Princess that gets my business next year. P and O can P O as far as I’m concerned. 

1 minute ago, Adawn47 said:

Let's not forget here  that P&O are having to do and say exactly  what Carnival are telling them to,  as are all the companies under their umbrella. All the the bad PR and anger should be firmly placed at their door. Don't shoot the messenger.

Avril 

I don’t see Princess getting the same bad press. They seem to be handling the matter differently even from underneath the same umbrella. 

7 minutes ago, Manx buoy said:

Yourself KTS and Staygulf seem to think you’re the forums legal advisers just a play on words 😉

You’ve got a fertile imagination if you know what I think. I’m certainly not a legal adviser, but do offer advice from my own experience. 

1 minute ago, Eglesbrech said:

I had happily studied your excellent blog as we were supposed to do it this year, alas cancelled.

 

I am not holding my breath for my refund for September as I still have repayment for sundries outstanding from March! This lengthy delayS in repayment with no proactive communication from P&O and no reply to polite enquiries is why the topic is still under discussion. You waited 24 hours, I am now over 100 days which is unacceptable by anyone’s standards surely?

It is unacceptable. So why are you being polite? Why don’t you do something about it? It looks like those who have pursued legal action have been paid pretty quickly. I know I was when I threatened to sue. 

34 minutes ago, Hampshire Steve said:

£105 Court Fee just received from P&O, that's me fully paid up and happy

 

Once again, shame it had to go this way but for all of you still sat on the fence waiting for your refund, serve them 14 days notice of intention to recover through the courts, then at least you know how long you have to wait.

 

Thanks everyone for your support, I will try to post more positive items from now on!

Way to go!

29 minutes ago, grapau27 said:

Pleased you are sorted now 

3 minutes ago, JeanieC,Aston said:

Hi

Have to agree with you there,,,,,112 days today,,,cancelled on March 17th.

And what have you done about it?

2 minutes ago, Selbourne said:

Well done, although it’s an absolute disgrace that people such as yourself have had to commence legal action in order to recover your own money, 3 months after the legal requirement to refund expired. 
 

I wonder, has anyone received a refund from the last batch of cancellations yet? I suspect not as I am anticipating that most people will be made to wait 2, 3 or more months, just as we all had to, in order to shore up P&O’s cash flow. Doubtless Mr Ludlow will come up with yet more creative excuses as to why those refunds could also not be made in a timely manner. 

No one reading this thread should be waiting in vain. They should all be giving 7 day notices before action and then filing a money claim on line. It costs net nothing, what have they got to lose? 

26 minutes ago, Son of Anarchy said:

Taking into account how this whole disgraceful fiasco as gone, I doubt very much that PL would be accepted by the Courts as an "expert"!

 

In the general scheme of things, I agree. But in explaining how his business has handled the refund fiasco in the light of the legislation there is no one better. 

54 minutes ago, Hampshire Steve said:

Following a HM Courts & Tribunals Service Claim - It's not over until the cash arrives though!

 

Just had a very pleasant email from Carnival's legal department informing me, that following my court claim submitted yesterday the Finance department have refunded my original payment cards for the full amount and that on providing my bank details they will also pay the court fee by BACS transfer, which I have since provided and they have further responded to.

 

I find the whole route to getting here unnecessary but they have dealt with the claim quickly and so far without hassle, so providing that the monies turn up, which of course I will update on, we will put our tinted specs back on and mostly forgive them (as many will, no doubt)

 

Those of you still waiting for your money, I encourage you to get on and claim, despite my tinted specs I will remember they ignored all of my other requests including my 14 day notice of action and only responded to actual legal action.

 

Link to an easy to use claim service below, make sure your timeline identifies who and when you spoke to, emails, dates of invoice, your expectations from what you were told, the more comprehensive your evidence the less likely you will have delays in being dealt with, I also had the court send an email of the claim to Mr P L's office

 

https://www.gov.uk/make-money-claim

 

It shows how they now expect you to go the extra mile. When I sent my notice before action with a note saying I was calling PL as an expert witness to explain the fiasco they paid up in a few days without me having to file the claim. 

20 minutes ago, No pager thank you said:

Thank you for this.

 

So it appears that it is in Carnival's interest to settle the claim immediately from Day 105 now to avoid a per day charge on the sum, but they will have "successfully" dodged the issue for the 91 days excess statutory interest.

 

The reason I raise this is that although normal rates are 0.1%, I believe that I am correct in saying that the statutory interest is 8%, which could come to several hundred pounds if Carnival choose to delay settlement until the point of enforcement of the debt, following any delayed response and judgement by default. 

 

In the grand scheme of things this is peanuts for a company that size, but this may start to restore the balance for the terrible customer service which led to this approach being seen as necessary to recover the sum owed.

I think for business debts you can claim from the time the debt is due but for non commercial debts it is from the claim form

2 minutes ago, No pager thank you said:

I do hope that this triggers P&O in to making good your refund plus of course your additional outlay, as is automatically included within the claim amount.  I should imagine that they will settle the matter now.

 

May I ask, have you also requested statutory interest to be added to the amount of the refund, backdated to the fourteenth day (when the refund should have been provided at worst)? 

I looked into that when I sent my notice before action and drafted my claim and concluded that you can only include an interest charge going forward from the claim, not historical. I stand to be corrected. 

2 hours ago, Hampshire Steve said:

Nothing on the CCs today, nothing in the post, had enough of this.

 

Court claim issued. £105 invested so far, will keep you posted.

Not wasted as there can’t be any defence and it’s added on to the claim. 

11 minutes ago, No pager thank you said:

When you read the internal views around how long Covid-19 was likely to suspend cruises for initially, the end of 2020 seemed to be a worse case scenario - and for a very limited time a 25% bonus on FCC might have been attractive.  However, the offer wasn't properly thought through - as it wasn't based on a worse case planning scenario and it wasn't considered alongside what the British cruise market expects.

 

Therefore, the 25%, IMO has actually caused more anger in many cases by trying to pretend to be a gift when in many cases it's nothing like one.  Yes, that depends on what you choose to spend your money on.

 

Beyond the administrative farce around refunds, the other errors have included:

 

1) Offering no compensatory OBC as a sweetener to encourage re-bookings;

 

2) Even worse, offering passengers up to £400 OBC per cabin not to cancel, and subsequently refusing to honour the offer when the cruise was cancelled.  You don't miss what you don't have, but you do miss more what is taken from you.  With the huge margins on many OBC purchases, this might have cost them around £100-150 per cabin to service (much less in reality), change in the grand scheme of things.  

 

3) P&O set their stall put at the get go not to offer either a price promise, or reduced payment terms (less than 90 days).  I would be very interested to see the percentage of FCC from RCL and Fred compared to P&O.  Likely an error.

 

4) Truly dreadful videos, quizzes, Which! - terrible PR.  Find own foot, aim carefully, fire repeatedly.

 

Ultimately, I believe that they underestimated how resilient passengers would be in requesting cash refunds when faced with ever increasing delays (for some).  None of these errors was a breach of contract, but all breached usually steadfast goodwill. 

 

The errors have led to P&O being seen as "below average" (being kind) on refunds and made it difficult for them to meet their own non-compliant standards on refunds.  Social distancing on cruises , plus any possible overbooking, and mass redundancies will only make this worse.  I would go as far to say that no one has done brilliantly in the travel industry in terms of customer perception, but some have done much worse than others, including the Carnival umbrella brands.

 

The lower the base prices in the 2022 brochure, particularly for Iona, the worse P&O will have done - 2021 will be a "freak" year for deferred revenue.  That, eventually, and not customer service now, may create ripples of accountability in Carnival House - we must wait and see.

None of these errors was a breach of contract, but all breached usually steadfast goodwill. 
 

The whole sorry sham is a breach of contract. The Package Travel regulations clearly state that a cancellation by them requires a refund to customer within 14 days. No offers of FCC snd no having to request the refund. It is automatic. The regulations clearly state that the conditions form part of the contract terms. 
 

So I’m afraid there has been a clear breach of contract in every cancellation. 

1 hour ago, ollienbertsmum said:

 

 

Mmm if I had had a cruise already booked I might (if DH was not so precious with his health) have said ‘ok now I have enough money to be able to afford to significantly upgrade my booking’.  I certainly would not have booked another whole cruise.  I would not book due to annual leave restrictions and the knowledge that the cruise fare is only part of the actual costs of a trip (add on flights,  pre and post cruise stays, drinks bill, casino costs and excursions during the cruise) which is usually around £1000 and we are just a couple who don’t spend excessively.  

 

I won’t be booking another cruise in a hurry.  I don’t think that the cruise industry have tempted me back just yet.  Although one of the RCI ships was in port again yesterday.  I think it was the Explorer,  the angle she was at I could only see ‘the seas’.    It was hard not to sit through my lunch just staring.  

I can understand the need for flights, maybe a pre or post cruise stay, excursions and even a drink or two. But why is there a need to factor casino costs into a cruise? That seems reckless to me.