jennjess

We had to disembark early due to a medical emergency and all port fees, pre paid gratuities, excursions and drink packages were reimbursed.  We didn't have NCL insurance but a third party insurance which covered the cruise cost without the extras.

Basically they said nothing to me about possible refunds and I wasn't really thinking about that at the time.  It was a shock to hear that the bone was broken and that it would probably need surgery.  I didn't ever talk to guest services onboard, we left the ship straight from the medical centre.  The bags were located by them, not sure if they ever made it to the cabin. I did email them to ask about the refunds a day or two after we had left the ship, but the email was never answered.  Not sure if I wrote anything about reboarding in the email and to be honest I always thought they would get back to me at some point but they never did.

Obviously they assumed we wouldn't be returning.  Actually I'm not sure if we even scanned our cards when we left, it all happened very quickly.

1 hour ago, ontheweb said:

There should never really have been any issue about receiving the NCL refund. A five week turnaround is not bad, a lot less than people were experiencing at the beginning of the pandemic.

It was my experience over the contact details that was making me wary that it wouldn't work out. So relieved that it did.

Finally received the NCL refund I was waiting for which was a nice surprise this morning.  It took 5 weeks in the end. Now just the insurance to chase up for the rest.

11 hours ago, Cruising Lynne said:

I was busy on a cruise when this thread was started, and did not see it until a couple of days ago. So I am chiming in now. I am a little disturbed that some people just want to lecture the OP about how they handled the situation. I feel that the OP just wanted to let others know that if you have an issue, you are on your own, and also wanted some guidance on the best way to communicate to NCL that they are due a refund for missed excursions and port fees. Since they did board the ship, and leaving the ship was not due to Covid, the rest of the money they would like refunded, will likely have to come from their insurance company.

 

 To the OP I would like to let her know that I do not blame her for waiting until getting on board to see a doctor. I badly sprained my wrist when I was a young teen when I fell while roller skating. My parents gave me ice and I went to bed. In the morning it was very swollen so my mom took me to our doctor to get x-rays. The doctor wrapped up my wrist and Mom sent me to school with a note saying why I was late. I do not think my parents did anything wrong. 

 

Not staying in a crowded ER where none of you would get any rest was a good idea. The only thing I may have done differently was see the doctor that the hotel was willing to call. 

 

I do not think that NCL should be giving people contact info that is useless. If they can not help you once you get off the ship, they should be up front about it.

 

I agree that the cruise company does not have to refund me for the cruise itself just the additional addons.  I have already put in a claim with the insurance for the cruise charge.  It's a long wait for all these refunds it seems.

It didn't seem worthwhile calling a doctor to visit since he would only have told us to go get an x-ray, which we already knew was necessary, hence the visit to the hospital.

The moral of the story is that NCL do not provide any helpful contact info once you leave the ship for an emergency.  It would be in their own best interest to sort that out.

10 hours ago, cruising sister said:

I agree as a pediatrician a broken bone is not life or death and if the waiting room was as bad as you said I would have left too. Don’t let the arm chair doctors guilt you into thinking you did something wrong leaving that night.  Accessing medical care out of your home country is always a challenge. I walked on a broken bone for a week before I had time for an X-ray.

It is helpful to hear from those in the medical profession so thank you for your input.

When you arrive at a hospital to see people on gurneys parked outside the entrance and in the reception area, who frankly looked to need urgent care far more than we did, then the decision to leave again wasn't difficult to make.

If my son had been screaming in agony we would obviously have stayed but he wasn't in that much pain and we felt a bit like frauds for even being there.

10 minutes ago, ChiefMateJRK said:

It's worked for me every time I've used it (cruising or otherwise).  I have no idea where you're getting your information.

Well I hope that will be my last resort, fingers crossed it won't come to that.

13 minutes ago, SeaShark said:

 

The only reason that I, or anyone else here, had to make assumptions is due to the striking lack of information that you provided. Dribs and drabs and always only enough to support your narrative. You boarded a cruise and then left with no indication that you would return...you even had them fetch your luggage so you could take it with you. You started your vacation and then left before it was over. Why should you be entitled to any type of refund? I know that NCL refunds some items (taxes, port fees) for those who cancel last minute, but those people don't show up, embark, use onboard services, and then leave of their own accord like you did.

 

That aside, why did the "young adult" not seek medical care on his own? Were you, as a parent, required to be there? Did the "young adult" make the decision for everyone to miss their vacation? Why doesn't the "young adult" handle affairs with NCL? Isn't the "young adult" perfectly able to make the necessary decisions?

 

I'm starting to think LGW59 is onto something. You didn't get the "emotional support" that you wanted (see post #38) and so now NCL is "bad".

The young adult is autistic and can't deal with these situations on his own.  It's not about emotional support but lack of information provision.  You think it's good customer service to provide unusable contact info?

40 minutes ago, LGW59 said:

Then why are you continuing to drag this out?  Because you enjoy the attention your getting, IMO.

Someone else ressurrected this thread not me.

28 minutes ago, kylenyc said:

I was responding to PATRLR who said they understood your "lack of urgency".

 

You had enough of a the sense of urgency to speak to a hotel receptionist about medical care. You had enough sense of urgency to interrupt your vacation to go to a hospital to seek medical care. In the end you declined to have a physician visit you at the hotel and you left the hospital when you were there before obtaining a diagnosis and opted to board the ship and seek care from NCL medical staff.

 

This is based on your account in previous posts.

 

I have not expressed any new opinion here and leave it up to others to do so... or not.

None of this is really relevant to the situation in any case as my original post was to note the lack of useful contact information I received and continue to receive from NCL.  It appears I'm not alone in thinking that this is a problem going by a number of the posts in recent days.

The choices we made are what they are and we would probably do the same should it ever happen again. He received good and timely care and is recovering better than expected.

1 minute ago, 4 cruisers said:

Sorry, but in our case, the insurance takes over.  They ask for receipts of those charges and then include that in the refund check.  We used NCL's insurance.

OK, we booked direct with NCL.  They can see what we paid for in their itemised bill.  It's very obvious I would have thought for them to work out what they should refund. We didn't have NCL insurance but outside cover.

36 minutes ago, kylenyc said:

The OP had enough sense of urgency to go to a hospital. They chose to leave. They had the option to have been seen by a physician. They chose not to.

 

He was seen by a physician within 14 hours which is possibly quicker than it might have happened had we waited in the hospital.  Have you seen what it's like in a Greek public hospital? Overwhelmed is a good word for it. It wasn't a life or death situation.

11 minutes ago, The Shrike said:

I'm going to wait three weeks before chiming in with my opinion.  😄😁😉

Probably for the best.

23 minutes ago, SeaShark said:

 

JMHO, but the medical decisions need to be made by the adults, not by the children.

But he is a young adult not a child and perfectly able to make his own decisions.  You continue to make assumptions that are incorrect as you have done many times in this thread. 

10 minutes ago, PATRLR said:

@LGW59How many fractured wrists have you seen and dealt with?  I suspect not many or maybe none.  

I've seen and managed a lot.  You might be very surprised at how little pain is associated with many of them.  Sometimes people need to be pushed very hard to have it seen and x-rayed and then they are shocked to learn it's actually fractured.  

I fully understand the lack of urgency on the part of the OP.  I've seen it first hand dozens of times.

Thank you for your input.  It was exactly so that he wasn't in alot of pain and my first thought was that he had just sprained his wrist. We put ice on it and I gave him some painkillers and thought a good nights sleep would be more helpful than a night in a hospital waiting room especially as I knew we would be able to get an x-ray on the ship (which we were to board next day) to see exactly what had happened on the inside.  We were shocked to find out that it was broken and needed to be operated on and were not thinking about anything much else at that point such as contact info for the ship etc..

They had given us a piece of paper which I didn't really look at until the next day which was when I started to try to contact them again without any success.

32 minutes ago, SeaShark said:

 

So much information/context still missing. Normally, you hand you luggage to the porter prior to embarkation. That luggage isn't delivered to your stateroom until well after you board. How exactly did you have your luggage to debark? Did you tell anyone at the ship that you would be returning or might even want to return? If you took all of your luggage and belongings with you, what impression are you leaving with the ship? Personally, I would think that you weren't returning at all.

 

They gave you medical attention, referred you to local medical care, had the port agent escort you, gave you contact information, etc. What else where they supposed to do for your issue that didn't even occur while on the cruise?

The luggage was located by the staff and taken off the ship.  I had earlier just been briefly in the cabin to drop hand luggage and went to eat lunch onboard whilst waiting for the medical centre to open later in the afternoon at 4PM if I recall correctly.

They could have given me more useful contact info and followed up on my emails and calls.  They didn't reply to my emails or answer my calls.  They maybe assumed the port agent would take care of everything from that point on but he was adamant that it was not his responsibilty.

25 minutes ago, cassie55 said:

I can't understand going onboard to get a diagnosis rather than a proper medical facility.  The facilities on a ship are good but nothing like as good as a hospital or minor injuries unit.  

They were sufficient for our immediate needs in that they had an x-ray machine to make a diagnosis on the injury.  We also could get that done quickly and easily.

We could have stayed in the first public hospital the previous night, which would probably have taken all night, since it was very busy with people who seemed much more in need of urgent help than we did at that point.  It was my son's decision not to stay there btw.  He wasn't in severe pain and I thought it might just have been a sprain and we would see how it was next day.

1 minute ago, SeaShark said:

 

 

But was the ship expecting a possible return, or did you leave them with the impression that you would not be returning when you debarked? This is why you've been asked about whether you left your luggage in your stateroom (indicating an intention to return) or if you took it with you when you debarked (indicating no intention to return). Despite it being asked multiple times, we haven't yet seen an answer to this question. While you were onboard, did you ask for information or a point of contact for coordinating your return after the medical care?

The luggage was taken off the ship with us.  It all happened very quickly, as I said I never even had a chance to see our travel companion to tell her what was happening.  Nobody asked us if we wanted to return and to be honest I was more concerned about what was going to happen next rather than reboarding at that point.  I was given a piece of paper with contact details of the port agent, guest relations email (no telephone number) and still nobody has replied to any email I sent, and a number to call in the USA which never was available and they didn't ever reply to my voice mail.

4 hours ago, pennyspain said:

Three days before we were due to sail on Epic out of Barcelona on 5th June, my husband was taken into hospital. I contacted my travel agent on Friday 3rd June to ask them to notify NCL that we couldn’t travel. I have a cancellation invoice from my TA which indicates that I should get prepaid gratuities, taxes, and excursions refunded. Questions 1. Will we get our CruiseNext credit refunded? 2. How long are we likely to wait for refund? Thank you.

28 days have passed since I put in a claim for the same refunds and I have yet to hear anything from NCL.  I called today and was told they would send an email to the financial department.  Will call again on Friday to see if there is any further news.  I'm wondering if it might be faster to do it via the credit card company.

27 minutes ago, ontheweb said:

Yes, one of the great advantages of youth is being able to recover.

 

My parents both died as a result of falls, one at 101 1/2 and the other at not quite 99. (Dad actually unexpectedly survived breaking his hip at almost 99.) Moral of the story---save your falls and broken bones for your years as a youth.

 

BTW, did you try to contact the port agent? If so, did he or she make any attempt to get you back aboard?

I called the port agent and he made it very clear that his only obligation was to get us to a hospital and there it ended.  He very quickly disappeared after we had confirmation from our health insurance that the hospital costs would be met.  The hospital he took us to still wanted the money up front though and so we went to a different hospital suggested by the health insurance alarm line.  They only ever asked us to pay one bill which was a covid test for me so I could remain with him in his room.

We did fly to Mykonos on the day the ship should have called but our luck being as it was, the ship could not dock that day due to the strong winds.  So another wasted journey and waste of funds. If I could have contacted the ship maybe that could have been avoided.

1 hour ago, 4 cruisers said:

This is where I don't see NCL's responsibility.  Your insurance needs to reimburse your shore excursions, not NCL...I believe....

 

No the excursions were booked through NCL they should refund me for those and the pre-paid gratuities, drinks package etc..

On 5/25/2022 at 2:06 PM, ontheweb said:

I hope all goes well for you and especially your son. 🤞

He is doing remarkably well, thank you.  The second part of our travels went to plan and it is annoying to me that we could have rejoined the NCL cruise at some point too but had no way to communicate with them to organise that.

5 hours ago, LGW59 said:

I feel bad for the kid that was injured, but the parent mucked this all up, to get on the ship IMO, perhaps thinking it wasn't serious, but...

How did we muck this up?  He needed a diagnosis which we boarded the ship to get.  It might just have been a sprain and we could have continued with the cruise.  It was not sadly and we had to leave the ship for proper treatment.  Not sure why anyone thinks it was a mistake to make use of the ship's medical service for a diagnosis as we paid for that service and had every right to get onboard.

Still haven't received a reply from the emails I sent to guest relations almost a month ago now or a refund for the excursions etc. I pre-paid.

I'm still waiting for a refund here, the 30 days is up on Wednesday.  Hoping that it comes through soon or I guess I'll have to contact the credit card company.

On 6/5/2022 at 10:28 PM, geleisen said:

Just some advice for the future, pretty much every health insurance plan in NL has the option to add coverage up to the full local rate for small amount each month. I don't know any insurer which doesn't offer this. Normally like 50 cents to 2 EUR per month. It was great when I was in Thailand and made the mistake of going to a private hospital instead of a public hospital and after only few hours and very little treatment, gave me a bill of like 2500 EUR. But the health insurance's international department called them directly to arrange payment, so I didn't have to pay anything directly, just my eigen risico later. That was with VGZ or Zilveren Kruis, can't remember, but works pretty much the same with all of them. I highly recommend it for next year, it is well worth it for the peace of mind. 

Yes we had this extra coverage via the health insurance and thankfully the emergency call number arranged with the hospital that took care of my son that all bills would be paid by them in full (apart from the eigen risico 385 euros) and we did not have to pay up front.  Definitely worth the extra few euros a month for that peace of mind.  No idea wht the final bill will be but it will be shockingly huge I'm sure.