In Praise of HAL

[mickeyfitz]

HAL and its management get a lot of criticism, some deserved, but I want to take an opportunity to thank them for their generosity and customer consideration. My wife and I were booked on the Hawaii cruise out of San Diego last spring, but two weeks before the cruise our daughter, who is a college student out of state, began having serious psycological problems that we had to travel from New Jersey to Florida and bring her home. She wound up taking the semester off, but is now doing well on medication and will be returning to school for the Fall semester. Under the circumstances, we had to cancel the cruise and we submitted a claim under our trip cancellation policy. We had not realized that the private policy we bought will only cover a psycological condition if the individual is hospitalized. Although we had statements from her family physician and from her psychologist confirming the seriousness of her condition, she had not been hospitalized and, therefore there was no coverage for our cancellation. We thought that the issue was closed and we were simply have to suffer a major financial loss. However, our travel agent contacted HAL, explained the situation, and HAL very generously gave us substantial credits towards our already booked two up coming cruises. The credits come close to equalling what we had paid for the Hawaii cruise we cancelled and we realize that HAL had absolutely no obligation to do anything for us. Thank you Holland America!

[talltexan]

It's nice to hear the story of a good outcome here sometimes, thanks for posting! Glad to hear your DD is doing well now.

Happy sailing.

[geocruiser]

mickeyfitz,

 

Very happy to hear that your daughter is doing fine. It was very nice of HAL to give you the credits.

 

Maria

[terigo]

Glad to hear your daughter is doing much better!

 

HAL's approach to this proves the theory of creating loyalty by better service.

Going above and beyond creates a customer for life, and one who will rave about the line to all who will listen....

This is worth a lot more in the long run than losing the revenue from one cabin on one sailing..... some lines do not have the foresight to realize this.

[May4]

I'm also glad to hear that your daughter is doing well and that Holland America Line was able to make a worrisome situation better.

[califgary]

Its nice when someone can take the time to tell others about a good experience! Hope your family is well.

 

We've only done HAL once so far and we had some issues with the pre-paid packages and when brought to their attention on board they did everything they could to resolve. Im sold on HAL myself!

[Krazy Kruizers]

So sorry to hear about your daughters problems.

 

That was so nice of HAL to review your case and compenstated you. You are fortunate to have such a wonderful TA to work for you.