Extremely disappointed!!

[PrincessPete]

We were extremely disappointed to receive an email this morning regarding our 28 night cruise on “Oriana” this Friday and to learn that we are no longer calling at Nassau in The Bahamas. We found out initially by an email where the subject read “Cancellation Oriana cruise” which for a few seconds until I opened the email had me thinking the whole cruise was cancelled.

It transpired the email was about the cancellation of a shore excursion we had booked in Nassau. It invited us to ring P&O where a totally disinterested Customer Service person told me the ship was no longer calling at Nassau and letters had been sent to passengers yesterday. She said that a call was being made to Freeport on Grand Bahamas instead – a different island to where Nassau is located.

I rang our Travel Agent who had received the letter this morning and forwarded it to us by Special Delivery (but had not thought to ring/email us!!). They did then email me a copy which stated that the call had been cancelled because the Port Authorities would not let the ship take on fuel in Nassau that day.

As above, the cancellation is most disappointing as Nassau was one of the special places we wanted to see when we booked the cruise. Excursions at Freeport are now on the Cruise Personaliser but are of little or no interest – there appears to be nothing much to see and the tours are largely beach related. Notwithstanding the pleasure of beaches on a cruise such as this, the tour in Nassau included a lot of colonial buildings and other sights we were keen to see.

Hey ho! These things happen, it is not the first time we have had a port changed and, of course, it is an occupational hazard with cruising which many others will have experienced over the years. I must add that had Freeport been the port originally, with no stop at Nassau, we would still have booked so this is not a claim “we only booked the cruise to go to Nassau”! There are plenty of other highlights on the cruise for us such as Bermuda and our favourite Caribbean island Antigua.

I do feel that P&O could have worded the email better this morning as for a few seconds it appeared the whole cruise had been cancelled!

I am sure we will still have a brilliant time and if anyone has anything positive to say about Freeport we would be most interested!

Kind regards. Peter and Beverley

[jh1809]

"I do feel that P&O could have worded the email better this morning as for a few seconds it appeared the whole cruise had been cancelled!"

 

I agree about that, having been similarly alarmed to get such an email regarding a cancelled excursion on a cruise I took last autumn. It surely shouldn't be too difficult to amend the template that generates the emails so that the word "excursion" appears in the subject.

[kruzseeka]

Thats a pity as it was a port you were looking forward to visiting, but you are clearly being very philosophical.  But I do agree that it could have been worded in a less alarming way and it begs the question about the itinerary planning.  Wouldn't you think if they were relying on a particular port to refuel that would be a fairly critical arrangement to be confirmed at the outset?

[PRINCESSTHE BEST]

Unfortunately it happens all the time, so i'm not surprised that the call centre staff has 'a matter of fact' attitude. We had an email 4 weeks before our sailing telling us the Spa would be closed for most of our cruise. Then 7 days before sailing another one telling us that due to speed issues we would not be going to Bergen. Fortunately for us both issues did not concern us unduly, but if it did would anyone at P&O care?

[Itsbeentoolong]

We actually got a whole day added to our cruise once, luckily the day was a bank holiday too so no need to arrange more holiday :) unfortunate for the cruise after us that lost a day but we did miss La Harve as the French were striking as usual but that meant I got nearly 500 quid back for my Paris excursions which I was only doing for someone's birthday so I was quite pleased hahaha  

Edited February 20, 2019 by Itsbeentoolong

[john watson]

I think the problem behind this sort of issue has a lot to do with the new generation of people who decide what to say and how to say it.  They do not seem to have the breadth of vocabulary and knowledge of how to phrase things in such a way as to not unnecessarily alarm people.  They seem to have a total lack of empathy these days and worry about absurd issues which are completely irrelevant to anything important.

 

Regards John