Brutal Cancellation by Noble Caledonia

[chris24a]

Apologies if I've posted this in the wrong place - please don't flame me.  I just wanted to share our recent experience with Noble Caledonia.  😞 We spent years researching and saving for a once-in-a-lifetime voyage to Antarctica, and finally settled on the Noble Caledonia cruise ‘Antarctica – Land of Heroes’, an extensive cruise to the Falklands, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula. We booked early to make sure we could select the cabin we wanted and Noble Caledonia happily took our deposit, thereby (we thought) guaranteeing our place on the cruise. Safe in the knowledge that our place was assured we booked our return flights to Buenos Aires, again early enough to get the exact flights we wanted. Three months after taking our money Noble Caledonia decided they could make more money by redeploying the ship MS Island Sky to Easter Island and cancelled our cruise. This was a crushing disappointment for us. Worse still, Noble Caledonia resolutely refuse to offer any kind of compensation for the loss of our flights even though this was entirely their decision. Now we feel utterly betrayed as well as disappointed. Noble Caledonia’s booking conditions are desperately one-sided. If the customer cancels for any reason they forfeit a massive expense – anywhere from 10% to 100% of the total cost. If Noble Caledonia cancels for any reason they don’t incur any expense at all – they merely return your deposit. It’s one thing to write such escape clauses into the small print, but it’s another thing entirely to actually treat your customers with such contempt. The Noble Caledonia business model is based on alienation of existing customers for short term gain. If they have done this to us they will certainly do this to others. Avoid this company at all cost!!!  As a result of our experience we will never attempt to book with Noble again, but also we now are very wary of all cruise companies.  😞

 

Edited February 22, 2023 by chris24a
submitted while incomplete by mistake

[LandC]

Sorry to hear that your cruise was cancelled.  Noble Caledonia cruises outside the UK are offered for sale with included flights, so am I right in thinking that you decided to book cruise only, and make your own flight arrangements?

 

[LHT28]

sorry to hear  you are  out of pocket 

Do you have insurance that would cover the  air portion?

 Can you find another  cruises that departs  from the same ports  so you can still use the air ?

 

Most lines will not reimburse you  for air  if they cancel the cruise

it may be different in the UK 

 

Hope you can find a solution & still use the air 

 

[Fletcher]

Sorry to hear about your experience, @chris24a.  As a former Noble Cal regular cruiser I have had both good and terrible experiences with their customer relations.  I did think that they included airfares in all their itineraries and that you had to opt out of them and, if you did, get some sort of refund on the price.  There is a lesson here - always book air flights through the cruise company if you are travelling long-haul or to out-of-the-way destinations.  That way you are guaranteed to get all your money back.

 

As @LHT28 says above, there are many other cruises available in Antarctica and you should be able to dovetail with one of them.  Look at Silversea, Seabourn, Ponant, Lindblad, Quark etc.  When you do this search you will find similar fares to Noble Cal and much, much better ships than Island Sky.  

 

On the other hand, I might add that the route from Tahiti to Easter Island, which I did with Noble Cal, remains the best cruise I have ever done. 

Edited February 27, 2023 by Fletcher

[chris24a]

Thanks all for the comments (and the sympathy 🙂 ).  We did indeed opt out of the included flights so that we could add extra time at the start (for safety) and at the end (for extra sightseeing in Argentina).  We accepted there could be a cancelation risk in doing this - thinking of insurrection, earthquake, plague, that sort of thing.  It never crossed our minds that they might just redeploy the ship when they already had passengers booked on it.  Lesson learnt indeed!

 

Thanks also for the suggestions - we're currently looking at an option with Aurora, though we'll still have to move the flights.  We'll make something work, it's mostly just a pain in the proverbial.  I think that Shackleton had the right idea - build your own ship and hire some people to sail it for you.

Edited February 27, 2023 by chris24a
Pressed ctr/enter and submitted by mistake. Again.

[jimdee3636]

@chris24a

I'll tell you one thing: this does not inspire confidence. I feel sorry for you, but I'm glad you warned us of NC's shoddy business practices. Good luck in making the most of this. I do like your spirit and attitude.

 

Jim

[Host Jazzbeau]

My take is that Noble is operating close to the wind post-Covid and must manage costs.  I don't know how they managed to survive Covid, but suspect it was a near thing – and they don't have the ability to sell billions of dollars of notes like the big 3 cruise conglomerates.  

 

Noble's business model is based on UK passengers joining the tour at LHR on included flights to/from the ship.  You chose to book your own flights, which puts you outside their normal business model.

 

We have booked 4 cruises with Noble, and as US-based passengers we are aware of this business plan.  On our first two Noble cruises, in 2021 as the world came out of Covid, we stayed within their model by flying to London and joining the tour at LHR.  The first one went smoothly, although it clearly involved extra costs borne by Noble:  regularly scheduled BA flights replaced by charters; required shore excursion bubbles that added extra buses and extra excursions for b2b passengers; difficulties restocking ship stores when all crew (even the Chefs) were barred from leaving the ship.

 

The second cruise was to be on Serenissima, a ship owned by a Russian – which was pulled from service by the owner [this was pre-Ukraine, so I don't know why].  Noble offered us an incentive to switch to a cruise on Hebridean Sky (one of the two ships they own, sister to Island Sky) – then that sailing was cancelled as they consolidated passengers into fewer sailings, so we switched to a guaranteed date [literally guaranteed, in writing from Noble] – and had one of our best cruises ever.  Delta allowed us to rebook the flights to London, and Noble's compensation allowed us to upgrade a cabin category.  So all-in-all a good deal.

 

For the third cruise we chose to fly to the Baltic on our own, in order to enjoy Copenhagen and Stockholm before and after the cruise.  We knew we were taking a risk not joining the tour in London and so insured the airfare on SAS, but thankfully everything went well.

 

This January we had a similar experience to yours, when Noble decided not to bring Heb Sky to South America and cancelled our cruise at late notice.  Again, we knew we were taking a risk by choosing to fly on our own to Buenos Aires and back from Santiago, rather than add thousands of miles flying to London.  American Airlines allowed us to rebook our flights to fit a replacement trip – this time with a different vendor – so we suffered no real loss.

 

We have always been aware that as US passengers of Noble we are somewhat unique [on each of our cruises we have been the only US passengers].  And if we choose to fly direct to the ship we know we are taking a series of risks [the air fare, delays causing us to miss the ship, luggage mishaps, etc.]  But OP shows UK as their home address – so if you had taken the 'normal' Noble booking with airfare from the UK this cancellation would not have involved any monetary loss.  You chose to fly on your own [probably for good reasons, like our cruises in the Baltic and to South America], but you should have known in doing that that you were taking a risk.  If British airlines still charge change fees, you should have insured the flights.

 

Your experience, IMHO, isn't a brutal mark against Noble, but rather your misunderstanding of their business plan and your failure to insure yourself when deviating from it.

 

We continue to value our Noble cruises as among the best of the 30+ we have taken, and I plan to continue to book with Noble when an itinerary catches my eye.  [I also notice that in a recent Which? survey, Noble is rated #1 among UK passengers.  The cruises themselves are amazingly good, if you know what you are buying and insure properly.]