a funny thing happened on my prima transatlantic...

[UKstages]

not haha funny, but funny in the sense of interesting and unexpected. you might find it interesting, too. (If not, there’s nothing to see here! please move along.)

 

first let me say that EVERYTHING that people have said about the prima is true. it is a sensational ship with much to recommend. it also has serious design flaws, and in many cases, these are “bad ideas gone wrong” that have poor execution and delivery on top of ill conception.

 

and, as on any NCL ship, there are crew members who provide best in class top notch customer service. and there are also low lights who are completely clueless indeed, the prima excels at simultaneously offering excellent service and utter incompetence, ingeniousness design juxtaposed against spectacular stupidity.

 

i fully plan to write another post that details miscellaneous observations of my 21 days at sea on this back-to-back adventure because i still believe NCL is trying very hard and wants nothing more than to have a world class ship and deliver memorable vacation experiences to its customers. but before i get into the nitty gritty of all that, permit me to share a notable incident that occurred a few days in on my TA from new york to reykjavik.

 

grab some popcorn. this might take a while.

 

i intend to break the story up into many bite sized posts, for easier consumption.

 

please, hold your applause - or your brickbats - till the end.

[UKstages]

 

so…

 

i left new york on 5/14 on the prima, headed to canada and iceland. i’m in a comped club balcony suite on this cruise as a guest of casinos at sea, NCL’s casino rewards program. as everybody knows, “free” rooms aren’t really free; one pays port fees, taxes, an inexplicable and usurious “admin fee,” plus gratuities on the drink package and the dining package, as well as the onboard service charge, a.k.a. the “daily service charge.” all in, this first leg of the B2B cost me about $1200, when you factor in all fees, costs, excursions and a couple of extra purchased meals.

 

that’s not as much as others who paid outright for their cabin (although this cruise had quite a few rooms left and there were certainly bargains to be found), but it wasn’t chump change, either. in any case, once you’re booked, you’re a passenger with the same benefits and privileges as any other passenger. more, when you’re actually in the casino. (and we’ll talk about that a bit later, because that is both a blessing and a curse.) in any event, if anyone cares, and, frankly, NCL should, i lost more in the casino in the first four days of this trip than i have on any other ship in cruises lasting 15 days or longer. and i lost far more than the cost of the cabin. that doesn’t always happen, but it sometimes does. and it’s why they offer “free” cruises.

 

people who enjoy it as entertainment, enjoy it. people who don’t, don’t understand it at all and think the devil has been sent to rob my soul and i’ll spend the afterlife in purgatory.

 

wait! that’s kind of already happened, on the prima in fact!

 

but i don’t want to get ahead of myself. this is just the preamble.

 

the point here is that when you’re a passenger, how you paid for your room doesn’t really matter, except for casino guests it does matter in the sense that the revenue they generate goes into the calculation of the overall lifetime value of a customer. who would NCL rather have sailing with them? a haven guest that pays you 18K for your room or a casino guest who sails in the haven for “free” but bets 100K in the casino and loses 24K?

 

that’s an interesting question and there are advantages to having both customers.

 

in fact, NCL wants both customers!

 

but i digress, before i really even get started, if that’s possible.

 

and clearly it is… because i’ve just done it.

 

where was i?

 

oh, yes, purgatory!

 

they say it’s nice this time of year.

[UKstages]

i was enjoying my cruise very much when, after leaving sydney, cape breton on day 4, we hit stormy weather and somewhat rough seas. that’s not a problem; i’m used to that. homey ain’t afraid of no boat rockin’. but when i tried to go to sleep, i noticed that the cabin was making unusual noises that i hadn’t heard before… on this or any ship. it sounded to me like i was onboard a ship built of wood in the 1900s (which is ironic since i had just visited the titanic exhibition at the maritime museum in halifax a day earlier).

 

there was constant creaking and popping, about once every two or three seconds, easily twenty to thirty times a minute. it was impossible to sleep. i put on noise canceling headphones and could still hear the noise. i put on music and listened through my noise canceling headphones and still heard a cacophony of creaking. i tossed and turned and didn’t sleep all night.

[UKstages]

now, i had read about prima noise complaints similar to mine in this very forum. but i had dismissed them as the whining of cantankerous curmudgeons who can just never be pleased and who blow up the most minor of inconveniences for dramatic effect. i mean, c’mon, who would believe that they could build a new ship with a large number of rooms with this very problem

 

believe, my friends!

 

turns out, this is no exaggeration. the noise is real and i can vouch for its ability to completely destroy your sleep, disrupt your cruise and turn you into a zombie.  the noise is maddening and ever present. 

 

and what is so disturbing and so disappointing is that management doesn’t really have an executable plan - after more than a year of dealing with this known defect - to manage customer dissatisfaction when this happens. they still can’t acknowledge how bad the problem is and provide reasonable accommodation, both in the sense of actual lodging (a quiet place to sleep) and a customer service “accommodation” for the incredible inconvenience and as an acknowledgement that an major portion of your vacation has been taken away from you.)

 

at about 10:30 am on day 5, the first of four consecutive sea days as we crossed the atlantic, i went to the guest services desk to report the concern. i spoke to a nice gentleman who didn’t seem the slightest bit surprised at this complaint, as he probably hears it frequently. how many rooms are there like this?

 

i asked: is it 12? 15? 30? 125? 275?

 

he wasn’t talking, nor is anybody else, but i did learn that these rooms are flagged in NCL’s system as having noise problems. presumably, that’s so they can sell them last or not sell them at all or sell them at a deeply discounted rate… you know, as if there were a slide running through your balcony. (i know, i know, like something so crazy could ever actually happen!)

 

i asked why NCL would book this room at all. and i asked why NCL would place a platinum member or a ruby CAS player in this room (that’s not to say that all guests shouldn’t have access to a quiet room, but there are supposed to be some privileges that come with status and while a quiet room isn’t one of them, you’d think latitude members who hold elite status wouldn’t normally be booked into a room with a known defect such as this).

 

he entered all the info in his computer and said that somebody would be sent to my room.

 

why, i asked?

 

these were not his exact words, but he essentially said it was to verify that that this was a real problem. and i found that surprising, because after a year of dealing repeatedly with this issue on the prima, it’s a pretty safe bet that if somebody comes to you and says their room is uninhabitable because of constant noise, and that they haven’t slept all night, they’re probably telling you the truth.

 

i asked what the next step was and he said an engineer would be sent to my room to fix the problem. i thought this was a load of hooey (can i say “hooey” on cruise critic; if not, phooey on them! i should be able to say “hooey,” gosh darn it. what has this world come to?). when i touch the walls and the ceiling in my cabin there is no noise. it’s an inside job. to put it another way, just like in all those horror films, the calls are literally coming from inside the house.

[UKstages]

so, doubting that an engineer could actually fix this problem, i grabbed one of those “Dear GM” notes that you’re supposed to fill out for the GM’s attention and drop in a clear plastic box as if you’re entering a draw for a door prize. In this case, the GM is a friendly and engaging chap named marc spijkerboer. i know he’s friendly because he’s smiling in his photo which adorns his box. I know he’s capable because he has decades of experience in the hospitality field on both land and sea. (it’s true… i looked him up! his linkedin profile lists strategic management thinking, people management and motivating skills, planning and organization and training and development as core competencies. we have a few things in common, marc and i.) so if marc wants me to drop him a line to get my problem resolved, i’m more than happy to do so. marc’s da man!

 

now, i know you’re going to find this hard to believe after the previous forty paragraphs or so, but i provided a concise summary of the problem and simply asked for a sleeping room that i could use to, well, sleep. i dropped it in the box.

[UKstages]

and then, guess what? the most remarkable thing happened. somebody did indeed get sent to my room! score one for NCL! he was a very nice gent, a warm and affable fellow who spent maybe 90 seconds in the room and, apparently, verified that the problem exists and that the noise is pretty much continuous. score one for the aggrieved customer! he told me that an engineer would be dispatched to my room to fix the problem. (clearly following the script… i heard that earlier the same day… perhaps i am wrong... perhaps there IS an executable plan!). he handed me his business card which listed his title as “2nd steward pax.”

 

have you noticed that everybody likes to hand you their business card onboard NCL ships, but they all have job titles that don’t make much sense to anyone who doesn’t work on the ship, and they rarely correspond to the task at hand? anyway, have you ever tried to call these folks? it usually begins a volley of voicemails that doesn’t get resolved – if at all – till the end of the cruise. again, if at all.

 

(when i arrived on my cruise i already had four voice mail messages! turns out, they were for the previous guest in my room. i didn’t listen to the messages, because that would be a violation of privacy and i care about guest privacy… apparently, NCL doesn’t. but i sure do wish i had listened to them… maybe there was one addressing the prior guest’s noise complaint. maybe that’s why an engineer never came to my room to fox it! maybe it’s because he had been there on the prior cruise. hmmm.)

[UKstages]

much later that evening, about six or seven hours after i lodged my first complaint, i received a voicemail from somebody who described herself as the “GM’s assistant.” she wanted me to call so we could get the matter resolved. and so i did. and she then introduced herself once again and said she was the manager of guest services. OK, whatever. I thought she was the GM’s assistant, which i should take great pains to point out is very different than being “assistant GM.” i suppose that anybody who works in a managerial capacity in furtherance of the GM’s goals is a GM’s assistant, much like mickey mouse, who wasn’t really a sorcerer, but a sorcerer’s apprentice. so yeah, it’s a bit of a stretch, but sure. the GM’s assistant. let’s work with that.

 

i just needed a place to sleep. could she help?

 

turns out, she could!

 

at least i thought so, but then i wasn’t so sure. she admitted noisy cabins due to structural flaws were a big problem onboard the prima from day 1. just to clarify, this really is related to high seas. in stormy weather, in high seas, when the ship is rocking, these cabins have an internal structural flaw that makes the internal walls and support structure creak in the most annoying way. (that’s my layman’s explanation. if an engineer were actually sent to my room, he or she might have a different explanation.)  you might go on the prima and be placed in one of these rooms and never have a problem. you might be hard of hearing or have a high tolerance for pain inflicted on your ear drums. so you might never complain. indeed, that seems to be NCL’s revenue-based strategy behind the sale of these rooms… some people won’t mind and for those that do, we’ll sort it out later.

 

she apologized for the inconvenience, but she did say that my room had not been previously identified as being problematic in this regard. please note: she didn’t apologize for NCL booking me into the room, she didn’t apologize that the problem wasn’t resolved and she didn’t apologize for the seven-hour delay in getting back to me. she apologized for “the inconvenience” and that they had no comparable room to offer me.

[SeaShark]

5 minutes ago, UKstages said:

latitude members who hold elite status

 

Of the seven latitude levels, Platinum is right in the middle...three levels above and three levels below. If latitude levels were grades, Platinum would be a "C"...right in the middle...average.

 

JMHO, but Ambassador "yes", Diamond "maybe", but I don't think NCL would consider a mid-level latitude level to be "elite".

[UKstages]

with regard to the room not being previously identified as having this problem… geez, i don’t know. i asked my steward about it and he said, yes, he hears that all the time when he’s in there making up the room. isn’t that interesting? as far as i’m concerned, if the steward knows about it, NCL knows about it. NCL has a bigger problem than structural defects in the wall if they haven’t trained cabin attendants to report problems with their rooms.

 

but back to the sorcerer's apprentice…

 

she said she could indeed move me to another room (which, in truth, was not exactly what i asked for. i had asked for a room to sleep in.) but OK, kindly make like sandy dumbrowski and tell me more, tell me more!

 

she said that all the “mini suites” were sold out, but that she could move me to a “studio” cabin. i asked if these were the inside cabins for solo travelers. she said yes. i said that would be fine, i needed a place to sleep… i hadn’t slept all night!

 

i also said that i assumed i would keep the club balcony room as a base of operations. this is quite common in a customer service recovery situation like this in the hospitality industry. you get the person what they need – in this case, a room to sleep in – and everything else gets sorted out after that. in fact, i spoke to somebody to whom this sort of thing happened on another NCL ship and they gave her a room across the hall. and she was free to go back and forth between the two rooms. my brother is the GM of a resort hotel and he confirms this happens all the time. it’s much more difficult when the property or ship is sold out, of course, but usually an accommodation of some kind can be made.

 

i explained that i was in no condition to move to another room after not having slept all night… and the club balcony had a much larger footprint, was good for hanging out in during port days (since there was no noise when the ship was docked) and also had a few benefits, including a free bag of laundry. and, knowing what i know about the way NCL ships operate, i explained that trying to get those benefits, or even messages or “treats” or laundry delivered to my new stateroom would be problematic at best.

 

she insisted this had to be a move. they could only arrange for me to move to another room and i would no longer have access to my former room. (when i say they could “arrange” it, i don’t mean to imply that they offered assistance for the move… nope. i would be on my own with that. i just meant they said they would “arrange” to give me a new room.)

 

frankly, that seemed unreasonable to me. it’s not like they needed the room for another guest. (the ship sailed under capacity.) and i would lose all the benefits of the booked room. she explained again that the “mini suites” were sold out and so i could not move to another “mini suite.”  i understood this, i accepted this and at no time did i ever insist on being moved to another “mini suite.” all i asked for was a place to sleep. she said she actually did have other vacant “mini suites,” but that they were designated as “noisy” and could not be offered to me. (she referred over and over to these “mini suites” and i think this is a serious branding and marketing challenge for NCL. they spent all this money to rename the “mini suite” to “club balcony” and yet they can’t get their long-term employees to play ball. it must be frustrating.)

 

she then said she could offer me what she called an “ocean view” room instead. i asked her to tell me more about that. “that’s a room with a small window?” i asked. no, she said. an “ocean view” room has a balcony.

 

hmmm. uh, OK.

 

i said that would be fine, too, but that i really needed to keep my original room as a base of operations. it was also at this point that i realized that maybe she wasn’t the best communicator. not only had she been imprecise in what she said to me, but i didn’t have a high degree of confidence that my concerns were being communicated properly to marc, the GM with the smiling face, who seemed to be the decision maker here.

 

since i know marc has good people skills, i asked to have marc call me. she said he would and that he would be able to show me available rooms the next morning.

 

so, i felt like a modicum of progress had been made there at the tail end of that call. a glimmer of hope! but i was still stuck in my uninhabitable room for another night. and i hadn’t slept all night… at that point i was probably up for 34 – 36 hours.

 

i will just pause for a moment to say that i have devoted most of my professional life to senior leadership positions in training and customer service and sales. i have worked extensively in the philippines, with 48 trips in the last ten years. i understand thought organization and idioms unique to the filipino community... and even i couldn’t understand what she was saying to me. this was not an accent problem… i heard the words she was saying… they just didn’t make much sense.

[UKstages]

the good news is that i was able to get three hours of sleep that night. yeah for me! the bad news is that – as day 6 of my 11-day cruise began - i was still exhausted. and yet i waited that next morning - like a schoolgirl with a crush - for marc’s call.

 

it never came.

 

needless to say, no rooms were shown to me. in fact, i didn’t hear from anybody at all until about 2 pm, when the “GM’s assistant” called once again. she said she waited till 2 pm to call because she assumed i would be sleeping. i told her she didn’t understand the problem if she thought i could sleep.

 

she said that she had spoken to marc and that he said i must move if i wanted a new room. i said that made no sense whatsoever. and reiterated the reasons why. she had no response. if she offered some legitimate reason why i couldn’t have use of the original room, while using the other room for sleeping, i’m sure i would have stood down and agreed to move. but she couldn’t offer me a reason because there is no reason. other than, perhaps, marc said no. and that’s why i guess i needed to talk to marc.

 

that’s the thing folks. if you’re going to ask your customer facing people to properly manage customer dissatisfaction, you have to empower them to make decisions on their own. they can’t defend decisions that don’t make sense, that they can’t explain or that that they don’t understand.  this woman couldn’t explain to me why i couldn’t do the thing she was explicitly told i couldn’t do.

 

i told her she was asking me to move to a lesser room with fewer services without any compensation.

 

i also said i was disappointed that marc didn’t call me himself as promised. she said no such promise was ever made. i said it was… by her, in our last conversation. she said it was not. i said it was. she said it was not.

 

i’m not terribly proud of what happened next. i told her that it was in fact promised by her and that i had been waiting for his call and then i told her that our conversation was over and i would await marc’s call. and i hung up on her.

 

yeah, just three hours of sleep over more than 48 hours will do that to you. i don’t recommend it.

 

hey, isn’t this one of the things they do when they torture prisoners of war? stick them in a room and play unwanted sounds until they can’t take it any longer?

 

[UKstages]

as for who calls whom… in customer service, it doesn’t really matter, provided the problem gets resolved or the task gets taken care of. but if it doesn’t, it matters a great deal who makes the call.

 

the GM’s refusal to get his hands dirty by talking to an actual customer experiencing a serious service lapse demonstrates either a total lack of understanding of the complexity of the problem or an alarming ability to remain aloof amidst the chaos his team had created. frankly, if he can’t be bothered to call a customer, perhaps he should try spending a night or two in one of those noisy rooms to see how debilitating it can be to be subjected to that minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, night after night.

 

most importantly, if he had taken the time to make a three minute or thirty-minute phone call, it would demonstrate that he genuinely card and that he is dedicated to owning the problem and providing resolution.

 

and sometimes, in those three minutes of discovery, you might just learn that the problem you thought existed doesn’t really exist. or you might learn that you have a different problem entirely. perhaps people claiming to be your assistant are misrepresenting the company’s position or not delivering the message you think she is.  the point is: spend time with your customers. and not just the ones with compliments. you’ll learn far more about your business and your employees from those lodging complaints than you will from those praising you.

 

by the way, these folks know everything about you. they know where you are and where you’ve just been. they know where you have dinner reservations and when you’re riding the go karts. they know when you’re in the casino. (they also know if you’ve been good or bad and, yes, it is on your permanent record. every NCL customer has a profile that includes your cruise history, your spend, your projected lifetime value and any notes that staff have made about your preferences, your demeanor or your transgressions. this is common for hospitality firms.)

 

rather than using fifty-year-old and four-hundred-year-old technology to communicate via voicemail and paper message, why not just go to where they know you are or will be, have a five minute in-person conversation and be done with it? they have your cell phone number, they know who is using the internet, they know who is using the app. why not simply push a message to you rather than dragging the process out over days by leaving endless voicemails and paper messages, neither of which are easy to get when you’re out and about the ship?

 

it’s exasperating.

 

oh, and i’m not running a school for GMs here, but a fruit basket always works. nobody really wants them, nobody really eats them, but it’s a gesture, ferchrissakes. you screw up, you send a fruit basket. (note: this does not work for wives, just disgruntled customers. you’re on the hook for roses for your wife.)

 

i should probably mention here that being the good cruise critic doobie that i am, i also reached out via email to katty byrd, vp of guest services at NCL corporate in miami. call me a sentimental fool if you will, but i thought she might like to know what was going on onboard her newest vessel.

 

do you think i should have emailed katy perry, too?

 

; )

[UKstages]

as day 7 began, i was loopy. i couldn’t sleep in the observation lounge because it was closed overnight. i couldn’t sleep on my balcony because it was too cold. i couldn’t sleep in the room itself because of the constant noise. i had been up for thirty something hours once again, but managed to get two hours sleep during the night and as morning approached i got another two hours sleep by bringing two pillows and a top sheet into the bathroom and making a little bed on the tile floor: my head near the shower door and my legs adjacent to the toilet.

 

hey, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it! i don’t recommend it for those over 5’8”, but it was the best sleep i had in three days, i kid you not. i would not be surprised if NCL dropped those images of lobsters and champagne and water slides in their forthcoming brochures and switched them out for images of their guests in fetal positions on the bathroom floor.

 

freestyle cruising means having the freedom to sleep anywhere and any way you like!

 

when i woke up - fresh as a daisy – i went down to guest services again. it was 5:30 or 6:30 am, i can’t remember. i spoke to a lovely woman, truly capable of expressing empathy. i asked her to pull up my account and i guessed that there would be some notes in there. indeed there were! it took her a few minutes for her to cycle through and get caught up. she explained that a room had been found for me! a balcony room one deck below my current room, i believe she said. i told her i had no idea this had happened, how would i have known?

 

she said a message was left for me. i said i received no such message. i also told her that in the past day, i had received three notices for other rooms with similar room numbers. one was an invitation to a dinner with officers, one was a message and one was park west spam. i delivered the invitation and the message to the other cabins myself. and i tossed the park west advertisement. my point was that it was entirely possible that my message had been misdirected. it happens all the time.

 

anyway, at this point… who cares? let’s just get a key to my new room, so i can get some proper sleep!

 

then she said she couldn’t give me the key to the “new” room until i moved out of the old one.

 

ruh-roh.

 

i explained yet again why that was neither fair nor advisable: i had not had much sleep, i would be moving rooms for the next cruise and it really wasn’t fair to ask me to move again just five days later, i had laundry out waiting to be delivered, but most importantly, i had port days coming up… the noise problem did not exist while in port and we were overnighting in reykjavik, leaving an entire night for me to enjoy the club balcony room that was rightfully mine.

 

she said, let me go in the back and check. she came out a few minutes later and said, no, i would have to move and lose access to the original room. i asked her to document our conversation by placing comments in the notes field and then i began to walk away, but i came back to ask her why marc’s picture is on the note to the GM box if he doesn’t answer customer queries or concerns. she said, “oh, no, he absolutely does.” i felt like i would be telling her that santa claus did not exist if i continued the conversation, so i said thank you and left.

 

i walked away, got all the way to the other side of the ship, then turned back and went back to guest services. i said, “please write in the notes to have whoever addresses this problem look at the revenue tab on my account.”

 

yeah, i played the revenue card for the first time in this ordeal.

 

look, every customer deserves to be treated well and be given what they paid for. but there’s a class system at most businesses (the latitudes program, the casinos at sea program and the entire haven “ship within the ship” concept is built upon this notion) and the value of all customers is not equal. so, yeah, i politely suggested that if someone looked at the revenue tab on my account, they might think differently about depriving me of three nights of sleep.

 

[UKstages]

now, i do have a theory as to how this all happened. not the noise problem… they had some clowns build a new ship for them and the QA team was asleep at the wheel. that’s how that happened.

 

no, i mean the somewhat lackluster customer service response.

 

remember the nice fellow who took my initial incident report? he might be a part of the problem. i believe he may have misused a customer sentiment tracker in NCL’s CRM software, due to poor training or a simple misunderstanding. the sentiment tracker has a graphical interface that uses a series of five “faces” ranging from a smiley face to an angry, nay, furious, nay, IRATE red face with steam escaping from it. And the frontline rep is supposed to choose one of those faces that most closely resembles the customer’s current state of mind or mood.

 

i asked the rep who first took the incident report on my situation which face he had chosen for me. he said “this one” and pointed to the red IRATE face, with the guy blowing his cool. I asked why he chose that one. “i’m calm, i'm polite, i’m expressing a legitimate customer concern. shouldn’t my mood be, gosh, i dunno, maybe this yellow face over here, the one next to the smiley face?”

 

he said, “actually, sir, the face indicates the severity of the problem, not how angry the customer is.”

 

um, OK, but... no, it doesn’t.

[UKstages]

as i mentioned up thread, i’ve been in customer service and customer problem resolution for decades and that’s not what this tracker - which is a relatively new tool – is used for. it just isn’t. now, a company can choose to use and apply a different label and purpose to a business tool if that’s what it wants to do. but everybody has to be on the same page and understand what it means. i suspect that not everybody at NCL is or does.

 

so, you likely have a frontline customer service rep who is saying the customer is red-faced “angry” and everyone who handles the concern subsequently accepts that the customer is red-faced “angry” because there it is, right there in the incident repot in the CRM software.

 

and that, in turn, invariably leads to negative attitudes and opinions about the nature of the customer concern – and the customer – before the executive resolution team even begins to tackle the problem. the salient point here is that it is very hard to be treated fairly once you’ve been branded as an irate customer. no matter what you do or say is likely to change the company’s preconceived notion of you, even if that notion is based on corrupt data.

 

and you know what so often happens? they treat you as an irate customer… and so you fulfill their prophecy and become one! not because you’re normally prone to angry outbursts, but because you’re exasperated at the seemingly inappropriate responses delivered without empathy, apology or genuine understanding.

[UKstages]

i wrote all the posts above before this next thing happened, but i decided to post them as a contemporaneous account of what transpired. it seems to me that people who frequent the NCL forum on cruise critic might want to know that there’s a decent chance they could lose sleep on the prima or wind up sleeping on the bathroom floor. and there’s an even greater chance they could lose more sleep as they tried to resolve a customer service issue.

 

and the preceding posts provide the necessary context to understanding this next bit.

 

not twenty minutes after i finished writing all that, i received a voice mail from a woman who identified herself as the “assistant GM.” sheesh… they’re everywhere, these so-called assistant GMs! i looked her up. turns out, she’s the assistant GM! score another one for NCL!

 

i called her back. she said she was very sorry at what had happened and that she understood that i had been offered “an additional sleeping room” and had refused.

 

i was gobsmacked.

 

i said, “um, gosh, no, that’s not what happened at all. i was told i would have to move to another room and relinquish my ability to use my originally booked room. i was told this repeatedly.” and then i explained that she has a much bigger problem than inconveniencing one guest. it appears that there is widespread misunderstanding about requiring people to give up their stateroom to move to another in a situation like this.

 

she said, “that’s not our policy. not at all. we do this all the time under these circumstances.”

 

we then had a brief conversation about how this happens on the prima during rocky seas and how, yes, there are a number of rooms that are so affected. it was quite a cordial conversation that went on for a few minutes more.

 

then she ended with: “of course, you can keep your original room. this would be an additional room for sleeping! also, we would like to give you a $500 credit.”

 

i said thanks and told her that i thought $500 was a little thin for three lost days of my vacation, with three sleepless nights culminating in a stint spent in the fetal position on my bathroom floor, and especially when viewed against my actual spend on the cruise thus far. (yeah, i actually did say that.) but i did thank her once again. and i asked if this were to be FCC or OBC. she said it would be a credit on the bill and it was authorized by the folks at corporate in miami, so it would take a day or two to be reflected on the bill.

[UKstages]

so, let’s unpack, shall we?

 

three and a half days of relentless noise that kept me from sleeping, culminating in having to bed down on the bathroom floor. umpteen complaints, er, i mean… expressions of my disappointment and concern: two visits to guest services, two phone calls from the manager of guest services who claimed she was the GM’s assistant, six conversations with my cabin attendant (you have only heard about one of those), two conversations with casino hosts, zero calls from the actual GM (nobody gets to see the wizard!), one call from the actual assistant GM, four misdirected paper messages and one more visit to guest services to get a new key for the second room (more about that later).

 

and in the end, what did i get?

 

EXACTLY WHAT I ASKED FOR THREE AND A HALF DAYS EARLIER.

 

plus $500 “for my troubles,” as the saying goes.

 

miami, we have a problem.

 

at least one problem, possibly more.

 

if the assistant GM is to be believed, and their policy is in fact to give people an additional “sleeping room,” then there is a major problem in training and communication. why is the person who is asked to resolve frontline customer concerns and communicate with customers seemingly unaware of that policy and why does everybody steadfastly refuse to budge from this erroneous position for more than three days, during which a customer is driven batty from sleep deprivation?

 

i believed her and i was aghast at how simply this was ultimately resolved. but i was also quite angry inside (you may appropriately select that red face now). i felt like the enemy i had been fighting for there and a half days was a straw man. i was raging against the machine and there was no machine there… there wasn’t even an abacus.

 

i was discussing this with a friend who pointed out the whole thing might be BS. there is no “additional room” policy, he said. they reversed course, he said, because they ran it up higher and somebody said this was crazy or because corporate got involved because of your email or because nobody ever actually spoke to the GM and once he learned about this he said, enough! or because somebody actually did look at your revenue tab and said, crikey, this is not somebody we want to annoy.

 

take your pick.

 

the assistant GM told you that they have a policy and a mistake had been made because it was easier to explain than three days of intentional obfuscation.

 

is that the case? i don’t know.

Edited May 23, 2023 by UKstages

[UKstages]

as for that $500 credit… i have a couple of issues there. the first was already stated up thread. it is a very small fraction of my spend on this cruise, when you factor in casino action. but because casino operations and ship operations don’t really have anything to do with each other… the people making this decision don’t recognize my value as a casino customer.

 

i’m not really an NCL customer.

 

i’m a casinos at sea customer.

 

but casinos at sea can’t make good when the ship screws up.

 

the second thing about that is… it’s unclear if it came from the ship or was corporate’s idea once they got involved, if indeed they got involved. that in itself is not a problem. what is interesting is that nobody on the ship… on the scene… is authorized to offer a $500 credit? that is remarkable. remember what i said upthread about empowering your people to make good decisions on their own and get the job done? you deprive somebody of sleep for three days and you first have to get in touch with corporate over a weekend to authorize a gesture of good will… whether it be $500, 1K, 2K or a generous amount of monopoly money… a.k.a. free slot play?

 

really?

 

whatever happened to hiring good people and trusting them to do the job they know how to do, until and unless they screw up?

 

they got this.

 

at least that's the way it's supposed to work.

[UKstages]

a couple of addenda before i go on my sleep derived, marginally merry way…

 

when i went to get the key to the new room, the guest services agent was unsure of what to do and how to process the request. he saw all the notes, he knew he was supposed to give me a card, but he didn’t know how to go about it. he went in the back, then came out, then went in the back again. and then he said, OK, here is your new card. and he gave me a new blank card with no imprint. and he wrote the room number down on a piece of paper.

 

i went to the room, a balcony cabin one deck below my first room, and it was fine. i did note that there was excessive fan noise in the bathroom, so i was hoping that i wouldn’t have to sleep there… but other than that, the room was fine.

 

the next day, there are loud and insistent knocks on my door (despite it having the ”do not disturb” indicator lit). i answer the door and am greeted by six people, including two security officers. they don’t identify themselves, but immediately hit me with a barrage of questions: “why are you in this room? who gave you a key to this room? when did you get that key? when did you move to this room? where did you come from? is anyone traveling with you? what was your prior room? have you been here the whole time?”

 

apparently, the guest services agent who gave me the key didn’t process the key properly. and the gang of six descended upon me to find out what was going on and, geez, i dunno, just a guess, extricate me from the cabin and send me to the naughty room?

 

i have no freaking idea.

 

at this point, let me just pause to say: how can one company be so incompetent and so clueless and cause so much discomfort and inconvenience at nearly every customer touch point?

 

(i have lots more examples of incompetence and lack of attention to details onboard the prima, including one that happened that same day with the excursions team. i’ll tell you more about that when i gather my thoughts, and write another post about the good the bad and the indifferent with this ship, but – for now - let me just say that the excursions team will look you straight in the face and lie, lie lie till they are blue in the face and then deny that they are blue and say that they're actually yellow and suffering from jaundice… and then hand you reissued excursion tickets to make up for their mistake [which they won’t admit to]. what they neglect to point out is that those excursions have less preferred oddball times that require you to change all your dinner reservations and make you miss featured entertainment.)

 

the next day, a certificate for crossing the arctic circle arrived to the new room, with somebody else’s name on it. correct room, wrong guy. how does THAT happen? was there somebody in my room earlier in the cruise? did they assign a random name to this cabin because their “system” requires a passenger name be assigned to a cabin so that six people don’t barge in and interrogate you?

 

my money is on the latter. and rather than fix the system, they provide a stopgap patch that will get them through the next few days, but that will guarantee that this will happen again to another passenger.

 

that’s really the problem… there’s a lot of flying by the seat of your pants onboard NCL ships… and they never solve the underlying problem. they just fix whatever is wrong in the moment. there is something to be said for that… but it won’t ensure the long-term viability of the company.

[UKstages]

oh, geez. i see i have an email from corporate that came in today. i took a quick glance. it appears to be very much a pro forma canned response. they kind of lost me when they referred to me as a “shareholder.” i am not. and they seem to have got other key details wrong. sheesh.

 

i’m still a bit loopy. i’ve been sleeping well in the new room, but i had such a deficit that i’m still not fully recovered. in fact, i fell asleep on a tour bus yesterday. i didn’t have the most engaging tour guide, but that had very little to do with it.

 

so, i’m going to go enjoy the rest of my cruise(s) now.

 

you kids behave yourselves.

 

i’m sure the usual suspects will be along soon to tell me what a nutter i am and also how brilliant i am. i’m sure there will be those who will demand to know why i let this go on so long and others who will wonder how NCL could let this go on so long. i think marc spijkerboer is likely to see increased traffic to his linkedin profile. and i’m sure it won’t be long before cruise critic runs a feature article on how to make your ship’s bathroom floor the most comfortable it can be. they will reveal shocking details on which lines have the most spacious floors and which have oversized toilets that obstruct the footprint and pose an obstacle to a good night’s sleep.

 

and some forum folks, i’m sure, will want to know how much i tipped the security officers who stormed the new room and interrogated me.

 

i adore you all.

 

(except for the ones i have on ignore... them, not so much.)

[YVRteacher]

So did you book another cruise while on board?

[UKstages]

other than that, mrs. lincoln, did you enjoy the play?

[Wulfwyn]

What deck were you on

 

[ChiefMateJRK]

Yikes.  I gave up about halfway through.  I book steerage, pack ear plugs and fully utilize the beverage package.  I always sleep like a baby and wake up READY TO GO.😎

[wncretired]

You need to write a book! (wait, you just did!)

I know this was not funny to you, but to me (the reader), it is hilarious!!

🤬🤬😢😢😂😂

[jimdee3636]

@UKstages

I have to say: for someone sleep-deprived you write extremely well, with insight, irony, and humor. And you've performed a public service---there is no way in Hell I'd ever get on that ship!

 

I hope you make it to disembarkation day.

 

Jim