Is this discrimination

[Megabear2]

24 minutes ago, S1971 said:

 

Yes, Selbourne's suggestion would be sufficient, but as you say it's only as good as the person the other end processing the information.

 

It amazes me that with all the technology nowadays, it really shouldn't that difficult to incorporate a program to autocheck evac chair availability at the time of booking, they obviously can only have a certain number, therefore once fully allocated the system simply rejects the booking.

Well I'm currently an hour into waiting to speak to Cunard about our form - the statement at the beginning of the call stated 30 minutes ...

 

Mysteriously my submitted form on 30 March appears to have removed our mandatory 1 to 1 assistance from the booking.  Ironically the P&O cruises do now show it.

 

I think they are all making it up as they go along!

Edited June 10 by Megabear2

[S1971]

4 minutes ago, Megabear2 said:

I think they are all making it up as they go along!

 

You're probably not far from the truth.

[jockosjungle]

2 hours ago, Megabear2 said:

How many of you are involved, is anyone intending out of your party to travel? Which other cruises have no evac chairs, are they all this year? I assume you have all made final payments now, does your confirmation at final payment show anything different to your original booking confirmation which presumably showed Pasenger X evac chair as per the screenshots above? If something suitable is not available are P&O offering a refund?  Which department are you and your t/a dealing with?

 

Sorry to ask so many questions but it will help to make suggestions to you.

 

Thank you.

 

Thanks all for the comments, I'll try and just use one post.

 

We booked through ***** and they asked no questions about mobility. I now notice that when you try and book there is a tick box about mobility issues so I'm guessing I'm not the only one. I also notice now if you try and book direct through P&O there are now tick boxes about evacuation chairs when you do a dummy booking. It will refuse a booking where there isn't one. 

I made final payment at the time I booked, this was a requirement of ***** at it was 1 May for a 17 August cruise. No there was no mention of an evac chair (people told me to check it was booked on, which is the only reason I queried it).

I have no idea who I am dealing with, I don't seem to be offered anything but the option to change the name on the cruise (I don't see why this helps my parents) and they can move the cruise to within 12 months. I tried to move it to a Northern Europe cruise on the 16th October, no evac chairs were available. 

I send a form via the online cruise personaliser bit, I recall last year I e-mailed something, this year it was done online and a PDF was generated. But I didn't e-mail it, it was submitted automatically. They did confirm they had received a mobility questionnaire. 

 

My wife and kids will still go in August and my parents are vaguely happy to move their cruise (I'll still go with them, so I get an additional cruise). They did Norway last year, so happy to do something a bit different.

I'm not immune to media reports about people getting turned away from cruises, but the P&O spokesperson accuses these people of not filling in a medical needs questionnaire, which we did.

Appreciate all the responses and further requests for clarity

[jockosjungle]

Just to add some more detail, on a vaguely unrelated topic I was e-mailing ***** and mentioned my Mum was a wheelchair user. The advice they gave was to send me a form for a different cruise line and I clarified I'd already filled in the P&O mobility needs online. She seemed satisfied I'd done all I needed to do

[S1971]

I'm bewildered that you appear to have completed everything as requested, only for P&O to refuse due to the need for an evac chair, yet they were happy to take full payment despite knowing your needs, for me that's shocking way to do business.

[solentsam]

41 minutes ago, jockosjungle said:

We booked through ***** and they asked no questions about mobility

I think the the problem lies with the TA from the outset, and they took your payment straight away and no questions asked about mobility.

 

38 minutes ago, jockosjungle said:

The advice they gave was to send me a form for a different cruise line

I find this also that the TA who you are with dont know what they are doing!!

 

I would go back to them and put this to them they have let you down and is their fault.

What sort of TA are they if they cant get the basics right?

Edited June 10 by solentsam

[Megabear2]

1 hour ago, jockosjungle said:

 

Thanks all for the comments, I'll try and just use one post.

 

We booked through ***** and they asked no questions about mobility. I now notice that when you try and book there is a tick box about mobility issues so I'm guessing I'm not the only one. I also notice now if you try and book direct through P&O there are now tick boxes about evacuation chairs when you do a dummy booking. It will refuse a booking where there isn't one. 

I made final payment at the time I booked, this was a requirement of ***** at it was 1 May for a 17 August cruise. No there was no mention of an evac chair (people told me to check it was booked on, which is the only reason I queried it).

I have no idea who I am dealing with, I don't seem to be offered anything but the option to change the name on the cruise (I don't see why this helps my parents) and they can move the cruise to within 12 months. I tried to move it to a Northern Europe cruise on the 16th October, no evac chairs were available. 

I send a form via the online cruise personaliser bit, I recall last year I e-mailed something, this year it was done online and a PDF was generated. But I didn't e-mail it, it was submitted automatically. They did confirm they had received a mobility questionnaire. 

 

My wife and kids will still go in August and my parents are vaguely happy to move their cruise (I'll still go with them, so I get an additional cruise). They did Norway last year, so happy to do something a bit different.

I'm not immune to media reports about people getting turned away from cruises, but the P&O spokesperson accuses these people of not filling in a medical needs questionnaire, which we did.

Appreciate all the responses and further requests for clarity

Thank you for the information and clarification.  It would appear you actually need to ascertain from someone at P&O which cruises in the 12 months might actually offer an evac chair as clearly it is no good your constantly checking on line for availability.

 

Meantime it would seem your travel agent has not been following the necessary procedures if they did not note the wheelchair/evac requirements.  They should know it's mandatory to ensure an evac chair is available.  Under the circumstances they appear to be partly responsible for your situation as they should not have taken the booking without ensuring the chair availability.

 

It would not seem unreasonable to ask your agent to ascertain which cruises within the necessary time frame are available to your parents if you are willing to go down that route.

 

However you did the correct form filling on 1 May and P&O should have responded to the lack of an evac chair upon receipt.

 

If you need to take the issue further I would suggest writing to Executive.Correspondence@carnivalukgroup.com

[Martinwpc63]

My wife uses a scooter to get about and we take that or a wheel chair on cruises depending on if an accessible cabin is available or not. P&O seem to have interpreted the evac chair situation much more strictly than Royal Caribbean. We are soon to go on Anthem of the seas in a standard balcony room and taking her scooter. Royal did not see a problem with this and when I asked about an evac chair they did not seem to think it was relevant so I booked pier assistance so it was on our booking that she is taking a scooter. When we phoned P&O to book a couple of cruises once I mentioned the scooter or wheelchair the first thing the P&so agent did was a search for evac chairs and there was lots of cruises that there was none left. So that became our criteria for looking. We managed to book Arvia for September and Iona for March2025 with evac chair mentioned on the bookings in accessible cabins. P&O do not allow scooters in standard cabins even though hers is narrower than her wheelchair. P&O will not tell you how many evac chairs they have available for each of their vessels there seems no way of finding this information out. It does not mater if you can do handstands backflips and run a mile if you take a wheelchair or scooter you must have an evac chair assigned to you. This seems to be a back door way in P&Os interpretation of the rules to cut down on the amount of guests they have with walking difficulties as it can not be a maritime law if other cruise lines are not enforcing it to the P&O extent

[S1971]

6 hours ago, Martinwpc63 said:

This seems to be a back door way in P&Os interpretation of the rules to cut down on the amount of guests they have with walking difficulties as it can not be a maritime law if other cruise lines are not enforcing it to the P&O extent

 

It certainly would be interesting to know exactly how many evac chairs they have to allocate per ship, as I understand from previous posts, these places are not exclusive to wheelchair and scooter users, those with walking frames and sticks also need to be declared even if they are only used very occasionally, so potentially a lot of guests given the older age demographic on some ships.

 

Only P&O can give a definitive answer as to whether they are trying to cut down on guests with disabilities, I suspect this is not the case but equally it could be possible.

Edited June 12 by S1971

[9265359]

On my Arvia cruise last week a couple I was chatting with had just experienced this issue.

 

Their story (which I took to be true) was that they had booked two cruises onboard on a prior cruise at the same time through the onboard sales P&O sales agents, with both cruises requiring an accessible cabin due to one of them permanently needing to use a wheelchair.

 

The Arvia cruise was the first of the two booked with the second one due to take place in August, but that day they had been told they wouldn't be travelling in August as there was no evacuation chair available on that cruise and the blame was being put on them for not completing a second mobility form.

 

The thought that struck me was twofold.

 

Firstly it would have been blindingly obvious to the P&O sales agent that the person sat before them in a large powered wheelchair would need an evacuation chair for any cruises booked - they were not someone with a broken leg or other temporary impairment that would disappear in a short period of time, so why on earth wasn't an evacuation chair booked then and there rather than relying on the passenger submitting a follow up mobility form - or rather two forms, one for each cruise as that seemed to be the issue.

 

Secondly what kind of rubbish IT system does P&O have? Is it rocket science to note against a passenger's details that they need an evacuation chair and then that information is automatically carried forward into future bookings. Is it rocket science to work out that if someone needs an evacuation chair in May they will almost certainly need it in August.

 

Frankly for anyone being denied travel on a cruise because of the lack of an evacuation chair and they are convinced they told P&O or they had travelled on a previous cruise, then I would seriously suggest submitting a Subject Access Request (How to make a subject access request | ICO) as it might make interesting reading, and perhaps things a little more difficult for P&O to justify if they have ignored information they hold.

 

Edited June 12 by 9265359

[jockosjungle]

Thanks for all the information everyone. I'll certainly be putting my views to P&O directly. We still haven't been informed that my Mum is persona non gratis on this cruise.

 

I can't really comment on how many evacuation chairs there are, but they've also rejected us for a North Europe cruise in October for the same reason. Last year my parents booked pretty late and there was no issue.

 

It would be interesting to see how many people are on board with mobility needs when we go to Norway as it does seem to be a way of limiting the numbers, maybe they got tired about the complaints that people in wheelchairs couldn't get on the lifts?

 

I will be making my views known to P&O, my parents certainly won't be booking another and a cruise from Southampton suited my parents state of health. 

[9265359]

2 hours ago, jockosjungle said:

I can't really comment on how many evacuation chairs there are

 

Just to note, the issue isn't specifically the number of chairs - it isn't hard to add more chairs - but the number of staff trained to use the chairs, which can be up to four if the person is over a certain weight.

 

Then there is the issue of whether you expect the staff to go back up or down the stairs with the chair to recover additional people - most evac procedures in buildings would prohibit that as you wouldn't want to send people back into a burning building, but perhaps the procedures for evacuating a sinking ship or a ship on fire are different.

[S1971]

2 hours ago, 9265359 said:

 

Just to note, the issue isn't specifically the number of chairs - it isn't hard to add more chairs - but the number of staff trained to use the chairs, which can be up to four if the person is over a certain weight.

 

Then there is the issue of whether you expect the staff to go back up or down the stairs with the chair to recover additional people - most evac procedures in buildings would prohibit that as you wouldn't want to send people back into a burning building, but perhaps the procedures for evacuating a sinking ship or a ship on fire are different.

 

Do they actually question someone on their weight on the initial form?

 

That aside, there must be a cut off point on numbers with disabilities, it would just be interesting to know.

 

Totally understand this policy for wheelchair, scooter and walking frame users, but those with a stick it seems very harsh, especially when taking into account those with young children, yes parents would be responsible for their safety, therefore I don't see any difference from a spouse taking responsibility for their partners safety in an emergency situation.

[david63]

24 minutes ago, S1971 said:

Do they actually question someone on their weight on the initial form?

I think that I have seen somewhere that they ask if you are over a certain weight (cannot remember what it is)

[Gettingwarmer]

42 minutes ago, S1971 said:

 

Totally understand this policy for wheelchair, scooter and walking frame users, but those with a stick it seems very harsh,

Walking stick users may only need one to one assistance, their partner may not be with them at the time so will need crew assistance. 

[solentsam]

30 minutes ago, david63 said:

56 minutes ago, S1971 said:

Do they actually question someone on their weight on the initial form?

I think that I have seen somewhere that they ask if you are over a certain weight (cannot remember what it is)

its 128 kgs around 20 stone in old money

[S1971]

31 minutes ago, Gettingwarmer said:

Walking stick users may only need one to one assistance, their partner may not be with them at the time so will need crew assistance. 

 

But parents often let their kids roam free around the ship, lots not having a clue where they are.

 

I'm just trying to make a comparison, in all honesty an adult with a stick is far more likely to find their partner or muster station than young kids looking for parents.

 

 

 

 

[S1971]

32 minutes ago, solentsam said:

its 128 kgs around 20 stone in old money

 

Wow, don't think I'd fancy carrying upto 5+ stone potentially down several flights of stairs.

 

Does anyone know if they refuse a booking if someone needing assistance is over that weight?

[solentsam]

25 minutes ago, S1971 said:

Wow, don't think I'd fancy carrying upto 5+ stone potentially down several flights of stairs.

 

Does anyone know if they refuse a booking if someone needing assistance is over that weight?

yes they would but don't know what the maximum is.

[david63]

29 minutes ago, S1971 said:

Does anyone know if they refuse a booking if someone needing assistance is over that weight?

That would become an interesting legal argument as under the Equality Act it would not be allowed to refuse them, so there would need to be something in maritime law which trumps UK law in this respect

Edited June 13 by david63

[jockosjungle]

There is definitely something on the form about a certain weight. Assistant above or below about 120kg I think. 

[S1971]

3 minutes ago, david63 said:

That would become an interesting legal argument as under the Equality Act it would not be allowed to refuse them, so there would need to be something in maritime law which trumps UK law in this respect

 

The equality act was my initial thought also but as you say, maritime law would take overall priority.

[S1971]

Would be interesting to see what would happen if you were dishonest on the form and weighed above that weight 🤔

 

 

[david63]

Just now, S1971 said:

Would be interesting to see what would happen if you were dishonest on the form and weighed above that weight 🤔

 

 

Or put on weight after completing the form.😇

 

Are they going to start having scales at check-in?

[S1971]

Just now, david63 said:

Or put on weight after completing the form.😇

 

Are they going to start having scales at check-in?

 

A public weigh bridge perhaps, just as you enter the port 🤣

 

Then a Weight Watchers club onboard for those who come close (chargeable of course).