Princess Cruises

Reviews

• ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
  Princess owes us $6,392.90 + port fees. According to the corporate office, this is not refundable. Apparently, they do not honor verbal communication where the Sapphire Princess said we would get our money refunded BEFORE we decided to disembark. Our original flights were scheduled to depart 17 December 2017 on Qatar Airways from Atlanta, Georgia. On 17 December, the Atlanta airport had a power outage, thus cancelling our flight to Doha. We immediately contacted Princess and EZ Air. No one could help schedule a new flight on 17 December. Qatar Airways was also closed. On 18 December, we contacted Princess, EZ Air, and Qatar Airways several times trying to get a flight to make the cruise that departed on 19 December from Singapore. After determining it was impossible to arrive in Singapore on time, the next port was Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. Initially, we were told by Princess/EZ Air we couldn’t fly into Malaysia because we didn’t have Visas. After advising the representative that we didn’t need visas as US citizens to fly into Malaysia, she found a flight that arrived after 6:00pm on 21 December. The ship was scheduled to depart Kota Kinabalu at 8:00pm on 21 December. I asked the representative if the ship would wait until we arrived, and I was advised it was our responsibility to make the ship before it departed and the ship would not wait for us. We asked for other flight options into Kota Kinabalu that arrived earlier and none were available. According to the ship, the airport is only 5 minutes away from the port. It wouldn’t have been an issue if the representative on the phone said the ship would wait for us. We were told by Princess/EZ Air we could fly into Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. After expressing that our Visas we applied for allowed entry into Nha Trang, Vietnam by cruise ship, we were told we couldn’t fly into Ho Chi Minh City. According to the ship, a Visa is issued upon arrival at the airport and we didn’t need a visa prior to arrival. We were told by Princess/EZ Air we could fly into Bangkok, Thailand. After hours of phone calls and being on hold all day, we wanted to cancel the cruise. We were told that Princess would not refund anything and to contact the travel insurance for any reimbursement. We were also told that we would have to get to the ship to receive any reimbursement for the days we missed. Finally, Vanessa Cameron in Customer Assistance was able to help us. Vanessa said the ship would be expecting us on 27 December and that the room would be decorated for the anniversary celebration on 20 December. She also reiterated that the ship would reimburse us the missed days. We arrived at the ship on 27 December while docked in Laem Chabang, Thailand. Once we got on the ship, we were directed to our room where we discovered the room was not decorated as promised for the anniversary celebration on 20 December and the 3rd bed was not set-up in the cabin. Our steward informed us that he did not know we were coming. It was apparent the ship was not expecting us after waiting for our ship cards and our room not being ready. We went to the customer service desk and spoke with customer relations manager, Nilesh Mohite. He informed us he could not tell us how much we would get reimbursed for the missed days and he had to wait for the stateside office to calculate the reimbursement amount. We discussed our issues prior to arrival and discussed the issue with our room not being ready, and according to Nilesh, he entered a complaint on our behalf. The next day, our cruise account was adjusted for the 8 missed days. We were only reimbursed the daily amount according to our cruise fare. We asked Nilesh if we could disembark in Singapore on 30 December, and he said he would contact the stateside office. After meeting with Nilesh again, he changed our flights and we were scheduled to depart on 30 December from Singapore and we disembarked and ended the cruise early. Nilesh told us to contact customer relations to get our extra airfare reimbursed and the remaining 10 missed days reimbursed.
  By Christina Roach, February 15, 2018

Photos