My wife and I were to take a 20-day cruise to the Middle East on Oceania Cruises departing April 20, 2011. After paying fully for the trip, the "Arab Spring" turmoil began. Soon after, the US State Department issued a "travel warning" advising US citizens to defer non-essential travel to Egypt. When trying to cancel and apply our deposit to another Oceania booking, as other travel companies had been offering, they became very inflexible. And they refused to make any exceptions to their cancellation policies. We have lost 75% of the cost of our trip, which seems unreasonable considering the highly unusual circumstances. Can you help us?
Consumer Complaints & Reviews
We had booked a trip on Oceania Cruises for March 2011 to Asia. Before we went on that trip we booked another cruise to the Caribbean over the Christmas holiday 2010. There were several things we wrote to the company about that we were dissatisfied with. The dining room service was very slow, there was very little entertainment in the evening and a fan blade flew off a fan on the pool deck hitting someone's deck chair. They did not respond to the letter so I told the travel agent who must have contacted them.
We received a call from Carlos ** saying we should not go on the second cruise and we did not belong on the cruise line. He was extremely rude when he spoke to me. My daughter-in-law had been invited to go on this cruise to take my husband's place as he had been ill. She took three weeks off from work and we arranged for my husband to fly to their house to help my son babysit. After having this conversation with Mr **, I decided to write to the company president and tell him how poorly we had been treated. I received an e-mail with a letter attached shortly after saying we were no longer welcome on the cruise.
We did not speak badly about Oceania before this occurred. We both were looking forward to this cruise. They would not change their position. They refunded the money for the cruise portion. I am sending you a link of a Help Me Howard program that was aired in Miami. I could also send you all documents that are necessary for you to review. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHZ37O2OrGk
