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Pre-booked cabin administrative error
Having booked our cruise in November 2013 (16 months prior to actual cruise date)
I did as much as I possibly could to ensure that everything was well organised like our pre-booked cabins. I checked this twice with the girls at Thomson's in Liverpool and also with our local Travel Agent who we visited 5 weeks ago because we never received our e-Tickets.
We had booked cabins 204 and 205 on Deck 6 the Promenade deck for ourselves and for Martin and Gill which are right on the front corners of the ship with front facing windows and also a single cabin for Keith - 724 on deck 2
On arrival at Gatwick we joined the Premium Club express bag-drop and were handed slips for cabins 204 and 208! I tried to call Thomson to try and sort this out before we arrived in Barbados but never got through despite being after 10am. All I got was a garbled message giving me an alternative phone number to call, but the messaged stuttered each time at the point where the alternative phone number was being read to me. At the fifth attempt I managed to get the number and called it.
When I did I accessed the option I was told to press and each time the line went dead. So 9 phone calls to Liverpool and still a problem that played on our minds throughout the flight.
On reaching Barbados, we registered at the desk (but not with our debit cards as there was a problem with Thomson's satellite communications back to their server) we were handed a typed apology saying there had been an admin error. Room 208 it would be and they would reimburse our cabin booking fee.
Okay, not terribly happy but at least we were still near our friends and were still on deck 6 with its doorways straight out on the Promenade Deck.
The next low point was when we saw the cabin, there was a huge 3 seater settee diagonally across the room cutting off one side of the bed and also 2 of the 4 wardrobe doors. What's more this wardrobe contained our life jackets! The settee was very heavy but we managed to move it further out into the room so we could get to the bed and to the wardrobes, but most of the rooms space was taken up by this.
We asked for the settee to be removed and replaced by 2 chairs but I could see that this was not going to happen due to logistics and of course it never did.
After complaining about the alternative cabin we were told that we would be able to move in there the following Sunday as it was at the moment occupied by a booking from the previous week!
After booking 16 months previously - quite possibly the first person to book the cruise on the first morning the cruise became available , checking that the cabins had been correctly booked and noted on our documentation, then being told there had been an error seemed to imply to us that we had been 'bumped' out of our correct cabin in favour of another booker.
Surely someone else cannot book a cabin that has already been booked?
By accident?
Due to the time and inconvenience of changing cabins mid-cruise, we decided to stay in cabin 208 with the offending settee for the duration and we received a credit of £42 refund on our account, but I thought Thomson should have got it right in the first place. |
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