Denny C.
Taking advantage of Covid 19 to bilk customers big-time.
Taking advantage of Covid 19 to bilk their passengers is very wrong. ***** I paid $4,000 for a cruise from Cannes to Lisbon in October. The company refused to answer my email in which I questioned why the trip director flatly refused to let me board because I couldn't furnish proof a PCR test. Days before the trip began, I had emailed the requested documents (CDC card, travel insurance, etc.) to them. Thereupon I was given clearance. "The documents you have submitted are acceptable for boarding," they said. No one bothered to mention a Covid PCR test. In the first hour of embarkation they had already refused boarding to 6passengers. Why didn't they issue a warning beforehand? Why was there no printed material ever sent, no letter expressly stating the absolute requirement on their part and the reasons for divergence from EU protocol? Passengers from North America have a gazillion things on their mind as they prepare for an almost 2 week cruise on another continent. Things come up, things slide, in the midst of a plethora of details and lists to do. Surely one email several days before the start of the cruise would have saved stranded passengers like myself much heartache and not squandered months of planning and packing, as well as life savings! In fact, going to France required only a EU digital Covid certificate and double Covid vaccination. Why the company was not in alignment with EU protocol is baffling. In fact, the United States, France, Portugal do not require the PCR. An antigenic test suffices. On the Star Clippers ships, everyone, anyway, was to be wearing masks on board except on the decks, just as is the case in the US or in France. In fact, he didn't even suggest an alternative, how I could meet up in the next port, etc. Another employee, a nurse told me how and wrote instructions down. Immediately took a taxi ($80) to rush to the airport to do the PCR, went back into Nice to find a hotel to stay overnight ($160) made air reservations ($400) to fly the next day to the port she said the ship would next stop at. The port she told me to fly to, at considerable extra expense and effort, was not the one listed on the latest itinerary. I went straight to the dock the next day after flying to Corsica. The taxi driver said he hadn't seen any such sailing vessel all day. That same morning I had hours trying to figure out how to SMS, telephone, email, leave a message on their site in order to ascertain which city in Corsica the ship would stop at and for how long. There was no way to do this. I trusted what the nurse who was standing 10 yards from the trip director had told me. She at least showed compassion. The trip director was totally indifferent to my plight and was of no help whatsoever. He was dismissive and acted as if I were asking for a refund on a $5 trinket. "No way. Now scram. I'm not interested in your problem. Do whatever you want. Why should I be concerned?" I feel totally ripped off and treated with near total indifference by star Clippers. "We got your money, now we don't owe you a thing. Go hang yourself" is their attitude. DO NOT TRUST STAR CLIPPERS OR GO ON ANY OF THEIR CRUISES. My hunch is that they overbooked the cruise intentionally, knowing and even hoping that the insistence on the PCR would throw some passengers off. Thus, they counted on turning away a certain percentage of already paid up passengers so they could overbook, including passengers whose cruises had been postponed since the shutdown. In any case, they are completely indifferent to the (plight of the) very people whose existence they financially depend on. "I've taken your money, so I no longer need you." The owners threw in the clearly extraneous requirement to make for lost profits from the 18 months or so there were no sailings due to the Covid shutdown. THEY'RE UNSCRUPULOUS.