Scenic Luxury Cruises and Tours - UK
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Scenic UK customer care
Scenic UK customer care We have had four cruises with Scenic, including their maiden voyage to Vietnam and Cambodia along the Mekong. There have been niggles with all the cruises, which is par for the course. However, Scenic encourages feedback, be it answering questionnaires at the end of each cruise, or writing your own report, as ‘Scenic always listens’. Somehow this stopped suddenly at the end of our last cruise, a modest 8 day cruise from Bordeaux and back along the Garonne and Dordogne rivers, from 29 June to 6 July 2017. For the first time in our experience of Scenic Cruises, we had very disappointing treatment from the dining room staff in served dinners (most dining is on a buffet basis; these were waiter service occasions). We booked this 8 day holiday only to find out (after booking) that we could have had another 3 days of holiday free of charge. About a third of the passengers on board complained about the same thing! So on 6 July, a third of us disembarked while the rest enjoyed another 3 days from Bordeaux and back, this time via Arcachon! We were charged 40 euros on our return journey for a 3 kg excess baggage (on easyJet) of which we had not been warned about beforehand. Far from getting an apology for all of this, I was virtually called a liar by ‘customer care’, despite the fact I produced printed evidence for what I was claiming. In their reply, Scenic ‘customer care’ said: - “20 kilos is the standard luggage allowance for many airlines”, which is not relevant: 23 kg is actually the standard luggage allowance for e.g. British Airways and Air France. - “We do state in the Scenic brochure that guests are allowed a maximum of 20 kilogrammes per guest on board”. This is not true either: there is no mention of a baggage weight restriction on the Bordeaux cruise. - “The Scenic brochure features both the 8 and 11 day durations to Bordeaux”, which was equally not true: two separate brochures were sent, the first one only featuring the 8 day holiday, which is the one we used for booking. - “I hope my explanations fully answer your concerns.” No, they do not, see above. - “…your file has now been closed and further correspondence relating to this matter will not be entered into”. We thought there must be a mistake, as there is no way Scenic ‘customer care’ would treat their (‘Platinum’!) customers this way, so I sent all the correspondence to the Managing Director of Scenic UK, asking for his views on the matter. After a few weeks came back an answer, amazingly not from him but from the same ‘customer care’ I had approached in the first place, needless to say with the same preposterous comments! So it is good-bye to Scenic Cruises. The cruises are fine as they go. However, should anything go wrong, do not expect an apology, let alone, should anything go seriously wrong, any compensation! ‘Scenic always listens’? Not anymore. Confronted with the evidence of bad service, now they just call you a liar and tell you to f… off.