Princess Cruises
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Accident and Staff attitude ruined our holiday...
We went A long awaited dream cruise to Alaska in August 2024 from Vancouver. The cruise itself was fine until the very last sea day on return, following the end of a very enjoyable theatre show, our 3 year old stumbled on a wine glass (that an inconsiderate passenger left by his stroller!) fell on top of it, cracking the glass and cutting his knee open on the full width of his knee. The medical staff did a sterling job and Princess duly gave us a medical bill of near enough $800 ($100 per stitch he needed to fix the wound). That was minor because we were going to claim on Insurance. That is where the positives ended. The attitude of staff from that point on was absolutely atrocious. The security team came along swiftly to take down notes and fill out an accident log, fine, procedue has to be followed but the way it was done make us feel like they were looking for something to pin the blame on the 3 year old (checking if his shoes were appropriate, if the buggy was appropriate, if he could walk normally etc) when we thought the cruise is 50% to blame for the accident for (A) allowing glasses to be taken into the theatre (B) without having sufficient procedures to collect empty glasses. In previous cruises we've been to, there were staff constantly walking to collect empty glasses. At the very least, the cruise could have had a marked section to place empty glasses, there was none of it within the theatre. Either way, after the security guys took statements from witnesses to the incident, they conveniently concluded that the CCTV that was covering the area of the incident was 'not working', how convenient! we were then duly sent the bill which we asked the guest services to charge. Regardless they sent another letter in the morning of disembarkation to pay the bill which I called guest services who asked me to ignore as they have the card on file to charge up. I went to the guest services desk to get a copy of the accident report and they still didn't tell us anything about the bill being an issue. And eventually when we were disembarking and checking out from the ship with an injured 3 year old in great pain, the system flashed up for unpaid bill, which is when we lost our patience. The security guy asked us to jog back to guest services to pay the bill with a rude tone. I lost my patience and asked them to get guest services back to me if there is an issue as I had 3 interactions with them that confirmed the bill payment was fine, especially for one that ideally Princess should not even have issued to us when they are partially to blame! At no point of this did any staff member apologise for the incident that occured and made us feel as if we were entirely responsible for the incident. At this point, my 7 year old lost his calm and burst out crying and said "Princess are the worst holiday company, we are never coming back, let's just leave". the hotel manager of the ship saw this and took us to a side to understand what happened, I gave her the credit card asking her to go get payment for the 4th time. After a discussion with guest services, they decided to write the bill off which she acknowledged that never should have been issued and apologised for the distress caused, the first person to have shown any level of empathy. The drama didn't end there, we raised a complaint with Princess with this and after a lengthy period of silence and a prompt chasing them, they came back saying the company does not take responsibility and this is an unfortunate accident and a level of personal responsbility has to be taken. What a response! Embarassing at best and saying a 3 year old trying to get on his stroller parked up at the appropriate location stumbling over a wine glass that was left by an insane guest partially due to not having appropriate facilities to collect glasses and on a busy carpet that no one would have even seen even if they looked to find a glass there it was hard to notice it. Safe to say we were looking to book our next cruise just an hour before this accident and a cruise company we were going to sing praice, but now it is a cruise company we would safely recommend to stay away at all costs because they are after taking your money and your safety is all your responsibility. My son after several months, says we are never going to go with Princess on any holidays ever again! now there's customer feedback.