NORWEGIAN CRUISE LINES endangered my baby and the higher ups did nothing about it.
If all you moms out there are anything like me, you don’t have a lot of time for stupid these days. Especially when you are trying to have a family vacation. I lamented about sharing my story, but after dealing with a company whose representatives don’t care about their customers, I decided no other parents should experience what happened to me at the hands of Norwegian Cruise Lines.
It was Easter. My entire family booked a cruise aboard the NORWEGIAN EPIC out of Miami. My husband was working so he could not go. Long story short, even though Norwegian’s own website says they will accept hospital certifications of birth from abroad hospitals, they wouldn’t accept mine. They said my whole family could board. They said I could board… But they refused my barely 16 month old baby access to the ship. Even though she had her hospital certification ( the one the county bases theirs on) and a social security card. And they blamed it on U.S. Customs. However, customs accepts the certificate I had and we explained that to them.
I get it. It was a technicality. I spaced out, I should have brought the correct birth certificate, but lack of sleep is tough. Here’s the kicker, I had someone ready to fax the port the county birth certificate and Gary, the port supervisor, refused to look at it because he said it was too late. He said the ship had sailed. When I called my family to say goodbye, they said the ship was still connected. The ship remained in port for another 2+ hours. They spent hours trying to get my luggage off the ship, instead of accepting my fax and spending 5 minutes getting my baby and me on board. Miracle of all miracles, they got my luggage off the ship over an hour after Gary said the ship had sailed.
Instead, they stranded us 3000 miles away from home. Because I think, they thought I was trying to kidnap my own child. I feel 100% they discriminated against me as a single woman traveling with a child. They let and accepted other people’s faxed birth certificates that day. Why not mine?
As if that’s not ridiculous enough, here’s what really is shocking and the reason I feel, NCl is NOT a family friendly cruise line. They REFUSED to call me a cab or car service with an infant car seat. Gary, lectured me on how desolate it became at the port and said I would be lucky to get any cab at all. He basically laughed in my face. I explained to him it was against the law and asked what difference it made to him and to please call a car service with an infant safety seat for my baby. Another employee tried to calm me down and said they would handle it, but they all took the easy way out and flagged down a cab from one of the other ships. And again, said I would never find a family car service. Meaning, the car service NCL endorsed jeopardized my baby’s safety.
I’m old school, I don’t have a smart phone. My cell phone was now dead from all the calls to California to get a copy of the birth certificate. I was dealing with an agitated, now exhausted baby trying to keep her calm and happy. Why couldn’t they go online and find us family car service? When I looked up family friendly car service at the hotel for my ride to the airport, it took me 30 seconds to find one. Either, 30 seconds was more effort than NCL employees are willing to make to keep a baby safe or they simply enjoyed adding to my distress and putting my baby in harms way.
And one final thing that struck me as odd. That evening I got a call from NCl asking me why I was a no show at the pier. A no show? I explained the situation and the woman on the other end had no answers for me. I don’t know how port authority works, but if NCL employees were righteous in their treatment of me, why did they lie in their paperwork and call me a no show? I can’t images there aren’t codes for these types of situations.
If you lie about me being a no show… And you lie about the ship being gone… And you don’t care about getting my baby a car seat so you lie about there not being any car services for families in the area, where does it stop? What about if you have a child with a nut allergy who gets sick on board? What about child safety on the ship? It’s a slippery slope. I think if their treatment of us was really on the up and up, why not be truthful about what really happened? It makes no sense, especially to people in your own company. Why is the left hand lying to the right? And what else do they lie about in their paperwork?
So after we are stranded in Miami for four days, we get home and share our story with the head of NCL’s customer relations Maria and copy the CEO Kevin. I thought for sure, somebody would acknowledge what happened to me and hopefully handle the situation with their port employees. If my employees didn’t try to help a mother and child and endangered babies, I would want to know about it and fix it. I thought at a bare minimum, I would get a call or letter telling me they handled the situation and repremanded Gary, so at least other parents wouldn’t go through the traumatic experience I did.
But I was wrong. They could not have cared less. Their customer relations isn’t about customers. And it isn’t about relating. Its about covering their own, “ass-etts.” I now see why the port supervisor was so arrogant and rude. Lack of respect or concern for customers trickles down from the top. NCL was more concerned with telling me they would NOT give my family a REFUND. I got a stock boiler-plate letter emailed from DONOTREPLY@NCL telling me their port employees are great and it was my fault for not having the document. They never addressed any of my issues. They ignored the facts about the county birth certificate and their supervisor refusing to look at it, but wasting hours getting my luggage off. And they completely ignored the cab situation. They REFUSED TO REIMBURSE us and didn’t even offer a make up cruise. So there it is. NCL cares about your money, not you and not your children. And once they get your cash, you are on your own. Even if you don’t get their service… They are keeping your money.
If NCL cared about its customers, one would assume that for $2000.oo, I should have been able to expect them to take a minute and call me a car service. ”NCL… At least jail is free and you get one phone call.”
I have learned three important things from this. MOMS, (1) GET PASSPORTS for you babies. Even if you don’t need them, no one can discriminate against a passport. (2) If you want to be paranoid and you are travelling without the other parent, get a signed consent to travel form. And (3) just because its called the sponge-bob cruise, doesn’t mean its family friendly!
I obviously can’t give a review of the ship because I never got on, but my family on board said it was horrible and I dodged a bullet. None of them will ever sail NCL again. They said the food was sloppy. The ship was completely over crowded and miserable, the rooms were awkward and anything nice worth doing cost extra.
There are so many choices when it comes to cruising, please consider my story the next time you book travel. And don’t forget, passports are indisputable!
I am so sorry about your bad experience
I have never sailed with them, even though take at least one cruise a year (going on my third one this year next week..), and now never probably will.
Oddly – we flew domestically the entire family without having kids passports with us (doh, domestic flight), and both my husband and I had IDs, at the airport they ask every single of our 3 kids their names, parents names and where we were going. A month later I was flying alone with 3 kids, from NYC/JFK to Europe, and nobody asked a thing from the kids when they had their American passports and I had my Finnish passport. I was actually teasing my husband that it was easy to smuggle kids out of the country…
(he was already in Europe waiting for us though). So yes, it varies a lot and I do recommend some type of ID for kids, even if it’s a library card…
PS. Next time choose Disney Cruise lines… I LOVE them and never been disappointed.
Thanks Katje for your support! i know, the airlines thing is so crazy! As far as cruising goes, we have always been treated very well by the Carnival/holland America group. and Celebrity was fantastic as well. I was truly more upset that management didn’t do anything to make it right. They didn’t admonish the supervisor who endangered my baby and they didn’t offer us a refund. Nothing. They just kept our money and sent us a dear john email with a do not reply address. Cowards. I WILL NEVER CRUISE THEM AGAIN EITHER. I told them i was going to share my story with all the others mommies out there, but they couldn’t have cared less. I guess they don’t values moms very much.
Woooooooooooow what a terrible experience. We have sailed with NCL more than 15 times and they have always been courteous. We were on the NCL Pearl for 29 days for one cruise. We were on the NCL Spirit when Tropical Storm Lee hit and kept us out to sea an extra 2 days. NCL let passengers make phone calls and use the Internet for free to notify family, airlines and etc. When we took our grandchildren recently we had to make sure all their paperwork was in order. Made two of them get passports even though we “heard” birth certificates were OK. We probably will not go on the Epic – tooooooooooo big to get personal with the passengers and guests, but we hope we will sail with NCL again. If NCL ever does us wrong we won’t be sailing with them again either.
Thank you for sharing your experience and helping other Moms avoid the pitfalls of traveling with a baby. Definitely going to never use ncl and going to get my son a passport!
I think, your experience is very harmful about this journey with your kids. Really this is not fair. I ‘ll remember your experience and ‘ll try to follow. Thanks for your nice story.
Jeffery Deon recently posted..celebstaped
It’s ALL ridiculous! Not letting the baby on the ship. Not accepting the faxed BC. Not calling a car with a baby seat and than the customer relations shining you like that?! Talk about giving you problems and not solutions. But how dumb of them. They could have thrown you a bone. Apologized and given you a make up cruise. It wouldn’t have cost them anything since they have your money. But instead, they cheat you out of what one or two thousand bucks? And in turn, are going to lose years to come of business from you, your family and your friends. I guess NCL doesn’t realize us moms stick together! I will never give them my families business ever again either. Thanks for sharing.
Good to know NCL is not family friendly…we were JUST thinking about a cruise for our whole family and now we know to avoid them like the plague!
Will your family ever take another cruise again?
Even if the paperwork was a real legal, red-tape sticking-point with them, the fact remains that they treated you very poorly, when they could have made ANY NUMBER of conciliatory gestures: from refund/reimbursement, to calling a proper car service, to even giving you the courtesy of a personalized reply letter! For a company that is solely in the service industry, making their customers happy seems a low priority. And as to your safety concerns, a carseat is not only reasonable, it is a LEGAL issue! How does this company respond to safety concerns when they are at sea? It is all very shady and worrisome, and I know I will NEVER be entrusting my family to their dubious brand of care or hospitality. Thank you for sharing your experience.
I am so sorry you had to endure such a horrible experience at the hands of NCL. Whatever happened to customer service? Certainly NCL has none. Having heard your experience I will never book a cruise on NCL. They totally ruined your “Cancer Free Celebration Cruise” for Joe and at the very least you deserve a reimbursement for all your expenses.
So sorry to hear about this misfortune! I will never cruise with NCL that’s for sure.
I have always thought Cruise lines would have better customer service, specially NCL. After reading this I will not consider them when traveling on a cruise. They should’ve provided great customer service to a mother with her child. Safety is priority and those 30 seconds it took you to get a family friendly ride just proved that NCL didn’t care about great service… I am sorry you had to go through this, children are priority! and so is safety specially when traveling.
On a professional level, emotional abuse is something I deal with every day as a psychologist in California. This story sounds like a real stress producer. When mothers are traumatized by events such as this, the angst transfers directly to the offspring. There’s a lot at stake here.
On a personal note, my husband and I are interested in another cruise and Norwegian was one we had been considering. No more.
Hi all, I want to thank everyone for their support. I’m a private person and it was not an easy decision to share this. I don’t like controversy. I have been deeply touched by all your responses. It made sharing feel less vulnerable and for that, I want to thank you all.
I never said I didn’t screw up. Yes, I made a mistake. But, anyone who can defend NCL’s lack of assistance, clearly has a different idea of hospitality and customer service, from mine.
When port employees are supposed to help a customer and don’t, that’s on them. When I was in hospitality, people messed up all the time. It was my job to make their day better, not worse. I did whatever it took to help. Corporate policy wanted happy customers so we were all trained to take the time to be problem solvers. Even when I could have hid behind technicalities and made it to lunch on time, I took the extra steps and time to help. I put the customer first.
There is the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. And sometimes, you need to be smart enough to know when to step up and do the right thing. We spent hours to get the document they asked for and they refused to even look at it.
If it were me, I would feel better as a human being, inconveniencing myself taking the fax and adding the name to the manifest, than I would feel turning the person away. And my travel blog would have been about how amazing NCL customer service is. How they did something so cool and saved the day.
All that aside, let’s pretend NCL 100% no way, no how could have looked at the fax. Or left my name on the manifest and accepted a fax to the ship. Had my baby sign a waiver… Whatever… Anything. Let’s pretend they 100% had their hands truly tied and did all they could to help and still we were stranded in Florida, do you (Joey) truly feel that me asking them to call for a safety seat is too much to ask?
ITS THE LEAST THEY COULD HAVE DONE. AS A CUSTOMER PAYING $2,000.00 for jack-squat, they SHOULD HAVE BEEN HONORED to make one lousy phone call. Making that call should have been their top priority. And since it obviously was not, what does that tell you about what had happened earlier with the birth certificate? It tells me, they are lazy and don’t care enough to try and help their customers.
Joey and all the joey’s out there, you try keeping a jet lagged baby calm for four hours at the port after traveling 3000 miles. And than let me know if you still think it’s unfair for me to say NCL has bad customer service when they don’t help you. We both deserved better. We deserved them to make every effort to call us a safe car. If you think, me expecting them to call a safe car is too much, than I hope you yourself, are not in hospitality or customer service. More than that, I hope you are not a doctor or surgeon. Because you’d be the dr that cuts off someone’s foot to save their leg instead of spending the extra time to fight and save the foot too. I’m just saying…
Dear Jennifer –
We are really so sorry to hear about your experience. While documentation is a strict government requirement, this situation is extremely disappointing to us because we pride ourselves on offering an exceptional family cruise experience and also on guest satisfaction. We would really love the opportunity to welcome you on board for a future cruise, to make this up to you and to show you how fun and family-friendly a Norwegian Cruise can be! Our customer service team is going to reach out to you today, and we do truly hope that you take us up on the offer we are extending to you. If there is anything else we can do to assist, please feel free to contact me directly.
Best,
Marisa Scime | Director, Social Media
Norwegian Cruise Line
Now that Jennifer posted this, your willing to fix it!!??? So had she not done it u guys would b treating ppl like crap!!!
Wow. More LIES and disappointment at the hands of NCL. First of all, NOBODY FROM CUSTOMER SERVICE HAS REACHED OUT TO ME AND IT HAS BEEN DAYS. But why would they? Its a corporate culture of not responding to the customer and not doing what is right. This was pretty much a blatant attempt at word-smithing. NCL’s idea of being sorry and making it up to me is generously welcoming ME to PAY AGAIN for another cruise at a discount. Seriously??? WHAT ABOUT THE $2000.00 THEY HAVE OF OUR MONEY THAT WE HAVE NEVER BEEN COMPENSATED FOR? I guess after my treatment on the pier that day, then by customer relations, and now this, nothing would surprise me. NCL is a joke. Its no wonder people wind up dead on their ships. No seriously. Out of respect for the families, I truly am so sorry to even go there and share this link. But DAMN! I think people need to know how their vacation might end when they sail on NCL
I think little G not getting on that ship was the best thing that ever happened to us.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/cruise-ship-docks-boston-dead-passengers-onboard/story?id=14837023#.T9rCGmgq9OM
This is terrible!!!!! Treatment like this is one of the many reasons why I will never take a cruise. Is there a consumer organization you can export this to? Or someone at the LA Times?
That is a horrible story. I will not book Norwegian Cruise Lines in the future and will tell the same to all my friends and family.
Gotta say I am surprised at the lack of customer service on the part of NCL. I can understand their taking a hard line stance with the documents but to not even accommodate a simple request for contacting a car service in this situation is appalling. Shame on you NCL. I will look elsewhere when it comes to choosing my cruise lines.
In today’s economy, it’s amazing NCL has the balls to be so disregarding of who butters their bread. In free market capitalism, we, the little guys vote with our dollar. And together we can make a difference. I’m voting no on NCL and will not support their business with my hard earned dollars.
Completely shameful! I am researching my first cruise right now and let me tell you I’m crossing NCL off the list! To not refund your money is despicable.
NCL should stand for “No Class Cruise-Lines” This is horrible !
Wow!!! ive done research on some criuses for a family vacation Luna wanted to go on NCL, but after reading her your story she got sad n mad (shes 9) n said she wouldnt like her baby sister or her to b in that situation, i like reading ppls opinions n stories to decide on something, im glad i read this blog so NCL is def. out of my list!
Oh n Joey the last thing they could of done was to give them their money back or at least half n getting a cab! How hard is that to understand…? She had aBABY not a dog who can easily sit n wait! Babys get fussy specially in a weatherl like floridas the baby is not used to!!!
I am so sorry to hear about the misfortune you went through, but I am glad you shared your experience for it will save a lot of moms out there who may have been planning to sail with their kids. That kind of treatment is horrible.
Heidi Jenkins recently posted..kimkardashiantapenews.com
You’re a great mom and also a good writer too. i like your and your topic also . Thanks for your nice article.
Barry Sage recently posted..I Need To Get Laid
I had a similar experience with NCL. In Oct 2011 my ex bf and I planned a cruise to the Caribbean. When we got to the dock we presented our documents. I presented mine and it was unacceptable. My birth certificate was a “keepsake” and not state certified. I didn’t know there was a difference. I took it from my parents home and never questioned it. The woman behind the counter asked me if anyone could fax the right one. I told her no, my mother was deceased and my father was in a nursing home. My ex went without me. I was sobbing and humiliated. I had to call my sister and she arranged a flight home for me. And she was pissed that my ex left without me. The counter employees were very cold. They had the “ok, next in line please step forward” mentality. No one tried or offered to help me. Luckily a security guard got me a cab and stayed with me until it came. I dealt with NCL when I got home and went all the way up to the BBB. It didn’t make a difference considering the circumstances but I had to try. We were to leave on a Sat and the following Friday, which was the day before we were to come back, my dad went into the hospital. He died two weeks later. It was meant to be that I didn’t go on that cruise. I was an absolute wreck that entire week that my ex was on the cruise then my dad went into the hospital. Yes, it was my fault but an honest mistake. It was the most humiliating experience of my life.
My bf was told by other passengers that I could have called the dept of health in my state of birth and had it faxed on that Monday. The same experience happened to a friend of a friend and he was allowed on board.
Needless to say I will never cruise with NCL ever again. And me and my ex broke up three months later. Also, I now have copies of my “state certified birth certificate”