RCI Ruined My Cruise Trip
Voyager of the Seas Cruise Review to Asia & Indian Ocean
Sanya & Chan
Sail date: July 14, 2017
Ship: Voyager of the Seas
Traveled as: Singles/Friends
Reviewed: 7 years ago
Review summary
I am writing to share my totally dissatisfying cruising experience with RCI and their poor complaint handling practice. During the trip, my old mum and her old buddy (over seventies) suffered so much and said won’t cruise anymore because of such bad experience provided by RCI. I wrote a complaint to RCI after the trip, and what they said is the trip was “successfully delivered”. I am so frustrated with their unempathetic customer attitude and poor service. So I decided to share my experience with the future cruisers about my bad experience as reference when choosing cruisers. Most of all, the human traffic control measures by RCI cannot be worse, illustrated with the following examples: 1. When the ship was berthing at Sanya, we joined the RCI’s onshore excursion, but have to wait for an hour for getting off the ship. Moreover, RCI never had enough staff to help to keep people in order in the entire process. Worse was that when coming back, there were only 2 check-points to cater for hundreds of people coming in, resulting in lots of people having to wait for long time. My two ladies could not stand long and had to suffer from a long queue with people elbowing and pushing each other, ending up mourning and almost falling sick when getting back to the cabin. 2. The ship then was expected to berth at Vietnam 8am next day, which made most people flock to the restaurants for breakfast between 6 and 8am (so as to get off the ship at 8am), resulting in hundreds of people waiting for tables or standing to eat at the restaurant. The staff again did nothing to direct people to other places even the restaurant was full. The buffet restaurant ended up turning into chaos. When we were forced to leave for another restaurant, we were asked to wait outside and yet with plenty of empty tables inside. The result was that people could not get tables to eat and tables could not serve people, totally ridiculous. Again, my two old ladies had to rush through all the places for breakfast with their soring legs and ended up eating like a race. Such service quality is totally unacceptable. There are still a lot more examples that RCI failed customers in keeping managing their guest properly and happily with decent human control measures. I cannot believe at all that RCI which claims themselves as an expert of serving thousands of customers with quality service would turn out so ugly. Plus, when I talked at their guest service, some of their staff attitude were rude. Furthermore, some other negative experiences are worth sharing as below: Poor food quality, especially the cooking quality and variety. We were fed up with the same types of bad food for days. My two old ladies even lost their appetite and did not want to eat their food anymore. RCI’s staff’s sense of infection control is totally unacceptable. I had once pouring half the glass of juice into my bottle at the restaurant, the staff then mixed that glass with a new glass, and put them back in the serving tray to pretend two full glasses. Seriously? The guest service were not responsive, probably because of too many people lining up for inquiries or paying bills (the line for paying bills once lasted even for about 10 hours till 12 midnight) all the time. I could not believe RCI’s system was so inefficient and had to let their guests wait all the time in the trip. Is it a cruising trip or a lining trip? The onshore excursion was totally not value for money. The RCI’s onshore excursion only dropped the participants at one seaside with some shopping malls. The weather was bad so that we could not swim, ending up nothing to do. A lot of participants ended up waiting in the coach for coming back. However, the coach did not even provide air-conditioning during the hot and humid summer. In short, I felt like paying money for suffering. The customer services for complaint handling is very bad. After the trip, I wrote a detailed complaint to RCI. They came back with the compensation of cruise coupon or on board consumption coupon for a future itinerary. Since my two old ladies were tortured by their service so much and do not want to cruise anymore, the coupons are actually useless. This also illustrates how RCI is unempathetic and insincere in treating their customers. I then said that if they really wanted to restore the confidence and relieve the suffering for my two old ladies, any token other than cruise related products serve well, even though a nice dinner at a good restaurant would do. However, their literal response from their headquarters to that is: “Even though we recognize a portion of your vacation with us was negatively impacted, the entire cruise in itself was not. This means there were services all of you paid for that were successfully provided.” Literally, the entire trip is ruined to my two old ladies due to their poor service. How hypocritical and thick-skinned of the RCI’s response! Such customer service attitude serves as a final blow to my initiative to talk with them anymore. Hope my experience can help you pick cruisers, especially when with the elderly. To me, I will not cruise with RCI anymore. If you do, good luck and hope you would not repeat my tragedy.Embarkation
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
Onboard Activities
Entertainment
Service and Staff
Ship Quality
Cabin / Stateroom
Ports of call
Sanya, China
Chan May (Hue), Vietnam Did not visit port
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