Mein Schiff 1, Caribbean
1
I made a serious complaint to Tui after my Cruise: Have been told by customer services that its not serious enough against their criteria of complaints. Will let you decide if you want to go ahead and book.
After paying over £4,000 fr a cruise, and after feeling brushed off, I thought it only best that others know about our experience with Tui. There are five areas to my complaint, all have been dismissed.
1. US Embassy. Tui did not let the US know that we left the country which has resulted in lots of admin and multiple back and forth emails to the US embassy. All Tui did was tell us they hope to make it up to us. We were told we had to sort all of the admin and the problem was passed to us. How does this oversight happen Tui? Youve told us you are digging into the bottom of it, but youve not told us why this has happened. How can this happen to everyone?
2. Baggage left in the pouring rain for four hours outside of the ship. We watched this from the boat. Uncovered in a torrential Barbados storm. These were the bags of our flight to Birmingham. No acceptable.
3. These bags (none of them) turned up for the flight either. We waited on the tarmac on the plane for over 3 hours being told the bags had not arrived at the plane. We were told it was because of equipment failure at the airport. Dont believe it. They left them out for long enough for them to be dripping, and I honestly think it was for the bags to dry out. Not acceptable. Image attached. Resulted in my partner (Type 1 Diabetic) having to emergency a doctors appt to get more insulin.
4. Communications: We did not get a boarding pass. This really is a non-issue, but it adds to a taste of our experience. The real issue is communications. We were told we would receive a boarding pass to our room and everyone else around us had boarding passes. We asked various crew members that told us to go to reception. We waited again for 30+ minutes to be told the printer had broke. No message sent to our rooms and again the onus put on us to figure this out. Not a way we really wanted to spend our last moments on the ship.
5. The poor staff on the boat were absolutely overwhelmed by the amount of customers at the bar all of the time. I have never been on a cruise like this, having to wait at least 20 minutes every time you go to the bar is not good. It just makes everyone anxious.
Collectively all of the above is unacceptable. Had it been one or two things Id let it lie. I very rarely complain and we have taken so much time back and forth speaking to multiple people at Tui who have strung us along telling us they are going to make it up to us, only at the end to receive a message You complaint doesnt meet our online criteria, so were going to close it. Its appalling Tui. Wake up!