Tuesday, February 19, 2008

reading my carmen miranda rights


Eddie Willers recently posted a piece on his blog about being short changed in Mexico based solely on his skin color. I noted a similar phenomenon here in Oregon where restaurants have two prices: the menu for tourists and the real (secret) price for locals.


I thought of both examples this week while experiencing another example of terrible customer service. I have mentioned that I am going on a cruise from Brazil to Morocco to Portugal this April. For me, the selling point was the three ports in Morocco -- two of which I had never seen (including Casablanca). A few weeks ago, we received word that one port was cancelled, but Cadiz in Spain was added. I was disappointed, but fine with the change. After all, we still had two Moroccan ports on the itinerary, and the cruise line was very upfront with the reason for the change.


Then in the middle of last week we received notice that the cruise line was cancelling all of the shore excursions in Morocco. No explanation. Just cancelled. I have been sharing information with some of my fellow cruisers on a message board. We wrote emails asking what had happened. And each of us got a different story. The very polite lady who called me was obviously using a script -- and the script was simply filled with misinformation.


Over the weekend my travel agent provided me with the cruise line's official line: security issues. This is a great case study of a business with terrible customer service. Before sending out any cancellation notices or trying to answer questions with incomplete information, the company should have first sent the notice to the travel agents and then cancelled the shore excursions.


We cruisers are not a suspicious lot. But almost no one now believes the corporate story.


What an opportunity lost. This is a cruise line that provides excellent service at sea, but that is now gaining the reputation of having a staff on land that is incompetent. And if it had not been for the internet, the company could have bamboozled each of us separately.


Another strand of the republic unravels.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Steve - here in Mexico there is a third pricing level - that of the gringo that lives here. When a local throws out a tourist price and we go on to offer up that we live here - they generally make an adjustment of less than tourist and more than paisano.

Having been to Morroco in the 60's I can't imagine it now being any more intriguing than here in Veracruz - why not cancel that cruise now that you have a very reasonable excuse and just cme on down to visit the casbahs around here ;-)

Juan Calypso