Many cruisers have experienced that sinking feeling on hearing that their favourite cruise is subject to port stop cancellations.
Stan Hoey, who travelled halfway across the world to see the New Zealand fjords, decided that the usual apology and small compensation just wasn’t good enough.
Hoey took the matter to court and after a legal battle, has just been awarded $13,581 from Imagine Cruising.
The smoking gun of the case was an email that showed a week prior to the sailing, Cunard already knew it would have to cancel it’s NZ stops. Passengers, however, weren’t notified until weeks later.
Hoey had booked his cruise with Imagine Cruising in the UK.
Hoey says: “We won our case because our evidence included an email from Cunard to the NZ government requesting itinerary changes over a week before our NZ cruise left Sydney. In UK law, significant itinerary changes prior to the start of a holiday package means a full refund is an option, but needless to say, this was not in Imagine or Cunard’s interest and they delayed notification to passengers until it was too late to cancel.”
What happened to Stan Hoey?
Essentially, Hoey had a cruise booked through Imagine cruising to sail on a Cunard cruise on Queen Elizabeth from Sydney to NZ.
“Our flight to Sydney had a 3-hour stopover in Dubai (05 Jan), and when we switched our phones on we had an email from Cunard to say Fjordland and Dunedin were being excluded “due to NZ’s strict biosecurity regulations”, and each passenger would receive $100 onboard spending. We received nothing from Imagine.
“On boarding QE on 07/01, we had a letter in the cabin to say
that they planned for divers to clean the hull while outside NZ territorial waters before Auckland on 14/01, so that the ship was fit to stop at Bay of Islands. I arranged a meeting on board with the officer in charge of the accommodation and retail to express my concerns about the itinerary changes and was told (politely) to take it up with Cunard on return to the UK.
“On the morning of 15/01, a letter was delivered to every cabin from the Carnival President Sture Myrmell, apologising for the fact that the cleaning was not completed and Bay of Islands was removed from the itinerary.
“As a gesture, Cunard offered each passenger 50% of the cost of the cruise as Future Cruise Credit. I emailed the President to complain and received a reply from his office while still on board on 18/01 to say that as we had booked with Imagine, Carnival was not responsible.”
How did Hoey find the email?
Hoey had been pursuing legal action back in the UK, but also reached out to the NZ government Ministry for Primary Industries, where he happened to have an old friend.
Through this Hoey had found information that showed Cunard knew of problems with the ships hull on November 2nd, and an email to Cunard from MPI on December 31 requesting itinerary changes. It can be noted that Hoey only left the UK on January 4.
Hoey eventually had a court date in August, armed with 200 pages of evidence.
He describes the end of the trial.
“After 20 minutes, we were called back in. The judge took 15 minutes to recap the whole trial, without giving anything away, which was frustrating, but I now understand that this is in case there’s an appeal. He eventually got to his judgement, which was that Cunard’s prior knowledge of itinerary changes is imputed to Imagine. This effectively means that whatever Cunard knew, Imagine also knew implicitly.
“He said that had we claimed that Imagine violated Part 3 of The
Package Travel and Linked Travel Arrangements Regulations 2018, we could have pushed for a complete refund. Our claim referred to Part 4, and he decided to award us 20% of the total cost (we asked for 25%), minus the refund (50% of cruise cost) already received. I had also excluded this from my claim. He increased the £1,000 we claimed for stress to £1250. Finally, our court costs (£455 and £346) were also part of the settlement.”
Hoey wants to help other passengers do the same
Hoey is now also assisting other passengers of the cruise to make their own legal actions.
“I’m assisting several fellow passengers on the same Queen Elizabeth cruise to pursue Imagine Cruising through the UK legal system, plus many more disaffected Imagine customers whose cruise to NZ in February 2023 was changed at the last minute to the East Coast of Australia.
“We met many passengers from Australia onboard QE who were similarly affected, but I have no way of reaching them. I accrued a significant amount of evidence for my court case, all of which I’m happy to share with anyone who can benefit from it, knowing that Imagine and Cunard’s feet are being held to the fire is the least they deserve.”
Cunard said in a statement: “As the judgement was not directed against Cunard, it would not be appropriate to comment.”
Consumer advocate Adam Glezer of of consumerchampion.com.au said: “If there is a significant change in an itinerary, passengers should have the right to cancel or get a refund.”
Cunard cancelled our QE cruise less than 23 hours before sailing for same dirty hull reason in February 2023 Melbourne to Auckland. We and many other passengers were left stranded in Melbourne with nothing but an email and 1300 number to contact. Left a message on the 1300 number…still waiting for a call. We ended up engaging the media and that got a response from Cunard. Took 3.5 weeks to get our money back. Also hit them for all out of pocket expenses such as cancelled flights tours and accommodation booked for cruise end and flights home from Melbourne. They were very difficult to deal with and showed no concern for us or other passengers. Was an absolute debacle and our itinerary was also altered a week before excluding Milford Sound. Found out that NZ Government had given them notice in 2019 to clean the hull and they’d ignored directive
My wife and I were booked on a similar cruise from Melbourne around NZ but a month later than Mr Hoey – the February cruise the report mentions. We booked direct with Cunard and met many disaffected passengers who had travelled from the UK and had only been told of the changed itinerary (Feb cruise!) when they arrived in Melbourne.
We were also given the “hull scraping to be done” excuse before being told that our cruise would only go along the east coast of Australia – from Melbourne to Cairns – a poor substitute for NZ cruising.
Interestingly, outside one of the ships lounge areas, a cruise map is signed off by the captain and senior crew. It was dated a couple of days before our sailing from Melbourne and only showed the route to Cairns and back. Also the QE was due for a drydock in the following months in Singapore and a sceptic might argue that Cunard and its owners did not want to spend any extra to clean the hull so soon before the drydock refurbishment.
Whilst Cunard did give us a similar cruise credit, it appears they have been somewhat duplicitous in their changes to these itineraries.
We were on a viking cruise back in Dec 2022. NZ has very strict biosecurity and like the Cunard cruise we were not allowed to dock. We had 8 sea days as our ship headed to the Great Australian Bight where our ships hull was cleaned.All viking passengers received 100% voucher to book another cruise. We are off to Asia, Bankock,Bali and beyond in 8 weeks. Viking looked after their passengers. At the time there were 5 ships caught in NZ waters with biosecuity problems with the hull of theirs ships. None of them looked after their passengers as viking did.
Paragraph 11 states “CARNIVAL WAS NOT RESPONSIBLE”
What does Carnival have to do with this article?
We sailed on the PO Encounter Island Hopping from Brisbane on Aug 3/2024. We we told that one of the islands New Caledonia was having issues and we were getting another Island in replacement, they didn’t know which island at the time.
We set off as planned and sailed to Mystery Island.
We all looked forward to exploring this island, however as we got ready for a day on shore, an announcement from the Captain that would not be stopping due to a crew member was sick and we would go straight to Vanuatu.
We felt very sorry about the crew being sick and wished him a speedy recovery.
We sailed on to Vanuatu and had a day on shore.
We set sail that evening and chatter at dinner was all about wondering where our next stop would be.
Well it soon became clear, it was back home to Brisbane
The island hopping cruise was a joke, we had one island only no explantation!! no replacement , no compensation.♀️
The customer service desk said it was our TA fault and we should talk to her ! Our Agent was as much in the dark as we were, and commented that the last time she checked she DiD Not own PO. I have contacted PO but they will not answer my complaints.
Its the cat and mouse game that Carnival Corporation have their associated cruise lines play. Some port cancellations are obviously important but not all. I’m glad these people won their case.
Princess Cruises did it to me a while back. Cancelling Bay of Islands and Tauranga before arriving in Auckland due apparently to “severe weather”
We sat in the Hauraki Gulf within sight of downtown Auckland unable to dock due to other scheduled ships in port in the most beautiful weather for 48 hours.
The three ports are only a few hundred miles apart but clear blue skies, no wind and balmy temperature belied the severe weather argument. The ONLY compensation offered was more organised Cruise Director activities. Wifi connections showed us the same perfect weather was in all three ports the whole time. A blatent lie obviously and all about MONEY obviously.
Holland America at least refund the passenger port charges if ports are cancelled. Not Princess.