Advice needed: Holland America cruise compensation for noisy cabin
 

My wife and I were on a 7-night cruise on Holland America's Koningsdam in July. Our cabin had almost continuous noise, some of which sounded like fan noise, and another that sounded like water gushing through a pipe, not intermittent but continuous. On some days that the ship was in port, the water noise was not present, but it was really bad during the nights and we were unable to sleep. We complained after the first night at Guest Services. We were offered two alternate cabins. The first one was very quiet, but we declined it because it had excessive sea motion and my wife suffers easily from motion sickness. The second alternate cabin was no better than our original one as it had a loud fan noise in the bathroom that was clearly heard in the cabin. Moreover, this cabin was only available for one night (the original guests had missed the ship at embarkation and were expected to board the next day).

The only other solution we were offered was ear plugs. It was a miserable cruise for us, and certainly not the kind of experience we expected to have after paying more than $2,500 for the cruise and another $1,200 on shore excursions with Holland America. On the last day of the cruise, we were offered $100 compensation for our experience. We declined that as we felt it was inadequate compensation for what we had experienced.

After returning home, I wrote to Holland America's Guest Relations describing the experience and suggesting that $800 would be a fair compensation. I have now received a reply from someone with the title "Special Advisor, Office of the President" stating that "we do note that you were able to bring this to the attention of our staff on board and multiple alternate rooms were offered as well as monetary compensation, though all of the offers were rejected. Since you did not accept the solutions on board, we would be unable to offer any compensation."

I would like to get advice from knowledgeable and experienced forum members on (a) whether my expectation of $800 compensation is reasonable and fair, and (b) how to go about getting an equitable resolution for this issue.

Without having been there with you, it's not possible to calibrate your descriptions of the problems with the stateroom as you described them. Having been on a number of cruises, intermittent fan noise and intermittent water gushing through a pipe in the wall are expected compromises associated with being aboard a ship on the sea rather than in a hotel room on land. My spouse even makes a special point to bring ear plugs on cruises since things are different from our comfortable home.

So just based on our experience as frequent cruisers, I can confirm that the cruise line's response, "unable to offer any compensation," is what we would personally expect in such a situation.

We just had a wonderful cruise in an aft wraparound suite. It was such a different experience than a cruise years ago in a much lower level cabin. So even aboard the same ship, stateroom categories separate the "good" cabins from the "not so good" cabins. Steps are taken to ensure that more expensive cabins are more comfortable.

You didn't indicate in your post what category you booked, and you didn't indicate what your frequent cruiser elite level is on Holland America. Frequent cruisers know that those are essential pieces of information for assessing what kind of response we can expect to get from a cruise line. It would also help to know what ship and cabin you were assigned; if there really was a cabin that was afflicted with problems beyond that which would be expected for cabins in that category, there would be enough warnings about it on the Internet that it could be Googled. That could change the complexion of the issue a bit.

Beyond all that: I believe the expectation for compensation is also compromised by the fact that they did offer you an alternative stateroom - a remarkable and rather rare option to be offered. Aboard a ship, turning down a cabin because of the motion of the sea doesn't hold much water (pardon the pun), especially with many stateroom categories. For example, if you were in a Category J cabin aboard Konigsdam, and were offered a Category N cabin as a courtesy, that alone would cap the reasonable amount of compensation by $20 per passenger (the difference in fare between those two cabins). Turning down the alternative offered would assuredly have capped any compensation you might have been reasonable to expect by that much.

Given the circumstances, I would have accepted the $100, without a moment's hesitation. $800 compensation seems remarkably excessive for a 7-night cruise. We sometimes can purchase an entire 7-night cruise for only a couple of hundred dollars more than that. (Right now, I could book a "Glacier Discovery Northbound" cruise on ms Westerdam for $499 per person.) I'm wondering if you might have damaged your ability to secure some compensation (even the originally-offered $100) by leading with an ask so far out of proportion.

I would try one more time though, sticking to the fact that $100 was offered and you would now like to accept that offer. It cannot hurt to try. I suspect that at the very least you'll be offered a $100 credit (or perhaps even $200) toward your next booking.

you should have booked a hotel room, at least a mile from water. even though these boats are bigger than hotels, they do move when in the water. if you really really want to be on a boat, i would recommend one that is in dry dock.

we just finished a transatlantic on viking that featured 4 meter waves(that's about 13 feet). never heard anyone on viking complain about the "heavy" seas.

where was your cabin on holland that moved so much?

i would recommend Nile River cruses for you and your wife. do not drink any water or juices when in egypt.

First, let me welcome you to Flyertalk. You will frequently find helpful advice here, so I hope you keep posting. Occasionally, you may find responses may lack sympathy and tact.

My own experience with HA is that they do not offer reasonable compensation for poor cabin experience. Because of my one experience like this on HA, I no longer travel with them. So, they lost a lot of business.

As far as expectations pertaining to your experience, I do think that it was reasonable that they offered multiple room to you. The one at the end with high motion was unfortunately not suitable for your spouse. That is really not HA's fault.

Picking the right suite on a cruise ship is an art form and a lesson in microeconomics. There are many less-desirable locations, and those are often the least expensive cabins. Find a cabin in the lowest deck, and you are bound to hear the noise from various machinery.

My own cabin choices are:

No pool deck or bar above me.
No bar/lounge below me.
No cabin at rear of ship
No cabin near elevator or stairs
No cabin in a high traffic area.
No cabin without balcony.

I even tell my travel agent that I do not want an automatic upgrade unless I can chose the cabin I desire.

Good luck in your future cruising options.

Thanks for the response. Here is the additional information that you requested for context: We have been on 3 cruises before this, so this was our 4th. The previous ones were 7 nights Alaska, 10 nights Baltic Sea, and 4 nights Bahamas; cruise lines were Princess and Royal Caribbean, so this was our first time on Holland America. We had no problems on the previous three cruises. So I don't think it is fair to say that we had unreasonable expectations. Our cabin on the Koningsdam was 5144 on the Gershwin Deck (Deck 5), category J interior. Some amount of fan noise is acceptable and is not a problem. The noise of gushing water, however, was extremely disturbing and we couldn't sleep. If you have ever tried to sleep with the sound of a dripping faucet, you might understand, except that this was not just a drip but a lot of water gushing through a pipe. The first alternate cabin we were offered was in the same category, but on a higher deck and out towards the front of the ship. It was very quiet, indeed quite a contrast to what we were in, but wave motion was very pronounced. The second cabin we were offered appeared to be in a lower category, but I am not sure. In any case, as I noted in my original message, it too had lots of noise and also was only available for one night. So really, none of these two was a viable option for us. Finally, about the cost, I know you can get 7-night cruises for $500, and this was not among those. Our cabin cost us about $1200 per person plus taxes and tips.

Have you been over to Cruise Critic's Holland America forum for advice?

I try to research the heck out of the staterooms because I am very sensitive to motion. ( Those prescription behind the ear patches have been a huge help.) Cruise Critic has been very useful. For example on the Azamara forum there is a spreadsheet of staterooms with people's comments on noise, vibration, etc.

We will have to agree to disagree about that.

Best of luck.

So many factors come into play in situations like this, and I completely understand why a poor response from HAL would drive your business elsewhere. Just to even the scales a bit, we had an experience with them that was the complete opposite. We were on an 11-day cruise, in the midst of which we spent 3 days sailing through a terrible storm. It was raining so hard, and the rain was being blown sideways, such that water was leaking through the balcony doors into our room (and my parents' next to ours). Nothing about it was HAL's fault, and we never complained. Our cabin steward noticed the problem and had engineering try several fixes including putting portable blowers in the room to try to dry the carpet. Through it all, we just chalked it up to life at sea. Imagine our surprise about a week after the cruise when both my parents and I got very nice letters from HAL apologizing for the inconvenience and fully refunding 25% of our respective cruise fares!

My parents never sailed another line again--HAL cemented themselves as a stand-up company who put guest service ahead of the bottom line. And while I've strayed a bit (taking three Disney cruises since), we just completed another HAL cruise and still consider them a top choice based largely on our treatment on that one, wet cruise.

Indeed, and we can expect just as many customers of the competitor-cruise line will have had a similar experience on that cruise line and out of spite intend to take their business to Holland America. A certain percentage of custom in the mass market will always be in churn. It is too costly to make mass market products and services so perfect that such churn is eliminated.

Of course. All the major mass market cruise lines are comparable to each other - none significantly better or worse than any other. They will vary with regard to individual aspects, but in the overall they'll have roughly the same amount of positives and negatives as each other. I typically recommend that people not do as the OP says he plans to - do not switch providers because of a bad experience that is, in reality, the same experience that you are as likely as not to have had on some other cruise line. Rather, learn from the experience - learn what is reasonable to expect, yes, but more importantly learn the ropes of customer service of that one cruise line. Even though you do not get satisfaction for your initial grievance, you've now got names and numbers and a story to tell the next time something doesn't go as you wish. You also have points toward elite status that might make a difference the next time.

One significant exception to that: If your intention is to "uplift". Perhaps what the OP has learned from this experience is that the mid-market mass market cruise lines don't offer the quality of service that he desires. The luxury cruise lines perhaps do. CCL offers Seabourn for this very reason - a luxury cruise line that offers that more rarefied level of service, superior accommodations, few if any staterooms with the kind of serious compromises that the OP encountered on Koningsdam. Switching to a better class of cruise line makes a lot of sense, if you can afford it and can justify the added cost.

HA is just unresponsive to complaints. It does not seem to matter how bad your issue was, the corporate group offers a few crumbs.

We are 4 star with Holland. We were offered an upgrade from our already high end veranda, and paid $1200 each. There was no choice of rooms, just this one.

The room was a disaster. Most of the items were not fixable during the 3 week+ cruise. Maintenance type items, that should have been done in port. Items clearly known when they "upgraded" us, but not disclosed.
Offer from corporate a 2 level upgrade. Note this is WITHIN a category (along the corridor), not from one to another and a couple hundred bucks SBC. We paid almost $2500 to be in a cabin that should have been left vacant while were being made. There was a booking, cruising and length of cruise restriction as well!

You would think being such a high level in there program would help us. It doesn't. They figure with the incentives we get as 4 star, we would not switch loyalties. Consider these type comments when you first start with a loyalty programs...like the airlines.

Nonsense. They respond in a manner comparable to other cruise lines in the same grade. Perhaps you should look into Seabourn, Silversea, or Seven Seas.

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And they could do a great job of it, if people, didn't expect balconies and sliding doors and so on.... we got very little water ingress on the warships I served in...because their design could keep out virtually anything the sea threw at us (and you do know just how powerful the sea can be, right?) Of course no one would pay for the very "indoorsy" experience of life at sea on a warship... (445 ft long vessel...229 onboard... THREE portholes. One in the wardroom. One in the Captains Day Room. One in the Missile Control Room - overlooking the Launcher:D)
As soon as you start having so many "weak points" ..as all Cruise ships do.... you ARE going to have problems in bad weather.