This may not be fair to criticise Costa…
This may not be fair to criticise Costa at this stage yet as our initial dealings have been with Seascanner, but the issue affects our impression of both companies so far.
I booked a cruise through Seascanner at the end of April for a cruise in August.
Everything appeared to be fine, as I had a booking confirmation from Seascanner and a confirmation from Costa Cruise.
I was able to login to both My Trips on Seascanner and the Itinerary with the Costa Cruise, as well as see my booking in the Cruise Cruise app.
However, when I went to pay the balance on the due date I could not log in to either Seascanner's or Costa Cruise's website.
As it was the weekend I was not able to contact customer support for either company. I did manage to fill in a contact form with Seascanner.
On the Monday I tried to use Seascanner's online chat, but they were only able to discuss new bookings. I made several attempts to call the customer support line on the Monday morning, which is supposed to operating between 10am and 4pm Monday to Friday, but was still saying the line was closed at 11:30am.
By midday i was contacted by Angelina in customer services, who did an excellent job at fixing the issue for me and the booking was reopened and the cruise secured with the cruise line. I was advised that Costa Cruise had updated their IT systems at the time of booking and it had fallen foul to computer error.
At this stage I would have been happy to give Seascanner a 4 or 5 star review, as Angelina worked hard to resolve the issue and alleviate a lot the stress and anxiety this issue has caused.
However, at no stage has either Seascanner or Costa Cruise offered anything by way of compensation for the stress and anxiety. We have flights and accommodation booked at our start and end ports. Had it not been for the balance been due we could have been close to our departure date to find out we didn't have a cruise to go on.
I contacted Seascanner to see if either themselves or Costa Cruise might offer a goodwill gesture, but was given a flat no from Mitch at Seascanner. I pushed for a further response and have not heard anything since.
This is our first cruise experience and it has not encouraged to go on one again and there is still a nagging doubt that there will be no more issues to come.







