Being a fan of
DCL, but not on either of the two repo cruises I followed the posts with casual interest.
I was amazed that DCL responded to all the email complaints with form letter “canned” responses and follow-up complaints were also met with canned responses.
For several days and what appeared to be hundreds of complaints DCL seemingly had no intentions of explaining the increase nor were they going to do much more than deflect the calls, letters, and emails.
Interestingly enough, Jason Garcia – Orlando Sentinel Travel Reporter – was contacted by a repo cruiser on August 6th and was given detailed information about this issue.
In turn, Mr. Garcia called the DCL Public Relations department on August 7th for comment. Mr. Garcia explained that he would be writing an article about this issue and it would appear in the August 8th Orlando Sentinel newspaper.
In very short order DCL made “an about face” and decided to refund the entire amount estimated to be about $500,000 ($100 per person @ approximately 5,000 passengers for both cruises) based on the potential bad publicity DCL was about to receive.
Mr. Garcia did write a prelude to the newspaper article on his blog -
Click Here - after that Tuesday morning conversation and the article did appear in the Wednesday, August 8th edition, but based on DCL’s decision to refund the money it didn’t have the same slant that the original article would have had.
DCL was also smart to send out an email right away on Tuesday, August 7th prior to the article appearing in the newspaper stating in a alleged “good will” gesture they were going to absorb the entire increase.
A debt of gratitude is deserving to Mr. Garcia; he apparently was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” since DCL made their decisions within hours of talking to Mr. Garcia.
