Cruise Reviews

I just had a nightmare with Golden Princess. Last winter break, my mom flew all the way from China to spend the vacation with me. Then nightmare happens. I forgot one of my documentation so I didn’t went on board that day. I realized that was my fault so I just requested them to return my luggage. After three hours, a woman came out and simply told me there are too many luggage and they cannot find ours. I was really pissed. Apparently, they didn’t send anyone to find my luggage. They just waited till the last minute and told us they can do nothing. Later on, the captain came out and promised me that they will send out my luggage as soon as they arrived in the first port of call. I agreed and left. After a few days, I called the customer service. What I got back is the ship was not able to send out my luggage without a reason. They instructed me to get my luggage after the ship went back to LA. I was so frustrated with my luggage so I went to their cooperate headquarter to get my luggage after two weeks, the time the ship went back from Hawaii. Guess what happened? They forgot my luggage on board and the ship had left for Hawaii again!! They have already broke their promises twice. I am almost speechless. My mom would be flying back to China in three days and she could not live without her luggage. After negotiation, Princess cruises agreed to send the luggage first to Berkeley and let me take out my stuff and send it back to China. I could do nothing but to accept it. On the way of the luggage from my place to the cruise’s office, Fedex mistakenly sent the luggage back to Hawaii instead of their office in LA. I talked to them, and Fedex agreed to refund them the money. As I contacted the lost and found department again, they use it as an excuse and stopped the process of returning my luggage. Their reason was they had spent too much time on my luggage and they didn’t want to deal with it anymore! Excuse me? If you just give the luggage to me when the ship returns to LA, and all those things couldn’t happen! It’s the third time employees in this company broke their promises to their customer. Finally a nice guy helped me to ship my luggage back to China, but it was two month after I gave my luggage to Princess Cruises. And the luggage still didn’t return to my mom’s hand yet coz the process involving international shipping are very complicated with Chinese custom.

For the whole two month, I spent countless time talking to their customer service, customer relationship department and lost and found department. I found their customer relationship representatives are extremely hard to reach and unhelpful. No one did step out to really solve my problem but only try to persuade me to find other departments to solve the problem. I find they are very passive and they sound like they are giving me a mercy instead of compensating what they have done wrong.

My luggage contains just my old clothes and personal belongings, but I bet every traveler understands that the luggage is almost my life when I am away from home. I not only lost all my booking fees, which is about 2400 dollars but also my whole winter break was ruined that I had to spent my Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve in a tiny motel room without my luggage.

The lesson I got out of this terrible experience is whether the money you pay is really for the people who are passionate about creating your dream vacation or just fulfilling their duties. I admit the main reason I booked with Princess Cruises was their reasonable price. However, after my experience with their uncompassionate employees, I find whether people are helpful when problems arise is a way more important factor to consider. I can see what a mess it is for Princess as a company and how poor the communications are between departments and departments. I strongly advice you to think it over before you book any cruise line with Princess. If you don't cause any trouble, I think you will be fine but if you do cause a little bit trouble, you will need a cruise company that really care about how their passengers feel instead of a company like Princess Cruises that try to find excuses to blame all the problems on their customer side and escape from positively solve the problems.


When I deal with these things during my holiday, I did research online and found many similar cases. I believe that apparently I am not the only who suffers from the similar problems. It must be their company’s own problem that makes so many mistakes.