Voyages Jules Verne - The Consumers Complaint List-In the Public Domain

The cruise that never was
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Basically my husband and I booked a Greek cruise with the company Voyages Jules Verne for the half term break last October as I work in a school and I can only take holidays when the children are off. Time was drawing on and we did not receive any correspondance or TICKETS for the cruise. It was about a week to departure and we started to panic. We had booked a car park,overnight hotel, kennels for the dogs and more importantly as we foster children for the county we had to find foster carers to look after them for the week.

Therefore we started phoning and were told by numerous staff that there was no problem and that the tickets were being sent. This happened several times until about 5 days before departure one of the managers finally told us there had been technical problems and no cruise boat.

There was no alternative holiday they could offer either. As you can imagine my husband went beserk. We desperately needed this break as my father had recently died plus other family problems. It wouldn't have been so bad but with so little warning we just panicked.

The company faxed back our money apologised and washed their hands off us.

We managed to book a holiday with another company but it was not particularly good and we felt very let down.

Since returning I have written to the company and had correspondance from a Ms G J Customer Services Supervisor. She enclosed a travel voucher for £100 which I am returning as there is no way we would travel with this company.

What I can't understand is why were the tickets not sent sooner even if there had been problems with the boat they could have contacted us by phone. I feel the real reason has not been told and that probably it was left so late as there were not enough people to fill the boat.

I would like to know how many other people were affected? How can a travel company treat its customers like this? Yours faithfully, J.E.Lowrie

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Editorial Comments

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My friend and I travelled to China with Voyages Jules Verne in Sept 2002 I found the company to be well established but the tour manager who was assigned to us left a lot to be desired! One item which concerned me was at our welcome meeting and he asked for 60 per person for baggage handling and tips as there was 35 people on the tour this was I thought rather excessive.

Granted the tour was a 3 week tour but in the tour price baggage handling was included so why the extra? The wages that the drivers, guides and porters are paid did not warrant such excessive tips, as is normal whilst on Holiday everyone is going to write to the company on their return but whoever does? So is it really the company asking for this money or is it a extra perk for the tour manager. Interestingly not many people tipped the tour manager at the end!Susan Conner ... 8 December 2003