Planet Cruise - Portsmouth

Ian Bell

Title: Extremely Disappointing Experience - Avoid Planet Cruise

We recently booked our first cruise package through Planet Cruise, explicitly informing them that we had no prior experience with cruising and were relying on their expertise to guide us through the process. Initially, they said all the right things and were quick to take our payment.

However, on Day 3 of our holiday, we received a notification from Royal Caribbean stating that our departure time on the final day would be at 8:45 AM. To our dismay, Planet Cruise had booked our flight for 9:20 PM, leaving us with over 12 hours to wait at the airport. This is incompetence of the highest order—what kind of travel agent leaves their customers stranded at an airport for 12 hours?

When we tried to resolve the issue, we encountered further frustration. Our attempt to contact Planet Cruise through their online chat only resulted in an automated response, which was utterly unhelpful. We then reached out to their phone helpline, where we were incorrectly advised to visit the cruise reception to amend our flight. After a 30-minute wait at reception, we were told this was not possible and that we had been given the wrong information by Planet Cruise.

Upon calling Planet Cruise again, I explained the entire situation and was placed on hold for 50 minutes, only to be informed that the manager couldn’t handle the issue at that moment. I was told I would receive an email with instructions on how to amend our flight at our own cost, and that I would receive a follow-up call. However, no email was ever sent, and no call was ever made.

We are now facing an additional cost of £700 to get home, with no support from Planet Cruise. It’s clear that once they’ve taken your hard-earned money, they couldn’t care less about their customers.

My advice is simple: do not book with Planet Cruise if you expect any form of support during your holiday. We will certainly never book with them again.

Janet Smith

Chris at Planet Cruise was so efficient and we were able to book a cruise hastle free in few minutes receiving confirmation emails of everything in less than 2 hours after paying deposit. So easy to make contact.Would highly recommend them also best value compared to other sites.

Michael Butler

To be fair the cruise to Japan was excellent. There were problems due to a Typhoon and an excursion was cancelled. We were informed that we would be refunded and apparently that is in the pipeline (although it's been 2 weeks so far). On chasing this refund we were left on hold well in excess of half an hour.
Brandon of the Tailor-made department of Planet cruise/Iglu was advising re the aforementioned issue after which we mentioned that we would like to complain about the poor communication. Inasmuchas it took an age to get through and then we were put on hold multiple times. At that he simply cut us off.

To prove a point we rang the booking line and got through to an agent within seconds.

Edit:
Thank you for your (oddly) prompt response. The webchat is a joke and we have never once had a response from multiple emails. I must however reiterate that the cruise and stay was outstanding. It's the communication that is lacking

Doug Parrott

Booked a cruise around Australia which Planet Cruise organised at a good discount. However the aftercare has been absolutely lousy. We were informed of our flight details early November by contacting the cruise company direct and were informed that they emailed the details to planet cruise in March!!! Consequently we were unable to secure the flight upgrade and seating arrangements we were hoping for. We were to hear back from a planet cruises manager as to what had gone wrong within 10 days, but 3 weeks on we are still waiting to here.
Oceania cruise and BA have been most helpful and informative when contacted directly.

Michael Haynes

Lovely couple of hours spent at Sandringham. My wife would have liked to have seen more of the house. The grounds are extensive and well maintained with lovely views all around. We would definitely return.

Doog

Easy to book, the web site is probably the best out there but once you've booked trying to speak to someone is extremely difficult as the phone queues are horrendous. When you do reach position 1 it means nothing as they still won't answer. They advise to contact them online but that takes days to get a reply and its often inaccurate.

Of course if you ring to book a new cruise they answer promptly.

I'm avoiding in future as their customer service after booking is totally inadequate.

Sharon Leonard

We decided to do one week on a Caribbean cruise over Christmas, followed by a week in Barbados. The quote said all inclusive so we assumed the two weeks would be all inclusive however, once they had taken our money, after almost two days they sent us the details. We were upset to discover that the second week was self catering in a 3 star hotel. I waited 75 minutes on the phone before I got to speak to someone that was super unhelpful to say the least. We are very lucky to holiday several times a year and have never had such terrible aftercare service. To say it was nonexistent is an understatement, totally unhelpful on the phone and do not reply to emails. Lesson learned, we shall definitely not use Planet Cruise again.

Mike Hawkins

Been waiting over 2 months for a refund for the airport transfer that failed to arrive and we had to make our organise and pay for our own transport at short notice. Won’t use them again