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Rudie B

1 reviews | Active since Nov 2018

02 May 2019, 18:10

Imagine Cruises never again

Worst experience ever with Imagine. Used to work through local travel agent and apart from beating Imagine's prices every time we got excellent service. Sat down with agent and plan best routes, flights, cruises and accommodation with best advise on each. Even visa's are considered and recommendations made. Assistance all the way with seat selections, check-ins etc. Personal interaction all the way. This time we chose Imagine simply because they were the only one to offer a specific cruise / route. What a disappointment. It was like buying a "voetstoots" package. Once you paid you are on your own. During the marketing of the package detail costs and other facts are not disclosed. If you query such afterwards they simply refer you to the contract stipulations.To our astonishment we ended up over R5 500 more than we initially budgeted for and were quoted on - this is before departure (today) hope we do not find more surprises. Vital info and tickets for train and cruise were only provided once you asked for it. We only received the cruise ticket today - 6 hours before our departure. Vital visa info on the UK was only provided to us 3 weeks prior to our departure date. Causing us extra frustrations and concerns to get such in time. Never again with Imagine.

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Replies (2)
Imagine Cruising
Imagine Cruising's reply13 May 2019, 12:22
Official
Dear Rudie Biela

Please be in contact with our customer service team on ***, they will gladly  explain everything to you and answer any question you might have.     

Kind Regards

Imagine Cruising
RB
Rudie B's update20 May 2019, 12:24
Reviewer Update
The reason I published my concerns on this forum was directly due to your lack of unsatisfactorily responses. Why are you afraid to debate this matter on this forum. Even issues raised to you afterwards during our travel i.e. flight bookings between connextion flights that you made where so little time was allowed between such flights - caused us to delay our flight and scheduled train tickets (which you booked and provided). Consequently we had to bear the additional costs for new train tickets (R800). Your excuse was that the flight was delayed and that we have to reclaim from our insurance. This despite the fact that all who were delayed (including Lufthansa / SAA ground staff) confirmed that there was no delay. You messed up the bookings and will not take responsibility. Your choice of a cruise line - Costa also proofed to be on your level. Highly - and that would be moderate 3-star experience compared to other cruise lines such as Norwegian, Carnival, Holland-America and other who are definitely closer rated to 5 star.
Costa is an all Italian cruise line catering largely for Italian passengers. Crew - over 80% Italian, directed all their attention, announcements, entertainment etc largely at local passengers. No cruise director available. Very little info provided. Staff is generally badly trained with little PR skills and crew speaks very little English - if you can undertsand those who can you are lucky. Defintely not an international orientated cruise like the others where they employ all nationalities to cater for all passengers. Costs are clearly cut by docking at sites such as IJMuiden - instead of Amsterdam (which you also marketed as the port) where they were clearly not pre-warned or equipped to manage a large cruise ship and passengers. Took us 4 hours to disembark, pass controls and get to Amsterdam. No or very little public transport was arranged. Overall an extremely bad experience with Imagine and Costa and will strongly recommend avoidance of both.