A television station in Florida is reporting that about a week ago, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines removed a family of five from one of their cruise ships because their 7-month-old baby was exhibiting the symptoms of the Norwalk virus. As always, the facts are in dispute, and we should note that you shouldn't believe everything you read online, but the story goes that the crew of the ship woke the family up at 11:00 at night and gave them ten minutes to get their stuff together, then booted the family off the ship, leaving them on the dock in Nassau (in the Bahamas) in their pajamas, without clothing, shoes, their luggage or their passports. By the time the family had located a hospital, taken the baby to the ER, gotten a doctor to certify that it was only a cold, and not the Norwalk virus, and returned to the dock, the ship was long gone. They were able to get the U.S. Consulate to issue them replacement passports (at $455) and then managed to fly home.
Now the family is saying that they want their money back, and they want the company to compensate them for what they lost on plane tickets and replacement passports and such. According to the online story, however, Royal Caribbean is offering them a credit to use on another cruise, and is refusing to pay for the plane tickets or passports because the family did not take out traveler's insurance. The company is also saying that they didn't want to take any chances with a child that young who appeared to be that sick; an emergency medivac flight at sea takes time (and isn't the safest thing in the world), and if the child was actually stricken they didn't want to be responsible for her not being taken to the hospital. They haven't actually pointed out that if you have a single passenger who appears to have a highly contagious disease aboard ship, it generally makes sense to take her off and send her to a hospital before everyone else on board gets sick, too, but this is the case.
Needless to say, the whole situation can be 'spun' however you'd like to. Are the family idiots who refuse to limit themselves to age-appropriate situations because they can't be bothered to plan a vacation around their children’s needs, and would rather endanger their child's life (by staying aboard ship) than cut their trip short? Or is Royal Caribbean being horrible to them, booting them off the ship in the dead of night, marooning them in a foreign country with a sick baby and no assistance (or clothing), and refusing to refund the money for what appears to have been a nightmare excuse for a vacation?
Well, to paraphrase Frank Zappa, 'Boy, we sure hope not!' If the online story is accurately describing the Company's actions, then this is possibly the worst example of customer service I have ever seen. Even if the company really tried their best; even if the family was asked politely to take the child to the hospital and refused to cooperate, staged some kind of sit-down protest in their rooms, and had to be persuaded by the authorities to actually go to the ER, this is still some of the worst PR work I've ever seen. If any of the family's allegations are proven true in court (they might be) it could cost the company millions in lost revenue, and even if they are proven to have been lying through their teeth about the whole affair, Royal Caribbean is still going to suffer.
This is where the concept of good customer service as preventative medicine comes into the picture. If the company could stand up in court (and in front of the press) and demonstrate that they pleaded with the family to do the right thing, gave them plenty of time to get ready, helped them pack up their stuff and disembark, provided a driver to take them to the hospital, and assisted them in finding their way home, they could quite legitimately ask the court (and the court of public opinion) 'We did everything we possibly could to help; what do you want from us?' And personally, I hope it turns out that they did (or at least attempted) all of those things; that this all turns out to be some colossal attempt to scam money off yet another unsuspecting business; that it's really a tempest in a teapot and it all just blows away.
Because I'd really hate to find out that another large company did something this stupid...
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Further investigation reveals a slightly different story. According to RCC, they did help the family out significantly (arranging for an ambulance and hotel, setting up Guest Relations contacts, etc.), but the family 'took matters into their own hands' and refused a lot of RCC's help. Also, apparently the family waited four hours between first contacting RCC medical personnel by telephone about their sick child and actually showing up at the medical personnel's office. RCC ultimately opted to refund the entire cruise and flight home.
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