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Norwegian Cruise Lines – Concealing COVID, Abusing Customers, Pirating your Hard-Earned Money – Part 2 Exposing How Norwegian Cruise Lines Keeps Customers’ Money & Conceals COVID Risks

May 15, 2020

The lawyers at Brown, LLC are investigating the unlawful business practices of Norwegian Cruise Line. Norwegian Cruise Line may have concealed the risks of contracting COVID and other diseases on their cruise lines. Further, it is alleged they are violating multiple states Consumer Fraud Statutes, by failing to provide timely refunds for cruises that have been impacted by COVID or only giving partial refunds.

Consumers be warned about NCL – Even monies they are supposed to refund, they are holding onto and REFUSE to provide a date certain or prove it is being escrowed.  Norwegian Cruise Lines is engaging in conduct tantamount to what a con man would do.  They are not to be trusted unless and until they can guarantee passenger safety and have a mechanism to promptly refund consumer monies. 

Here is just a list of some of the events at one of their cruiseliners called Norwegian Spirit according to https://www.cruisemapper.com/accidents/Norwegian-Spirit-702

 March 2020 Other Incidents
Due to the global Coronavirus pandemic, the ship was denied entry to several call ports of the 20-day Dubai to Cape Town cruise (itinerary March 2-22). After spending 17 days at sea, on March 22 the liner docked and disembarked its passengers in Port Cape Town (South Africa). Of the original itinerary remained (were visited) only Abu Dhabi UAE (Mar 3), Fujairah UAE (Mar 4) and Muscat Oman (Mar 5). The other destinations were cancelled due to port closures or country lockdowns, including Seychelles (Victoria Mahe), Madagascar (Nosy Be Island), Mauritius (Port Louis), Reunion (Saint-Denis) and South Africa (Richards Bay, Port Elizabeth, Mossel Bay).
  January 2019 Cruise Illness / Norovirus Outbreaks
(CruiseMapper email from Alison Smith) Just got off NCL Spirit at Barcelona from a 10-day cruise starting on 24 Jan 2019. There was a norovirus outbreak resulting in major sanitary procedures. We were unaffected and can’t judge the size of it, but clearly significant. Wonder how it will affect the new passengers going aboard at Barcelona today. The incident occurred during the 10-day “Canary Islands, Spain and Morocco” cruise (itinerary Jan 24 – Feb 3) roundtrip from homeport Barcelona to Morocco (Casablanca), Canary Islands (Gran Canaria, Tenerife), Madeira Island (Funchal) and Spain (Malaga, Alicante). Note: When the itinerary doesn’t include US cruise ports, the ship is not required to report to CDC, thus no official illness report would be issued.
  03 April 2018 Crew / Passenger Deaths
(overboard) On April 3, 2018, a 34-year-old male passenger was reported missing. The man (from Saudi Arabia) went overboard from the ship at ~2 am. In the conducted search and rescue operations were involved vessels from Guardia Civil and Salvamento Marítimo (Spanish coast guard), including 2 helicopters and 1 plane. The accident occurred in the waters near Mazarron (southeastern Spain), approx 30 mi / 50 km south of Cartagena. The ship was en-route from Malaga to Alicante, completing a 10-days roundtrip Barcelona to Morocco and Canaries cruise (itinerary March 25 – April 4) to Casablanca, Gran Canaria, Tenerife, Madeira, Malaga, Alicante.
  December 2011 Cruise Illness / Norovirus Outbreaks
December 2011, CDC reported on voyage Dec 18 to 25, a Norovirus outbreak affected 94 passengers (out of 2409, or 3,9%) and 13 crew (out of 945, or 1,4%). The ship was on 7-day Caribbean cruise from homeport NOLA New Orleans


These reported incidents are before NCL’s concealment of the risk of COVID and lack of plans to keep its passengers safe and its further refusal to promptly refund any portion of concerned people’s monies who don’t want to go on these potential Norwegian death cruises.  People are reporting that there are extended wait times to speak with NCL reps, and that any refunds are not being done for many, many months.  Further, even though NCL is unable to provide for the safety of its passengers due to COVID and evidently other events, they are keeping large portions of monies paid which may violate state and federal law.

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If you have information about the unlawful practices and concealment of COVID by NCL please call the lawyers at Brown, LLC at (877) 561-0000.   Our cruise ship law firm want to hear your information and your issues and see if we can assist you.

Here is a sample email from NCL recognizing in part they are obligated to return certain funds, but failing to provide a date for their disbursement:

“Thank you for writing in.  We greatly appreciate the understanding of our valued guests during these fluid, unprecedented and challenging times.  Our organization stands behind the recent option(s) provided to our guests and none are retroactive.

The options associated with our voluntary action to suspend cruises with embarkation dates from March 13 to April 11, 2020 announced March 13th, 2020 are applicable to those guests with an active reservation at time of announcement.

Guests who opted to cancel and take advantage of our Peace of Mind policy applicable and effective as of March 10th, 2020 will be protected as such.

Guests who opted to cancel under our cancellation policy which is communicated to our guests at time of booking and can be found on our website will be protected as such.

In addition,  due to the high volume of requests at this time, refunds may take up to 90 days to be processed. We are working diligently to ensure we revert to our guests as soon as possible.    We are incredibly appreciative of your loyalty and trust in allowing us to welcome you aboard our amazing ships. We remain dedicated to providing our guests with the best travel experiences across the globe, and we look forward to welcoming you aboard very soon.
Sincerely,
Mahasin Francis
Coordinator
Guest Relations”

You’ll notice the highlighted part in which NCL continually punts refunds to 90 days in the future.  Other parts show how they are continuing to change the rules, but the one rule they keep is your money.  Hold NCL accountable.  They have an arbitration clause, so they can’t be sued, but the lawyers at Brown, LLC can advise you of your rights and how to commence an arbitration and potentially handle your case on a contingency basis. 

The arbitration clause permits them to evade accountability to the entirety of the class so it’s critical that if you know of the inside practices of NCL and how they have been actively concealing the COVID risks to contact our office so we can present the matter to the various state Attorney Generals who can hold them globally accountable for outright ripping off the consumers and putting them at risk.