Monday, February 10^th, 2020

At Sea

We were due to have passengers disembark in Singapore and Hong Kong. This is currently not an option, and so these passengers now either have the choice of disembarking in Port Kelang or in Fremantle. Those passengers due to disembark in Singapore who now want to stay on until Fremantle get 5 free days on QM2, so they are very happy campers. The majority of passengers have decided to remain on board until Fremantle.

However, the entertainers and lecturers will be disembarking in Port Kelang. Because no one will be able to embark there, it looks like we will have to amuse ourselves.

One of Deirdre’s clients chose to disembark in Port Kelang, and I spent the day trying to book an air ticket to the US for her. This proved to be much more difficult than I had expected, and finally after I got the booking, her credit card was denied, and the fraud department said they could not deal with the issue until tomorrow morning. That was leaving things a bit close.

We threw ourselves on the mercy of the financial department on board, and after some major pleading, we were able to convince them to book the ticket for us, and charge it to her on board account.

It took until 8:00 tonight to achieve this, but she did get a ticket. Despite my strict instructions as to what flights she wanted, she was booked on a totally different itinerary that was not to her liking at all, but at least she was booked.

We headed to the Commodore Club to celebrate.

The lessons learned were know the billing address for your credit card – I know we should know that, but in her case she got electronic bills, and has moved several times in the past few years and never updated her address, and thus could not remember the address she had used.

The other issue is that the phone number the credit card company had for her was her home number, and the fraud people would only speak to her on the home phone, not her cell phone. If she had been home she would be unlikely to be booking at ticket from Kuala Lumpur to her home the next day.

So all in all it was very frustrating, but thankfully Cunard came to her rescue.

As I sat at dinner and we all discussed our days I realized that I had done nothing else other than try to book the air ticket. However, I really didn’t mind, I have 75 days left on the ship, so 1 lost day is not a disaster at all. And I’m glad that we were finally able to help her out.

The entertainer tonight was Roy C Hemmings, a former member of the group The Drifters. Despite the fact he must be getting on a bit, he still has a lovely voice and lot of energy and had us singing along and dancing in the aisles. That’s my favorite sort of show!

So here we are on this magnificent ship, slowly heading to Australia. No update on our revised itinerary once we get there, but no worries, I’m sure they will come up with something, even if it just means more sea days.