Well,
DCL called me back about the kids' club incident.
They basically put the blame on me for not talking to the clubs about it, which we did. We spoke to the Oceaneer CMs about it, who did not even apologize for not tending to our kid after the incident. Why anyone who is in charge of supervising kids not take an injury report, however minor or perhaps dramatic, seriously, I don't know. Why wouldn't you at least ask, "are you ok? Would you like me to call your parents?" if you didn't want to deal with it?
The rep I spoke to blamed me for not going to guest services, ok, fine. Again, I reiterated, I didn't go to guest services because my child didn't want me to, because he wanted to continue going to the clubs and not have tension or animosity with the staff there for reporting them, so I respected his wishes. That does not excuse the fact that your own trained CMs did not do their jobs! Which is what I want to address! I'm not writing to you to threaten a lawsuit. I want you to make sure people in charge of children DO THEIR JOBS! and help parents like me feel safe having their children under those employees' care.
The rep blamed me for not calling security...on who? On the kid that kicked mine, and took off without leaving his name, and no way to know where he was what room he was in before he took off? What do I say? My kid did the right thing. He told an adult in charge, which was an Oceaneer CM, right as it happened, when he could've pointed to and identify the kid who kicked him, and CMs did nothing. Other CMs also did nothing when we went back to report it and get ice packs. In fact, even then, the CMs didn't apologize for dropping the ball, they said, "I'm sorry it happened." Yeah, us too, but things like that do happen with kids, and we understand that, but why didn't you do your job? Often times, guests, especially parents dealing with an upset and hurt child don't know what the cruise line's procedures, chain of commands, are for situations like this, but their employees should. And really, what parents involves authorities for something so minor as one child kicking another? Why didn't the trained Youth Counselors do their job and at least check on the child when he said he was kicked, but instead, told him to quit faking it and to help pick stuff up? If calling security was warranted, why didn't the CMs know that was the procedure, and do it when we went back to tell them about the incident? Why wasn't the incident handled properly in the first place? The DCL rep didn't have an answer, but just told me that if I want to report it to the cops/authorities that I can, and they will cooperate. Report what? That a child under your care, kicked mine, kid didn't leave a name or contact info, and your employees didn't do what they were supposed to? Who do I report? What do I even tell the cops? She explained to me that DCL's policy is that the CMs will talk to the parents of the kid who is being unruly and if that doesn't stop they can be asked to not come back to youth activities. She also told me to call the cops because it was a guest to guest incident...but yeah, it happened in YOUR clubs, under the care of trained youth counselors who did nothing even when we did report it, including breaking your own policy of talking to the kid's parents.
I asked, how is a parent to feel safe with their child under a brand like known for being family-centric when their own trained youth club CMs couldn't do the basic human thing as to ask if someone is ok when they say they're hurt. She deflected it back at me saying, "since this isn't your first time cruising with us, you know this doesn't happen often." (Well, since this was only our 3rd time, there's like a 33+% chance of it happening? Soooo if we're going to base it on that...but I didn't say that.) But it did happen. And I know it happened to at least one other family on our sailing as well, whose complaint is also sitting on their desk, but I know they're not at the liberty to talk to me about it, and that's fine. The fact remains, it did happen. And now you're blaming the parent for not following your company's procedures, when your own employees, who are suppose to know, didn't. All I wanted now was, how do you instill faith back to your customer? With most businesses, if they screwed up, they're happy to give you something to ask you to try them again. I once had raw chicken in my noodle bowl with a local chain of restaurants, they spoke to management of that location, and sent me a gc nearly 3x the cost of that bowl (that I didn't request, I simply Tweeted them to say, "heads up you guys are serving under cooked food".) I certainly didn't expect 3x my cruise fare from DCL or even anything remotely close to that, but they didn't even offer so much as $5 a Dole Whip to my kid as an, "I'm sorry we dropped the ball. Please give us another shot to see that we have fixed our Youth Club problems, and we are STILL the premier vacation choice for families. Be our guest. Put our service to the test," and all. In fact, she didn't even really have an apologetic attitude, but one of blame.
I'm going to sit on this for a while and process the call. I might call back next week to ask to speak with a manager, but frankly, I don't even know what about. It's not like I'm going to demand compensation...I mean, what, how? But I do think a small something even like a fun graphic $5 gc like the ones they have with Disney Movie Rewards would've been a nice gesture to say, "I'm sorry your kid got hurt, and we didn't follow our procedures. We hope this will bring some magic the next time you sail with us." I want things to be fixed, and good customer service, not a free cruise, though duh, it's not like I or anyone would turn that down either.
And certainly not be blamed for not doing all the right things by their policies and thoughts when I contact them about it. This is the reason why people don't report things.
