Cunard Line Reviews

Think twice before booking with Cunard
Initially I booked a transatlantic cruise well in advance and was promised that would be the absolute best price. A few weeks before departure they sent me an advert offering the same deal for £1300 cheaper. When I contacted them they refused to offer any kind of concession.

When they cruise was cancelled due to covid I stick with them and booked another. Rather than honour the price they put the price up by £2000 and reduced the on board spend by half.

The flight upgrade I paid for also disappeared.

Due to the length of time between dates I needed to change one of my party for another. Despite the booking being in my name although they claim not to charge for this they have a policy of taking the part of the deposit you’re moved ( cruise credit ) or paid away so in effect if you’re travelling with one person they take 50% of the deposit you’ve paid away .. you have to pay it again.

My whole experience with Cunard has been full of these instances and inconsistencies whilst the person you chat with is always very pleasant the Information given is often wrong. I was told yesterday to ring today to book flights … guess what they won’t discuss an existing booking on a Sunday … but they will take a new booking … I think that tells you everything

Throughout my seventy-six year lifetime I have never been treated so badly, by any company, as I have recently been treated whilst on holiday and, upon return, by the company’s customer services department. The company? Cunard.

SHOCKING - I am shocked and appalled. I've never had such an ugly customer service experience in my life. Being stuck on a cruise can give you cabin fever, but being stuck in an environment created by Cunard will have you counting down the seconds till you leave to a normal life where human decency and respect exists.

Normally, I wouldn't care about customer service, as I'd just cross my fingers and hope we didn't run into problems - but this company seems to thrive off predatory policies, lies, and deceit, so that its almost impossible to have any kind of normal interaction or experience with them.

I was so shocked and traumatized after dealing with them, I happened to google 'Cunard reviews' and luckily came across this page. I suddenly realized it was not me who was crazy, but every word on this page resonated with the interactions I had on the phone, email and with the staff.

There is something clearly deeply wrong and troubling with this company.

We booked a Mediterranean cruise on the Queen Mary 2 for 9/6/23. Upon seeing prices lower on Cunard’s website my wife tried to upgrade ie pay Cunard more for a better cabin.
Their response was staggeringly inept.
Apparently the new lower prices were unavailable to us even though we wanted to upgrade & pay them more money?!?!?
Their solution was to cancel the old booking, lose our £500 deposit, and rebook at the current price.
One of their team, bless him, didn’t even understand what an obstructed view was or where the lifeboats were situated.
We had only paid a deposit and Cunard’s utter disregard for customer satisfaction was quite frankly mind blowing.

Anyway, never been happier to lose £500 deposit, as a regular cruiser over the years I will NEVER ever even contemplate using Cunard in the future. Have found writing this very cathartic and look forward to an as yet unbooked cruise this summer between other holidays.

I booked my cruise in UK where I live. Am holidaying with family in NZ before flying to Melbourne to board Queen Elizabeth

On and after 22 days before boarding one is asked ( must) complete and print off a boarding card. Being by then in NZ one has to try and comply using an elderly iPad and an iPhone SE 2020. Not helped by having bought a local SIM for local services .
Have still to comply with their Covid test requirements. These require one to take a lateral flow test the day before boarding and photograph the result alongside one’s passport and a digital date/time screen and one’s signature.
Cunard are perfectly capable of performing the test at the boarding terminal ( as they do in UK).
In short they are dumping all their pre boarding processes on their customers. Our task is to have the info/ evidence to hand at boarding. The IT processing is your job Cunard!
Worse, when one complains via their systems the emai reply is since you booked in uk your complaint has been forwarded there.
Nothing else has been received.
Cunard customer service is a disgrace. Somebody needs to be fired

Would have been a zero.
AVOID THIS COMPANY - BOOK WITH ANOTHER COMPANY - READ THESE REVIEWS
We've travelled with Cunard in 2018, our transatlantic cruise was lovely, so we decided to book this year. We paid a lower deposit, only to be HOUNDED to pay the remainder, it was explained to me not to worry I could pay so much s month. 2 WEEKS BEFORE CHRISTMAS THEY RANG ME AND INSISTED I PAID NEARLY 500.00 ADDITIONAL .
I explained I couldn't, I rang off, I was called 2 weeks ago insisting I paid yhe remainder, so I decided to pay monthly a small amount to show I was making a conscious effort to clear my deposit. That still wasn't good enough , they rang demanding more money.
I wrote and made a formal complaint to the CEO, considering who I wrote to they put some inexperienced idiot on the phone to attempt to resolve my issue.
She didn't try and keep a valued customer she just said she would refund the additional payments I made , not my original deposit
They couldn't seem to make payment to my card they were issuing a cheque that would take 2 - 3 weeks to be posted- absolutely disgusted
MY QUESTION IS , HAD I BOOKED A ROUND THE WORLD CRUISE COSTING IN EXCESS OF £ 200,000 EACH AND IMPORTANT , INFLUENTIAL BUSINESS PEOPLE WOULD U BE TREATED THE SAME - NO I WOULD NOT

We are booked on a cruise from Melbourne and along the coast of NZ on 14 Feb. We have heard and read in the press that the QE2 has been banned from entering certain NZ ports due to excessive marine growth on the hull. So it seems that we will not be able to see Fjordland and other places of great interest. Calls to Cunard, as expected, result in a brush off: "So far there are no planned changes to the itinerary". When asked a simple question as to whether or not the hull will be cleaned I was put on hold for seven minutes - to receive the same answer above. So it doesn't take a genius to work out that the response, in truth is 'NO'! No doubt they know exactly what will happen and no doubt their lips are sealed as they don't want the bad news to get out.
I was told that their Customer Care people will contact me within 48 hours. They didn't, of course.
This will be our third but last Cunard cruise as they are totally unreliable and their customer care standard is NIL.

QM2 is a fabulous experience.. no doubt about it ! Great staff & fantastic food with a good selection of experiences to choose from. However, the WiFi package is extortion plain & simple. Why Cunard? So many disgruntled passengers and for what? .. a measly few more dollars on your margin. Wake up and smell the mood..

The whole cruise was spoilt by the lack of empathy and customer service shown by the customer service desk. We had an issue with a case that was badly damaged between the dock and the ship. We were told it was nothing to do with Cunard and the issue lay with the port authority. After a long debate with desk staff and manager we were offered either a repair or a form to claim on our insurance. This was a brand new case and also needed to get our luggage off the ship, but the team didn't seemed to have any empathy for this. We were asked to provide pictures after we had already given these, told they would contact port authorities to sort it out and didn't, we could go on but the bottom line is this simple incident occupied most of our time during our trip. We are regular guests of Cunard and it is important to say the service on the rest of the ship was fabulous. Sadly we will be unlikely to travel with them again.

I am beyond disappointed in Cunard ! To see the same cruise I booked and paid in full for in October ! Now $8,000 cheaper and there’s nothing they can do !??? Wow ! I could have had a balcony room and still saved $6000! I will never book a cruise with them again! That’s a dirty way to do business! I’m retired and worked very hard to save my money and to basically throw it away ! Never again ! My advice never book early! Wait until the month before !

What a waste of almost £3000,00! being told on day two that head office had just informed the captain that we were going into dry-dock in Cadiz to get a new propeller and therefore missing out on Lisbon and spending an extra day in Cadiz!!! Of course all on board new that there was a new propeller and a dry-dock waiting for Queen Victoria on six days notice..... not!!!!
The food on board was to be polite mediocre. After three days in the restaurant we decided the buffet was the slightly better option. At least there were fresh vegetables available, even though Sauerkraut is not white cabbage boiled with vinegar, or Savoy cabbage is not white. Most potatoes, roast, parisienne and sautéd, were deep fried and the so called "chip shop potatoes" were American shoestring fries to name a few! Drink prices on board were horrendous considering they were duty free. Plus the typical 15% Service charge (typical for American ships)
Lots of longstanding guests commented how much Cunard had gone down in all aspects but I think it's easy blaming COVID on all the shortcomings!
Will I ever go on a cruise with Cunard again......?
Give me SAGA or P&O anytime!
Ps: I am still waiting for my e-mail from Cunard to write a review of my trip

Just arrived back from cunard queen Victoria Christmas and New year 15 night cruise ie 14 days. However we only had 13 days ie missed out lisbon as we were stuck in dry dock in cadiz whilst they fixed a previously known problem with propellor. Whilst we were allowed off for a day in cadiz both the afternoon before and the morning after meant we could not get off whilst water was pumped in and out of the dry dock. Then long trip back to Southampton. Why were we not told about this before we left? Were they worried people would cancel? We paid an increment for Christmas and New year but apparently that didn't matter as the ship needed to be fixed prior to the world cruise. Am awaiting compensation. Ha ha. Communicating with cunard is the original black hole.
And, looking back on other posts we too had spurious spends against us, one being a 70$ meal in the verandah. Having just eaten in the Club Balcony, not possible. Other double counting on drinks mainly reconciled. I think!
Worse still, there was a barrel of 30+% hydrochloric acid left in the corridor of 8th floor. Heaven help if a child had become curious (ship's Captain and other officers children on board!) or wheelchair had banged into it. Reported it but....

I had a lovely cruise, prepaid for a SPA session for 2, when onboard decided to upgrade for the full cruise the SPA Session. Lovely manager told me that she would write to the financial department to ask for a refund of what was paid, this was the 13/11/2022. To date I am still struggling receiving the pre-payment back. They never know when it will be back onto my account. Problem, my bank of which the card was attached is closing down the 23rd of January. And yet, still no refund on my card! I am very dissatisfied as it looks like they are trying to get away with refunding their customers after they took the cruise.

Very pleasant cruise apart from the constant additional gratuities added to just about everything. Wound up with a higher than expected room account and then Cunard charged it twice to our account. Left us seriously out of pocket 2 days before Christmas. Still not refunded two weeks later and an exceptionally poor customer service experience trying to get any response at all. Has ruined the whole experience. Cunard …. Never again.

I was on the Queen Victoria late October until 10th November to the canaries in a Princess grill cabin the cabin was filthy especially the bathroom with black mould around the walls I contacted the purser who eventually sent a maintenance officer to our room he agreed the bathroom was filthy and arranged to have all the walls cleaned and freshly grouted. The food in general poor only good thing now is the dress code it is now equivalent to office dress down friday so one does not have too dress up anymore but then why dress up to eat your dinner with no cocktail parties anymore ship is now in need of a major makeover premier inn now offers better rooms than princess grill victoria ALSO WI FI IS UTTER CRAP AND FOOD IS OFTEN SERVED LUKE WARM BEST BIT OF THIS CRUISE WAS GETTING OFF IN SOUTHAMPTON AND BEFORE ANYONE SLAGS ME OFF HAVE DONE 40 PLUS CRUISES WITH CUNARD ALREADY GONE ELSEWHERE