I've just spent a couple of hours reading the last 6 months of posts in this thread, and some in related threads.
In October 2004 I was allocated and accepted a cruise to the Carribean departing today, 5th November 2005.
I'm still here, of course. It was cancelled months ago, in a phone call from Rise Travel after I declined to pay £799 to upgrade the allocated cabin. I refused the "book of discount vouchers", which were worthless given the conditions attached to their use and said I would wait until 2006 for the cruise to be reallocated.
Since then, nothing. To be honest, I thought the chance of ever getting a Carribean cruise for £10 were remote, especially after reading many posts on ZDnet and hearing of the expose on TV.
However, these sort of s_c_a_m_s really annoy me, and I'm still hanging onto the dream. The D**** E****** made a lot of sales with the huge screaming headlines, and filled a lot of pages of their paper with this promotion.
In my opinion, it was always intended to disqualify as many people as possible with the large number of T's & C's, and the considerable "flexibility" required to take advantage of the offer was sure to force many people out when they were allocated dates (and destinations) they couldn't or wouldn't take up. Refuse the initial offer - any offer - and that's your lot...!
Many more could be disqualified as a result of not confirming within the tight deadlines, not using the very expensive Special Delivery (Recorded Delivery was not allowed, I recall), or using standard mail and being unable to prove they'd replied.
I suspect the number of people posting - or even reading posts here - is a TINY proportion of those who applied - by that I mean a TINY percentage of 1%.
This would also explain why an organisation like the D**** E****** hasn't bitten the bullet and just bought cruises for those who qualified. If there were 40,000 people - a figure I have seen mentioned - even at £250 each this would have cost them £10 million! Far too much to justify settling... someone probably decided the bad press would have to be put up with until enough people had given up to bring the bill down, meanwhile the trickle of cheap unfilled places on cruises (that it had always been intended to use) has been used to send a handful of (perhaps the loudest!) people away. Note that nowhere, throughout this saga, here, in letters, on Watchdog - anywhere- has the DE ever revealed how many people have been on a cruise, and what proportion of the qualifying number of people that is...I leave it to readers to wonder why this is...
The tone of this Board has changed over the month, due to the tendency for those who HAVE been on a cruise to provide a disproportionate number of posts, giving the impression of many people going away and having a great time. Nice to hear how they've got on, but let's not lose sight of the fact that these are probably the tiny minority, and even then, probably still not a representative proportion of the total due a cruise, the vast proportion of which probably just sighed and thought "well, it did sound too good to be true - oh well, nothing lost" - and who would never have thought of or bothered to enter "D**** E****** £10 Cruise" into Search Engines...if they were computer literate...!
Personally, I hope the idea of leasing a ship for a cruise isn't an option, as this would probably be arranged to cost as little as possible, and that would probably mean the Med, somewhere I've spent a lot of time, and can get to very cheaply. I was allocated the Carribean, somewhere I've never been, and that's where I want to go...!
Given the likelihood of being offered dates not entirely suitable to me, locations I wouldn't have chosen, given free choice, the possibility of being unable to go by the time a cruise is offered due to work, health, accident or whatever, and the draconian possibility of having to pay the full cost of the cruise if I failed to catch the ship for some reason, I'd look favourably at a cash offer if it was reasonable and I could then buy a cruise at my leisure without having to add too much to the pay out...otherwise I intend to continue asking the Daily Express where my Carribean Cruise is, and I hope others will continue to ask too.
It would be nice to hear, if there are any lawyers reading, whether a Small Claims Court action (perhaps claiming £1144 which I think was the figure mentioned somewhere as being the cost of a [second] place on a cruise if you wanted to take a friend or partner) would stand a good chance.
In any event a class action taken out by one person, funded by voluntary contributions (given the number of people standing to gain this wouldn't need to be a lot- I've taken these out before) might be worth considering. If one person does this and wins, it should set a precedent for everyone else...
Although the timescale for the allocation of cruises was somewhat open-ended, I think T's & C's have to be reasonable, and after a period of time, which would have to be decided by a judge, it would be open to him or her to decide that the promoter had failed to honour their promise and was therefore in breach of contract...
(Of course, if the promoter was deemed to be R*** T***** they'd probably just be forced into bankruptcy)
Comments anyone?
Steve.