Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Day 65 At Sea

Today was a little better than yesterday….  It is slowly getting warmer and the seas slightly improving.    I spent the day visiting with friends and thinking of warmer days. Tomorrow may be the breakthrough…  Warmer days coming soon…  Tonight we had dinner in the Pinnacle Grill celebrating our friend Ton’s birthday.  The meal was just perfect!  It was a wonderful evening with great friends.  My frustration with the internet continues to grow…..  Why?  Because the last 30 years there has been explosion of Internet technologies.  The services and platforms provided have increased dramatically and the costs have plummeted. Unfortunately, this has not translated in improved services and lower pricing on Holland America Line.  Come to think of it, I believe their pricing has remained at the same lofty level for years in the face of dramatic drops in Internet pricing around the world.  As more and more people bring iPhones, iPads, PDAs and laptops on board, the cruise line has not responded well to the increasing demand.   When people embark on a long voyage around the world they particularly feel the pain.  Our lives are totally connected, socially, financially and to provide informational needs through the medium of the internet.  Only a small fraction on the 400 subscribers onboard (not including crew) can actually get on the Internet at the same time to use the services they contracted for with Holland America Line.  Just today I had a message that there were too many subscribers online and to try later.  I went to the Internet Manager and inquired as to how many users were online.  And the answer was….  Only 22!   The really sad thing in all of this is that the business model they have essentially says that the worse they perform, the more money they make.  Sad indeed!  This is because the cost to the user is based on time logged on the system, so if the system is really slow or not transmitting data it takes much longer than it should normally, Holland America Line makes more and more money.  They should use the same model for some of the staff, for example, the poorer the fuel consumption performance of the Captain, the more money he should be paid or the less revenue that the Hotel Manager brings in should translate to a higher salary and bonuses.  In addition, the view among some of the technical staff on board is that as long as you got a connection and started the meter reading, regardless of the performance even if you cannot get any data transmitted, they have done their job and the service is working properly.  That is so wrong words cannot describe.  This has created a huge swell of dissatisfaction among the guests onboard since day one.  I have been communicating with management on board, encouraging them to respond to the problem and their efforts to respond have been noted, but to date the actual performance remains intermittent, slow or non-existent. It is time for Holland America Line to step up and resolve this problem.  The technology is far too good to continue to provide a such poor service and, I believe Holland America Line is better than this.

 

 

 

12 comments:

  1. Well said. Last Sept/Oct I had the same problem and was told to try to get on after the old folks went to bed and the crew got off work !!! That is not a solution to this problem. I purchased $100. internet time and only was able to use about 75min. in 35 days. That was less that half my purchased mins. Good Luck getting this resolved. R.

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  2. Jeff
    The internet issue is fleet wide. on my Veendam trip in December, I ended up leaving 130 unused minutes as it was actually faster and easier to use my blackberry for email and sending pictures. Not sure how I would ever have been able to keep a blog current. i truly feel your pain and thank you for being persistent in getting all those photos uploaded
    Vickie

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  3. Zaandam was equally as frustrating--need to speak with the Chairman of the Board !

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  4. it seems no matter what ship it is the internet has major problems.. I posted on here back at the start of your adventure about our internet troubles on our 45 day Europe cruise in Oct thru Dec on your 'non-favorite' ship-- the Maasdam...it started.. or should I say stopped the internet availability.. after we left St Martin for the crossing...they couldn't repair it.. even after we got to the Canaries.. finally did something replacing a transmitter in Casablanca.. but it still wasn't working properly..

    the powers to be made the decision to refund everyone's internet charges and let them keep what minutes to use that were still available.. that was the right thing to do but it still didn't help us get online

    my take on it.. it's their service provider--MTN Satellite Communications..
    http://www.mtnsat.com/mtn-markets/cruise-lines they have the cruise industry wrapped up... and they are incompetent.... in this day and age this should not happen..

    hope everything with your internet troubles works out

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  5. this story was just on CNN this morning Feb 8... the video ..if you can get it on the ship's internet shows the Amsterdam in the background at about 2 min 20 sec into the video .. http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2012/02/07/rivers-uk-argentina-tensions.cnn

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  6. Keep those comments coming.... I think HAL likes the free publicity. Many people have booked HAL cruises based on my blog, including the world voyage so they have a right to know more about the product.

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  7. Perhaps HAL should charge based on usage (MB uploaded/downloaded). Time-based internet fee only makes sense if HAL is able to provide consistent levels of service. Obviously, this is not the case.

    Enjoy very much following your blog...
    Chris

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  8. It,s not just HAL, Princess is bad too. To put p;icturesin my blog on a Med cruise I had to use internet cafes on shore,

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  9. MB usage sounds great but.... with an intermittent connection you can upload/download the same thing multiple times....

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  10. We will embark on a world cruise on Princess in May and dread trying to keep my blog going. Maybe I should get up at 3am to send the material? I agree it is a joke, but what leverage do we have if all the carriers have the same problems?
    Pam
    worldcruise12.blogspot.com

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  11. With all due respect, I think you need to do some research into what it is that you're writing about before you publish it. If you go on any ship, on any line, you'll notice that it is all the same. Though technological advances may be rapid on land, that does not necessarily translate to satellite advancements at the same pace. The cost of a satellite system is astronomical to a cruise line... nothing like what you pay at home for DSL/Cable/T1 connections. And like all businesses, that cost must be passed along to the consumer. The fact is- you are uploading pictures. Whether on land or at sea, this takes a LOT of bandwidth. Maybe instead of complaining about the speed and reliability of the internet, you should be thankful to have the capability of logging on at all when you're in places that are hardly industrialized, to say the least. As a former crew member on cruise ships, I personally think it sounds like you are long overdue for a break from ships.

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  12. Well "former crew member" it is you that are misinformed..... My blog only takes 3-4 Mb which is nothing compared to the Skype, Facetime etc that the crew members use everyday. On a normal day on the ship my blog only takes about 3-4 minutes to post. That sucks up bandwidth like crazy.... The biggest problem here is the intermittent connection.

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