Advice please!

[ChristinaM 0]

As some of you may know, I had some issues when I signed off the cruiseship I worked on, one of which included the fact that my musical director promised he would send a couple of my instruments my way and never did.

As a consequence, those instruments have been stolen and I'm a) considerably out of pocket and B) trying to get some form of compensation for them.

Here is the email I sent the guy at corporate office:

Mr Corporate,

DB [my MD]assured me that he would send me my instruments - both verbally on the ship on the Saturday evening and in email. Here is the progression of email:

>-----Original Message-----

>From: Christina C

>Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2005 9:47 AM

>To: MUSICAL DIRECTOR

>Subject: My Stuff!

>

>

>Hi D,

>

>Thanks for letting me pinch your suitcase and for offering to send my

>bits.

>I did try and call you on Sunday morning to check that it was still ok,

>but since I couldn't get hold of you, I assumed that it would be!

>

>I was just emailing to give you my forwarding address:

>

>80 Xxxxxx Xx #4

>Portland

>Maine 04101

>

>Thanks again,

>Christina

______________________________________________________

>From: "MUSICAL DIRECTOR"

>To: "Christina C

>Subject: RE: My Stuff!

>Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 05:26:47 -0400

>

>Hi Chris,

> You want me to send your stuff to an address in the states? Are

>you sure you don't want it sent to England where you live? Just let me

>know and I'll take care of it for you. How long are you going to be in

>the states and are you there now?

>DB

__________________________________________________________

>-----Original Message-----

>From: Christina C

>Sent: Friday, June 03, 2005 1:15 PM

>To: MUSICAL DIRECTOR

>Subject: RE: Help!

>

>

>Did you manage to get my things sent out? I'm trying to hook up

>auditions at the moment, but I'm obviously missing a couple of vital

>instruments!

>

>Thanks again,

>Christina

>

>

____________________________________________________________

>From: "MUSICAL DIRECTOR"

>To: "Christina C"

>Subject: RE: Help!

>Date: Sun, 5 Jun 2005 23:44:41 -0400

>

>Hi Chris,

> I'm coordinating with S [my roommate on the ship] to help get your gear back to you. I

>had port manning today and next week I've got 4 musicians signing on so

>I'm going to send her to the mailbox etc...in Galveston. Tell me

>exactly what you left and I'll make sure she mails it to you this Sunday.

>Shouldn't cost too much to ship in the states, but the horn/case might

>weigh a lot but I'm thinking around 70 bucks for everything. Chris [my hubby]

>might know more than me in regards to shipping instruments and what not

>but I'll cover the cost up front and you can pay me back. S said

>she talked to you today and you're doing good. I'm glad to hear that.

>Things are ok here at the moment,,G just came back and our new acd

>is an old friend.....

>Take care and be good.

>DB

______________________________________________________________________

That pretty clearly states to me that DB took responsibility for sending my instruments on. I would not have left them in the hands of my roommate (SN, Sound Tech), although I did think that leaving them with my line manager would be safe; particularly with the conversation we had prior to me signing off the boat.

Had I known in advance that I would be signing off on the day that I did, I would have made advance preparation to ensure that everything got where it needed to be going. However, since I was not told until 8.30pm on the Saturday night that I was to be packed and ready to leave in less than 12 hours, I was unable to make any kind of provision for this. I consider this to be especially unfair given that SM, who was also signed off the day that I was, knew at least 5 days in advance (which both he and DB told me explicitly). I gather that standard procedure is not to tell people that they are being replaced until the last minute, but to tell one person and not another is really not good practice.

As my airport request form had also not been processed (although it had been submitted), my return flight was booked to London rather than to Portland, Maine. As I mentioned previously, I was not informed that I was to be signing off until 8.30pm. This meant that the time in the UK was 1.30am - a completely unsuitable time to organise transport from Heathrow airport, and without more than one days' notice I would not have been able to get anybody to pick me up. (Another problem which could have been solved by a little courteous advance warning.) Because of this, Chris and I decided that I would fly instead from Houston to London and then return to the US on the next available flight. (As a point of interest, this cost Chris an additional $800, rather than the decreased cost cruiseline would have paid to fly me internally had my airport change request been honoured.)

Because I was going to make two trans-Atlantic flights back to back with no ability to leave any of my belongings in London, I asked DB if there were any way that he would be willing to send my clarinet and tenor sax directly to Maine for two reasons. One was to save me paying excess baggage fees both ways (it would have been cheaper for me to pay DB for the internal shipping from Galveston to Maine), and the other was that I simply was not able to carry them - a situation I would have remedied had I known in Galveston the week before.

The whole situation was, quite frankly, a mess, and as a result of something which my Musical Director (my line manager as employed by cruiseline) did not do as promised I am looking at needing to spend over $2500 to replace my clarinet alone (Buffet RC, Serial No. 437017). To replace my tenor sax like-for-like would cost me over $2000 (YTS-25, Serial No. 004131). Considering the circumstances, I feel that cruiseline played something of a large part in this given the lack of forewarning, the airport change request not processed and the initial assurance from DB that he personally would forward my instruments. If DB were unwilling to do as he said he would then it was inappropriate for him to agree to it in the first place.

As I mentioned to you in my previous email, I am currently playing on borrowed instruments. As I have the opportunity to play semi-professionally here, I obviously cannot continue to do this. It is apparent from his emails that DB, as an employee representing cruiseline, accepted responsibility for property of mine, and since it is now not possible for either piece to be returned I would like to see them replaced. I don't consider that I should have to suffer financially for this mishandling on the part of a relatively senior shipboard employee of cruiseline.

Regards,

Christina

I sent that email on 2/21, and oddly enough I haven't heard anything back.

Does anyone have any advice about how I could go about following that up. I don't know what my legal position is (and to be honest, I suspect it's pretty weak), but I do think that given the clusterfcuk that my departure from said cruiseline was the very least they could do would be to reinburse me the cost of at least my clarinet (which was the professional-level instrument and what I have now had to borrow). They were also insured, although with the circumstances being what they were I suspect I might have trouble getting money out of the insurance company too.

[MaryandMian 1]

Christina,

Did you have insurance on these instruments? Have you got receipts? I would contact the cruise ship once again and ask for a response from them and go higher up the chain of command as well as the one person you have been dealing with. I would show them proof from pics and receipts if you still have them. Then you would have two options possibly to follow thru with.

1. Talk to an attorney to see if they can file a claim for your reimbursement.

2. And another option is to file with your insurance company and maybe they can get reimbursed thru the ship's insurer.

Sorry that you have not gotten this resolved since it has been going on almost one year. Wishing you the best of luck on this.

Mary

[cmartyn 0]

Hmmm... Looks like a matter for their corporate office at this point. If your manager agreed to store and forward your equipment after you departed, then, it should ahve been done. Unless of course, their is a corporate policy or element of your employment contract that overrides this responsibility.

Anyhow, if your email is going unanswered, I would write a letter to their HR department and see what they say.

As for the insurance, I would just say you left them with your employer and they were somehow lost or stolen.. Its not like you left them in the street.

[ChristinaM 0]

Thanks guys...

My concern with going back to my UK insurer is that they will say "You didn't have the instruments in your possession, so they were not covered at that time". The cruiseline do NOT insure instruments whilst they are shipboard, so I can't claim it from them. I'm hoping that with the situation being what it was, my Allianz Cornhill will just pay up and be done with it, but the cruiseline really should be taking the responsibility for this.

I'm not sure who to go to further up the chain of command; that email was forwarded to the guy who hires musicians and HIS boss, and I don't know where the next logical step is.

[ILIKEALLCAPS 0]

Mary has some excellent ideas. I can only add that you should send a registered copy of this letter through snail mail to the higher-ups, explaining that since you were no longer employed by them, and the instruments were still in their posession at the time of loss, you would then be needing a claim form as a priviate party suffering loss while the objects were under their control. Also state that you are interpreting the lack of response from the emails as a tacit acknowledgment of culpability.

Unfortunately you'd need to check your contracts to see what liability the cruiseline actually has. If they don't start making motions to either return the instruments or replace them, you'd need such to consider litigation. Also, your insurance company would want proof that you've gone to great lengths before they even think about paying out.

Hmmm.....another possibility is asking the cruiseline people where/when the instruments were last able to be physically located, and tell them that you need that so you can know what police jurisdiction to file them as stolen. A savvy manager would know that a police report of theft (grand theft at that) from the cruiseline would be a matter of public record.....and really bad publicity.

My last option is to see if your area newspapers have an ombudsman service and if they'd be willing to take on the cruiseline for the publicity it would take.

That's about all my groggy mind can come up with this morning. If I think of anything else, I'll pop back in later.

[ChristinaM 0]

Nice, CAPS. This is why I ask you guys, you're so much smarter about this than I am.

I signed off back in May last year. Does anyone think that the police (or insurance co.) would say "why didn't you file sooner"? I think I can make a pretty good case for that, beings that I tried consistently to find out where they were and only received confirmation that they were not on the ship in February, but I wonder if it might cause problems.

I'm also hoping they might find some money just to shut me the heck up!!

Edited March 4, 2006 by clmarsh

[ILIKEALLCAPS 0]

Honestly, you probably will get the "why didn't you <blahblah> sooner?" question from people. But seeing as how you have the emails indicating you were in contact and trying to resolve it differently, I think that will explain the delay away.

Good luck in this. I seriously hope you get your friends back, instead of having to replace them.

[ChristinaM 0]

Thank you. Sadly, they have disappeared from their last-known location, so I can only treat them as stolen and resign myself to replacing them. It's sad, because I'd had my clarinet for around ten years and it went all over the world with me. I just hope that whoever took it appreciates its value and looks after it - or at least sells it to someone who will.

[ChristinaM 0]

*bump*