Forget the lost luggage and the ruined vacation.
Capri pants and cotton sweaters, Tumi bags and iPads are all replaceable.
Ruined vacation? Your typical ruined vacation turns into a funny story within a year or two.
But this isn’t about lost luggage and ruined vacations.
This is about surviving an “accident” that never should have happened, likely brought on by sheer negligence and recklessness on the part of the ship’s captain and/or the cruise line managers who allegedly pressured the captain to give the passengers a thrill by passing close to shore.
Even if you were one of the lucky ones – first off, exposed to minimum panic – you now know how easy it would have been to have lost your life.
Most likely, if you survived you experienced the chaos, the panic, the fear, the tumult, the disorientation. Most likely you can’t help thinking “what if”. What if you had or hadn’t returned to your cabin? What if you had or hadn’t taken the staircase you did? What if you had or hadn’t stayed for that second nightcap? What if you had or hadn’t run into someone calm and helpful? And, of course, ‘what if’ you could have done something to make matters better, and didn’t? Or, worse, ‘what if’ you did something that made matters worse?
Not, exactly, pleasure cruise questions to ask yourself.
I don’t imagine there are many survivors – passengers or crew – who aren’t replaying this event, running their ‘what if’ scenarios, and waking up in the middle the night with an occasional cold sweat.
This has got to be worth more than the $14,458 that Costa Crociere, owners of the Costa Concordia, are offering passengers who survived the entirely-avoidable shipwreck that changed them from happy campers cruisers to people who, however mentally healthy they are, will no doubt always be haunted by images, memories, and ‘what if’ scenarios. (The $14,458 covers lost luggage and “psychological trauma”; cruise fare, travel costs, in onboard incidental charges are being separately refunded.)
Costa Crociere made its offer in return for passengers signing a waiver not to sue. I doubt they’ll have many takers – unless it comes to light that they are underinsured, have no assets, etc., and that this is the best they’ll be able to do.
This disaster wasn’t an act of God, or an act of terrorist, or an act of bad manufacture. It was an act of man – the ship’s captain who thought it might be fun to sail dangerously close to shore to give a wink and a nod to a retired fellow captain. And it was the act of a company that may have goaded the ship’s captain to do the crowd-pleasing nautical drive-by, and that either hadn’t fully trained its staff on how to respond to an emergency, or had hired the wrong kinds of people (c.f., The Captain) to begin with.
Given all this, $14,458 seems pretty darned low-ball.
Yes, I understand that those who were injured, and the families of those that lost their lives, will be better compensated. Still, $14,458 wouldn’t quite do it for me. Even though I’m not the particularly litigious type, I’d hold out for the inevitable class action suit that will be mounted against Costa Crociere, and its (presumably deeper pockets) parent, Carnival. Even if the outcome is near lawyer-take-all, I’d rather have the satisfaction of sticking it to the cruise line, thank you.
I always like to go direct to the source, so I wandered over to Costa Crociere, where “a cruise vacation is the best way to travel in comfort and style”, to see what they had to say.
Although on the day I looked there was no mention of the $14,458 tender, there were a couple of updates, including this:
…the company welcomes discussion with its guests and all consumer protection associations to determine indemnity for the hardship endured, with the support of tourism sector trade associations with which it has been in contact for days.
Which is, I believe, the crew that came up with the $14,458.
Well, I suppose you have to start somewhere. And, of course, the first rule of negotiation is that your first offer isn’t your last, and your starting offer shouldn’t be where you want to end up.
Maybe, having conferred with consumer protection and industry associations, they really do think that this is the “right” number – or close enough. Maybe the figured that, if they got something out there quickly, they could do some passenger cherry-picking that would keep what is likely to be an astronomical award down a bit. Maybe (understandably) they just want to get the survivors over and done with so that they can focus their legal efforts on the dead and injured.
But if I were a survivor, I’d be sitting there thinking, hmmmm.
The stuff – shoes, clothing, tote-bags, jewelry, electronics, reading material, toiletries - that I lost was probably worth several thousand dollars, by the time you added up replacement costs. To make things simpler, let’s just say it all added up to $2,458.
That means that everything I went through, including fearing for my life, the lives of those I was traveling with, and the lives of several thousand complete strangers. Living through those moments when the ship started to list and, having seen Titanic and The Poseidon Adventure, knowing that this isn’t a good sign. Having my life turned, if only temporarily, upside down, is only worth $12,000.
DOES. NOT. COMPUTE.
I don’t know what the right number would be, but this ain’t it.
See you in court!
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