Topic: Thomson To Face Compensation Claim!

QUOTE:

Spending half of your holiday ( paid for by your hardearned cash) in your cabin suffering from D&V, probably norovirus is no fun. Complaining in writing to your holiday company (in my case Thomson) in depth about conditions on the ship involved and requesting information from chief executive and just receiving an apology from a clerical person, is unacceptabe. I even had a rectal swab taken BUT never received any notification from said company of what I was suffering from! I had even mentioned how important this was for me as I work in healthcare and offered my email address to be contacted directly. I only spoke to the doctor on the phone and was seen by a nurse at 10pm after becoming ill midafternoon. She told me that the medical staff were so busy that she had been unable to phoine home to her husband on his birthday and also following day St Valentine's. When you are marooned in your cabin you have no knowledge of how many others are "in the same boat"so to speak.Companies will not provide you with the full picture but I knew of a numberof ill passengers who re-emerged on the last day. Pools had been emptied. We witnessed deep cleaning going on in nightclub while we were still in it and staff cleaning up in theatre midevening after someone had been ill. If this happened in a hotel do you really think it would go unnoticed and unreported? No wonder people are taking the route to Irwin Mitchell to get the truth if nothing else. Incidentally, if anyone can provide me with the facts about how many people were ill on Thomson Spirit Canaries cruise week including Valentine's DaY February14th2011, I'd be very grateful, as Thomson do not seem able to!

I suggest you start a thread on this cruise and if a few members start discussing the problem that will keep it current.
Your trip is very different to one person and three pieces of fish (maybe two loaves of bread)

I think I did just that on my return.
However reading beginning of this thread it asked if anyone had a similar experience on a Thomson cruise, if I am not mistaken
. My point really was that it is very difficult to get any straight answers about outbreaks of norovirus etc. from cruise companies even -though they have prevented you from leaving your cabin due to your illness. Also the fact that even with medical testing you cannot receive a diagnosis from test results as you simply do not receive them. So, good luck to those who can prove with help from insurance companies that a company is at fault, as I feel a lot is hidden. A family friend , a fit young father of two children died from food-poisoning in Majorca. Please don't dismiss these illnesses as being trivial.More needs to be done by authorities to record what is actually happening by ships recording levels of such sickness aboard.

QUOTE:

No I don't believe that. It's less than 18 hours since I was reliably informed by Tomvet....



How dreadful. Oh well, what goes around....

Only the best kitchen equipment on Cunard

Richard, the illness may be an enterotoxaemia and not bacterial. Thomson have not failed any hygiene inspection nor has it been proven that they were the cause, if they can demonstrate that they have adhered to their food safety management system and have documentary evidence showing this - they are in the clear i.e. due diligence. Clearly factual evidence is present that Cunard do not! A huge difference!

Regarding the best kitchen equipment on Cunard. That may be true. However my experience as a food safety professional is that food non-compliances can be due to either (1) the machine or (2) the person. Unfortunately the person lets the side down far more often. So Cunard may have excellent equipment but they are only as good as the poorest operator.

Take a look at your photoraph more closely, would you like to comment on the following:
Staff not wearing head gear that covers their hair in totality
The placing of an oven glove on the upper surface of the appliance where dust collects and Salmonella loves dusty environments.

Yes great equipment but staff not conforming to Good Hygiene Practices.

[QUOTE=spartan, kent;275658]

QUOTE:

Ah! this Irwin Mitchel are a firm of solicitors who specialise in personal claims etc and they were involved in the Dream stuff too.
They should be working overtime contacting Cunard cruisers to see if they can drum up any business. (sarcasm)

Wonder what happened to that Welsh fella who had the fit?[/QUOTE]

He lives happily overlooking the Solent

Love it!!!!!!!!!!

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I was compelled to sign up and say that food poisoning from seafood is rapid and very vicious.

My partner works for a Jewellers and a watch rep took her and 6 collegues for a meal at a restaurant of their choice.

They opted to go to the french chain "Pierre Victoire" and she ordered mussels in cream. Before the deserts and the bill was paid, she was feeling queezy.

On the way home, a 10 minute journey took her friend half an hour as she made 3 or 4 stops for her to be sick. Her temp rocketed and she was suffering through both ends throughout the night.

She was off work the next two days and a doctor gave her a prescription and told her to rest. She lost almost 10lb in weight and couldn't even hold a glass of water down the day after.

So this "it takes days for a bug to strike" is eyewash !

She was 25 when she suffered that ordeal, and hasn't had a bug before nor since. The sight of Mussel's even now on Paella turn her stomach and put her off her own food.

For an elderly lady to suffer fish-derived food poisoning must have ruined her for at least a fortnight or longer. Let alone the length of her holiday.

I can only imagine the hell of being that ill, whilst stuck inside a ship cabin, bobbing around on the waves at her age.

I'd not only want my holiday refunding, I would want their asses kicking.

Yes this is true. Food Posioning can be either an (1) endotoxemia - where by you ingest contaminated food containing bacteria, these take time to multiply and elaborate their toxins that cause the damage and (2) enterotoxaemias - whereby you ingest preformed toxins in the food so the lag phase of bacterial multiplication and elaboration does not take place - hence the onset of symptoms is rapid. Fish posioning esp shell fish tend to be enterotoxaemias.

Shell fish also produce histamine like subsance e.g. Scumbroid poisoning so allergic enteritis can be seen extremely rapidly post ingestion.

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I suggest you start a thread on this cruise and if a few members start discussing the problem that will keep it current.
Your trip is very different to one person and three pieces of fish (maybe two loaves of bread)

was it not 5 loaves?

QUOTE:

I think I did just that on my return.
However reading beginning of this thread it asked if anyone had a similar experience on a Thomson cruise, if I am not mistaken
. My point really was that it is very difficult to get any straight answers about outbreaks of norovirus etc. from cruise companies even -though they have prevented you from leaving your cabin due to your illness. Also the fact that even with medical testing you cannot receive a diagnosis from test results as you simply do not receive them. So, good luck to those who can prove with help from insurance companies that a company is at fault, as I feel a lot is hidden. A family friend , a fit young father of two children died from food-poisoning in Majorca. Please don't dismiss these illnesses as being trivial.More needs to be done by authorities to record what is actually happening by ships recording levels of such sickness aboard.

I don't think any one considers them as trivial. To be fair Norovirus is not a serious issue, it haas high morbidity but mortality is v v vlow. That said its a real pain in the bum! Even if you rectal swab came back NoV+. All that says you have a NoV+ stool. Where you got it from - who knows as isolation and typing of viruses from food matrices is notoriously difficult - therefore you may not be able to prove anything from a virology view point. From a food safety management view point - once the operator has a HACCP system and maintain an appropriate monitoring protocol etc and is seen to take due diligence - they are covered.

Now STEC (Shiga toxin producing E coli) is a whole diferent animal - ref German and French outbreaks 2011. We have had deaths and 15% of survivors require renal transplants - this is premier divisiion stuff. NoV - actually 4th division!

[QUOTE=tomvet, limerick, roi;275726]I don't think any one considers them as trivial. To be fair Norovirus is not a serious issue, it haas high morbidity but mortality is v v vlow. That said its a real pain in the bum! Even if you rectal swab came back NoV+. All that says you have a NoV+ stool

I have just bought 2 off these from Ikea very nice they look to........being serious though, having suffered Complabactor food poisoning whilst on holiday in Potugal one year I can confirm its not a trivial thing, I felt unwell for weeks afterwards,and was called by the public health dept because this is a notifiable condition in the UK. The local hospital was able to confirm, via a stool sample 2 weeks return from holiday that this was the bug I had been exposed to

Sean

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Richard, the illness may be an enterotoxaemia and not bacterial. Thomson have not failed any hygiene inspection nor has it been proven that they were the cause, if they can demonstrate that they have adhered to their food safety management system and have documentary evidence showing this - they are in the clear i.e. due diligence. Clearly factual evidence is present that Cunard do not! A huge difference!

Regarding the best kitchen equipment on Cunard. That may be true. However my experience as a food safety professional is that food non-compliances can be due to either (1) the machine or (2) the person. Unfortunately the person lets the side down far more often. So Cunard may have excellent equipment but they are only as good as the poorest operator.

Take a look at your photoraph more closely, would you like to comment on the following:
Staff not wearing head gear that covers their hair in totality
The placing of an oven glove on the upper surface of the appliance where dust collects and Salmonella loves dusty environments.

Yes great equipment but staff not conforming to Good Hygiene Practices.

I'll chalk that up as a bite.

In the meantime I note that you are obviously a man of many talents Tomvet, and 'experience as a food safety professional' has now been added to the Veterinary profession.

Shame about the enterotoxaemia. Is that the human form of the sheep and goat overeating disease, enterotoxemia?

QUOTE:

No I don't believe that. It's less than 18 hours since I was reliably informed by Tomvet....



How dreadful. Oh well, what goes around....

Only the best kitchen equipment on Cunard

Hello again Richard - I do love these debates don't you?, the only but significant difference here is, the word CLAIMING, as yet no proof, even you must admit compensation drives people.

Oh and what a lovely kitchen, it's a shame it's been PROVED as one of the filthiest on the high seas.

Have a nice day

Regards Diddy