Bear with me as this is a long one but it may save you a lot of heartache and a great deal of money in the future! If we could post with no stars we would. We were due to cruise with MSC on 1st May but one of our party tested positive with covid using a home kit a couple of weeks before we were due to sail. We emailed Cruise118 to ask for direction in what to do next, they called us and told us they had spoken with an MSC Doctor who had said not to take covid tests but to wait until the day before we sailed and get an antigen test which should come back negative which would allow us to sail the next day. We then received an email from another Cruise Concierge to tell us we could not sail but they could offer us an alternative cruise in August and informed us of the additional cost which we accepted. We chased via email for confirmation of the new cruise to several of the Cruise Concierge agents we had dealt with over the next few days with no response. We sat on the telephone for one hour and forty minutes to get to get through to someone, pleading for some information regarding the alternative cruise. Someone was always going to get back to us and no one did so two days before we were due to sail/not sail we sat yet again for over an hour to get through only to be told that nothing had been done with the alternative cruise offer and it had been withdrawn by MSC. We were told by this Cruise Concierge that it might be a good idea to get an official test done (which by now would have shown negative on us all as we had been home testing for our safety) and try and claim on our insurance which with no official test results was useless. We explained that we had been told by one of her colleagues NOT to take tests and all she could say was ‘oh dear’. We were not able to sail on the cruise and so made an official complaint to the Chief Exec of Cruise118, she did not respond to us regarding this complete fiasco but instead got her Customer Service Manager to ring us instead, she confirmed she had checked out all the points in our complaint and did not dispute any of our complaint, she apologised for us being unhappy with their service and at the end of the conversation she asked us if we would like to take up the offer of the alternative cruise in August of which we said yes or we would like a full refund as we had been misguided through all of this by their own staff. She said she would call MSC the following morning and sort it and come back to us, she did respond the following morning with an email to say that again she apologised that we were unhappy with the service we felt we had received, the alternative cruise was not available and if we wished to take it further we should contact ABTA….and that was it, no cruise, no refund they just walked away from their responsibility. We are now pursuing one of several avenues to get our money refunded, we have used this company on many occasions and had the odd niggle with them mainly because they do not talk to each other or pass on information so you have to be the one to follow up any querie you may have but on this occasion we received so many emails and calls with instructions that totally contradicted each other, the one email told us to ignore the information we had been given so far because she had the correct information which was that we could take up the option of the alternative cruise!! This has been a horrendous experience made worse by the total indifference of Cruise118 to take responsibility for their incompetence causing our whole party to loose the cruise and money. You will not speak to the same adviser twice but they do keep notes on all calls and emails as we were told by the Customer Service Manager, they just do not action them. I’m sure we are not the first but you may be the next!