insanemagnet

Am I happy that the staff are paid a pittance?

Well are you?

So can we all assume that you take the moral high ground and refuse to cruise while the staff work on their supposed exploitative contracts.

"supposed exploitative contracts" - sounds like you are quite happy for the staff to be paid a pittance and having to put their hand out and hope.

You are now sounding desperate.

Not as desperate as P&O's cheerleader, who surprisingly has no facts only opinions.

I have never seen this done on P&O, has anyone?

I have after I poked the staff into action one day, but it took quite a lot of effort.

They will place cards on sunbeds which have been unoccupied for some time that say if you don't return within a certain amount of time your items will taken away.

The fallout from the cards was quite amusing to watch from a distance, but from the grief the staff were getting from leaving the cards I can understand why they don't actively do it.

The other problem for the staff is the family or social groups who will take half a dozen sunbeds and then leave a sentry to guard them whilst everyone else disappears for hours. If the staff approach they are chased off by the guard.

Well you do surprise me as you have been against tipping for years as your many negative posts have shown.

My dislike is not tipping staff who are paid a fair wage (like every other member of crew other than stewards and waiters), but the Victorian system you support of paying staff a token amount with the stewards and waiters crossing their fingers that customers will make up their pay to a living wage.

If you are happy that staff are employed on such exploitative contracts then great, but personally I don't think they should exist in modern society.

Although you continue to quote facts which are not facts at all but made up by you. Something does not become a fact just because you say it often enough.

And you saying something isn't true doesn't make it so, no matter how desperately you want to believe it.

Thats because we have the moral high ground. Clearly unlike you who have been against tipping for years. I will give you that you are consistent.

 

 

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As usual you are wrong.

I have nothing at all against tipping.

However P&O's optional service charge which is used to fund the bulk of the staff wages isn't a tip in any sense.

It’s that type that I was talking about earlier in the thread and sadly there do seem to be many more of the demanding “snap the fingers” type of people around since the prices reduced which is a bit of a contradiction.

That isn't my experience.

By far the rudest people I have had the misfortune to encounter are those that loudly tell you about the vast number of cruises they have been on and then bore on about how they have been on this ship and that ship.

I'm beginning to think it's the people who DON'T pay gratuities who have sleepless nights about those of us who do pay them. Otherwise why are they continually posting on cruise forums justifying why they don't pay them. Not only that they try to bully those who do into doing the same.

I don't see many people trying to justify why they don't pay an optional charge, but an awful lot of people saying they do pay and trying to take the moral high ground.

Oh look here is one.

I sleep very well because my conscience is clear.

 

2) P&O say that individual employees do not lose out if guests remove gratuities. It therefore seems to be logical that P&O would need to build up a fund for this event. Therefore do P&O hold back a proportion of gratuity contributions for this event?

There is a fund and it is where all the money collected from the service charge goes.

People assume the money they pay goes to their steward and their waiters. It doesn't.

It goes into a pool out of which the bonus is paid. So if someone doesn't pay the optional charge the stewards and waiters still receive a bonus.

The amount of the bonus is calculated by P&O based on their expectations of how many people are going to pay, so whether an individual person does or does not has no effect on the bonus.

But assumptions are not proof.

 

They just muddy the water.

 

 

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The point which is being made (which you are either ignoring or can't understand) is if the optional service charge has trippled in the last few years either -

- Staff remuneration has increased massively, so P&O have not benefited from the increase in the service charge; or

- Staff remuneration has remained the same by reducing base pay in proportion, and P&O has profited from having a reduced wage bill.

As you have all the facts from your inside knowledge as P&O's chief cheerleader, which is it?

Surely if you cancel your cruise, your contract with pando is terminated at that point. What happens after that point is immaterial as you do not have a contract with pando any more. Or am I over thinking things again.

With respect I suggest reading the T&C's rather then guessing.

I think there a few barroom lawyers here so to be specific let’s look at how Carnival handles another possible charge namely fuel supplement.

 

(d) Cruise Fare does not include fuel supplement charges, security surcharges, or similar incidental surcharges (“surcharges”); Carnival reserves the right to impose or pass any of thesesurchargesandnorightofcancellationshallbeimplied. “Fuelsupplement”shallmean any additional charge to defray a portion of Carnival’s fuel costs. The amount of fuel supplements and government fees and taxes collected are subject to change. Carnival reserves the right to charge a fuel supplement of up to $9.00 USD, or its equivalent in foreign currency, per person per day, without prior notice, in the event that the price of light sweet crude oil according to the NYMEX (New York Mercantile Exchange Index) is greater than $70.00 USD per barrel of oil. Carnival may collect any fuel supplement in effect at the time

of sailing, even if the cruise fare has been paid in full.

 

Note as specifically stated this will not be added to the fare. So any additional charges are not likely to affect the advertised fare.

 

DAVID.

Carnival, not P&O.

No you provide facts you never do. It is all assumption.

 

Muddying the waters.

 

 

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So you have no facts, just beliefs.

Oh good, another made up fact to allow those who do not want to tip to justify their actions.

 

Muddy waters again.

 

 

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If P&O are unwilling to provide facts such as exactly how is the distribution made, what proportions end up with each section, what happens to the money if staff don't deserve a bonus, etc, then is it any wonder people will fill in the gaps.

If you have any better facts, let us hear them.

Well that doesn’t seem to apply to resteraunts

Plenty of small businesses fly under the radar of officialdom and only operate correctly when challenged.

Large companies like P&O like to be legally correct, even if not morally so (for example Amazon and their tax bill).

You have moved it from the starter point, when did the OP cancel the cruise?

Is that relevant?

Once P&O decide they are not operating the cruise the only way they can do so is by cancelling the contract.

But if you have already cancelled, would that not mean that the contract is nul and void, and therefore section 40 is no longer applicable.

 

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No.

If the customer cancels the contract still exists but section 38 permits P&O to make a charge equivalent to the deposit.

Section 40 specifically allows P&O to cancel the contract when they don't want to operate the cruise. If they have cancelled the contract they can hardly make a charge under section 38.

And, no, just because the ship didn't sail, doesn't mean that you can claim your deposit back.

I disagree.

Section 40 of P&O's T&C's makes clear that P&O may cancel the cruise and if it does so it will "cancel the Contract".

As soon as the contract is cancelled then the right for P&O to retain the deposit under section 38 disappears.

From the Advertising Standards Authority

 

 

https://www.asa.org.uk/advice-online/compulsory-costs-and-charges-vat.html

Exactly.

Any 'compulsory' service charge would have to appear in the headline price so P&O couldn't advertise a cruise as "only £499" and then somewhere else say "plus £49 compulsory service charge", it would have to advertise it as "only £548".

So the only purpose of including a separately advertised service charge would be so you could say "service charge included".

Now that might be a selling point to experienced cruisers, but P&O are aiming a lot of their marketing at a non-traditional audience who have never even thought about a service charge. So in their advertising they are raising a negative point and then trying to spin it as positive. A pretty silly thing to do.

Also by making them compulsory they definitely become part of the consideration for the supply of the cruise by P&O, so has all the knock on tax implications. A voluntary payment made by people which is held and administered by P&O on behalf of the staff is a very different thing.

They could certainly charge a MANDITORY service charge of £5 or whatever.

They cannot.

If they charges a mandatory service charge it becomes part of the fare and has to be included in the headline price. At that stage it stops being a service charge.

and no Insanemagnet, it’s not obvious to a lot of people how to put the jacket on the right way round, how to adjust straps etc. The new style on Britannia is a case in point.

It is obvious to me.

For those who have difficulty I am happy for them to take the extra lessons.

I do however have a concern that if they can't work it out in the warm dry theatre, who knows what is going to happen to them when the ship is at a 40 degree list and the water is rising.

More important to do it on Britannia as the life jackets are different.

The only people it benefits to try it on are those people you see making a complete mess of the straightforward task of putting on a life jacket.

For an object which is designed to be obvious to fit whilst the ship is sinking and water is lapping around your ankles, some people do seem to struggle.

Just had an "important information" letter in the lost from P&O telling me to go to pocruises.com/register and log in with the email address they showed in the letter.

Used the 'forgot password' which sent back a password reset, and bob's your uncle, in and details changed.

I read your link and I copied this from it. So do you still think it acceptable to remove the tips because it doesn't seem fair to the crew.

 

Between the greedy cruise executives and the miserly passengers who remove the gratuities, the hard working crew members seem to be stuck between a rock and a hard place.the greedy cruise executives and.

Is it fair the crew happen to be born in a country which drives them to work long hours away from home to earn a good wage. Probably not, but that isn't the fault of the cruise companies.

As for the fare / pay system on cruises there are three options -

1. Carry on as now and pay the optional service charges.

As mentioned in the linked article, for NCL each $1 increase in service charge delivers $15,000,000 extra to NCL. With that sort of business opportunity cruise companies are not going to be reducing the service charge any time soon.

Sure some passengers will opt out and not pay, but the staff still get paid and the cruise company directors will continue to drink champagne on the profits.

2. Stop paying the optional service charge and tip the equivalent in cash.

The cruise company won't care as it still saves them paying the staff and they can continue to buy champagne from the money saved on the wage bill.

3. Stop paying the optional service charge and don't tip or pay a minimal tip.

Initially the cruise company won't care as they are not the ones losing out. The staff will be the ones suffering the reduced pay, but it won't be significant if few passengers are opting out.

The cruise company will care when sufficient customers stop paying as then staff will have a change of heart about signing up and working hard for a low basic pay which isn't made up by a large enough amount in bonuses from the tip pool. If it reaches a critical point the cruise company has to act and the only option is to either make it difficult to remove the service charge (as NCL did in the USA where you have to write in afterwards) or they will include the charge in the fare (as NCL did for UK and Europe customers).

However for P&O, there are customers in all three camps, some moving from 1 to 2, some from 2 to 1, some from 1 to 3 but no overall surge towards 3, and until there is the directors will continue to drink champagne with the staff taking the risk.

Thanks, yes.

 

On Oriana recently the number of miserable people in the lifts that stood at the front and tutted if anyone else tried to get in, even though they could have moved back or moved to one side and let others in the back.

I just stand in the doorway preventing the doors closing until the penny drops for them to realise that they need to step back if they want to go anywhere.

And these are the same people who are stood at the front and make no effort to move to one side to let people behind out when the lift arrives at a floor before the one they want