Select dining Gratuities

[Christine Frances]

I think the dining room wait staff also work in the Buffet. (If I am wrong, please correct me:)) So your tips did go to people who provided you with a service.

[2SeaWithMe]

Once again, someone asks a perfectly legitimate question and must suffer the comments from the superior people who apparently feel compelled to question the OP's "real" motivation. I recognize that I will be castigated by those same people for providing my input, but let me give you what I consider to be a very practical and honest reason for asking about the pre-paid tipping rule for those who choose "select" dining with Celebrity. In October, we were "select" diners on the Mercury. Accordingly, we pre-paid all of the gratuities, including the dining staff. On the first night in the MDR, we received quite sub-par service. Just a few specifics, because I know some will ask "How bad could it have been - you're just a complainer..." : We had to wait a long time to receive our initial glass of water. Waited long time for main course, which turned out to be the wrong meal for me. Quality of the food when it did arrive was poor (cold). Waiter never returned. Had to "catch" an employee to get a water refill, etc. Consequently, we never returned to the MDR - and ate all of our remaining meals on this 11-day cruise at the buffet on Lido Deck. We asked customer service if any of our tip money would be provided to the dining staff up on the Lido deck and we were told "No, that is completely separate and they do not receive any of the tip money that we had pre-paid". We didn't "stiff" anyone - didn't even ask for a refund of our tip money. But because of this policy, somebody received 10 days worth of tips for a service they did not provide and we did not receive. I understand that there are many diehard Celebrity devotees who will be unable to believe this and will be compelled to defend their cruiseline.

 

I think you are spot on.

[Denny01]

......I understand that there are many diehard Celebrity devotees who will be unable to believe this and will be compelled to defend their cruiseline.

 

Nope, post the same type responses on Princess and other forums. And no, do believe those that say they got bad service...most of us have sometime along the way. My recommendation is to talk with the senior staff about poor service. that can be more effective than witholding tips because it usually has an immediate impact. My reaction on this and other tip-related threads is to the "How can I remove my gratutities....but I don't want to withhold tips from anyone". What?? but the OP has explained his specific rationale for wanting to know if they can remove prepaid tips but has nothing to do with not tipping....Oooookayyyy.

 

Den

[maxsales]

Nope, post the same type responses on Princess and other forums. And no, do believe those that say they got bad service...most of us have sometime along the way. My recommendation is to talk with the senior staff about poor service. that can be more effective than witholding tips because it usually has an immediate impact. My reaction on this and other tip-related threads is to the "How can I remove my gratutities....but I don't want to withhold tips from anyone". What?? but the OP has explained his specific rationale for wanting to know if they can remove prepaid tips but has nothing to do with not tipping....Oooookayyyy.

 

Den

Okay (note no protracted spelling/sarcasm) so let's switch the question a little. Away from stiffing the crew on tips and questioning discrimination. Why is select dining singled out for prepayment and other dining times are not? Is that not by definition discrimination?

 

To tip or not to tip should be a personal choice, when you are forced to prepay without the opportunity to have those tips credit back to your account there is no longer a personal choice, it has been taken away from you.

[Alsmez]

To tip or not to tip should be a personal choice, when you are forced to prepay without the opportunity to have those tips credit back to your account there is no longer a personal choice, it has been taken away from you.

 

To tip or not to tip SHOULD be a personal choice, but due to the way the cruiselines structure their employee salaries, it really can't be, or people wouldn't get paid. It sucks, but it's the way the industry works. I have a feeling that making Select Dining participants pay upfront is just a first step - it wouldn't surprise me if cruiselines start making everyone pay upfront eventually.

[2blueyam]

it wouldn't surprise me if cruiselines start making everyone pay upfront eventually.

 

Many of the luxury cruise lines already include the "tip" in the cruise fare, so that is basically the same thing. Strangely I don't see a lot of complaints about that practice. Maybe the key is not to have it listed as a seperate charge.

[dzcruisers]

As per customer service and staff on my last sailing...cash tips that are given after tip removal are not pooled. Never, ever.

That's not what I've been told by several staff on board. If you leave your tips on and give staff extra they may keep that, if you take off your tips, any money you give to the staff gets pooled.

The staff has a list of who removed their tips. They could lose their jobs if they don't follow the rules. It has to do with taxes, etc. that they don't include it in fare.

[vicmon]

who gets the prepaid gratuities on select dining if you do not go to dinner every single night?

[dzcruisers]

who gets the prepaid gratuities on select dining if you do not go to dinner every single night?

It goes into the pool in the Select dining room.

I think to only ask one person on board about tips is like calling customer service at X and taking their word as the gospel. You'll get different answers so you have to ask many people on many cruises and see what the general consensus is about what happens to the tip. Most have told me if you leave your tips on and tip extra they can keep it otherwise it gets pooled. Too many youdon't see would get stiffed otherwise. It's because of the bottom line that they can't add it into the fare. They would have to make a profit on it. And the taxes would be huge if they paid the employees more. They get a notice second to the last night as to who removed tips and who left them on.

My understanding is you can NOT get a refund on Select dining tips.

[SilkShirt]

We just spent 11 nights on the Equinox. I like to prepay everything. We were in Aqua class. I prepaid the $264 in tips months early.

Out of the 11 nights,we only ate at Blu 5 times.

One night we showed up at the main dining room and to my surprise they had reserved a table for us. We were AQ and select dining! We had great time at the table for 6 with 2 couples from Wales. They had wondered why our seats were empty every night.

We liked the specialty restaurants. We always added at $10 tip to the bill.

I'm not sure how the staff at Blu made out with our prepaid tips. I'm curious if they cared either way. Half the time we eat breakfast in the buffet. We felt the food was just as good with more choices. Though it was a much busier atmosphere.

[SixOneTwo]

My suggestion on why only SELECT DINING customers are required to pre-pay tips is that it complies with the "cashless" experience the cruiseline strives for. You are likely to have different people serving you each night and to tip them individually, you'd need to leave cash at the table or sign some sort of paperwork after each meal. I would guess that Celebrity doesn't want the bulk of their staff handling cash and they don't want their guests "inconvenienced" by needing to carry cash around.

 

As we know, the traditional method has passengers with assigned dining either giving their cash at the end of the cruise directly to the server, or having their pre-paid tips given to that server who receives a note that you have paid their tip that way.

 

I guess that we have to assume that pre-paid tips paid by SELECT DINING customers are pooled and divvied up accordingly.

 

I'm only offering this as an idea to think about. I'm not making any judgments or comments on what is right or wrong either by the passengers or the cruiseline.

 

ENJOY YOUR CRUISE!

[Sunrise913]

I just returned from a cruise on the Infinity where I had select dining with pre-paid gratuities. Since the gratuities are not just for the dining staff what is the reasoning behind the pre-payment. No one on my cruise came up with a satisfactory answer. Can any of you? Do they think because I don't see the same servers everyday I won't tip any of them? (And this isn't true anyway--the select seating area is very small and I repeated with almost all the staff two or three times). I just don't understand why eating at the the same time each day allows you to not to pre pay. Are those the only people who are allowed to pay gratuities (to insure service) instead of the forced prepayment of something other than a gratuity? I am still confused--this is my first time facing this. Oceania and Azamara (cruiselines I have taken before) did not have set meal times so this wasn't an issue AND there was not prepayment of something called a "gratuity" like this Celebrity Cruise did.