Advice Please ?

[Kruznut]

When you prepay gratuities do you think it would be better to do it online or should I call customer service. I don't know if it really matters which way, but I would like to know if you get a receipt for it either way ? Just looking for the most secure way to do it.

[chrysalis]

I would call their 800 number and prepay that way.

[PigBoy]

I just prepaid the gratuities for our upcoming cruise online and Princess emailed a confirmation shortly afterward.

 

Don

[FraudBroad]

When you prepay gratuities do you think it would be better to do it online or should I call customer service. I don't know if it really matters which way, but I would like to know if you get a receipt for it either way ? Just looking for the most secure way to do it.

 

I prepaid last week online for my cruise on the 7th. Right away I received a confirmation. When you board the ship it should show up as OBC.

[dmwnc1959]

For the last several years I've always called ahead and added the pre-paid gratuities. As mentioned earlier, don't forget to have them e-mail you a receipt confirmation.

 

:D

[schlot]

I decided not to prepay the gratuities and glad I did not. We received the $100 per person onboard credit a few months before we sailed.

 

Since my wife and I are not big drinkers or shoppers and we had a private company excurision lined up we were able to use onboard credit to pay the gratuities. If we had already paid the gratuities we may have felt we had to use the credit to buy things that we really didn't want.

 

Since we were on a budget it worked best that way for us.

 

Just food for thought.

Edited February 3, 2015 by schlot

[Kruznut]

Thank you very much for your thoughts they've been very helpful to me. I want to make sure that I get confirmation that it's been paid. I believe in having some kind of paper trail just in case something would go wrong.

[sonoma03]

I don't understand why anyone would want to prepay the gratuities before they board. If you prepay, you have to make the payment at that time, maybe well in advance. If you wait until you sail, it goes on your shipboard account and you can have it offset by OBC or pay by credit card at the end of the cruise. The only time I can see any reason to prepay is if you intend to pay your onboard bill in cash and want to reduce how much you have to bring on the trip. Am I missing something here? Are people just wanting to spread out the cost of paying for the cruise?

[jellyfish39]

We chose to pre-pay gratuities (something we have never done in the past) because Princess was offering very favorable exchange rates for Canadians - we paid our gratuities two weeks in advance of our cruise and even bought some on board credit.

I think Princess uses the exchange rate in place at the time the cruise was booked to calculate charges for gratuities, shore excursions etc.

So prepaying is not something we would normally do, but worked in our favor for this cruise.

[srpilo]

I just prepaid the gratuities for our upcoming cruise online and Princess emailed a confirmation shortly afterward.

 

Don

 

Ditto for me..

 

 

Srpilo

[Kruznut]

Whether one pays by credit card or cash some people might prefer to lower the total amount of the shipboard account in advance. I think it's just a matter of what works for you.

[Pam in CA]

When you "pre-pay" gratuities, all you're really doing is sending yourself OBC in the amount of the gratuities. When you board, you'll have a credit on your folio and anything charged to your folio will be deducted. The gratuities will still be charged nightly. In essence, nothing is pre-paid.

 

Your best bet is to "gift" yourself OBC for any amount you wish.

[FraudBroad]

Well...while I advised earlier that this was easy to do I know have to take that back.

 

When looking at my Cruise Personalizer today I see that It's showing my friend's gratuities have been paid, but not mine. Only problem is she didn't pay her's!

 

So I call Princess, they reverse my charge and once again I go online and pre-pay my gratuities.

 

Only to have my friend go in an hour later to pay hers...and guess what? It's showing her's are paid and mine are not. She attempted to just pay mine but it wouldn't allow it.

 

Another call to Princess...

 

And in the end...neither of us has pre-paid her gratuities....just forget about it!!!!!

 

But I do have $230 in charges now pending on my credit card from Princess. We'll have to see what happens when we board the ship on Saturday!

[sportsmum]

If I buy a gift card for myself and I do not use it all onboard, will I get that money back or will it just stay on the card like a regular store gift card?

[OCruisers]

I don't understand why anyone would want to prepay the gratuities before they board. If you prepay, you have to make the payment at that time, maybe well in advance. If you wait until you sail, it goes on your shipboard account and you can have it offset by OBC or pay by credit card at the end of the cruise. The only time I can see any reason to prepay is if you intend to pay your onboard bill in cash and want to reduce how much you have to bring on the trip. Am I missing something here? Are people just wanting to spread out the cost of paying for the cruise?

 

Hear you! I have no clue why anyone would want to prepay gratuities. :confused:

LuLu

[Kruznut]

I admit that I am not as knowledgeable as many of you which is why I asked for advice. I think I had a very limited understanding of how the prepaid gratuities worked. Thank you Cruise Critic members for sharing your knowledge with me.

[dmwnc1959]

Hear you! I have no clue why anyone would want to prepay gratuities. :confused:

LuLu

 

 

I pre-pay everything I can: drink packages, tips, gift myself plenty of OBC, and anything else that helps me budget my cruise, and pay off the expenditures, before I ever leave home. I don't have a credit card, and don't want one, so being given the option to pre-pay works best for me. On the day I step out of my apartment and head for the airport, literally everything is already paid for.

 

:D

[Tweedy]

When you prepay gratuities do you think it would be better to do it online or should I call customer service. I don't know if it really matters which way, but I would like to know if you get a receipt for it either way ? Just looking for the most secure way to do it.

 

 

I prepaid ours online through the cruise personalizer and received a confirmation in my email inbox.

[dmwnc1959]

This.... :D

 

The only time I can see any reason to prepay is if you intend to pay your onboard bill in cash and want to reduce how much you have to bring on the trip. Am I missing something here? Are people just wanting to spread out the cost of paying for the cruise?

[dmwnc1959]

I prepaid ours online through the cruise personalizer and received a confirmation in my email inbox.

 

 

Very cool. In the end, we ALL do what works best for us.

 

:D

[Jasperdo]

I admit that I am not as knowledgeable as many of you which is why I asked for advice. I think I had a very limited understanding of how the prepaid gratuities worked. Thank you Cruise Critic members for sharing your knowledge with me.

One thing to note is that on Princess you are not required to pre pay gratuities. If you want to, that's fine. You received very good information on how to do that in this thread. But you could just go on the ship and have the gratuities taken care of automatically there. A gratuity charge will be added to your shipboard account every day. It is charged to the credit card you have on file with Princess. Very easy. You don't have to do anything special. Edited February 4, 2015 by Jasperdo

[bhopal21]

Very cool. In the end, we ALL do what works best for us.

 

:D

 

Exactly. I'm just happy they give us choices.

 

Mike:)

[OCruisers]

One thing to note is that on Princess you are not required to pre pay gratuities. If you want to, that's fine. You received very good information on how to do that in this thread. But you could just go on the ship and have the gratuities taken care of automatically there. A gratuity charge will be added to your shipboard account every day. It is charged to the credit card you have on file with Princess. Very easy. You don't have to do anything special.

 

So true. No need to pay in advance unless you wish! :)

LuLu

[dmwnc1959]

One thing to note is that on Princess you are not required to pre pay gratuities. If you want to, that's fine. You received very good information on how to do that in this thread. But you could just go on the ship and have the gratuities taken care of automatically there. A gratuity charge will be added to your shipboard account every day. It is charged to the credit card you have on file with Princess. Very easy. You don't have to do anything special.

 

 

This is absolutely NOT true.

 

On my last three Princess Cruises I registered my Chase Bank Visa Debit card on the Cruise Personalizer. NO charges or holds were EVER placed on that card by Princess Cruises during or after my cruise. I attribute that to the fact that I had prepaid all of my gratuities and had pre-purchased plenty of onboard credit.

 

:cool:

Edited February 4, 2015 by dmwnc1959

[caribill]

If I buy a gift card for myself and I do not use it all onboard, will I get that money back or will it just stay on the card like a regular store gift card?

 

If it is a Princess gift card, it will stay on the card so you can use it with Princess in the future.

 

If you are referring to Princess OBC that you gifted yourself to use on the ship, you can get the unused amount back in cash from the Purser's desk.