Breakdown of prepaid gratuities

[katiel53]

They won't because that will make the cruise look more expensive. As long as they don't have a shortage of people willing to work for them there's no need to force the gratuity.

 

 

I totally agree with you. I don't believe it has anything to do with taxes etc. If Carnival raised the price of the cruise to include the tips, it would make Carnival seem more expensive than other lines. The only way this will happen is if all cruise lines do the same thing. A mandatory service charge would also have to be done on all cruise lines for the same reason.

 

I do wish that would happen because then those that stiff the staff wouldn't be able to do so. Somehow, I doubt that they would be happy if they worked all week and didn't get paid. How would the stiffer feel if his employer spent all the company money on booze, fun etc and had only a small amount of money left to pay his salary? Same goes for the crew that is in a tipping position.

[sfaaa]

If Carnival rolls the DSC into cruise price, the same cheapskates will come to cc and whine about higher cruise price and their lost opportunity to stiff the crew. So why bother.

[spookyfudge]

Wow! Never seen people who DO NOT EAT on the cruise! Many dining room staff work on the lido deck during the day. Do those people think tipping $2 a day for buffet that these use 3+ times a day is reasonable? One way or another they are eating. If they can afford to cruise, they can afford the tips. Those workers work 16-18 hours a day. Don't cut their tips.

 

Amen, if you cant tip, you cant afford the cruise!

[Crusingdiva62]

I have a friend who is adverse to tipping! She can't understand why I cruise with everyone but her? She in restaurants has been known to leave a card on the table with life tips but no tip money !

 

 

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[Drrandall]

This non tipping stuff irritates me. I'm a waiter for a living. I've already prepaid my gratuities for our upcoming July 9th Breeze cruise. I have about $250 in 1s for extra tips. Gonna give my room steward $20, MDR waiters $20 and the Alchemy bartenders $20 the first day so I am well taken care of for the week.

[Saint Greg]

I have a friend who is adverse to tipping! She can't understand why I cruise with everyone but her? She in restaurants has been known to leave a card on the table with life tips but no tip money !

 

 

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[cantthinkofanythingfun]

I was a bartender and server in my younger days. I always tip cash for every drink and meal in addition to the automatic 15% added on to the Cheers package. This DSC is a racket though. Carnival and every cruise line use it to pay their third world salaries. It really should just be included in the cruise fare and then let people tip cash to those that serve them. They can decide if they want to tip out the back of the house staff that helps them out. In the real world we tip a waiter. He/she then tips the busboy and bartender. This keeps everyone on their toes to provide outstanding service because you really don't know what kind of "bonus" you will get rewarded with.

 

I've never removed a DSC and never will. The DSC pays their bare minimum. It should be included so they can be rewarded even more when they provide outstanding service. Now more people than not don't tip extra because they think the DSC is plenty.

[swscruiser]

:eek:

I have a friend who is adverse to tipping! She can't understand why I cruise with everyone but her? She in restaurants has been known to leave a card on the table with life tips but no tip money !

 

 

OMG :eek:

 

 

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[Crusingdiva62]

:eek:

 

 

 

Yes imagine this you are in a very expensive restaurant in San Diego that overlooks downtown. Everyone in our party calculated their tips and ponied it up. This woman pulls her phone out finds a poem and takes her business card out and wrote a life tip about wealth management and sat it along side our tips? Yep. I am sure the waiter in Mr A's was thrilled with her tip, not!

 

 

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[Saint Greg]

Yes imagine this you are in a very expensive restaurant in San Diego that overlooks downtown. Everyone in our party calculated their tips and ponied it up. This woman pulls her phone out finds a poem and takes her business card out and wrote a life tip about wealth management and sat it along side our tips? Yep. I am sure the waiter in Mr A's was thrilled with her tip, not!

 

 

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[cruisemom67]

Yes imagine this you are in a very expensive restaurant in San Diego that overlooks downtown. Everyone in our party calculated their tips and ponied it up. This woman pulls her phone out finds a poem and takes her business card out and wrote a life tip about wealth management and sat it along side our tips? Yep. I am sure the waiter in Mr A's was thrilled with her tip, not!

 

 

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So sad! My daughter is a server. She is beautiful and friendly (sorry, mom brag). Usually she does well at the expensive restaurant she works at. But some nights she comes home and HAD TO PAY TO WAIT ON TABLES, yes, you read that right. She has to pay "tip out" to the bar, hostess and busboy. So when someone tips her $5 (after telling her what a great waitress she is) on a $200 bill, she actually just paid to wait on a table. She gets nothing and has to pay others.

 

So that minimum tip is just that-- bare minimum. Servers get paid $2.xx per hour, and expect tips to make up the difference.

 

Don't cut your tips, on a cruise or anywhere else. If you are there, save money for those who take care of you.

[notyours75]

We consider the gratuities part of the cruise fare and pre-pay them along with the taxes and everything else. I think the industry has kinda backed itself into a corner with gratuities as the staff derive a large % of their income from tips but the cruise industry wants to keep the "advertised" fares as low as possible. John Heald wrote about this some time ago. If every cruise line did away with the gratuities and then included that in their fares then everyone would be fine. But if only one line, say Carnival, does this then all of a sudden their fares are roughly 10% higher than their competitors and us price sensitive consumers will go there. We see the same thing in the US with restaurants trying to include tips in the food prices much like those in Europe do but people complain that their food is expensive.

 

As for me if you are going to charge me a set gratuity then unless the service is exceptional that's probably all you going to get. When we started cruising 20 years ago it was still the cash system and we probably tipped better then but it was a pain to hold onto that cash the whole cruise so I do prefer this system. In a sense the cruise line has picked the gratuity for their crew. I would never,ever dream of removing my pre-paid gratuities.

[summersigh]

Don't they add gratuities at the end of the cruise anyway. I didn't think they had a choice. I am pretty it sure it says not to give them tips unless that's something you personally want to do. I would just tell them to beware it will show up at the end of the cruise. The employees on the ship really don't make a lot of money and all the money they make they send it home to there families that they never get to see. Regardless of where you eat. I feel it should be paid anyway. Personal opinion. Don't need the nayslayers to hound me.

There is a group who are cheap and figure that if they pull those automatically added tips they'll have more $$$$$ for alcohol or partying. If they can't afford both they probably shouldn't have chosen a cruise.:eek:

[summersigh]

As for me if you are going to charge me a set gratuity then unless the service is exceptional that's probably all you going to get.

There's nothing wrong or cheap about that ... in fact, I think that's the whole purpose of the auto-gratuities - to cover the whole of the tipping that should be done.:)

[Doggielover68]

There's nothing wrong or cheap about that ... in fact, I think that's the whole purpose of the auto-gratuities - to cover the whole of the tipping that should be done.:)

 

 

I agree. I actually prefer to prepay gratuities because then it's just done. On excursions, land based resorts, restaurants, etc I find the moment of soliciting/giving tips to be awkward. In addition, if I have to tip everyone individually it would be a little stressful for me to "see" the money leaving my wallet over and over again. With the set amount, I know that what I am tipping is the expected amount. On occasion we have given a tip directly to certain people for excellent service. Usually it's just the auto grats. We try not to be a pain to the employees. We keep our room pretty clean, don't usually make any special requests (ice, extra linens, etc), order directly off of the menu at the MDR (one meal each). It would be extremely embarrassing for me to go to guest services and ask for them to be removed.

 

 

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[lmeridieth]

this will be my 20th cruise with royal and I think the gratuities have gotten (overboard) they offer less service than ever before but keep charging the customer for their employees wages. I agree with some of the gratuities but they will not give a breakdown and I dont think some are warranted. Now you must ask for things that once was just customary

[ray98]

Way to use your first post to dig up a 10 month old thread.

[Saint Greg]

Way to use your first post to dig up a 10 month old thread.

 

And they appear to be on the wrong board.

[lizardhowson]

Most people who remove the gratuities to pay them in cash fall into one of two groups.

1. Cheapskates who say they're removing gratuities to pay in cash but have no intention of doing so.

2. People who get some sort of thrill out of seeing the looks on workers faces when they hand them cash.

 

 

Exactly correct !

[Megan_Strick]

this will be my 20th cruise with royal and I think the gratuities have gotten (overboard) they offer less service than ever before but keep charging the customer for their employees wages. I agree with some of the gratuities but they will not give a breakdown and I dont think some are warranted. Now you must ask for things that once was just customary

 

 

You've been on 20 cruises and this is your first post on a Carnival site about a Royal cruise??

[Sebleo]

Yes imagine this you are in a very expensive restaurant in San Diego that overlooks downtown. Everyone in our party calculated their tips and ponied it up. This woman pulls her phone out finds a poem and takes her business card out and wrote a life tip about wealth management and sat it along side our tips? Yep. I am sure the waiter in Mr A's was thrilled with her tip, not!

 

 

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On her business card?!?! :')

 

So the server knows how to contact her with their "thanks and appreciation "!

 

I wish everyone who stiffed me would do that! :D:D:evilsmile: