No more free internet for platinum & elite

[srice]

We started sailing on Royal Caribbean in 1984.  Somewhere along the way they started their loyalty program.  For a while we sailed other lines like Princess, Royal Cruise Line, Holland America, and Celebrity but returned to Royal Caribbean because of the overall experience and the benefits in the loyalty program.

 

At some point we noticed the Royal Caribbean experience was deteriorating then they started watering down the loyalty program so we went to Princess because we had good experiences in the past and worked our way up to Elite and thought the benefits were very good.  Now Princess is going the way of Royal Caribbean and I do not like some of the loyalty program changes like loss of complimentary wi-fi.  Even though I don't use all of the benefits I don't think the program should change to the detriment of loyal passengers.

 

We have 4 future cruises booked on Princess but I am now considering switching at least 2 to another line and maybe not booking any more on Princess.  

 

I was hoping that Princess saw what Royal Caribbean went through and would leave well enough alone.

 

I guess it is a sign of the times that cruise lines don't mind devaluing the long term relationships they have with their most loyal passengers.

[Bwana Tom]

1 hour ago, steveww48 said:

Some people have commented on the small amount of money involved in the loss of the free internet minutes. Yes, the out-of-pocket cost may be small but this is really about what loyalty means, as many others have stated.

 

The free internet minutes were actually the perfect sort of perk: The perceived value by the customer was high but the actual cost to the company was very low, a true win-win. This is one of those cases where the qualitative value is far more important than the quantitative value. Princess was thanking us for our continued patronage in a tangible way. We appreciated that.

 

Replacing the free minutes with a 50% discount off some price that will of course increase as time goes on is not the same thing, even if the current cost is relatively modest. “Free” is better than “not free” both in a tangible way and an emotional one.

 

More than ten years ago we decided that Princess seemed to be the right cruise line for us. We found interesting itineraries; we liked the ships; the service was always at least very good (often excellent); we enjoyed the on-board entertainment; and we’ve met some great fellow passengers.  Some things have changed during this period, most notably the reduction of food quality in the MDR. We’ve adjusted by patronizing the specialty dining venues more often, which I’m sure is part of Princess’ business plan.  (Heads up, Princess: Although the MDR food quality is still acceptable, there isn’t much room for further quality reduction before it crosses the line.)

 

 So we’ve stuck with Princess during this time and at some point their loyalty program started to come into play. We appreciated being recognized and rewarded for our continued patronage. We never said this consciously, but our mindset had evolved to a point that “a cruise” always meant “a Princess cruise.” We never even looked at cruising on a different line. Princess’ marketing was effective!

 

That’s no longer the case. Princess has given us a wake-up call and there just isn’t any reason for our continued loyalty.  We’ll probably continue to use Princess but we definitely will sample other cruise lines. Perhaps we’ll find another one we like as much or even more. To the extent that happens, Princess will get less of our business and perhaps eventually none. In the meantime they certainly will lose some of our business while we try other cruise lines.

 

Princess has told us that they will continue to work hard to earn our loyalty and they hope we enjoy our new benefits. I’ll offer a suggestion to whoever is now in charge of marketing at Princess:  It’s not a good idea to insult the intelligence of your customers.

 

One more thing. We have not taken enough Princess cruises to qualify for the Loyalty OBC, so the withdrawal of that benefit didn’t affect us. Looking ahead, some of our future cruises won’t be on Princess but we won’t have any regrets about not making progress toward qualifying for the Loyalty OBC because Princess has taken that out of the equation. Thanks, Princess, for making the transition even easier.

 

Very well said and I couldn't agree more with your assessment. We also will be looking elsewhere whereas in the past we were happy with Princess. When they don't appreciate our loyalty though there is no need to be loyal to them. I hope the Princess officials are paying attention to how well their "working hard to earn our loyalty" is working for them.  

[nocl]

1 hour ago, steveww48 said:

Some people have commented on the small amount of money involved in the loss of the free internet minutes. Yes, the out-of-pocket cost may be small but this is really about what loyalty means, as many others have stated.

 

The free internet minutes were actually the perfect sort of perk: The perceived value by the customer was high but the actual cost to the company was very low, a true win-win. This is one of those cases where the qualitative value is far more important than the quantitative value. Princess was thanking us for our continued patronage in a tangible way. We appreciated that.

 

Replacing the free minutes with a 50% discount off some price that will of course increase as time goes on is not the same thing, even if the current cost is relatively modest. “Free” is better than “not free” both in a tangible way and an emotional one.

 

More than ten years ago we decided that Princess seemed to be the right cruise line for us. We found interesting itineraries; we liked the ships; the service was always at least very good (often excellent); we enjoyed the on-board entertainment; and we’ve met some great fellow passengers.  Some things have changed during this period, most notably the reduction of food quality in the MDR. We’ve adjusted by patronizing the specialty dining venues more often, which I’m sure is part of Princess’ business plan.  (Heads up, Princess: Although the MDR food quality is still acceptable, there isn’t much room for further quality reduction before it crosses the line.)

 

 So we’ve stuck with Princess during this time and at some point their loyalty program started to come into play. We appreciated being recognized and rewarded for our continued patronage. We never said this consciously, but our mindset had evolved to a point that “a cruise” always meant “a Princess cruise.” We never even looked at cruising on a different line. Princess’ marketing was effective!

 

That’s no longer the case. Princess has given us a wake-up call and there just isn’t any reason for our continued loyalty.  We’ll probably continue to use Princess but we definitely will sample other cruise lines. Perhaps we’ll find another one we like as much or even more. To the extent that happens, Princess will get less of our business and perhaps eventually none. In the meantime they certainly will lose some of our business while we try other cruise lines.

 

Princess has told us that they will continue to work hard to earn our loyalty and they hope we enjoy our new benefits. I’ll offer a suggestion to whoever is now in charge of marketing at Princess:  It’s not a good idea to insult the intelligence of your customers.

 

One more thing. We have not taken enough Princess cruises to qualify for the Loyalty OBC, so the withdrawal of that benefit didn’t affect us. Looking ahead, some of our future cruises won’t be on Princess but we won’t have any regrets about not making progress toward qualifying for the Loyalty OBC because Princess has taken that out of the equation. Thanks, Princess, for making the transition even easier.

 

the cost to the company was in the amount of time to support the minutes. a large percentage of the IT managers time  dealing with my minutes vanished, people failing to log out properly, complaints that the system was too slow so they were wasting minutes. Now all that goes away as well as not having to support the system that manages minutes.

 

Combine that with the percentage that were talking advantage of the discount to upgrade or buying the package fare that includes wifi and it no longer made sense to support that system.

[nocl]

the funny thing all of this is the emotional investment that a simple marketing program with a loyalty label has created in some folks.

 

Loyalty to a cruise line is like loyalty to a car brand, air line, bank or any other business. It only makes sense when one is happy with the product they receive for the price they pay.

 

What is truly surprising is the number of people that apparently do not compare cruise lines as a routine part of their their vacation planning.

[KeepCalmBearOn]

On 7/3/2021 at 9:56 PM, XLCAPRIES said:

Why not offer free wifi as a benefit............ then it would be a real benefit.......... compared to the cost Princess charge.

 

I get unlimited internet at home for less than $2 a day, for multiple devices and stream movies on each, at the same time,  so why use/pay more at sea...

 

Princess charges a pretty fair rate for Internet in comparison to other lines. There is a great CruiseCritic Primer that is worth reading.

 

https://www.cruisecritic.com/ab/agents/variation-a/articles.cfm?ID=45

 

Yes you get "free" (included) WiFi on Celebrity, but if you want to Facetime or stream Netflix you need to buy an upgraded level.

 

What you pay in Sydney for WiFi is completely irrelevant to what the backhaul costs are for Princess in the open sea. You can't even begin to compare terrestrial backhaul to satellite backhaul.

 

On 7/3/2021 at 9:56 PM, XLCAPRIES said:

Another Princess passenger looking to jump ship........... even as we hold Carnival shares..... which are pretty worthless these days......... and the future doesn't look that promising either.

 

Well sure, if you paid $7,000 for 100 shares to get $100 OBC you might be unhappy, but I paid $1,300 for 140 shares in April 2020 so I am sitting on a profit of $2,300 right now. I also bought RCL, NCLH and AAL in April 2020 and I am feeling quite smug.

 

12 hours ago, pms4104 said:

We NEED them to survive?  No, we NEED many operations to survive (such as medical providers, public transit, schools, farms, etc.) ... most of which....

 

Oh please, way to take him out of context. This isn't a Social Justice chat board or Economic Essentials chat board. It is cruise chat board. The person you quoted CLEARLY means if cruise lines don't survive, we don't get to cruise; 'we NEED them to survive' if we want to keep cruising.

 

21 minutes ago, BoopTennis said:

This makes it easy to change to a different cruiseline. 

 

Good luck in finding the perfect one that will suit your needs.

[Iamcruzin]

I realize that for those who want to print boarding tickets or check an email or two that this is a big lose.  It was never enough for me with technology being what it is today. I always had to buy more. Now I just buy the unlimited package on whatever line I sail.  It is actually less expensive than it was when I was paying for minutes and service is a lot better.

[2 cruises a year]

1 hour ago, scottca075 said:

 

Princess charges a pretty fair rate for Internet in comparison to other lines. There is a great CruiseCritic Primer that is worth reading.

 

https://www.cruisecritic.com/ab/agents/variation-a/articles.cfm?ID=45

 

Yes you get "free" (included) WiFi on Celebrity, but if you want to Facetime or stream Netflix you need to buy an upgraded level.

 

What you pay in Sydney for WiFi is completely irrelevant to what the backhaul costs are for Princess in the open sea. You can't even begin to compare terrestrial backhaul to satellite backhaul.

 

 

Well sure, if you paid $7,000 for 100 shares to get $100 OBC you might be unhappy, but I paid $1,300 for 140 shares in April 2020 so I am sitting on a profit of $2,300 right now. I also bought RCL, NCLH and AAL in April 2020 and I am feeling quite smug.

 

 

Oh please, way to take him out of context. This isn't a Social Justice chat board or Economic Essentials chat board. It is cruise chat board. The person you quoted CLEARLY means if cruise lines don't survive, we don't get to cruise; 'we NEED them to survive' if we want to keep cruising.

 

 

Good luck in finding the perfect one that will suit your needs.

Thank you.

From the person taken out of context.

[caribill]

4 hours ago, nocl said:

the cost to the company was in the amount of time to support the minutes. a large percentage of the IT managers time  dealing with my minutes vanished, people failing to log out properly, complaints that the system was too slow so they were wasting minutes. Now all that goes away

 

And what will happen with all that time not needed to deal with minutes?

 

Maybe they can cut the number of IT managers on the ship from one to 1/4?

[caribill]

2 hours ago, Iamcruzin said:

I realize that for those who want to print boarding tickets or check an email or two that this is a big lose.  It was never enough for me with technology being what it is today. I always had to buy more. Now I just buy the unlimited package on whatever line I sail.  It is actually less expensive than it was when I was paying for minutes and service is a lot better.

 

And for you, that is the right decision.

 

But, if  I remember correctly, Princess has said that for 80% of the people getting the free minutes, that was all the computer time they needed.

 

So this change has gone from satisfying the Internet needs of 80% of those eligible for free minutes to charging them for more Internet than they need.

[nocl]

5 minutes ago, caribill said:

 

And what will happen? They can cut the number of IT managers on the ship from one to 1/4?

keep in mind that the it manager does more than just deal with the passenger it connection.  

 

Also on cruises I have been on they have had multiple people helping to deal with passenger issues. 

[caribill]

8 minutes ago, nocl said:

 

Also on cruises I have been on they have had multiple people helping to deal with passenger issues. 

 

I assume those were MedallionNet cruises as all the cruises I have been on which did not have MedallionNet had only one IT person that I was aware of.

[nocl]

2 minutes ago, caribill said:

 

And for you, that is the right decision.

 

But, if  I remember correctly, Princess has said that for 80% of the people getting the free minutes, that was all the computer time they needed.

 

So this change has gone from satisfying the Internet needs of 80% of those eligible for free minutes to charging them for more Internet than they need.

and how recently did they say that. several years ago when the set the minute limit, prior to the advent of the upgrade of the satellite connection with unlimited becoming the norm?

 

or recently?

 

 

[caribill]

Just now, nocl said:

and how recently did they say that. several years ago when the set the minute limit, prior to the advent of the upgrade of the satellite connection with unlimited becoming the norm?

 

or recently?

 

 

 

I head them say it recently, but I do not know what point in time they were referencing.

 

With the upgrade to MedallionNet hardware, the free minutes would be even more than adequate as the system would be faster and those that were satisfied with the minutes under the old hardware would have much faster response now.

[nocl]

1 minute ago, caribill said:

 

I assume those were MedallionNet cruises as all the cruises I have been on which did not have MedallionNet had only one IT person.

You and I have been on considerable different cruise then I have only been one 1 medallion cruise. Even my 6 cruises in 2019 were on pre medallion ships.  The norm on every cruise I have been on has been to have the manager and 1 person assisting from another department to deal with issues, especially at the start and the end of the cruise when most problem occur.

[nocl]

1 minute ago, caribill said:

 

I head them say it recently, but I do not know what point in time they were referencing.

 

With the upgrade to MedallionNet hardware, the free minutes would be even more than adequate as the system would be faster and those that were satisfied with the minutes under the old hardware would have much faster response now.

Except that is no longer an issue because the minute system in no longer supported. Consider it the same as trying to get help on MS DOS these days. the support system is retired.

[RRFan]

5 hours ago, nocl said:

You and I have been on considerable different cruise then I have only been one 1 medallion cruise. Even my 6 cruises in 2019 were on pre medallion ships.  The norm on every cruise I have been on has been to have the manager and 1 person assisting from another department to deal with issues, especially at the start and the end of the cruise when most problem occur.

The people assisting the IT managers are usually the performers. They say they assist on days they don’t perform if they want to. Their help might be limited to helping log on, but they free the mgr up for bigger issues. 

[Musky Ike]

6 hours ago, nocl said:

Except that is no longer an issue because the minute system in no longer supported. Consider it the same as trying to get help on MS DOS these days. the support system is retired.

Could they have converted the minute limit to a GB limit ? That is what land based providers do.

[Iamcruzin]

6 hours ago, caribill said:

 

And for you, that is the right decision.

 

But, if  I remember correctly, Princess has said that for 80% of the people getting the free minutes, that was all the computer time they needed.

 

So this change has gone from satisfying the Internet needs of 80% of those eligible for free minutes to charging them for more Internet than they need.

For me even though it wasn't enough minutes it was the best perk out of all of them and you achieved it at Platinum.  Since Princess passengers are mostly the flip phone generation who have probably made it to Elite maybe they should have just dropped it from the Platinum level. I'm 60 and have been sailing with Princess on and off since I was 30. As more and more of my generation become the senior passengers of Princess the free minutes will not cut it. We want to stream videos and Facetime. We don't print boarding passes we add them to our wallet on our phone and Emails have been replaced with text messages for updates on flights, bill due date reminders and general communications.

[dreaminofcruisin]

6 hours ago, caribill said:

 

And what will happen with all that time not needed to deal with minutes?

 

Maybe they can cut the number of IT managers on the ship from one to 1/4?

 

Pretty sure they will be spending their time handling everyone's problems with the Medallion app.... 😜

[Iamcruzin]

12 hours ago, BoopTennis said:

This makes it easy to change to a different cruise line. 

If people were only sailing Princess for the loyalty program than they were selling themselves short. There are complaints on the Royal and Celebrity boards of watered down or eliminated benefits as well.  

[Iamcruzin]

11 hours ago, nocl said:

the funny thing all of this is the emotional investment that a simple marketing program with a loyalty label has created in some folks.

 

Loyalty to a cruise line is like loyalty to a car brand, air line, bank or any other business. It only makes sense when one is happy with the product they receive for the price they pay.

 

What is truly surprising is the number of people that apparently do not compare cruise lines as a routine part of their their vacation planning.

I don't get it either and for everyone leaving Princess for another line there is someone else leaving that line to try Princess.  Also the grass isn't always greener on the other line.  The main reason to choose a cruise line should be for itinerary, price,  and service in whatever order that is important to you. If you are choosing a cruise line for the future free perks you are in for a rude awakening because they are all cutting something from the program.  I will say that the one thing I like about the  RCL program is that the benefits can be shared among the lines in their group. 

[pompeii]

6 hours ago, caribill said:

 

I head them say it recently, but I do not know what point in time they were referencing.

 

With the upgrade to MedallionNet hardware, the free minutes would be even more than adequate as the system would be faster and those that were satisfied with the minutes under the old hardware would have much faster response now.

That's right.  People keep saying the minutes were practically unusable because they were slow.  With MedallionNet, the minutes and the unlimited used the same satellite and were the same speed.  Minutes were only slow on ships that had not upgraded to MedallionNet yet.  When I sailed on the Caribbean, I with my minutes had the exact same internet as people who purchased unlimited, I just had a finite amount of it.

[Steelers36]

7 hours ago, caribill said:

 

And for you, that is the right decision.

 

But, if  I remember correctly, Princess has said that for 80% of the people getting the free minutes, that was all the computer time they needed.

 

So this change has gone from satisfying the Internet needs of 80% of those eligible for free minutes to charging them for more Internet than they need.

Hah!  For once, the 20% gets something good!!  I love the 50% off.  Maybe in a few more years, they will up it to 75%.  (In my dreams).

[Steelers36]

In regard to the discussion about support team for IT.  Most assuredly, the IT Mgr has a support team, especially on Day 1/2.  This is mostly because a lot of people needed help with the OCEAN app, getting signed up on an internet package, getting a quick-access icon on their home page, etc, etc.  Once the initial rush died down, the next headache was people running out of minutes due to logout issues.  In my observations, the help team (usually reduced to one additional mid-cruise) was unable to make any minute adjustments.  With no worries about minutes going forward, I don't see the initial rush declining as many folks need basic help to get going, but the rest of the voyage should be quieter. 

 

Not sure it saves any resources, except those who helped the IT Mgr could be re-deployed to respond to that new Princess promise that we can use the MC App to summon a crew member to our location for whatever assistance.  😉

[mtnesterz]

1 hour ago, Musky Ike said:

Could they have converted the minute limit to a GB limit ? That is what land based providers do.

WDITOT! On the face of it, sounds like a great solution.