Bundled Soda / VOOM Inet package gratuity fishyness...

[binro01]

So, I'm a math guy. I use math constantly in my profession. I write machine learning code, so yea. I'm a nerd/geek/pencil neck. Just remember, revenge of the nerds. It came true. My wife looks like princess Diana.

My wife and I don't drink, so we are looking at looking at the Bundled soda, VOOM Inet package, they are suppose to charge the 18% gratuities on the soda portion of the charge.

Before bundling, The soda package is 8.99 and the VOOM package is 18.39 per day for a total of 27.38 per day, Bundled its 25.

If you take a standard discount equally across the 2 purchased items in the bundle to reach the 25 dollars a day the soda would work out to 8.21 per day and the VOOM package would be 16.79 per day. 

Soda = 8.21 X number of days of cruise (6 for me) = 49.26, Gratuities on that is 8.86, yet Royal is charging 16.41 for tips!!!

Whoah! That's almost double, they are getting 18% from the number 91.17 for the soda package which works out to 15.20 per day vs the 8.99 per day for the unbundled soda package and only charging 58.83 for the internet (the portion that has no gratuity added on)!

 

Well that's one way to pad the gratuities bucket to help pay for their crew.

 

Now get this! When they recently put the bundle on "Sale" for 23 a day the tips on that package went down to 13.61, which means they are now only charging 75.61 for the soda package (12.60 a day vs the unbundled not on sale soda package of 8.99 per day), so the "sale" was partially funded by taking away tips from the crew! Thats kinda cruddy! These people work very hard for ridiculously low wages. I don't mind paying the extra tips to help these people out. But when Royal partially "funds" a sale by reducing the value of the gratuity portion of a bundle to keep more profit, home.. It makes me kinda mad.

[d9704011]

Where did you get $8.99/day for the Classic Soda Package?

[Biker19]

19 minutes ago, binro01 said:

It makes me kinda mad.

Trying to figure RCI math leads some to that - avoid trying to understand RCI math. 

[Merion_Mom]

1 hour ago, d9704011 said:

Where did you get $8.99/day for the Classic Soda Package?

That's a pretty standard price for that package.

 

[binro01]

1 hour ago, Biker19 said:

Trying to figure RCI math leads some to that - avoid trying to understand RCI math. 

I'm not so mad about the profiteering, Im more mad about the mode of profiteering. If you need to put something on sale, don't fund it primarily by lowering the value of the part of the package that gets gratuities added to. That steals money out of the crew's pocket.

[alexgtp]

There is no Math when it comes to RCL and their "SALES" or "BUNDLES"

 

Just book at whatever price is lowest and you feel comfortable with. You can always cancel and book their newest "SALE" price 😂

 

Also don't go down the RCL rabbit hole,

 

For example:

RCL also like to show a cruise as 100% Full when booking a room for 2 ppl, but when you switch to 3 or 4 ppl magically rooms are suddenly available.

 (Check Anthem NYE21 for rabbit Hole) 😁

[binro01]

11 minutes ago, alexgtp said:

There is no Math when it comes to RCL and their "SALES" or "BUNDLES"

 

Just book at whatever price is lowest and you feel comfortable with. You can always cancel and book their newest "SALE" price 😂

 

Also don't go down the RCL rabbit hole,

 

For example:

RCL also like to show a cruise as 100% Full when booking a room for 2 ppl, but when you switch to 3 or 4 ppl magically rooms are suddenly available.

 (Check Anthem NYE21 for rabbit Hole) 😁

It really has nothing to do with the pricing. Im ok buying it even at the non sale price for the bundle. I just got interested on why the gratuity price on top was so high. On the standard, non bundled soda package, the gratuity charge is 9.70, But the bundled package with VOOM they upped gratuity charge to 16.41. basically saying the soda portion of the bundle now costs more than the unbundled soda package, and severely discounting the VOOM package.

I get why. It funds the gratuity pool heavier to pay their employees via tips so they can keep the pay very low. I'm OK with that, it puts some more money into the hard working crews pockets.

 

But when they put the bundle on sale, and now Lower the value of the tipped soda package to "fund" the loss of revenue from the sale by reducing the amount of money going into the tip jar. That's what I got ticked about.

Edited October 26, 2021 by binro01