Onboard E-Mail Address?

[ripleyroxy]

Upon receiving our final cruise documents, we were given onboard e-mail addresses. What is the purpose of these addresses?

 

Can we access this e-mail address free or do we need to purchase an internet plan to access this e-mail address?

 

I guess I am not sure why they issue us our "atsea" address.

 

PS I am a first time cruiser

[LHT28]

You can access via the computers onboard at a fee ...it is $2. per message in/out.

 

See the FAQ

https://www.oceaniacruises.com/T_MainContentPage.aspx?PageUID=89f3a518-78a5-4b1b-af0d-8a6f236defa2&Secure=True

 

 

I just use my yahoo address

[hondorner]

It's entirely possible to take 4 or 5 minutes to get logged on to a third party email program and see whether you have any important messages. And, you have to do that every time you want to check, whether you send or receive any messages or not. At the normal rate of almost $1.00 per minute, that can get expensive awfully fast.

 

Instead, we give our shipboard "atsea" address to a couple of trusted folks who we know will not use it unless necessary, and then tell everyone else to contact one or the other of those folks if they need to get in touch with us. Our contact folks (our best friend and our daughter) then filter the info and decide whether to contact us. On our last 26 day cruise, we received exactly one email (which cost $2). It turned out to be important enough to require a response (which cost us an additional $2). Other than that, we had no other internet or email charges. I normally spend hours on the internet each day, but not when I'm on vacation.

 

On Oceania, you can log into your account as often as you like, check your "atsea" email account for messages, and do other things not involving the internet, for free. You are only charged if there is an email message.

 

Some folks use the "atsea" account to send a periodic email home to one person, then have that message forwarded to a further list once it arrives. It's a great way to stay in touch while still controlling the cost -- a daily email will only cost $2 per day, while it would be easy to go way over that with internet access.

 

When the cruise line asks for comments and suggestions at mid-cruise and at the end of the cruise, I always mention that Oceania should use the internet fees more proactively, as an incentive. I remember reading one recent poster on this forum who gets free internet on another premium line because of past cruises.

 

I know they're aware of all the comments made on this board, and combined with the comment cards they receive, there is no doubt they are aware of the problem. In my mind, there are only two possible reasons why they haven't done anything about it -- they are either too stubborn, or they have a severe technical problem that doesn't seem to affect other cruise lines.

[Benita]

I gave them a really easy suggestion to follow on my midweek cruise survey, both last year and this year and even spoke to the computer staff on the Nautica, but to no avail. I gave the Oceania at sea email address to a few people to be used in case of an emergency. Oceania posts the name of people who received emails on a computer screen outside the computer center. They refused to televise it on the TV screens in the passenger cabins. First, the computer people said the computer was not set up for this and when I made the suggestion that they put a telecam camera to film the list and easily transfer it a TV channel, they said that would be easy to do (but never did it)

As a result, we had to keep going up to the center, as did the rest of the ship's passengers, to check the screen.

[hondorner]

I gave them a really easy suggestion to follow on my midweek cruise survey, both last year and this year and even spoke to the computer staff on the Nautica, but to no avail. I gave the Oceania at sea email address to a few people to be used in case of an emergency. Oceania posts the name of people who received emails on a computer screen outside the computer center. They refused to televise it on the TV screens in the passenger cabins. First, the computer people said the computer was not set up for this and when I made the suggestion that they put a telecam camera to film the list and easily transfer it a TV channel, they said that would be easy to do (but never did it)

As a result, we had to keep going up to the center, as did the rest of the ship's passengers, to check the screen.

Your TV cam scan of the computer screen is a great idea. It could be mixed in with the changing screens on one of a couple of different channels. Inthe meantime, there is another alternative. I rarely found myself up in the vicinity of the computer room, but I was frequently in the area of the library. Once you set up your account on the ship's network (a simple matter of using your onboard email address as a login and creating a password), you can log in to any computer and check your email in Outlook. That includes the computers in the library. It only takes a few seconds to log in, open the email program and check for mail. I was usually able to do it for both Betsy and I in less than 2 minutes.

[conan]

Just a word about the internet charges using your "atsea" internet address. If cost is important to you, be sure the file sizes that you're sending are not too large. We sent a picture of ourselves to my Mom from Nautica last year that cost us $10. The speed of the system that was aboard was v-e-r-y slow.