aReLBee Posted November 8, 2007 #1 Share Posted November 8, 2007 I don't know if this is a ship specific complaint as this was my first cruise with RC but you all need to know about this!!! If you buy any photos from the Royal Carribean photography department it is NON-RETURNABLE and NON-REFUNDABLE!!! There is nothing around the photos or around the sales countertops telling you this. HOWEVER, it is on the bottom of the receipt they give you AFTER you've purchased the photos. I cruised on the Sovereign of the Seas with my wife and her family the first weekend of November 2007. My wife and her two sisters bought over $200 worth of photos. Their mother was not with them as they went through the pics and picked out the best ones. They purchased them as a present for their Mom and we then went to dinner. I left the dining room to run to our stateroom for some meds. As I was coming back I saw my wife's parents in the 3rd deck elevator lobby leaving the photo display area. I got back to the dinner table before them and told my wife and her sisters that I saw their parents coming from the picture area. We laughed because we knew they had already bought all the good pics for her. However, when their Mom got to the table she had a ship folder with a couple of the remaining bad pictures which she had purchased herself. My wife then showed her Mom all the pics they had bought and explained to her that the ones her Mom had purchased were the leftover "bad" photos. Her Mom then said "I didn't know that". There was no way she could have known but once she saw the pictures her daughters had bought my wife suggested they return the three their Mom had bought. We ate dinner and afterwards my wife went to return the three photos. When she returned, she was fuming mad. "They won't let me return them. They are saying their non-returnable and that it says it on the receipt!". We all looked and sure enough, it said it right there on the bottom of the receipt. My wife continued "We spend over $200 dollars on photos and can't return $20 worth of the ones Mom bought! This is ridiculous" I then did a walkthrough of the picture display area intentionally looking for a sign that stated no returns or refunds. I walked up to the point of sales area and looked for a sign there. There were no signs anywhere. This is unacceptable. As many photos that cruise lines don't sell and recycle after every cruise surely they could understand a situation like ours. To turn away customers for the sake of a couple of bucks is poor business and leaves a bad taste in their customer's mouths. Pay attention to your return policies on purchases while cruising with RC. They bank on you not doing this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BettyBoopX Posted November 8, 2007 #2 Share Posted November 8, 2007 Yea I always thought that policy kinda sucked. They take pictures all week and honestly when you only plan on buying a few it's hard not to grab them when you think they might be good only to find that the one you take the next day is 10 times better. That's why my family started going by the photo place and consolidating all our pictures every day in one area so the last day of the cruise we can go though and pick out the best ones and buy them. Every once in a while one or two of the pictures will go missing from someone moving it on us but 9 times out of 10 all the ones we wanted to buy are still there at the end. I always bring my mom with me to pick out pictures for the same reason as the orignial poster, I don't want either of us to end up buying the crappy pictures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crusinmama06 Posted November 8, 2007 #3 Share Posted November 8, 2007 Sorry but I can understand the policy, here's why. There are people who take pictures of the pictures. :rolleyes: They keep people from doing this in the photo gallery by using sercurity cameras. But if they DID have a return policy, then someone could take all of their pictures back to the cabin...take pictures of them, then return them. And on another point, what about "buyers remorse". I know I come back with at least 40 8x10's after ever cruise. I bet if they allowed you to return them, people would be trying to get credit on their sea pass cards as a way to bring their bills down at the end of the week. It would be a mess. :eek: It's unfortunate that your wife wasn't able to stop her mom from buying the pics. But that was a communication problem between your family and RCCL shouldn't be to blame. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karysa Posted November 8, 2007 #4 Share Posted November 8, 2007 I understand the policy but I think that there should be a sign stating what the policy is at the cash. I try to get my husband to wait until the end of the cruise to buy the pictures and then we know which ones we really must have and which ones we could do without. Karysa Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terpnut Posted November 8, 2007 #5 Share Posted November 8, 2007 You should have disposed of the "bad" pictures right after going through them initially and purchasing the "good". There is a collection area for these "bad" pictures. If you had done so, you would have eliminated the need to see them again later in the cruise, and the possibility of someone else buying them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VikkiGarcia Posted November 8, 2007 #6 Share Posted November 8, 2007 I understand the policy because on our last cruise I saw an extended family in the atrium with the pictures that the Mom and Dad had purchased. One of the son's was taking photos of the pictures with his very nice camera and writing down what other relatives wanted , how many, ect. I think the family felt this was perfectly fine because they did buy the initial photos first and Mom and Dad were going to keep them. But what is to stop someone from doing the same thing then going back to the studio and returning them. Many people see their final bill and start thinking about what they could have cut out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wanderingfool Posted November 8, 2007 #7 Share Posted November 8, 2007 I understand the policy because on our last cruise I saw an extended family in the atrium with the pictures that the Mom and Dad had purchased. One of the son's was taking photos of the pictures with his very nice camera and writing down what other relatives wanted , how many, ect. I think the family felt this was perfectly fine because they did buy the initial photos first and Mom and Dad were going to keep them. But what is to stop someone from doing the same thing then going back to the studio and returning them. Many people see their final bill and start thinking about what they could have cut out. It's kind of crummy too how, if you aren't aware of it beforehand, the company that provides the photo service has a copyright waiver form online if you want to make copies when you get home. I've heard stories of some angry people who bought 5 or 10 reprints (at $20 each) when they could have gotten them much cheaper on land (via scanning the image directly i.e. Kodak reprint machine.) It would be much better quality than photos of photos 99% of the time, fancy camera or not (otherwise you end up with glare, distortion, etc.) I don't fault the cruise line for their policy, but I do agree that it should be more clearly laid out "just in case". As a side note, if you notice a photo you have set aside and would like to buy has been damaged/dented/full of greasy fingerprints (from being moved), they will reprint it free of charge - you just have to ask them to do it prior to purchase - and give yourself a day so that they have time to do it before you leave the ship. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr_DNA Posted November 15, 2007 #8 Share Posted November 15, 2007 Many of the photos that were laid out were fingerprinted (our 4 year old was only 1 of 30 kids and all of the older people thought that he was adorable) and they happily reprinted all of the photos that we wanted. Also, on our ship (Explorer) they had kiosks that you could use to search through your photos. If the ship printed a 5 x 7 but you wanted an 8 x 10, you could place your order right on the screen. So there were many more options available than what the ship printed out. Maybe the cost will go down when they figure out that they don't need to print so many and use the kiosks instead. $20 really is a bit much for a single photo; I think that my wife spent over $300 on what seemed to be just a handful of photos. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sas80 Posted November 15, 2007 #9 Share Posted November 15, 2007 Everybody please notice that OP created an account just to post this one thing, and has never come back..... I smell TROLL!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crusinmama06 Posted November 15, 2007 #10 Share Posted November 15, 2007 Everybody please notice that OP created an account just to post this one thing, and has never come back..... I smell TROLL!!! No even stranger the account was created years ago but the poster posted just ONE thread in all of these years? :rolleyes: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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