Tipping on NCL

[CruisnGram]

my husban and me just went on a crusie on the caribbean, on board the Norwegian Dawn, and we just found out the sad situation of the tippins,

as per the crew members, they used to received more money as salaries before, Norwegian cruise lines charge 12 dollars per person, this ,oney suppose to go to the crew involved in the pooling system, but as a sorprise is not like that, Norwegian crusie lines is Stilling the money from the crew, they been adding more cabins to the roostewart, and more guest to take care in the dinning rooms, but their salaries are instead of be more is less, before i remember my previous roomstewart who was a great one, makes me fell a litlle curious about their salaries, but he was so nice by telling us he was making around 3.500 us dollars, that was in 2000 , but in my recent trip 2008 after been on board the Norwegian DAwn, we just found out that the are making only 2500 us dollars, is not fair that hard working people receive around 1000 us dollars less that they used to receive before for more work. and as far as we investigated they fired 31 roomstewart and their assistants took over their possitions for only 1800 us dollars, they were given an assistant as well, other wise could be a disaster for them and for the service as well. by saying this we can realize that Norwegian cruise lines are taking aditional 700 us dollars fron the crew per seccion that every romstewart are taking care of. is a sad situation for this hard working people because they have to live their families during ten moths for less money. and to make it worse every roomstewart have to be responsible for a minibar in every cabin, if something is missing from the minibar, they are beeing charged for that. we decided to pay our service to the roomsterwart but the front desk manager said no!, how ever we decided to give a extra tip to our roomstewarts. Norwegian cruise lines is a big tiehft among all the cruise lines. i really prefer RCCL. If you would like to know how much they get when the gratuities are split, take a note in how many guest they take care per cruise, with 33 cabins they have around 68 guest per cruise, on a low season, when is hight season then the might have 88 to 100 guest and still receive the same amount of money monthly. is that fair?

 

Huh?

 

CG

[terrymtex01]

I like to think of it like this: The service charge is a charge. It is not the same thing as a tip. It is part of the cost that everyone agreed to when then book.

 

Think of it like this- If you go to a steak house on land and you and your spouse orders steaks. One is fabulous and the other is kinda over done. The first thing you do is ask the server/manager to make it right- i.e. recook the steak. If after trying to make you happy, the steak still is bad, then you would tell the manager that you do not want to pay for it. The same thing with NCL... you agree to pay the standard service charge. If you have bad service you talk to a manager and resolve the issue. If after trying to rectify the situation everything is still awful beyond help then and only then do you remove the charge. It is not really not all that descretionary in my humble opinion.

 

Another example- if you hire a contractor to do home repair you agree to a price. If there is a problem you give him a chance to fix it and if all else fails and the agreed work is not completed, then you talk about reducing the price. Same thing on the ship... you are agreeing when booking to pay that charge for the services provided. It would be so much easier if they would just include the DSC in the published cruise price but of course all lines would have to follow suit since people comparison shop.

 

I think if you are going to adjust the DSC, you have the right idea about it.

 

Last night I stood in front of the mirror and practiced my "NO!" so I think I'm ready! ;)

 

LOL

 

Our intent was to leave the stewards with something in addition to the standard tip pool distribution while not increasing our overall obligation

 

I did want to say that I could tell your intent was not to hurt anyone, but just to reward those you felt did such a great job for you. It is not that common of knowledge to the general public about them having to turn in cash tips when the DSC has been adjusted down, so I really do hope you aren't feeling bad about what you did. I really do believe you had the best intentions. And I am sure those that have said something negative to you about it just may not have understood your good intentions.

[terrymtex01]

Now I'm ashamed - for some reason I did not. My most sincere apologies!

 

GFunk.. I'm not going to bash you for things youu have said on here because I do believe every one has a right to post their opinion. I do not believe it is approprite for anyone to personally attach another poster. I do want to say that you are wrong about one thing. American, I believe, is the only country where you do not have to pre-pay the DSC. All other countries do so that kind of negates, to a degree, your idea of having to prepay the charge.

[josephsschmoe]

Maybe my math is wrong, but you added to your overall obligation didn't you? How many days was the cruise? And was the DSC $10 or $12 per day? My figures were based on $10 pp per day on a 7 day cruise.

CG

 

To return to the OP topic....

 

Yes..Mr and Mrs Schmoe added $4 to the total obligation. $28 seemed like a contrived number to put in an envelope so we rounded it up to $30 for each envelope. I am quite sure that the room stewards need the money more than I do.

 

As far as I am concerned, the stewards deserved every bit of the pool money and then some.

 

One of the stewards had a preoccupied look when I was leaving the ship on Sunday..I think that I now know why.

 

NCL needs to make all of this stuff transparent to the passengers.

 

Hey..this was our first cruise and we are still on a learning curve.

[josephsschmoe]

Oh yeah..the Schmoes were on the $12/day program

[G-Funk]

GFunk.. I'm not going to bash you for things youu have said on here because I do believe every one has a right to post their opinion. I do not believe it is approprite for anyone to personally attach another poster. I do want to say that you are wrong about one thing. American, I believe, is the only country where you do not have to pre-pay the DSC. All other countries do so that kind of negates, to a degree, your idea of having to prepay the charge.

 

I'm from Canada and I don't think I've prepaid anything - if so, I need some money back!:D

[CruisnGram]

.

 

NCL needs to make all of this stuff transparent to the passengers.

 

 

I would agree with that. It's not something that NCL makes well known. In fact, I'd doubt if anyone who doesn't read CC or ask the question would know.

 

It's a shame that you tried to do something nice that didn't work out the way you thought. Not your fault though....the intention was a good one.

 

CG

[G-Funk]

GFunk.. I'm not going to bash you for things youu have said on here because I do believe every one has a right to post their opinion. I do not believe it is approprite for anyone to personally attach another poster. I do want to say that you are wrong about one thing. American, I believe, is the only country where you do not have to pre-pay the DSC. All other countries do so that kind of negates, to a degree, your idea of having to prepay the charge.

 

And just to be clear, the first that I posted anything negative was after it was suggested to me that my opinion did not matter as I had not been posting enough or long enough. And all I did there was tweak that person about the number of posts necessary to have what they considered a "valid" opinion.

 

It was after that that the name calling started - I believe the post contained the word pompous if I remember correctly.

 

Anyway, I'm entitled to my opinion, and fortunately, I have a venue here to express it, just like everyone else. A little debate is a good thing, it sharpens both of our arguments.

[iheartbda]

Thank you Captain Obvious!, I'm sure your other 3881 posts are just as informative and interesting!:p

Excuse me???

I don't understand your reason for being sarcastic.