Removing gratiuities - when to do it

For the avoidance of doubt: No.

Thanks.

Are people saying that on top of the service charge I am expected to hand out envelopes of my hard earned cash irrespective of a service that I have already paid for twice?

No, they're saying that you should either pay the service charge or hand out envelopes of your hard-earned cash.

Or do neither, but get used to the taste of saliva in your food.

And whatever it is you do to earn your cash, it isn't as "hard-earned" as the cash earned by the people on the ship who scrub your toilet and deliver your breakfast.

My cruise days go back to the days when the envelopes were left for us and an advisory note given as to how much to tip. Now it is so complicated - we leave the auto tips/service charges on and then give a bit extra with a thank you card stating why the individual made our trip so special - I am sure they would have preferred more money but, as a nurse, whilst many patients and their families gave us chocolate or donations, it was the people who wrote a personal note who left a lasting memory.

Being in the food industry, we usually add a 20% service charge to our customers. We've done very high end & difficult client weddings/affairs. Nothing worse than busting your butt & getting stiffed.

So remove the possibility of "getting stiffed" and simply charge the real price, rather than a fake price with a 'voluntary' service charge.

So remove the possibility of "getting stiffed" and simply charge the real price, rather than a fake price with a 'voluntary' service charge.

Like :)

Are people saying that on top of the service charge I am expected to hand out envelopes of my hard earned cash irrespective of a service that I have already paid for twice?

Its outrageous, that you keep the "Service charge on" then the "Cunarders" on this forum expect you to re tip by envelopes.

Be very interesting to be a fly on the wall!

What people say here differs a huge amount to what they do on board.

We all know, that yes, the Gratuities do go to the staff. however removing the gratuities, then Cunard Pay the difference !

So remove the gratuities, tick all the Magnificent boxes regarding staff and pay them in $ cash in hand. Everybody including the staff, except Cunard and the Die hard Cunarders are happy.

Therefore the sticky on this this thread is misleading and should be removed. Because it really makes no sense, as access to the post it refers to does not appear in context .

It really bears nothing to the Gratuities thread.

Cunard appear at the present time since the refurbishment of QV to also be "Stifing" the customer even more.

So remove the possibility of "getting stiffed" and simply charge the real price, rather than a fake price with a 'voluntary' service charge.

The fares charged by Regent, Seabourn, and Crystal reflect the "real" price of operating a ship and paying a crew. Though it's not a direct comparison to price a QM2 Caribbean out of New York vs. a Regent Caribbean out of Miami they are both 10 nights. At $14Kpp for the cheapest Regent cabin that's a good indication of what Cunard would have to charge.

So for a 7 night crossing it's a charge of $80.50pp ($94.50 if you are in the Grills). Anybody who finds this a budget-blowing hit on their finances really cannot afford international travel.

Are people saying that on top of the service charge I am expected to hand out envelopes of my hard earned cash irrespective of a service that I have already paid for twice?

NO WHERE did it say that! Some(myself included)wish to give a little "extra" to those who made our trips so enjoyable. It's up to you if you wish to give a little extra.

So remove the possibility of "getting stiffed" and simply charge the real price, rather than a fake price with a 'voluntary' service charge.

We pay our employees generally over $15/hr. That's pretty generous for servers in the food industry. When we do a large wedding, for example, we usually add a 20% service charge to the bill. This fee is then divided up among the staff who worked on that job from the pot scrubber to the wait staff.

I guess a lot of pax acquired their money from being cheapskates all their lives.

Thats possibly how they acquired the Money.

Cheapskates or Inheritance, then brag about how wealthy they are. Very Sad.

I have worked for my Money and also been on the inheritance line so very fortunate . But I never look down on those unfortunate not to have done so. Neither do I brag about my Wealth,

Those that really have it do not flaunt it!

From past threads on tipping/gratuities/service charge (call it what you will) I thought posters said that if you remove the daily charge the steward is advised of this and so must hand over any tip he gets in cash from that passenger so it can be divided among the staff as the daily charge would be. If you leave the daily charge on your account and make an additional tip to the steward then he/she is able to retain that to themselves.

Is this the case or not.

Have to say this subject gets a bit tiresome. When you book you know there is a daily charge and how much and that there is a service charge on drinks. If you don't like it don't book. If you want to give extra for a good service then do that, no one else needs to know.

From past threads on tipping/gratuities/service charge (call it what you will) I thought posters said that if you remove the daily charge the steward is advised of this and so must hand over any tip he gets in cash from that passenger so it can be divided among the staff as the daily charge would be. If you leave the daily charge on your account and make an additional tip to the steward then he/she is able to retain that to themselves.

 

Is this the case or not.

 

Have to say this subject gets a bit tiresome. When you book you know there is a daily charge and how much and that there is a service charge on drinks. If you don't like it don't book. If you want to give extra for a good service then do that, no one else needs to know.

Impossible to Police,

Remove the Gratuities, Cunard Pay the difference if the Gratuities do not make up the total Wage Bill.

Give the Gratuities "Service charge" you would have paid that would have been on your account to the staff in $ , Their happy, Your Happy because you have saved your self some dosh in extra tips. Cunard have paid. Cunard apparently Guarantee to make up the difference in their wages from Auto Tips. now Called Service Charge.

Impossible to Police,

Remove the Gratuities, Cunard Pay. Give the Gratuties that would have been on your account to the staff in $ , Their happy, Your Happy because you have saved your self some dosh in extra tips. Cunard have paid. Cunard apparently Guarantee to make up the difference in their wages from Auto Tips. now Called Service Charge.

Cunard are not a charity so would assume that they will have estimated (based on past experience) how many will remove the Service Charge and add that on to the cost to the cruise for everyone. So we all pay so a few can, in your words, save some dosh in extra tips.

Why does removing the Service Charge sound such a cheapskate thing to do. Overheard some people talking on a cruise stating they had spent more than they had intended so would have the Auto Gratuity (as it was then) removed to lower the bill to an acceptable level.

Impossible to Police,

Remove the Gratuities, Cunard Pay the difference if the Gratuities do not make up the total Wage Bill.

Give the Gratuities "Service charge" you would have paid that would have been on your account to the staff in $ , Their happy, Your Happy because you have saved your self some dosh in extra tips. Cunard have paid. Cunard apparently Guarantee to make up the difference in their wages from Auto Tips. now Called Service Charge.

Not sure this is entirely correct. Yes Cunard promise a minimum wage and if enough people removed tips to bring the staffs pay below the guaranteed minimum Cunard would indeed have to make up the difference. However I believe the minimum levels offered are fairly low and in reality the staff earn a fair bit more than the guaranteed minimum.

If some people remove tips this will reduce what the staff take home and unless enough do so that it takes pay below the minimum it wont cost Cunard anything.

I have always left the auto tips on as I think it is an easy way of making sure everyone gets rewarded, I can then choose if I think anyone deserves anything extra. If someone wants to remove the auto tips then that is up to them but I don't think it should be assumed it costs the staff nothing. It is a personal matter and views on tipping vary greatly.

The whole thing is a farce especially when some packages include prepaid gratuities and some don't. As my father in law, a former colonel in the Red Army always said - "no one tipped me, where's my tip?"

The fares charged by Regent, Seabourn, and Crystal reflect the "real" price of operating a ship and paying a crew. Though it's not a direct comparison to price a QM2 Caribbean out of New York vs. a Regent Caribbean out of Miami they are both 10 nights. At $14Kpp for the cheapest Regent cabin that's a good indication of what Cunard would have to charge.

 

So for a 7 night crossing it's a charge of $80.50pp ($94.50 if you are in the Grills). Anybody who finds this a budget-blowing hit on their finances really cannot afford international travel.

Do you tip the stewardess on the airplane too? The real beneficiaries here are Carnival shareholders if truth be told, because the profits are fatter when the tipping myth is in play.

The whole thing is a farce especially when some packages include prepaid gratuities and some don't. As my father in law, a former colonel in the Red Army always said - "no one tipped me, where's my tip?"

So now we are comparing gratuities to crew members on Cunard ships with tips to a Colonel in the Red Army?

Frankly, I don't care what anyone does or doesn't do in regard to tipping crew members or anybody else at sea or on land. Keep you purse zippered. Remove the auto charge! See what happens when the crew isn't making the money they once made...will they transfer to another Carnival Corp ship where tipping is the norm? - That's what the casino workers do when the opportunity arises.

Red Army indeed.

Salacia

Do you tip the stewardess on the airplane too? The real beneficiaries here are Carnival shareholders if truth be told, because the profits are fatter when the tipping myth is in play.

You certainly know that airline crews are not tipped. As flight attendants often tell us, "We're here for your safety."

Whenever a tipping thread comes up I make an attempt to give the history of tips accounting for a large portion of crew compensation (going back to White Star days) and taxing in different jurisdictions as a huge reason that gratuities are not rolled into the fare. Yes, there was expected tipping in the liner days and when only the wealthy were cruising. As cruise ships grew and mass marketing began too many passengers would "forget" to leave anything. By the early 1990s all major lines had introduced the autotip in some form to combat this.

The arguments always takes a turn with somebody demanding that the cruise line pay the wages and roll everything into the fare. One way or another it's going to be paid. Where there is a "free gratuities" promotion then the base fare is going to be adjusted. Either that, or the profitability will be diminished to the point where a cruise line will pull out of that market.

Which is a corundum. Once Cunard rolls everything into the fare they immediately look more expensive than their competitors. What grabs attention first? $1299 plus gratuities or $1380 gratuities included? When people will cancel and re-book over $20 ("Hey, that's two drinks!") then it's the $1299.

I like what NCL in the US has done. It's now called a "service charge" and cannot be removed on board. One has to get a form from their purser and describe the specific service failure and how it was not addressed during the voyage. The form is then imaged and emailed to a shore side office for a reimbursement request. Brilliant. Shore side has a digitized record, in the passenger's own handwriting, on why they want to remove gratuities.

You certainly know that airline crews are not tipped. As flight attendants often tell us, "We're here for your safety."

 

 

 

 

 

Whenever a tipping thread comes up I make an attempt to give the history of tips accounting for a large portion of crew compensation (going back to White Star days) and taxing in different jurisdictions as a huge reason that gratuities are not rolled into the fare. Yes, there was expected tipping in the liner days and when only the wealthy were cruising. As cruise ships grew and mass marketing began too many passengers would "forget" to leave anything. By the early 1990s all major lines had introduced the autotip in some form to combat this.

 

 

 

 

 

The arguments always takes a turn with somebody demanding that the cruise line pay the wages and roll everything into the fare. One way or another it's going to be paid. Where there is a "free gratuities" promotion then the base fare is going to be adjusted. Either that, or the profitability will be diminished to the point where a cruise line will pull out of that market.

 

 

 

 

 

Which is a corundum. Once Cunard rolls everything into the fare they immediately look more expensive than their competitors. What grabs attention first? $1299 plus gratuities or $1380 gratuities included? When people will cancel and re-book over $20 ("Hey, that's two drinks!") then it's the $1299.

 

 

 

 

 

I like what NCL in the US has done. It's now called a "service charge" and cannot be removed on board. One has to get a form from their purser and describe the specific service failure and how it was not addressed during the voyage. The form is then imaged and emailed to a shore side office for a reimbursement request. Brilliant. Shore side has a digitized record, in the passenger's own handwriting, on why they want to remove gratuities.

What NCL has done would, in EU law, require the line to roll up that charge into the fare they advertise. Which I would have no problem with.

When pricing a cruise I factor in the service charge and the drink prices.

No, they're saying that you should either pay the service charge or hand out envelopes of your hard-earned cash.

 

Or do neither, but get used to the taste of saliva in your food.

 

And whatever it is you do to earn your cash, it isn't as "hard-earned" as the cash earned by the people on the ship who scrub your toilet and deliver your breakfast.

Plenty of people scrub toilets for a living. They don't get tips, at least very few of them.

We pay our employees generally over $15/hr. That's pretty generous for servers in the food industry. When we do a large wedding, for example, we usually add a 20% service charge to the bill. This fee is then divided up among the staff who worked on that job from the pot scrubber to the wait staff.

So why don't you charge the customer the real price for the service you are providing, rather than let your low paid staff take the risk someone won't pay the service charge?

It doesn't seem fair you make a profit irrespective, but your staff may suffer because of your business decisions.

What NCL has done would, in EU law, require the line to roll up that charge into the fare they advertise. Which I would have no problem with.

And that is exactly what NCL have done in the EU since earlier this year. A straightforward fare that does not rely on a voluntary surcharge and the prices they are changing are not substantially different from the prices they charged previously, and certainly not in the scale quoted earlier.

You certainly know that airline crews are not tipped.

It's called a rhetorical question.

Are people saying that on top of the service charge I am expected to hand out envelopes of my hard earned cash irrespective of a service that I have already paid for twice?

If you keep the service charge on, that's entirely between you and your wallet. If you remove it, that is also between you and your wallet. The same goes for any passenger who decides to give extra, as a personal thanks. A personal decision and nothing to do with anyone else.

None of your fellow passengers will know what path you take unless you tell them, and here I am not including the reports of those who apparently, rather tackily flourish envelopes for all to see, in a display of largess at the end of their holiday.

 

But an interesting idea, all the same. In essence, what does a hotel provide ? A service, since it clearly does not provide you with any goods. So adding a "service charge" onto a product which is already a service is quite bemusing.

Absolutely!

 

And whatever it is you do to earn your cash, it isn't as "hard-earned" as the cash earned by the people on the ship who scrub your toilet and deliver your breakfast.

So the assumption is that no Cunard passenger can possibly earn a living working as hard as a Cunard worker and of course all passengers have their hands inspected at embarkation to detect evidence of manual work.

Shock horror, you could well be dining with a bricklayer.

David