pupe

The OP and the follow up comments fail to distinguish between the manners\general character of staff & crew of a particular line vs the manners\general character of the passengers from a particular nation.

To draw conclusions about the manners \general character of an entire nation´s population based upon one´s experience on a single cruise is very superficial and lacks credibility. However, to draw conclusions about the manners\level of service of staff and crew based upon a single cruise experience is a lot less superficial. True, one person´s opinion may not be entirely credible, but criticisms of onboard service are not necessarily superficial, much less irrational.

When many passengers rate service as much poorer on MSC than any other cruise line, it is likely that service on MSC is poorer than any other cruise line. Over 145,000 CruiseCritic members wrote reviews published on this site and rated service as part of their review. These cruisers (many experienced) rated service on MSC as the worst by far of any other cruise line. That is a very significant indicator and supports the OP´s own observations about the lack of good service from MSC personnel.

All twelve MSC ships included in the all time Cruisers Choice ratings finish in the bottom 15% of all ships included in the ratings. Every single MSC ship is rated lower than every single ship of its mass market competition, i.e HAL, Royal Carib, Norwegian, Carnival, Celebrity, Princess. See the all time ratings published at Cruisers Choice Awards:

http://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberpoll_all.cfm?rating=Service&sort=Highest

The ship will not buy Arg pesos nor will any currency dealer (unless perhaps at an absurd rate). The best way to use pesos is to use them to pay for all goods available in duty free shops in the EZE airport. The duty free shop prices are expressed in USD, but you can pay in pesos.

In fact, you may want to load up on some blue market pesos to buy stuff in the EZE duty free shops. You can get great bargains. For example, a bottle of single malt scotch that might retail for $80 will probably sell for about $60 in duty free. If you pay in pesos, the price is calculated by multiplying 60 by the official rate of exchange (8.5) = 510 pesos. However to obtain 510 pesos on the blue market one only need sell about 40 USD (40 x 12.5 = 500). That´s a handsome savings. For current exchange rates see http://www.ambito.com