Theft from safe on Equinox - is it worth reporting it to head office?

[dwhe]

I had a Google to see how common reports of theft were and found Royal Caribbean Internationals crime allegation statistics which the cruise industry according to US law is required to publicly disclose.

 

http://media.royalcaribbean.com/content/en_US/pdf/Alleged%20Crimes%20-%20RCI%20-%20April%20to%20June%202014.pdf

 

Bizarrely the law only requires thefts over $10,000 to be reported, of which there has been a number over the past few years.

 

This is not directed at Celebrity or RC both of which I'm very happy with, but at all cruise lines, I'm certainly going to be a bit more careful on my future voyages.

 

This was unbelievable which happened on a Carnival ship.

 

http://www.katc.com/news/woman-upset-with-cruise-line/

Edited October 24, 2014 by dwhe

[GOLDENBONNY]

Hi Louise. I see you are on Silhouette next year. We're taking her across the pond on 31 October. Maybe you can talk hubby and the boys into a Transatlantic? :)

 

My comments on the original post -- I've only had a problem one time with my stateroom safe. The batteries died and locked us out, and one of the Officer Engineers had to come, crack into it, and replace the batteries.

 

I've always felt safe (no pun intended) putting my wallet, travel documents, money, jewelry, and the like into the safe for safekeeping. I've never heard or read any other threads of folks missing something from a locked safe. One time when traveling with my sister-in-law, she was missing an expensive bracelet and accused the stateroom attendant. When one of the head housekeepers came in to investigate, the bracelet was found behind the front lip inside the safe.

 

Could it be possible the honeymooners had too much "juice" in the casino that night and miscounted their monies? :confused: Just saying, not accusing. ;)

 

I saw a same thread many years ago .Money missing from safe and guess ... from people who won it in casino) I believe it was on Costa forum and Costa proved that husband did it after all)

__________________

Edited October 24, 2014 by GOLDENBONNY

[wwcruisers]

How much money did you win? If it was $1,000, then one hundred would be easy to see was missing. If it was $10,000 it would be easy to see that miscounting MIGHT have been involved.

 

Question: Did you TELL the room stewards you had won a great deal of money? I can't believe they try every safe every day in the hopes that one will have something new (IF they are inclined to be dishonest in the first place, which I'm sure not all are). Also, don't they have to keep the door open when they are servicing the room?

 

I had a similar thought. When you get right down to it, a casino is like a small town -- easy for others to know your business. And a big winner in the casino always draws attention. I'm wondering if the culprit could have been someone who was in the casino (pax or employee) at the time the OP and her husband won. But, that brings me to my second question:

 

I too, wonder about a possible miscount by the OP. It just doesn't make sense that anyone would take $220, and leave all the rest of the $$ and valuables in the safe. Especially, since any credible accusation of theft is cause for immediate termination of employment.

 

However, none of that excuses rude or unprofessional conduct by the ships' employees. In the OP's shoes, I would be filing a complaint with Corporate for that, alone.

[Mummble]

Unfortunately, they can, using a pen, straight through the zipper, and then dragging it open, a video demonstrationg this has been posted on all kinds of websites recently as a caution to travellers. It gave me the horrors reading your story, we have never experienced anything like this on a Celebrity ship, we always feel as safe as we do at home, I would hope it is an isolated incident and they get to the bottom of it, glad to see Celebrity have responded and are taking action. Hope you had a good honeymoon other than this. :)

 

Eek! It always felt relatively safe to me, with my little combo lock. After looking up that video, I feel pretty foolish! :o I guess if someone really wants your stuff, they'll find a way. :( Thank you for alerting me!

[genian_travels]

Thanks for the responses so far, sympathies and well wishes. In answer to a few points/questions -

 

Also what kind of surprises me is why was a room key audit not run right away upon indicating there was a theft... Im also thinking the electronic safes can be audited on when they are opened, and depending on what type when, this is a common feature in most electronic safes .

 

They did run a key audit which confirmed only the cabin attendant and his assistant had been in the room, verified by the security camera footage. Security also ran an audit on the safe - unfortunately all it shows is that it was opened and closed throughout the day, not what time it occurred. Ironically, they ran it the next day while we were in port and we were told we would have to get security to reopen it for us as they had locked it with a new code. When we got back to the room we found they left it wide open! Coming back to that scene made us think we might have been robbed again, so we had another frantic 10mins of double checking all our money and documents again. Thankfully everything was in order, but that was very sloppy on their part.

 

The question is, will you be happier contacting them if they don't treat the matter as you expect or hope, or moving on and putting it behind you?

 

I presume the official report would have been sent to HO anyway so they would already be aware of the incident, so in terms of me reporting it again I guess it would just be expressing my disappointment at the poor treatment we received. I'm not really sure what I expect to get back from them - but some form of acknowledgement the incident actually occurred and not accuse us of lying would be nice...

 

It's also wise to take sensible precautions re room safes. Don't use codes that are easily guessed or associated with you ( e.g. room number). I'm sure the safe we had on the Eclipse was one where you had to put the code in each time you locked the safe. Which means that if you opened the safe yourself and then found money missing whoever took the money must have locked it using your code. If they were using the master key I think they usually work without identifying the original code, I.e. They just force the safe open and reset the code.

 

I totally agree - our code was part out our home landline phone number so it was random enough to not to be able to guess. You do need the code to lock the safe again - if it was opened by a master code it's possible they left it open afterwards hoping we would think we forgot to lock it. In our case, as we are usually quite vigilant with the safe and had both been and and out of it a number of times during the day, I suppose it's also possible we thought our other halves had opened it again because who else would know our PIN?

 

Could it be possible the honeymooners had too much "juice" in the casino that night and miscounted their monies? :confused: Just saying, not accusing. ;)

 

Nope - I'm teetotal. I don't think it's possible for two people to miscount money, especially when you're splitting it equally between you, is it?

 

How much money did you win? If it was $1,000, then one hundred would be easy to see was missing. If it was $10,000 it would be easy to see that miscounting MIGHT have been involved. Question: Did you TELL the room stewards you had won a great deal of money?… Also, don't they have to keep the door open when they are servicing the room?

 

We weren't crazy jackpot winners. When I said we had a "big" win, it was $490 - which, for someone who usually comes away from the casino a loser, made us quite excited :o I then won a more modest $50 on roulette. As you have to print out your winnings from the slot machine and take it to the desk to claim it, we actually took a picture of it (and the machine) so we could proudly send it to friends and family. So a missing $220 would be more than an accounting error. And no, we didn't tell our cabin attendant we had won any money - that wouldn't be very wise. We actually didn't see him at all the rest of that evening, or on the day of the theft until the chief housekeeper and security met us at our cabin when we reported it and he happened to be doing turn down service in our room.

 

I'm not sure what the policy is with keeping doors open or not while servicing the rooms. I definitely saw a mixture of doors being left wide open and some being kept slightly ajar with a small weight - and believe me, I was noticing after the theft! As it happened on a port day, the ship was very quiet and not many people walk the corridors. I suppose it's not beyond the realms of possibility if two people are working together, one keeps watch at the door while the other scouts the room?

[genian_travels]

I too, wonder about a possible miscount by the OP. It just doesn't make sense that anyone would take $220, and leave all the rest of the $$ and valuables in the safe. Especially, since any credible accusation of theft is cause for immediate termination of employment.

 

However, none of that excuses rude or unprofessional conduct by the ships' employees. In the OP's shoes, I would be filing a complaint with Corporate for that, alone.

 

We didn't have any other valuables in the safe other than our passports as I don't wear jewellery save my wedding ring on my finger. It's probably actually quite clever to take "small" chunks of money and not the whole lot because as you suggest, thefts usually occur in an all-or-nothing capacity. If the whole lot went missing, it would be reported straight away and suspicion would immediately fall on the cabin attendant. Taking one or two notes leaves a lot of room for doubt on the passengers' part making it more unlikely anything is reported and draw any suspicion away from the thief.

 

In terms of passenger doubt, just going by some of the comments on this thread, you could take your pick from: did I miscount the first time? Maybe I lost it in the casino? Am I too drunk to remember? Did I spend more than I thought I did offshore? Maybe my husband/wife took it? etc..

 

Some people may not even count their money and realise anything is missing, especially if it's a small amount. It's almost the perfect crime.

[cle-guy]

I agree many things could have happened, some even inadvertently.

 

But I'd certainly take it up with corporate as a matter of course.

 

On board, I would have insisted that they read the cabin door lock history (this something that can be done with a special gizmo the front desk has) then looked at hallway video to see who went in the room during questionable periods, to be sure they seemed to have legit business to do, or see if they spent too much time in the cabin or if they were looking side to side as if to see if someone was watching them....

 

I don't know if they have a way if "interrogating" the safe lock to determine when it was accessed to determine if it was in fact accessed outside of your own access periods. I kind of think they can, but am not positive on this one.

 

There are certainly ways staff can get into them when locked, this is needed if the battery dies for example or someone forgets their code, or is left behind and security needs to get passports out. But I thought it required a physical key in addition to keying in an administrator code on the keypad lock.

[genian_travels]

I had a Google to see how common reports of theft were and found Royal Caribbean Internationals crime allegation statistics which the cruise industry according to US law is required to publicly disclose.

 

http://media.royalcaribbean.com/content/en_US/pdf/Alleged%20Crimes%20-%20RCI%20-%20April%20to%20June%202014.pdf

 

Bizarrely the law only requires thefts over $10,000 to be reported, of which there has been a number over the past few years.

 

This is not directed at Celebrity or RC both of which I'm very happy with, but at all cruise lines, I'm certainly going to be a bit more careful on my future voyages.

 

Thanks for this link - I'll certainly be mentioning it in my letter to Celebrity and point out thefts are fairly frequently reported on their ships, despite guest relations telling us we must be mistaken because it "never happens".

 

I'm also truly shocked at the number of allegations of rape and sexual assault on the ships… :eek:

[cle-guy]

Thanks for this link - I'll certainly be mentioning it in my letter to Celebrity and point out thefts are fairly frequently reported on their ships, despite guest relations telling us we must be mistaken because it "never happens".

 

I'm also truly shocked at the number of allegations of rape and sexual assault on the ships… :eek:

 

It is important to not the these are reports of ALLEGATIONS not necessarily confirmed cases.

 

The allegations of sexual assault are 1/5 that of those as reported on land. (5 per 100,000 versus 26 per 100,000 on land)

[warmwinds]

Just grasping at straws here - when you won the first time, then won the next night, is it possible that either of you took money from the first night to use to gamble with in the casino the second night?

[Eddie's Girl]

You are right Wine-O. Last year on our TA with you the same thing happened to me and the lost item was found under that front lip. However I don't think that is the case here. You and Louise have fun next year on Silhouette. We'll be on her in the Baltic in June '15.

[AlanAllyn]

demon_princezz:

 

Be sure to note post 15 on this thread. That is from Celebrity's main office. They do monitor these threads and have asked for more information.

[robsmom]

I too, wonder about a possible miscount by the OP. It just doesn't make sense that anyone would take $220, and leave all the rest of the $$ and valuables in the safe. Especially, since any credible accusation of theft is cause for immediate termination of employment.

 

.

 

The theft of the $220 actually makes sense to me. If the theft took all of the money and valuables the passengers would have clearly noticed it an reported it. By taking a bit from the two different places, the theft could have been hoping that it would never be noticed.

[warmwinds]

Another thought...did you have any negative dealings with either room steward before this happened? Did you remove your tips from being automatic?

 

I truly hate to believe that some are dishonest, but I guess it's naïve not to do so. I've also in my own personal experience sworn up and down that I did or did not do something which was later proven to be false (especially as we've gotten older, lol).

[galavant3]

The theft of the $220 actually makes sense to me. If the theft took all of the money and valuables the passengers would have clearly noticed it an reported it. By taking a bit from the two different places, the theft could have been hoping that it would never be noticed.

 

My mother in law (and her neighbors) were being robbed by their cleaning lady. It took a while to figure it out because she would take just one earring, or one bracelet and leave everything else in place. If it doesn't make sense to you, perhaps you don't have the mind of a thief...which is a good thing!

 

I used to take my better jewelry on a cruise. Now I take only costume. We never had a problem but I found myself worrying too much about it.

[cle-guy]

Here's an info sheet on in-room hotel safes.

 

http://www.saflok.com/products-solutions/257116/in-room-safes.html

 

Some need special coded swipe cards to enter, some need physical keys and a code to enter. Some do have master keyed pin codes to enter. Will vary by manufacturer and safe model.

 

These models do have audit trail capability, letting staff "interrogate" and find the last 100 openings of the safe and how it was opened, and with what code(s)

Edited October 24, 2014 by cle-guy

[Host Jazzbeau]

I have seen several posts claiming that any time a room safe is opened by any kind of master key/code it resets the number -- so if you can open the safe with the code you had programmed in, there is no way anyone else has been in it. Has anyone seen documentation that this is not the case?

[bikerunner]

Thanks for the responses so far, sympathies and well wishes. In answer to a few points/questions -

 

 

 

They did run a key audit which confirmed only the cabin attendant and his assistant had been in the room, verified by the security camera footage. Security also ran an audit on the safe - unfortunately all it shows is that it was opened and closed throughout the day, not what time it occurred. Ironically, they ran it the next day while we were in port and we were told we would have to get security to reopen it for us as they had locked it with a new code. When we got back to the room we found they left it wide open! Coming back to that scene made us think we might have been robbed again, so we had another frantic 10mins of double checking all our money and documents again. Thankfully everything was in order, but that was very sloppy on their part.

 

 

 

Okay good, definitely need to follow this up.

[need2bespoiled]

Someone said it's a small casino, which is true. It's a small ship. It's entirely possible, someone in the casino, knows a cabin steward, information is shared, etc. I want to doubt it, but could imagine it, or maybe I've watched too many movies.

 

I fear there will be no definitive answer to what happened.

 

Happy sailing,

Jenna

[blindrid]

 

I'm also truly shocked at the number of allegations of rape and sexual assault on the ships… :eek:

 

Why would you be. I found it a smaller number than I thought. I look at it this way: the ships are small towns with 2-3,000 people on board, the majority transient- like you and me. The ships go every week-that's 102-156,000 people a year. The crime is a lot better on a ship than in the US.

[cruiseerf]

Hello:

 

Luckily I have not had any thefts onboard any ships. That said, we sailed 7-8 times on Silversea with a very wealthy distinguished English couple. Very kind people and on the first cruise we were together His gold Rolex disappeared and she lost a diamond earring. They called housekeeping who turned over their room looking for it and these items were never to be found.

 

We heard about the $30,000 Rolex and the $15,000 to replace the diamond stud for the next 6 cruises. The Cruiseline said they had no proof it had been stolen (which was true).....Just that it was missing. They ended up dropping the issue and we cruised until She passed away.

 

Two months after her death we received a note from him that the watch had been found and so had the diamond earring which his daughter was going to make into a pendant...It has somehow made it into a pocket of an old handbag.

 

Moral of the story is: We are all human.....We all make mistakes. We all forget doing something and then remember when we find that item. For what does not appear to be a lot of $$ these people made this situation uncomfortable for the cabin attendants and IMHO I would have just let it go....These people still had to interact with the people they accused every day.....For $100....ugh. Choose your battles. This is not one I had chosen.

[FLACRUISER99]

I'm also of the opinion that the room steward did not do it and the OP is mistaken than the cash is missing.

[Caribbean Chris]

I wonder how often these episodes go unreported. I once had some cash (not a lot) taken from my wallet on a HAL cruise, and felt stupid for leaving my purse on the floor by the bed, and did not report it. Maybe I should have, but you begin to doubt yourself and don't want to accuse someone and open up a big messy inquiry.

 

Mostly, though, I felt bad because we all want to trust our wonderful room stewards. It's just statistically true that despite the majority of honest, hard-working individuals in ANY business, a dishonest person will sometimes get access to your stuff.

 

As far as the official response...I think the cruise ship management has to present a sort of neutral face as they investigate (rather than rush to agree and apologize to the "victim.") No employee can/should jump in and make soothing statements that suggest they agree you've been robbed. The investigation has to follow its course.

 

And if a front desk person seems ho-hum about it, imagine how many times they've had upset passengers claiming their gold rollexes and diamond earrings are gone, only to see the sheepish person later admit it was found in the evening bag. Probably happens several times per sailing.

[johhnnyt]

I wonder how often these episodes go unreported. I once had some cash (not a lot) taken from my wallet on a HAL cruise, and felt stupid for leaving my purse on the floor by the bed, and did not report it. Maybe I should have, but you begin to doubt yourself and don't want to accuse someone and open up a big messy inquiry.

 

Mostly, though, I felt bad because we all want to trust our wonderful room stewards. It's just statistically true that despite the majority of honest, hard-working individuals in ANY business, a dishonest person will sometimes get access to your stuff.

 

As far as the official response...I think the cruise ship management has to present a sort of neutral face as they investigate (rather than rush to agree and apologize to the "victim.") No employee can/should jump in and make soothing statements that suggest they agree you've been robbed. The investigation has to follow its course.

 

And if a front desk person seems ho-hum about it, imagine how many times they've had upset passengers claiming their gold rollexes and diamond earrings are gone, only to see the sheepish person later admit it was found in the evening bag. Probably happens several times per sailing.

 

Really Good Points!

It brought back a memory

We had a couple sitting with us on a voyage one time, and day three she had her earrings stolen from their safe, reported it and absolutely convinced it had to be their steward or butler since they were only other ones that had access to the safe

 

She talked about how guest relations and security wouldnt admit fault, and at first port stop contacted her lawyer at home, Celebrity Executive offices in Miami and her insurance company, and demanded stewarts and butler be fired

 

Day 5 and 6 at dinner that's all we heard about

 

By day 8 it was out of her system I guess since we didn't hear the story repeated

 

Day 10 (of the 12 day cruise), her husband told me she found the earrings in one of her other purses a few days before, he felt terrible and being a stand up guy apologized to the stewarts and butler, guest relations, and security

 

He told me she was still convinced someone stole them and returned them after she raised a fuss. I could tell by the look on the husbands face, he knew that wasn't the case

 

I would think that cruise ships like any small community have to use presumption of innocence if there is a lack of evidentiary standards, so although they might feel bad for the person they are speaking to, they can't admit fault when they don't know fault exists

[caladezi]

I'm also of the opinion that the room steward did not do it and the OP is mistaken than the cash is missing.

 

I agree with this opinion. However, there is another possibility that perhaps the husband (they are newlyweds) decided to borrow part of his new wife's share and along with his money try to double their winnings. He may have lost it all and either been embarrassed or afraid to tell the new wife. What better way to explain the loss than to claim that the steward took it?

Edited October 25, 2014 by caladezi