Daghis

Meanwhile, my offers started appearing again. I received offers each of the past three weeks including the same one you had. Maybe not having cruised with Royal Caribbean lately makes them want me even more?

I don't understand Casino Royale. As I've mentioned before, I'm not gambling much at all these days. As expected, my offers on the website dried up. But today, I got this 23RCL803 offer for a balcony cabin on one of about a dozen different itineraries ranging from 3-7 nights, plus $100 freeplay. I have to wonder what input into their algorithm keeps sending me significant offers because it ain't my accumulated points.

My offers finally dried up as I'd been expecting them to for over a year now. I've got one more Royal Caribbean cruise booked (Symphony TA this fall), but after that, I think my husband and I are moving to Celebrity for future cruises. We feel like we've aged out of RCI's offerings, so we'll move over to somewhere a bit slower and quieter (and with a smoke-free casino).

I'm certainly curious what others will offer, but I remember when "VIP" was the only status as you were either an invited Club Royale member with all the perks it afforded or you weren't. The "VIP" sticker enabled the free drinks. I wonder whether "VIP" means something more or if it was generic usage.

No, the IRS doesn't care about that sort of stuff. It does have a date on it, and that appears to be where Casino Royale screwed up. There is no reason that a jackpot won in 2020 should be entered on a 2021 W-2G with a 2021 date. Casino Royale could not tell me how the duplications caused the dates to be changed. As far as your specific question, since I don't know what actual forms Royal Caribbean submitted to the IRS, I don't know what was on those W-2Gs other than they were associated with the 2021 tax year which for me was impossible to begin with. If someone else had W-2G income in both 2020 and 2021, a mistake like this might be much harder to find.

Oh, that's very true that the tax laws are dreadful here, but the IRS doesn't get the blame for this one as they're responding to what they thought was valid data. They had no idea they were being lied to by Royal Caribbean. 🙄

So, the answer is that they took my three jackpot winnings that I had in February 2020 and duplicated them with 2021 dates and submitted them to the IRS. They have issued three "Corrected" W-2G forms to me that correctly show the dates of winning having been in February 2020, so I hope that will appease the IRS. I am, of course, somewhat concerned that if this happened to me, how many others are going to be similarly affected? I would fear that anyone who got a taxable jackpot in the brief period in 2020 when cruises were going pre-pandemic, maybe they, too, will have this issue. 😟

It sounds like your experience is part of what defines the negative reputation of the IRS overall. I'm so sorry you had to deal with that. I'm not sure about the "87,000 armed IRS agents". I think someone conflated the ability to hire 87,000 IRS employees over the next 7-8 years (through 2031) with specifically hiring Special Agents (the ones authorized to be armed). It seems that they only actually hope to hire 300-350 Special Agents for the entire fiscal year, some of whom are backfilling 150-175 retirement/attrition departures.

I can say that I've had a couple "You owe us taxes!!" letter for amounts in the low 5-digits of tax liability. Each time, I wrote very detailed, step-by-step instructions for how I computed my values based on their forms and instructions. And, each time, I'd get a letter back from the IRS saying "Oh, yeah. You're right. Matter closed." This time, though, the IRS has faulty information. Even if I can't get Royal Caribbean to admit the mistake to me, upon writing back to the IRS claiming that Royal Caribbean fraudulently submitted those forms, I would have to imagine that Royal Caribbean might be forced to claim the error directly to the IRS in the end anyway since they don't have paperwork backing up these purported winnings. Although I'm not thrilled with the idea "Maybe it's just happening to me," but it seems more likely that it may affect others as well given the human nature of the error I suspect it to be.

I'm not as quick to brush it off like that, especially since the weight of the IRS is in the picture. As a software engineer, I cannot offer a straightforward error that could either change someone else's SSN (to mine) or otherwise changes the year of the winnings to a different value. I figure it has to be human error, and if this is a case, the actual human error is that there wasn't an automated process to preserve data accuracy in the first place. These may very well be my W-2Gs, but they would be from pre-2021. I had a buttload of W-2Gs, including some from Royal Caribbean, in 2020. My guess is that someone entered these three W-2Gs from a 2020 cruise into some IRS-reporting application and mistyped 2021. I did send a redacted copy of the letter I got from the IRS to someone @rccl.com. I look forward to hearing what they report back.

This seems to be a good place for general Club Royale commentary, at least better than a new thread just for this. I got a letter from the IRS saying that I failed to report three W-2G forms totalling $11,133 from Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd in 2021. The problem is that I didn't win any jackpots anywhere in 2021. In fact, I didn't do much gambling at all that year. I'm on the phone with Club Royale "Resolutions". They confirmed that they have a record of me winning a whopping $454 on the one cruise I went on that year. They have not yet found a reason why they've told the IRS otherwise.

I must admit, I'm ever so slightly tempted by the 9-night on Vision of the Seas. I've not yet sailed on a Vision-class ship and I've not yet sailed out of Baltimore. There's a high novelty factor of doing that kind of a trip solo. I'd even be able to drive down in the morning so I wouldn't necessarily need to get a pre-cruise hotel. (If I were to miss the cruise, whatever I'd pay would be fully refundable, so although it'd be disappointing, it's at least a somewhat cost-effective option.)

Yes, I received it (23JUN102) as well. This is the list I got. The fine print does say "This complimentary cruise only offer is valid for one (1) stateroom, including complimentary dining venues and entertainment, for the ship(s) and sail date(s) (the “Qualifying Sailings”) and stateroom category(ies) described for the qualified player in this communication (the “Recipient”) and one (1) guest, double occupancy."

People have reported that those offers require you to pay for the double-occupancy difference. You'd end up paying your taxes/fees and gratuities and then the remaining of the BOGO fare pricing. (You wouldn't need to pay second passengers taxes, fees, or gratuities.)

There is a lightly-active thread in the casinos forum where some of this is also being discussed. And to @RFerrington's point, I'm getting offers well beyond what I should be getting based on my level of play over the preceding 5 cruises during the past ~18 months. It doesn't make sense. Additionally, we're currently discussing there that Casino Royale is starting to experiment with offering a half-comped cabin (casino guest comped, but the rest of the double-occupancy rate remains due). They seem to be making changes in the realm of offers.

Thank you for the info. It didn't work for me, but I was able to find this other page which provides a couple extra steps that may be required when doing this on the Wi-Fi adapter.

Please report back if you are able to achieve this. I just took a quick peek in System Settings for my WiFi adapter, and it's got the hardware address grayed out. I don't know whether it's possible in macOS, but perhaps works with a Windows laptop.

I was on the first no-Jazz-on-4 sailing on Harmony of the Seas last month. I was very disappointed not to have that venue as I had been really looking forward to it. They did offer jazz at least one evening up in Dazzles, but it was no comparison to the Jazz on 4 experiences I've had in the past as Dazzles had the music blaring at >90dB (according to my Apple Watch) which is far too loud for me for a quiet, relaxing evening; it had been a very reasonable volume in Jazz on 4, though.

I'm pretty sure the answer is no. Certainly, Club Royale is making it look like they're trying to cover even less of our travel companions' cost. It had been, though, that booking an extra cabin or two would get a nominal discount for those folks, but that's about it. I don't know what the current details are for this as I've not done it with RCI in quite a while.

I just got the USPS Informed Delivery PDF of the 23VAR403 offer. I'm sharing it here but specifically noting the fine print since it seems this is getting more relevant. This complimentary cruise only offer is valid for one (1) stateroom, including complimentary dining venues and entertainment, for the ship(s) and sail date(s) (the “Qualifying Sailings”) and stateroom category(ies) described above for the qualified player in this communication (the “Recipient”) and one (1) guest, double occupancy. Exclusions include, but are not limited to, all taxes, fees and port expenses, online booking fee, gratuities, applicable fuel surcharges, upgrades, additional guests in the stateroom, additional staterooms, air and ground transfers to/from the embarkation and debarkation ports, and onboard expense account items for products and services rendered. Offer applies to NEW individual bookings only made by residents of the United States and Canada. Offer is nontransferable, is not combinable with any other offer and is subject to casino capacity and stateroom availability at the time of booking. The Offer must be booked by May 3, 2023 and departs no later than September 30, 2023. Call your Casino Royale Representative at 1-888-561-2234, Monday - Friday 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. EST and Saturday - Sunday 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. EST, or contact your professional Travel Advisor or your Independent Casino Representative. Please visit RoyalCaribbean.com/casinopromos, for full terms and conditions. ©2023 Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. Ships’ registry: The Bahamas. 23008200 • 3/23/2023 23008202_Casino_June-September_Sailings_ID_23VAR403.pdf

Wow, these things just don't make sense sometimes! Mine was a 403 offer, but before April 1, I was Signature, and honestly that status was fully carried-forward since pre-pandemic; I've not gambled much at all since cruising restarted, and my status now is where it deserves to be, Choice. And, yet, I still get comped cruise offers. My solo trip in February was by chance. I happened to be traveling to Orlando the weekend before and noticed that I had a comped junior suite available for the Monday-Friday sailing on Independence of the Seas. What was really interesting is that when I checked availability (given it was a last-minute booking), there was one JS available, but 2 people couldn't go into it (presumably because of life boat station capacity limits and nearby cabins with >2 people), but 1 person was just fine. Being spring break and last-minute, that was a $5K booking for just myself. 😳

Wow. They must be really upset that they let me go solo in a comped JS! 🤣 That's just ridiculous. On the good side, since it's not the usual BOGO50 sale, each passenger is 30%-off each, so one doesn't have to worry about paying for the first vs. second passenger rates.

Yup! Just did that last month, but got triple points for solo in a comped junior suite.

I'm sure we're all well familiar with the "Wash Your Hands" song and video so I won't inline it, but have you heard the song "Falling in Love (With My Best Friend)" by Matt White? You may find the chorus starting around 0:48 interesting. I heard this song playing while onboard Harmony of the Seas last week and immediately launched Shazam on my Apple Watch once I recognized the melody.

Oh, @edrussell indirectly brings up a good point. I was talking Crown & Anchor points, not tier points. I don't have a recollection of paying attention to that, I'm afraid.