Check your gratuities if on an Aussie booking

[MrYellowDuck]

My saga on the Radiance continues. Earlier today I noticed I was being billed daily gratuities, which is fine except my RCCL invoice states ever so clearly that my fare includes gratuities; being I’m a kiwi and we like the Aussies are charged up front.

 

I tried to resolve this over the phone with guest services but they did not believe me what was written on my invoice. They asked me to come and see them to prove I was not lying (I’m on level 10, they are on 4 and they are doubting my integrity). Now, what would you do if asked to waste time proving you’re not a crook? What I did was counter and offer that they come to my room or that I email them the invoice. Nope - neither option was good enough. So, I emailed the office of the CEO instead and within a couple of hours the problem was sorted with an extremely apologetic hotel director wanting this problem to go away.

 

On the one level the service here was fantastic and indeed World Class but at the same time it had earlier been extraordinarily poor. The presumption of dishonesty does not sit well with me at all. I guess the issue as so often happens in my experience is that the frontline folk you have to deal are sometimes not quite good enough. It would have been ever so easy for the experience here to have been fantastic but instead the person I had to deal with decided that great customer service was a secondary function of their role.

 

The people running the show on the ship seem to be very good and extremely customer focused. This is true of the vast majority of the others I have come across. I’m left impressed by the ability to recruit and retain such lovely people. There is a bad apple in the barrel though and I hope they get the training they appear to need to have a more positive attitude towards their guests.

 

It was right here that I learned when sailing RCCL the need or sensibility to carry around copies of what the terms were when purchases were made. Hence I have my invoice and by so doing have saved $980 that I otherwise would have been paying twice.

[Clarea]

... So, I emailed the office of the CEO instead and within a couple of hours the problem was sorted with an extremely apologetic hotel director wanting this problem to go away. ... .

Good show, I love it!:D

 

I may have to do this myself sometime.