Error in Deluxe Beverage package pricing?

[Tasm3n]

Like sands through an hourglass, these are the days of our lives...

 

[Casino Comp Chick]

Backtracking again......

[awestover89]

At least Zack and Gwen remember to change the names when they reply. Poor Yami earlier kept copying and pasting the same response without changing the name of the person she was replying to

[AmazedByCruising]

"Taking some time to rethink things". The legal department must be busy right now 

[lovelife]

3 minutes ago, AmazedByCruising said:

"Taking some time to rethink things". The legal department must be busy right now 

 

Farcical high jinks

[grandgeezer]

I Googled this situation and apparently there is something in the cruise contract. It states that if the mistake is caught before the product or service is provided the correct price prevails. If the situation was reversed, would you settle for a compromise between the posted price and what it should have been? I bet not.

 

[Merion_Mom]

17 minutes ago, dswallow said:

 

I like Gwen's response best.  🤣 🤣 🤣

[BeachChik]

25 minutes ago, Casino Comp Chick said:

Backtracking again......

 

They can’t win. Their Facebook is flooded with people asking them to reconsider their response so they say they are going to do exactly that and you still complain?!?!

[MandyMooToo]

Curious to see what they have to say tomorrow.  They're being awful nice to people who are being awful nasty to them on Twitter and such. I feel bad for the reps having to deal with this mess, they really have no say in anything and probably only have two or three canned responses they are allowed to choose from!

[dodgestang]

It's complete obvious what's really going on here.....

[AmazedByCruising]

 

4 minutes ago, grandgeezer said:

I Googled this situation and apparently there is something in the cruise contract. It states that if the mistake is caught before the product or service is provided the correct price prevails. If the situation was reversed, would you settle for a compromise between the posted price and what it should have been? I bet not.

 

 

I don't feel that a client is expected to understand that $18/day for unlimited drinks is a mistake or "a glitch". I wouldn't. Compared to the cost (without crew, etc), very few would actually drink more than $18 worth of rum or whatever. Also, it's very common to be given all drinks for free as part of a promotion. The client gets even more confirmation when representatives don't immediately spot an error when they are contacted, it's not like the decimal point was moved and it should have been $180/day. 

[GUEST71919]

26 minutes ago, AmazedByCruising said:

"Taking some time to rethink things". The legal department must be busy right now 

 

NO doubt! 🤓 I emailed Mr. MB, a long email trying to use psychological reasoning (heck, it was a free consult, I hope he listened) and then went to Twitter and boy was the latter already full of commentary.  While I have no doubt my email went into a giant ignored pile, I did try to point out in it that their accounting could not show the hit to a reputation and the change in loyalty from cruisers, both of which I personally believe would likely have far bigger negative consequences over time. Some have said it won’t ruin the company and it won’t, but it surely can affect the profits in the long run.  Glad at least they are making noises about listening 🙂👏🏻

 

 

@grandgeezer  why so negative about people expressing their thoughts and feelings? People do have a right to feel irritated, even if you do not feel the same. I don’t think it’s necessary to assume there is only 1 correct thought on the issue.  We are all intelligent enough to understand that the RCL contract covers every possible “out” for the company; the feelings of many here relate to what is fair and ethical, not to whether they have a “right” to cancel the packages. Happy sailing 🙂

[kastke]

I am glad RC is taking extra time to rethink things. It would be a really good PR move to honor all of the packages that were bought yesterday. RC made the situation worse by having reps on the phone telling people it was a special sale, so of course word spread like wildfire. RC should have had shut their website down as soon as the error in pricing was discovered, until it could be fixed. Instead, they not only continued to let people see the 18.00 price, people were able to buy the pkg for at least 6-8 hours after it was a known pricing error. I feel especially bad for those who cancelled previously purchased pkgs in good faith that this was a valid special sale. 

 

We did not know it was an error when we first booked the pkg. I thought it was a super cheap price, but I have seen super cheap prices before on occasion! Ironically, we have a B2B scheduled next Jan/Feb - yesterday both cruises showed the 18.00 price, but I couldn’t book the beverage pkg for the first week (Jan). Kept getting time out errors, so we tried booking the second week from a different computer and lo and behold, it worked!  I know what the beverage pkgs on both weeks cost before the sales, I know what they are currently running price wise, and I will be curious to see how the “special offer” for this mistake really turns out.

 

Hopefully RC sees the better light in this situation and just let’s the packages stay as purchased. 

 

 

[HicksRA]

What’s really wracking my brain is I’d love to know how many people actually jumped on this “glitch”.

500?  1000?  5000?  

It’s got to be a bunch to cause such a dilemma for RCI. 

[Tasm3n]

6 minutes ago, HicksRA said:

What’s really wracking my brain is I’d love to know how many people actually jumped on this “glitch”.

500?  1000?  5000?  

It’s got to be a bunch to cause such a dilemma for RCI. 

 

I would guess in the thousands given all the social media I've seen on this.  

 

What I'm curious is how many people bought the package that would not have purchased such a drink package otherwise.  I know I purchased because we had to buy for all in the room including my mother who *might* drink one drink a day.  At the regular price, it wasn't cost effective.  

[MandyMooToo]

10 minutes ago, Tasm3n said:

 

I would guess in the thousands given all the social media I've seen on this.  

 

What I'm curious is how many people bought the package that would not have purchased such a drink package otherwise.  I know I purchased because we had to buy for all in the room including my mother who *might* drink one drink a day.  At the regular price, it wasn't cost effective.  

I have actually seen quite a few people posting that they only purchased due to the price and that they never get the package but did this time only because of the “special.”  Not sure how many that really adds up to be but probably a lot that would have only gotten the soda package or had considered the package but didn’t feel it was “worth it” at typical pricing. 

[Tasm3n]

1 minute ago, MandyMooToo said:

I have actually seen quite a few people posting that they only purchased due to the price and that they never get the package but did this time only because of the “special.”  Not sure how many that really adds up to be but probably a lot that would have only gotten the soda package or had considered the package but didn’t feel it was “worth it” at typical pricing. 

 

Yep.  If it gets canceled, I imagine we'll just buy a non-boozy package and out of pocket the drinks we do decide to order.

[paul1815]

19 minutes ago, HicksRA said:

What’s really wracking my brain is I’d love to know how many people actually jumped on this “glitch”.

500?  1000?  5000?  

It’s got to be a bunch to cause such a dilemma for RCI. 

Let's say it's only 1000 people.  If a more "reasonable" super-duper sale price is $38, then that is $20 per day lost revenue...times 7 times 1000 people = $140,000.  If you use $48 as the cheapest sale...it's $210,000.   No way they are leaving that on the table.  😞 

[Casino Comp Chick]

1 hour ago, BeachChik said:

 

They can’t win. Their Facebook is flooded with people asking them to reconsider their response so they say they are going to do exactly that and you still complain?!?!

 

That wasn’t a complaint, it was an observation. Perhaps you should re-read post #450 again. 

Edited July 3, 2019 by Casino Comp Chick

[MechE31]

6 minutes ago, Tasm3n said:

 

I would guess in the thousands given all the social media I've seen on this.  

 

What I'm curious is how many people bought the package that would not have purchased such a drink package otherwise.  I know I purchased because we had to buy for all in the room including my mother who *might* drink one drink a day.  At the regular price, it wasn't cost effective.  

 

I've never bought the alcohol package before and bought this. I normally buy the refreshment package on Royal and get my money's worth. I also bought it for my wife, who is technically in a separate cabin (connecting rooms, 1 kid 1 adult booked in each room). We may average 3 drinks a day each. We're not heavy drinkers, especially with the kids.

 

My mom and sister, who are sharing a room, also bought this. My mom will probably have 2-3 drinks (mostly beer) a day and my sister would pretty much only use the refreshment side of it. 

 

Between the 4 of us, we'd probably have bought 2 refreshment packages at the same price and spent less than $18 a day on average on alcohol total with several days having no alcohol. They will get more onboard revenue from the 4 us even at $18. 

[Radgirl75]

I only bought the packages because of the sale price. I bought it last time i cruised rccl and it wasnt worth it. My husband doesnt drink alcohol at all. I drink some but not enough to justify 57 dollars a day. I hope it sticks but not getting my hopes up. At least they are listening. Ncl kind of pulled some garbage in novemeber by removing grey goose and patron from the regular alcohol package. They listened and a week later it was put back.  If Rccl would not have told people that the price is a special sale and they were honoring the price the cancellation wouldnt be that hard for a consumer to take but they did and backtracked the whole thing and deleted comments.  Thats poor PR. This will be a nightmare for them for a while. Hopefully they can come to an agreement soon on what they will do. So far nothing has been cancelled for our sailing yet and my card was charged. No reversal on it yet. We shall see

[dswallow]

7 minutes ago, paul1815 said:

Let's say it's only 1000 people.  If a more "reasonable" super-duper sale price is $38, then that is $20 per day lost revenue...times 7 times 1000 people = $140,000.  If you use $48 as the cheapest sale...it's $210,000.   No way they are leaving that on the table.  😞 

 

RCCL carried 6,084,201 passengers in 2018. They had 38.43 million passenger cruise days available in 2018.

 

$210,000 is a rounding error in their normal drink package revenue, and even at $18/day would likely still cover direct costs completely.

 

300 people get sick on a cruise and the hand out 50%-off-your-next-cruise certificates to 5,000 people without much thought.

 

[Sailor_Sally]

All they have to do is make a decent offer and most people would be happy . The people that just bought it because it was so cheap would probably cancel and that would just leave all the people who were going to buy a drink package anyway  .

[springfire]

Rum runners are still the best deal!

[rmacaluso]

32 minutes ago, paul1815 said:

Let's say it's only 1000 people.  If a more "reasonable" super-duper sale price is $38, then that is $20 per day lost revenue...times 7 times 1000 people = $140,000.  If you use $48 as the cheapest sale...it's $210,000.   No way they are leaving that on the table.  😞 

If it’s 10,000 people it’s $2.1 million. Given that the error stayed active for 6 to 8 hours their exposure is probably in the millions. His is probably why they are taking so long to figure out what to do. 

Edited July 3, 2019 by rmacaluso
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