Beware of the Arcade on RCCL...

[Mr. Candyman]

5 hours ago, Host Clarea said:

 

Correct, when an account has no charging ability, then there should be no charges.  Seems a simple concept, and yet, for some odd reason, the arcade charges somehow cannot be controlled.  If I didn't know how bad Royal's IT was, I would say this is a planned "mistake", but I can believe that they don't have the IT skill to solve the problem.

I believe someone posted that once you use your seapass in the arcade the  system automatically turned the charging privileges back on.  So what happens if you just have a daily limit set?

 

3 hours ago, MandyMooToo said:

 

We moved to cash accounts some time ago and do not regret it.  Less hassle for us, no surprise charges and no fee (as of now) if you need cash from your account. 

I'm just trying to better understand how to utilize a cash account.  You said no surprise charges at the end.  So with a cash account don't the daily charges still show up as they would with having a cc on file?

[Clarea]

8 minutes ago, Mr. Candyman said:

I believe someone posted that once you use your seapass in the arcade the  system automatically turned the charging privileges back on.  So what happens if you just have a daily limit set? ...

 

Good question, it might be a somewhat effective workaround.

[Mr. Candyman]

13 hours ago, marci22 said:

But as I said, I don't think anyone knows how this actually works.

 

 

1 minute ago, Host Clarea said:

Good question, it might be a somewhat effective workaround.

I'll be the guinea pig and experiment in 60 days.  I'll set a limit on one the kids seapass and I'll put another with no privileges.  But seeing how it appears to work differently between the ships, we still may not achieve a definitive answer.

 

[Clarea]

3 minutes ago, Mr. Candyman said:

 ... But seeing how it appears to work differently between the ships, we still may not achieve a definitive answer.

 

 

True, but it may something that is common to all ships in the same class.

[MandyMooToo]

30 minutes ago, Mr. Candyman said:

I believe someone posted that once you use your seapass in the arcade the  system automatically turned the charging privileges back on.  So what happens if you just have a daily limit set?

 

I'm just trying to better understand how to utilize a cash account.  You said no surprise charges at the end.  So with a cash account don't the daily charges still show up as they would with having a cc on file?

 

With a cash account the daily charges still accrue. The amount can be slightly mitigated because they only allow a certain amount to be charged before you have to come pay it down but it is more so to protect against charges after the cruise. 

[crusinthrough]

17 hours ago, PhoenixCruiser said:

What? If you have a Royal Caribbean credit card you get double points!

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk
 

This is a benefit if you have the cc

[crusinthrough]

16 hours ago, brillohead said:

Your comment is totally irrelevant to the subject at hand.  In a situation like this, whether it was a cash account or a credit card account, the same thing would have happened.   

If the kids ran up a balance on a cash account, you'd still have to go to Guest Relations on the last night and pay the balance -- having a cash account doesn't mean you don't have to actually pay the bill!  If your bill isn't paid in full, you won't be allowed to scan off the ship on the final morning.  

And while YOU may not see a benefit of setting up your account with a credit card, the vast majority of the thousands of people on the ship don't want to spend their last evening of the cruise standing in line at Guest Relations. 

 

Can you imagine on a Freedom class or larger ship, a line of over 2,000 people at Guest Relations the last night????  (That's assuming that most staterooms are a couple/same household, so only one person from each stateroom would need to go pay the bill.)


 

There is a limit as to the amount you can charge with a cash account before paying.  The original post said there was $800 in charges, which would not have been allowed with a cash account.  It may have been less but it would not have been as much.  In addition, the title of  the thread is beware of the arcade.  I offered a way to use the arcade without having a surprise $800 bill at the end of the cruise.  If you find it irrelevant scroll on. 

[brillohead]

10 hours ago, Hogbay said:

With a cash account on a short cruse the limit is $300 before they notify you and $500 for longer ones . We are not rich like you and a $800 ( AU $ 1,142.00 ) would really hurt us and still would have to go to GS . 

Thank's Nashna for your warning 

If the kids each use their card on a cash account, wouldn't they EACH be able to charge up $500 before being cut off, so two kids could charge $1000 total?   

I'm not rich, not sure where you got the impression that I was, nor what the relevance is???  Even if I were lucky enough to be rich, I wouldn't let hundreds of dollars get charged to my account erroneously -- that's a good way to not stay rich!

And as you stated, you'd have to go to Guest Services anyway if there's an error, so what does it matter if there's a cash account or credit card on file.  If there's NO error and you have a credit card on file, you don't have to go to Guest Services at all.

 

[brillohead]

9 hours ago, Mr. Candyman said:

Would setting up a cash account prevent charges in the arcade?

 
Not at all -- you can still make charges to your ship account with a cash account, just like you can charge drinks, room service, daily gratuities, purchases in the shops, etc.  

[brillohead]

7 hours ago, crusinthrough said:

There is a limit as to the amount you can charge with a cash account before paying.  The original post said there was $800 in charges, which would not have been allowed with a cash account.  It may have been less but it would not have been as much.  In addition, the title of  the thread is beware of the arcade.  I offered a way to use the arcade without having a surprise $800 bill at the end of the cruise.  If you find it irrelevant scroll on. 

However, if different kids on different accounts each racked up $500 in charges, you could still end up with a surprise bill of $800 or more.  

Having a cash account or a credit card account is still irrelevant to the discussion.  The REAL problem is that Royal's IT department is so inept that they're unable to turn off charging privileges on cards when requested, or putting spending limits on cards when requested. 

In this day and age, there is NO reason for this to be an issue.  If Chuck E. Cheese can figure out how to run an arcade with a bunch of 4yos running around unsupervised, why is it that RCI can't do the same???  

IMO, Royal should have written off the entire $800 charge and simply fixed the problem with their arcade system years ago, period. 

Why not run it like the casino (after all, that's basically what it is!)?  Have a change machine that will turn cash into tokens -- if parents want their kids to be able to play in the kiddie-kasino, they can give them cash. 

There could be a machine there that is compatible with the ship's charging system, so that if kids have charging privileges they can get tokens out of the machine, and if they don't have charging privileges, they have to get an adult to either give them cash or use the adult's card to get tokens.  With a system like that, you could still purchase an arcade gift card that the kid can use to get tokens (a separate physical card not tied to the SeaPass), and when the card is used up, no more tokens are dispensed from the machine. Easy-peasy, no problems for anyone, no surprise charges at the end of the week for anyone, period.  

In this day and age with the technology that we have available, there is NO EXCUSE for why Royal is unable to set up a workable solution to the Kiddie Kasino.  

[Clarea]

2 hours ago, brillohead said:

 ...

In this day and age with the technology that we have available, there is NO EXCUSE for why Royal is unable to set up a workable solution to the Kiddie Kasino.  

 

Totally agree, but this is typical of RC to put this on a very low priority as it will result in making less money.

[LMaxwell]

4 hours ago, brillohead said:

  Have a change machine that will turn cash into tokens -- if parents want their kids to be able to play in the kiddie-kasino, they can give them cash. 

 

 

Pretty sure since we've moved away from coin-op machines that spending has increased.  So you can outright forget that happening. 

[October17]

I also noticed that controlling the Arcade credits in the arcade, on the stateroom TV or in the app was impossible on Harmony in April. The kids in our party (14, 15 and 19) each got $100 arcade credit. The only way to keep track was for them to count (not fun, and easy to loose track, making it a chore) or stand in line to Guest Services to check how much is left. The machine for adding credits (?) in the arcade did not show what was left. And two of them went a few dollars (4&6) over by accident - machine did not alert, and did not show up in the app. 

 

Royal needs to work on how this is set up...

[broberts]

5 minutes ago, October17 said:

Royal needs to work on how this is set up...

 

No incentive to reduce arcade revenu.

[Clarea]

27 minutes ago, October17 said:

 ...  The machine for adding credits (?) in the arcade did not show what was left. ...

 

Not surprising, it's like ROyal engineered the situation to be easy to overcharge.

[Nashna]

UPDATE...  Thanks to all of the posters who "got" our complaints.  Royal Caribbean has just responded with an offer to reduce each child's bill to just $25.00.  The parents accepted this settlement and are very happy with the huge reduction in their bills.  I posted this issue to alert other parents/grandparents to be aware of this situation.  Let's hope that RCCL is able to resolve this problem so no other family is faced with a huge bill.  Our entire family (19 people) had a wonderful cruise on The Allure.  The resolution of this issue, makes us all very satisfied that RCCL did the right thing.  

[Norwich Cruiser]

25 minutes ago, Nashna said:

UPDATE...  Thanks to all of the posters who "got" our complaints.  Royal Caribbean has just responded with an offer to reduce each child's bill to just $25.00.  The parents accepted this settlement and are very happy with the huge reduction in their bills.  I posted this issue to alert other parents/grandparents to be aware of this situation.  Let's hope that RCCL is able to resolve this problem so no other family is faced with a huge bill.  Our entire family (19 people) had a wonderful cruise on The Allure.  The resolution of this issue, makes us all very satisfied that RCCL did the right thing.  

 

25 minutes ago, Nashna said:

UPDATE...  Thanks to all of the posters who "got" our complaints.  Royal Caribbean has just responded with an offer to reduce each child's bill to just $25.00.  The parents accepted this settlement and are very happy with the huge reduction in their bills.  I posted this issue to alert other parents/grandparents to be aware of this situation.  Let's hope that RCCL is able to resolve this problem so no other family is faced with a huge bill.  Our entire family (19 people) had a wonderful cruise on The Allure.  The resolution of this issue, makes us all very satisfied that RCCL did the right thing.  

That’s great to hear.

[KelSny1011]

Glad to hear(read) and THANK YOU for posting your story!

[Tree_skier]

For all the ranting about the terrible customer service on Royal their customer service dept. sure seems to come through a lot in the end!

 

Glad you got a positive resolution.

Edited July 17, 2019 by Tree_skier

[saharaga]

On 7/2/2019 at 10:32 AM, mjkacmom said:

This is not the first time I’ve heard of this happening, so I’m sure they know it’s an issue. I give charging privileges to my kids on vacation, and they know not to go over budget. This is different, it was a separate card that was supposed to have $100 worth of swipes. It’s like a visa gift card, once the money is gone, it no longer works. 

 

Unfortunately, it's not a separate card. It's loaded onto the sea pass card of whoever has the credit. I was pleased that it worked as intended on our Adventure cruise in April. The card reliably declined any attempt to use it in the arcade after the initial credit ran out and also when our reloads ran out. My husband and I were able to reload our son's arcade credit using our Sea Pass cards. This is the first time, we didn't have an issue with the arcade credit. 

[Arzeena]

22 hours ago, Nashna said:

UPDATE...  Thanks to all of the posters who "got" our complaints.  Royal Caribbean has just responded with an offer to reduce each child's bill to just $25.00.  The parents accepted this settlement and are very happy with the huge reduction in their bills.  I posted this issue to alert other parents/grandparents to be aware of this situation.  Let's hope that RCCL is able to resolve this problem so no other family is faced with a huge bill.  Our entire family (19 people) had a wonderful cruise on The Allure.  The resolution of this issue, makes us all very satisfied that RCCL did the right thing.  

What a relief that must be for the parents. Glad it was resolved to their satisfaction.

 

[Judyrem]

Well, this is a great cautionary tale.  I was a bit stressed out over my internet, and was at Guest services and they asked if I wanted to allow my grandaughter charging privileges. I said ok.🙄

 

She went to the arcade and before 30 minutes passed, she used 41$ worth of play.  I caught it right away and told her no more and she agreed.  She was horrified she spent that much in such a short time.

 

Needless to say, we both learned  a  valuable lesson!

[icsys]

 

On ‎7‎/‎4‎/‎2019 at 9:10 AM, brillohead said:

In this day and age, there is NO reason for this to be an issue.  If Chuck E. Cheese can figure out how to run an arcade with a bunch of 4yos running around unsupervised, why is it that RCI can't do the same???  

IMO, Royal should have written off the entire $800 charge and simply fixed the problem with their arcade system years ago, period. 

Why not run it like the casino (after all, that's basically what it is!)?  Have a change machine that will turn cash into tokens -- if parents want their kids to be able to play in the kiddie-kasino, they can give them cash. 

 

Well said.

 

We only started cruising after our children became adults so have never had experience of the arcade. Thank god!

 

What I find incredulous is that somehow its okay for a multi-million dollar company to allow minors to rack up large debt playing on arcade games, which, to be fair, they are going to continue to play on for as long as the machines let them.

 

Does no one else think it is totally irresponsible and reckless of an organisation to have a system in a games arcade that would allow a minor in charge of a seapass card, with no charging privileges, to use that card in the arcade, which then automatically turns the card on in the system and gives it charging privileges, with seemingly no limit???

 

Saying there is a 'glitch', or worse, having actual terms and conditions that state 'Guest will not be notified once Arcade Credits are depleted; additional arcade play will be charged to guest’s Seapass at current onboard prices' just beggars belief.

 

I think a settlement offer was the only valid outcome. This clearly shows where the liability lies.

And yes, it should have been written off entirely.

 

Cautionary tales these may be, but I am surprised no one has legally challenged such a system, which is probably what it will take to stop it.

[brillohead]

25 minutes ago, icsys said:

Cautionary tales these may be, but I am surprised no one has legally challenged such a system, which is probably what it will take to stop it.

But nobody is going to go to the expense of hiring a lawyer to settle such a small debt, especially if RCI ends up reducing the amount when challenged.  

So this will keep on happening, until it happens to "someone important" with a celebrity following who puts it out in social media.