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A question on the GRATUITIES

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oakridger

oakridger

Posted
Posted (edited)
40 minutes ago, ellieanne said:

If you pre-pay your crew gratuities, you get a slight discount. For my non-suite, I prepaid $155 per person for my 10-day cruise.

 

I have never seen a discount for prepayment on Crew Appreciation!  The only time I have seen a lower cost like that would be if one pays it before their cruise and then the price goes up you would not be charged the higher price.  The cost was $15.50/day as you paid but went up to $16/day.  That may be the situation. Can you provide more information if it was truly a "discount"? 

 

~Nancy

Edited by oakridger
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ellieanne

ellieanne

Posted
Posted
49 minutes ago, oakridger said:

 

I have never seen a discount for prepayment on Crew Appreciation!  The only time I have seen a lower cost like that would be if one pays it before their cruise and then the price goes up you would not be charged the higher price.  The cost was $15.50/day as you paid but went up to $16/day.  That may be the situation. Can you provide more information if it was truly a "discount"? 

 

~Nancy

I can't explain. I didn't dig into to it too much. The rate per day was quoted at $16/per person, but then I was charged only $15.50/per person per day. It happened to my parents and younger brother on the same cruise. So we figured it was a discount for early payment.
Your mileage may vary.

(For reference, the Sept. 2023 cruise was booked in 2021, and all the information indicated the gratuity per person/per day was $16. We pre-paid the gratuities in August 2023, about 3 weeks before sailing.)

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rodndonna

rodndonna

Posted
Posted
13 hours ago, ellieanne said:

If you pre-pay your crew gratuities, you get a slight discount. For my non-suite, I prepaid $155 per person for my 10-day cruise.

 

Are you sure that wasn't the result of a "good" currency exchange rate?  

 

As pointed out here by another poster, we Canadians generally do better by prepaying for our gratuities as they give us a pretty good deal on on our horrendous (but maybe not as horrendous as yours?) currency exchange rate. 

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electro Great Review Rare

electro

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, rodndonna said:

 

Are you sure that wasn't the result of a "good" currency exchange rate?  

 

As pointed out here by another poster, we Canadians generally do better by prepaying for our gratuities as they give us a pretty good deal on on our horrendous (but maybe not as horrendous as yours?) currency exchange rate. 

I am Canadian and book my cruise in CAD. For my last cruise in Sep, I prepaid my gratuities on line and was charged in USD. 

How do you prepay in CAD?

 

Thanks

Lois

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rodndonna

rodndonna

Posted
Posted (edited)
32 minutes ago, electro said:

I am Canadian and book my cruise in CAD. For my last cruise in Sep, I prepaid my gratuities on line and was charged in USD. 

How do you prepay in CAD?

 

Thanks

Lois

 

when they add it onto your booking (which is in CAD$) do you get a seperate charge to your card in US$ or does HAL not convert and charge you in CAD$?

 

On our cruises in CA$, they always convert it and charge us in CAD$. Same as when we have added in HIA after booking - when it was a charge of $50 US/pp/day, it would be converted to a CAD$ value and that value would be better than we could do by a few points (maybe 5 points better was about what I remember on our last booking a while ago)

 

edit: By prepay I am referring to BEFORE you get on the ship. If you get on the ship and go to guest services and prepay grats, you would then be charged in US$.

 

As a side note, this does not apply to excursions, dinners etc. Those are all charges US$ regardless of when you buy them. 

 

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electro Great Review Rare

electro

Posted
Posted
23 minutes ago, rodndonna said:

 

when they add it onto your booking (which is in CAD$) do you get a seperate charge to your card in US$ or does HAL not convert and charge you in CAD$?

 

On our cruises in CA$, they always convert it and charge us in CAD$. Same as when we have added in HIA after booking - when it was a charge of $50 US/pp/day, it would be converted to a CAD$ value and that value would be better than we could do by a few points (maybe 5 points better was about what I remember on our last booking a while ago)

 

edit: By prepay I am referring to BEFORE you get on the ship. If you get on the ship and go to guest services and prepay grats, you would then be charged in US$.

 

As a side note, this does not apply to excursions, dinners etc. Those are all charges US$ regardless of when you buy them. 

 

I prepaid online before the cruise. It was charged in USD.

It actually showed up in my account onboard as OBC and then the gratuities were still added daily which surprised me.

HIA added online before cruise was charged in CAD.

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rodndonna

rodndonna

Posted
Posted
13 minutes ago, electro said:

I prepaid online before the cruise. It was charged in USD.

It actually showed up in my account onboard as OBC and then the gratuities were still added daily which surprised me.

HIA added online before cruise was charged in CAD.

 

Maybe that has changed (for the gratuities). Not a huge deal, but kind of a bummer,

 

I know they used to add and then remove the gratuities everyday on the account, but I "thought" on our last cruise (Sept/Oct) that was not the case anymore but could be remembering that wrong. I don't recall it ever showing up as some form of OBC though. It would show up as a charge and then add a credit to reverse (forget how they labelled that credit back, but not OBC). It makes sense if it was considered OBC that it was charged in US$, as OBC is strictly US$.

 

...Weird ....things are always changing though.

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VMax1700 "Live from...." Rare

VMax1700

Posted
Posted

For our last cruise the process was as follows:

I pre paid online the gratuities.  The price quoted was in Euro (our booking was in euro as we live in the euro area). Our payment was processed in euros. The rate used by HAL was very beneficial to us and much better than paying USD onboard.

When we arrived onboard our statement showed credit for the gratuities of $224 ($16 x 14 days) for each of us.  

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sunviking90 Holiday Sharing Rare

sunviking90

Posted
Posted

We were able to prepay gratuities in CAD for our cruise leaving tomorrow. Paid them about 3 weeks ago. The exchange rate they used when I calculated it was 1.30, so much better than waiting. Oddly enough buying OBC is in USD so would cost much more. Consistently inconsistent is HAL. @electro’s experience sounds unusual but I don’t doubt it.

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rodndonna

rodndonna

Posted
Posted
18 minutes ago, sunviking90 said:

We were able to prepay gratuities in CAD for our cruise leaving tomorrow. Paid them about 3 weeks ago. The exchange rate they used when I calculated it was 1.30, so much better than waiting. Oddly enough buying OBC is in USD so would cost much more. Consistently inconsistent is HAL. @electro’s experience sounds unusual but I don’t doubt it.

 

The 1.30 rate was the last rate I remember from summer, so good to see they are still holding that rate 😃

 

I wonder if Electro's experience in having to purchase and use OBC was handled differently for some odd (but maybe legitimate?) reason? Can't think of any reason why they would have charged it that way though....

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electro Great Review Rare

electro

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, sunviking90 said:

We were able to prepay gratuities in CAD for our cruise leaving tomorrow. Paid them about 3 weeks ago. The exchange rate they used when I calculated it was 1.30, so much better than waiting. Oddly enough buying OBC is in USD so would cost much more. Consistently inconsistent is HAL. @electro’s experience sounds unusual but I don’t doubt it.

Did you prepay online or through a PCC/TA?

 Maybe that is the difference?

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Nickelpenny Holiday Sharing Rare

Nickelpenny

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, vicd1969 said:

Guess this is a good time to remind that the AARP HAL gift card costs 10% less than face value, which effectively means if you buy enough OBC, your gratuities are basically 10% off.

Now you must be an AARP member to buy the gift cards. It just recently changed. 

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ellieanne

ellieanne

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, rodndonna said:

 

Are you sure that wasn't the result of a "good" currency exchange rate?  

 

As pointed out here by another poster, we Canadians generally do better by prepaying for our gratuities as they give us a pretty good deal on on our horrendous (but maybe not as horrendous as yours?) currency exchange rate. 

No, no exchange rate. It was quoted as $16/per person/per day. I paid in US $ with a US credit card, but my credit card was only charged $15.50/per person/per day.
Like another poster, the pre-payment was applied to my account as a credit and the gratuity was added to the account daily.
I cannot explain the discount I got. It showed up as $16/per person/per day on the account, but at the end of the cruise, with the pre-payment, the on-board-credit, and the credit for 2 missed cruises, HAL actually owed me money. I got just over $100 refunded to my credit card. My parents and brother got over $300 refunded to theirs. I'm not questioning it -- I checked the math and it all works out, even the discrepancy in the pre-payment and daily charge -- and I did get the refund quoted within a week of the end of the cruise, though the initial hold on my credit card when I boarded took over a month to clear.
I can only speak to my experience. And your experience may differ.

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