Join my letter writing campaign

[EBFURR]

It has come to my attention that RCI is neglecting and discriminating against a large group of customers. That group is the Land Shark drinker, commonly known as the Parrot Head. It is my goal to see this remedied and for RCI to give us our well earned right to buy Land Shark beer on their ships. As a Diamond C&A member, I have watched with interest the recent stink over benefit changes and reductions. Just today I received a personal email from Adam Goldstein of RCI stating that due to the backlash they are making efforts to appease the angry hoards and restore some of the previously suspended perks. This inspired me to apply the same determined tactics to aide another group of oppressed and neglected cruisers – the Drunks. If each of you would take pen to paper or fingers to keys, as the case may be, we can bring similar pressure to bear on another important issue. In other words, can really put the screws to those suits in the front office. Since most of us are pretty much bleary eyed by this time of day, I took the liberty of drafting and example letter (with due apologies to LawGirl). Note to those who suffer from SOHD (sense of humor depravation) this is called a JOKE*. Google it.

* Note that I did not say it was a GOOD joke, but I am pretty sure there are some other twisted souls who might find the humor.

 

Mr. Richard D. Fain

Chairman and CEO

Royal Caribbean International

1050 Caribbean Way

Miami, FL 33132

 

 

Re: RCI Crown and Anchor and Shareholder Beer Choices

 

Dear Mr. Fain:

 

My family and I have cruised many times on RCI. I am a Drunk and frequent poster on Cruisecritic.com. I recently received an e-mail advising that RCI is removing important Diamond member benefits from its Crown and Anchor program. As of January, RCI also took away the ability to combine shareholders onboard credits with loyalty member credits.

 

I really do not give a hoot about any of that.

As a frequent cruiser of RCI, I am frustrated and offended by RCI's disregard for loyal drinkers. We have chosen to spend our hard-earned vacation dollars with RCI. One would hope that in this economy where all vacation providers are struggling to maintain customers, that RCI would be offering passengers more beer choices.

 

It has come to my attention that none of your ships currently offer Land Shark beer. Surely your marketing research shows that a large number of your loyal (and probably disloyal) customers are Parrot Heads. We have to await our arrival at a port of call that has a Margaretville handy. (This is pretty much anywhere except CocoCay and Labadee.) These days, most of us can even find Land shark in the grocery store. This makes it even more unbelievable that we cannot find it on a cruise ship in the middle of the freaking Caribbean. As loyal cruisers and Parrot Heads, it is our solemn duty to buy Land Shark and make Jimmy Buffet even richer than he already is, which pretty darn wealthy by any standard.

 

At the very least, the company could allow previously-purchased Land shark to be brought aboard for passengers who reached Drunk status prior to July 1, 2009. RCI cannot say (under the guise of customer feedback) that the restrictions in beer selection are for the benefit of its passengers. If the concern is overcrowding in the beer cooler, you can solve that problem by not offering beer choices to those who reach Drunk status after July 1, 2009. Passengers would then be forewarned of choices they will or won’t receive once they achieve a certain level of intoxication. This is far fairer than literally stripping beer choices from passengers who, like us, have been extremely loyal (not to mention plastered), spending beer money with RCI.

At this point, I and my family and friends will not be cruising RCI in the future. Based upon the many postings on cruisecritic.com, it is evident that other loyal passengers and Drunks agree and will be changing cruise lines once they sober up. If your company has no interest in treating Drunk Parrot Heads fairly, then such passengers have no reason to stay with RCI. We are hopeful that RCI realizes this serious business error and will allow current Crown and Anchor members and shareholders to have better beer choices. If not, we will be staggering over to other cruise lines, assuming we can find them, as a result of your poor business decisions.

 

 

Sincerely,

(Your name here)