It's called "Freestyle" dining on NCL, Char. They won't remove those charges, it's required of all guests except those little ones under 3 years old. Here's a paragraph from their FAQ's:
NCL Service Charge
On all NCL ships payment of Pre- Paid Service Fee is required. A fixed Service Charge of $10 per person, per day will be added to your onboard account. For children ages 3-12, a $5 per person per day charge will be added to your onboard account: there is no charge for children under the age of three.
Not quite true. You can go to the reception desk and have your "tips" removed from your onboard account. They will ask for a reason and then comply with your request.
On a side not...it is my belief that the people who have their tips removed, on NCL, are the same ones that miss dinner on the last night on the the traditional cruise lines.
On HAL -- those tips that people give AFTER they have signed the waiver doesn't just go to a supervisor to be divided among his crew. It is turned into the front office and then divided among all the crew.
There is information to that effect on the bottom of the form.
I am with you and it isn't only on NCL that people do this. Those who don't want to pay the tips always get out of it and have some lame excuse. My reason for wishing that tips were simply included in the fare.
Having to pool personal tips for a job well done is not entirely fair.
I hate people that skip out on gratuities. That to me is just inexcusable.
However, with that said, I also do not like pre-paid gratuities or being told exactly what I should give.
Two reasons; first, it should be left up to me to reward someone for good service or to cut back if the service was not acceptable. And I do not like being told how much I will give. This should be my choice, not theirs. How would you like it if a 15% gratuity was added to all of your restaurant orders, including fast-food places?
Second, if gratuities are pre-paid or included in the price of the cruise, there is no incentive for providing good service. Everyone gets the same amount of tips irregardless of the quality of service. And yes, there are lots of arguments about this both ways, but human-nature is what it is - if you could paid exactly the same as someone else, where is your incentive to try and do better if money is the only factor involved?
Personally, I much prefer to hand my gratuity to my server and personally thank them for their service.
In every day living, there are too many things that are being taken out of our hands and decided for us. This is one of those things that should remain personal and inside of our control.
But whether I want pre-paid or do-it-myself gratuities should be my choice and neither I nor my servers should be rewarded or penalized by the cruise line for me deciding either way.
Remember when restaurant tipping was 10-15%? And prices went up (and tip amount as a natural percentage), and somehow it turned into 15-20%??? OK--I am fine with that.... but don't tell me the price didn't go up....
Is that what we are are subject to onboard now? Prepaid tips, and an "extra" thank you tip. Don't get me wrong, I have tipped as high as 100% (great dinner special), but I like to reward great service. So now, I prepay AND have to add extra.... hmmm.
If some are fussing about the $10 per day service charge, I suspect there will be great fussing when NCL increases their daily charge to $12 in January '09. I just noticed this when checking on the NCL website recently.
But, I still think it's easier to accept the service charge and tip the couple of crew members with whom we have personal contact. And with freestyle dining this could only be our cabin steward as we don't frequent the bars. Not sure if we'll even use the paystyle dining rooms either.
NCL offers bargain prices -- and it would appear from cruise reviews you get bargain basement service in some cases, at least on the European cruises when staff is paid in American dollars. We still booked a winter cruise but are prepared for this.
I contacted NCL in reference to the Service Charges and was told that they CAN NOT be removed. Dont know if they can make exceptions once on board, but I plan on leaving mine alone. I know these folks work hard to make me happy. However, I may go back to Carnival after this cruise. Carnival just seems so much easier.
We enjoyed a winter 11 day Mediterranean cruise on the Jade in January and rec'd good service.
As is our custom, we left a tip for our room steward mid cruise and did tip in cash at the couple of speciality restaurants we used.
We rec'd royal service from people at the front desk several times. We took a few ships' tours and for one handed in tickets for two different tours. No one noticed the error -- our error -- and when we went to gather for the next day's tour we were late as we looked at the ticket from the previous day and so missed the tour. We went to the front desk -- tour desk was closed -- and they happily booked us on a later tour that afternoon. This tour was cheaper than the one we missed and much to our complete surprise they refunded the difference. Now, that's customer service!
We were happy to leave the automatic tip in place. It's just part of the cost of cruising and should be factored into expenses.
If TIP really means 'to insure promptness' it's really just a service charge for service provided. Our mid cruise gifts are a genuine tip.
If you wish to remove the auto tip, you have to sign a form. All the heads, i.e., dining room manger, housekeeping, etc., are all notified that you have done this. Any cash tips that you give to your cabin steward and the dining room staff must be turned in!! They are not allowed to keep those tips. That tip money goes into a pool to be divided by everyone (as HAL calls it -- the behind the scenes people). Should an employee get caught keeping that tip, he will lose his job.
That is why we leave the auto tips in place. And we can tip those people extra at the end of the cruise and know that they are allowed to keep that extra tip.
I experienced the same thing, Yonnie, and I hate the new policy. We went ahead and did it anyway and slipped our cabin attendants an extra bit each for exemplary service.
My husband and I have booked a Panama Canal cruise on the Norwegian Star. I can't find reviews by people who have gone on that cruise. Cruise Critic has reviews of people who have sailed on that ship to the Mexican Rivera and Alaska but not the Panama Canal. We feel that $12 per person per day is excessive for the service charges.
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