So, What's "The Catch?"

[Fern]

Paul, I would have made many mistakes on our cruise's after the 1st one(which was a "free" cruise from DH's company).

Thankfully, by the time we took our second cruise, I had found this site and was able to learn some very important things.

We've never been "caught" by anyone on board the ship (we don't do the Spa stuff), but we did spend $5.00 on a cab to a shopping center in Ocho Rios, Jamacia. After the driver dropped us off we found that at the end of the shopping area was the (very short) walk to the ship !

[OldFartCruiser]

Here are a few unexpected higher costs for your cruise.

1st - A ship transfer cost from the port to FLL is $15-$20 pp. A cab cost ~$15 for the ride. Cab goes directly to your airline, shuttle goes to everyones airline before yours.

2nd - Book your cruise then look for good airfare to & from FLL. You may be able to get a good airfare to FLL, but if your ship returns on a Saturday or Sunday be prepared to pay 50% or more for a flight home after 10:00am until 6:00pm. There will be 7 or 8 other ships (incl RCL's monsters) arriving and the airlines know that. To get around that, if you live w/i a days drive and it is a winter cruise, rent a car and drive it. The car rental agencies have an excess of cars in Florida and will charge a very norminal drop off fee.

I used Fort Lauderdale as an example, but other ports may be the similar.

OF C'er

[Paul Motter]

I was on Seabourn - Canada New England, and while in Canada I received a text message containing a picture of our dogs.

I looked at the picture on my cell phone - but it must have been 5 MB in size when attached. Even though I had "data roaming" turned OFF on my phone I was surprised to see a charge of $480 just for data on my next phone bill.

The amount of data they said I used was a mere 28 MB - but the charge is $25 per megabyte.

Now, I had data roaming turned off - so I wanted to know what kind of data I was being charged for (the bill did not specify it was the picture, this is just what I assume). Verizon actually told me I needed a court order to find out the exact type of data was I was charged for due to "privacy laws." Well, we are talking about my own phone.

Needless to say, I was told a lot of stupid, useless, incorrect information about that charge by Verizon. Finally I got a supervisor to retroactively reduce the charge to a mere $30 to reflect the cost a 50 MB data package had I pre-paid it.

Obviously, I didn't buy one in advance because 50 MB is nothing if one picture can use up 28 MB of data transfer. But in the end it was worth not having to fight over the $480 charge - so we just paid it.

[civilsid]

I have a Sprint Android phone with International calling. I did use the phone a couple times knowing completely well that I would be whacked for $3 a minute.

I tried using it a few times early in my cruise and found that the call would drop usually in under 30 seconds. When I could connect, the reception was terrible. So I stopped using the phone except when I was in a port and had a good signal. When my bill came around, I started reviewing it and saw that there were 6 incoming calls of 1 minute each from the ship the day before I reached the port. There were also 2 incoming calls that I supposedly answered between 1 and 2 AM the day befor that.

This of course made me suspicious of every call that was logged because I knew for a fact that the last 8 calls were 100% completely bogus. I called Sprint to discuss it and they are looking into the matter but it seems someone is trying to hose me for $50 or so for no reason at all.

Anybody else have this happen to them?

__________________
NCL Jewel- Panama 05/2012
Carnival Splendor 10/2011
NCL Spirit 03/2011
Carnival Freedom 11/2010

[civilsid]

update: Sprint agreed to cut the bill for the international calling in half. Maybe still not a great deal but I guess it was nice of them to at least make an effort. I don't think they cared to actually look into the issue, they just wanted me to pay my bill and go away.

[buttons16]

When you book a cruise and pay a deposit the final price of the cruise can escalate due to the volatility of oil prices prior to you paying the cruise in full....but most travel agents wont tell you this, some do...However with the price of oil plunging and some experts have speculated that oil will drop below $40 a barrel I don't see the price increase as a problem.

however I paid in full my cruise on Crystal in December.

Here is some fine print on a Celebrity statement :
in very small print it states - Celebrity Cruises reserves the right to impose a fuel supplement on all guests if the price of West Texas intermediate fuel exceeds $65.00 per barrel. The fuel supplement for 1st and 2nd guests would be no more then $10 per guest per day to a max of $140 per cruise; and for additional guests would be no more then $5 per person per day to a max of $70.
Which in my book adds up to a possible $280 for a family of 4.

I dropped the fuel charge on all customers from a high of $2.00 per trip (if a family of 2 in car price is still $2.00)to $1.00 per trip. If fuel in my area drops below $2.75 a gallon then the extra fuel surcharge oon customers would be dropped...all customers are informed of the surcharge prior to dispathing a car to their pick up point even though we are not required to tell them over the phone...all that is required is to display the fee in a noticable place in the car...we have it in bold red lettering.

[Paul Motter]

CivilSid...

I agree that there seems to be something going on with cellphones and cruise ships. My erroneous charge for $475 was jaw-dropping, and like you I couldn't get the compony to discuss it, but they did agree on a "settlement" with me - $30.

[snorklr45]

The daily "resort" fees some hotels have now been tacking on to your bill. If you don't read the fine print, you'll find out at check out when you have to pay a handy little sum for no good reason at all. These resort fees are generally an extra $10-30 per day which does not sound like a lot but adds up if you are staying a week or two..I won't even go into what hotel taxes have come to nowadays..

[aerospace]

Originally Posted by snorklr45

The daily "resort" fees some hotels have now been tacking on to your bill.

In Vegas almost every hotel has a resort fee. That way they can advertise a room for $29 cheaper and add it to your bill at the end.

On a cruise I don't mind them charging for extras, most of which I could care less about, but photo prices are just stupid now. At $10 it was a splurge a few years ago, but $25-30 for a photo on the dock now?

I have to agree on the possibility of paying more as the oil increases. Hasn't happened yet as most lines are ignoring it but when it does and you don't find out until the last night of your cruise... hate to be working guest relations that night.

[Waiting4acruise]

I have to go with the hidden port fees.
Carnival now gives you the exact port fees back instead of a flat $20 for missing a port.
But it seems funny Guest Services can't tell what the port fees are until you actualy miss the port.

[buttons16]

Originally Posted by aerospace

In Vegas almost every hotel has a resort fee. That way they can advertise a room for $29 cheaper and add it to your bill at the end.

On a cruise I don't mind them charging for extras, most of which I could care less about, but photo prices are just stupid now. At $10 it was a splurge a few years ago, but $25-30 for a photo on the dock now?

I have to agree on the possibility of paying more as the oil increases. Hasn't happened yet as most lines are ignoring it but when it does and you don't find out until the last night of your cruise... hate to be working guest relations that night.

Add-ons make the cruise company a multi billion dollar industry.

Specialty restaurants
Pay for all liquids except water, Iced tea, tea, some coffee,
Bingo
Pictures
Tours
Gift shop items
Spa
Some lines now charge night room service
Art auctions
Fast food joints
And so much more...This is where they make the big bucks.

[colorcrazie]

I have never had an issue with the hair salon, probably because I only used it once...at my husband's request...neither of us thought it was worth the $, and I would rather spend my time in other ways.
A couple of years ago, though, I did get a nasty surprise. Booked a cruise on Carnival, which we like, and one reason was the stop in Roatan. Did not know that they had built their own dockside complex. They had previously done this in Costa Maya and Grand Turk. We didn't mind either, because there wasn't a lot to do either place. But, Roatan? It was brutally hot, no pool, no shade and to get to the beach, you either had to take a long walk or pay extra for a ski lift to get down the hill. Then, you could not get to the water without booking a cabana, as these had been put up so close together that it was a wall. Plus, Carnival apparently never checked into why they were able to lease this little cove. Seems the jelly fish love it, as they were as thick you could ever imagine. I felt that if Disney built prison camps, this would be their model for it.
Haven't been on Carnival since!
Marty

[Bruce Chafkin1]

Originally Posted by anniegb

Paul

Me suspicious - never

It has puzzled me however that the cruiselines have not been more proactive to the developments in photography over the last few years; if they reduced the selling price of the photographs they would probably sell more

Annie

I always love to hear this comment on ships.
"If you would just lower the price, you would sell more".
Probably very true by the way. But perhaps a bit naive.
I suppose it matters if you sell things just to sell things, or you sell things to make a profit and stay in business.

"If Jaguar or Mercedes would just lower their price by 50%, I would buy one.
That way they could sell more automobiles."

These people apparently didn't have time to take economics 101 in school.
Selling your product at a loss is not a very wise business plan.

In the cruise industry, EVERYTHING is ALWAYS about the money.
If somebody had figured out how to sell photos for less money and still make a profit, we would all be doing it already.

[Moonlight Reader]

He is saying that if they took "less" of a profit per item, they may be able to sell "more" of that item and make "more" profit overall.

What gobsmacks me is that they haven't tried selling CDs with the pictures burned onto them for an extra cost. I know a lot of people would like to have the pictures electronically and would probably be happy to either get a CD or have the pictures sent to their e-mail address for an additional cost.