Removing T ips

Have heard from an acquaintance tha she was able to get travel agent to remove all tips prior to sailing .I was under the impression that you had to do on the ship and her logic is that she eats no meals in the dining room and will only tip those who give her service.Is this possable or is travel agent blowing smoke?Also will those who are affected by her actions know which passengers are not tipping?Would like to hear from those who know the real story.

[DeeDee]

I think the TA is blowing smoke. As far as I know this can only be done on the ship.

Yes, there will be a list of those who have the tipping removed from their account and staff will be informed.

Wonder if your acquaintaince knows this bit of information.

Sounds to me like this person is just being cheap.

We went to the front desk to have our tips removed for a couple of reasons. We had terrible dining room waiters and also did not eat there 3 nights out of 10. We opted for the Pinnacle one night had had dinner on our verandah the other two nights. (The last two nights becasue we just got sick of how they treated us) Those three ights we tipped the waiters individually. On the other hand we had an incredible room steward. So we removed all of the $200 and ddi our own tipping as we saw fit. The dining room waiters kept rolling their eyes at us every time we asked for a different condiment or other simple things....nothing difficult. They never smiled and everything arrived so helter skelter---one person would receive their appetizer while another person had already had the appetizer and salad and was served their entree. We never had one hot meal. Our table of 4 was always the last table out of there---10:00 -10:15.

The process at the front desk is easy---but you do have to fill out a form saying why you are removing the tips. HAL says only 5% do that, but I would beg to differ based on what I saw down at the desk two days in a row! LOTS of people wanted to do their own tipping.

As far as the help being notified about tips being removed........didn't appear they were as when we handed the "bad" waiters their tips in envelopes, they asked if we had removed the auto-tips. We told them yes we had. They replied that they make about 30% less than normal when people do that. They were disgusted as they were going to have to put the money into the "pool." That suited us just fine as they were only worth 25 % of what we normallly tip. Tipping should be based on good service and these two guys were just rude the entire 7 nights and everyone in that section agreed with us.

[peaches]

Unfortunately, JUDY, your incredible room steward had to put your tip to him into the pool also. When a pax removes the automatic tipping from their ships account, then ALL tips given in cash directly to any and all stewards have to be put into the pool. So your room steward received a lot smaller tip from you than you intended.

This is what makes the new system unfair. If you want to tip everybody automatically you can give additional cash tips to whomever you would like and they can keep 100%. But if you feel a steward does not deserve the automatic tip so you remove it from your account intending to tip all stewards as you wish to, then all are penalized by having to pool what you give them.

You are correct in your comment on pooling tips when they are removed.Maybe some of these people should contact Holland and get it right from the horses mouth.I am personally happy with Celebrity where you have the opton of placing on your shipboard account or giving at the end of the cruise which in my opinion is much more personable.My guess is that there are only a few who would not tip on Holland and I did hear that it was less than 5%.Those are the same who stiff waiter and waitresses.