Its an interesting article. It seems wrong to me that RCI would reward people with free stuff who may have never paid for a cruise on their ships (like the 14 year old Champion discussed in the article) while reducing the perks for the Diamond and Diamond Plus members who have numerous cruises with them.
If I were a Diamond Member, I would be a bit upset to hear that I didn't need to spend tens of thousands of dollars on cruises to be recognized, I only needed to have enough free time to sit at my computer and post glowing reports about them
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================================================== ========== Carnival Cruise Lines:
Fantasy 90, Celebration 95, Victory 05, Conquest 05, Spirit 6/06, Freedom 6/08, Holiday 7/08, Victory 6/09, Valor 9/09, Dream 6/10, Splendor 8/10,Conquest 8/11,Magic 11/11,Triumph 4/12,Spirit 7/12,Freedom 11/12, Triumph 2/13 - The fire cruise
NCL Dream October 2006, RCCL Mariner OTS June 2007
Imagine how I feel having 50 cruises with Royal Caribbean. Lately I've been getting perks taken away instead of added. The only perk that counts is the Concierge Lounge. Any person with 10 cruise gets that...what's the point of me being such a loyal customer? I'm seriously thinking about putting my eggs into another basket. Where does the marketing staff get these hair brain ideas? Maybe they should consider a political career.
I personally have several issues with this. There is a big difference between someone being a fan of a cruise line, and someone being compensated to post positive reviews and comments. To me it destroys the integrity of a cruise forum. It should be mandatory for those being compensated to disclose that fact with every post. That way everyone can take it with a grain of salt, if it's even worth that.
This is also a slap in the face to RCI's loyal cruisers, who've had their loyalty perks reduced.
I also want to echo what Dave said. It will not be acceptable for Royal Champions to post here. The forum staff has made many behind the scenes efforts to keep links and ads from being placed in the posts for registered members. We are not going to allow the post itself to be an undercover, compensated comment. Cruise-Chat is far from the biggest cruise forum. However, there is a loyal following of members here because of the friendliness, helpfulness, and most of all the integrity of this forum.
I'll have to agree with all of you. I can only imagine how someone who has been as loyal as Sonny feels.
There has been a couple of huge threads on CC about this.
We're diamond members and we see perks disappearing. We really enjoy cruising on RCL...we've never had a bad cruise and never came home disappointed. We have four booked right now but I have found myself spending more time looking at other cruise lines. If it wasn't for losing money on our next cruie certs we would probably cancel a couple and try another line or two.
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Upcoming Cruises:
Celebrity Eclipse March 5, 2011
Serenade of the Seas Oct 23, 2011
Originally posted by IslandCruz:
I personally have several issues with this. There is a big difference between someone being a fan of a cruise line, and someone being compensated to post positive reviews and comments. To me it destroys the integrity of a cruise forum. It should be mandatory for those being compensated to disclose that fact with every post. That way everyone can take it with a grain of salt, if it's even worth that.
Well said, indeed. I hope Sonny was able to recover from the slap in the face that he received. Overall, inflation considered, Sonny has spent six figures of hard-earned money cruising with RCCL and they kick sand in his face with reckless abandon. Also, don't confuse the fact that these people aren't cheerleaders... they are paid lobbyists. No different from the irksome bunch that crowds the D.C. beltline. They have no place here or any other forum. They should give the money that they are paying to market this program and pay it's participants to the people who made them the premier company that they are. Sheesh!
This was one of the strategies that was used to get the current president elected.
For every critical post a stream of positive posts would appear and move any negativity off the first pages of local newspaper blogs, media blogs and political blogs.
It seems to me that a lot of people will not take the time to conservatively sort out the fluff that they read in some forums and go after a product unaware of any of its deficiencies.
It's sad to me that RCI has employed these tactics.
just one more reason that having unbaised monitors is so appealing on this forum. I wonder what RCL corporate is smoking these days. thanks again Sonny and Dave.
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