How do you settle your onboard account? I'm thinking in particular if you use a card on an American ship.
The reason I'm asking you all this is that a client of mine was filling in her Royal Caribbean cruise personaliser today and they were asked if when they went to settle their bill they wanted to use the ships currency converter before the bill was paid or just rely on their card providers conversion rate.
In case you're not sure what I'm talking about, (and apologies to those that do if I'm dumbing this down), when you check in on any cruise ship you have to set up your onboard account with a debit or credit card. At the end of the cruise anything you've spent onboard will then be deducted from that card. However, you will be given of choice of either settling the bill using the ships currency converter or just relying on your bank to convert it for you.
Which do you use?
If you let the ship do it for you they will convert your bill, (in dollars), into sterling. If you rely on your bank to do it the ship will just request the amount from your card in dollars and the bank will convert it for you.
So which is best?
Well like all things there's no easy answer and it's always wise to check both exchange rates before you go but from past experience I've always found my bank has given me the most competitive exchange rate.
It may seem cynical but I'm sure the ship always gives you a bad exchange rate and keeps a little for themselves.
My best advice is if you have the time or inclination look into it before your cruise but as a general rule of thumb trust your bank, (and I never thought I'd catch myself saying that), rather than the cruise line.
Do you agree?
Is that how you do it as well or have you had a different experience?
Happy cruising.
This is called dynamic currency conversion. You will always get a better deal if you choose to pay in the on board currency, and let your credit card company do the conversion.
ReplyDeleteI agree I always double check my credit card rate and it is always more advantageous than the cruise line.
ReplyDeleteI also agre, but even better apply for a credit card that dosen's charge for converting which can be around 3%.I have an Halifax one and I only use it abroad. In September on a HAL cruise, the rate when it was converted from dollars was 62 pence. Not bad I thought.
DeleteNever let the ship convert, to expensive. Cheaper if your credit card company does it.On Grand Princess a few years go, we had to complete a card in the cabin and hand it into reception if we wanted our account to be paid in dollars.No competed card and they converted to sterling.There was a large queue at reception the day the bills came out.A Canadian couple had their account converted to sterling and then to Canadian dollars!
ReplyDeleteNever let them convert the dollars back to sterling as you always lose out. Better still ask to keep it in dollars and use a credit card like Saga or Post Office which does not charge a commission for any spending worldwide. Extremely useful when cruising for use in port too.
ReplyDeleteWe normally pay cash on the last night, having bought $'s from our local TA in the months prior to the cruise, hence making sure of the best conversion rates leading up to the cruise.
ReplyDeleteAny purchases on the last night (wine etc) can be prepaid (estimated) and then the miniscule balance left to be claimed from the Amex card we had registered.
We have just set up our account for the Adriatic cruise on Celebrity Silhouette next June and we were able to log that we would pay in cash, and did not have to register a CC
Went on a Princess Cruise and ticked the box so the credit card company converted the balance. Unfortunately Princess ignored this, converted it AND added a 3% charge. There was a lot of unhappy people when the final bills were issued.The purser wasn't able to do anything except advise us to complain in writing to their Head Office in Southampton. Apparently they'd had this problem for about 6 weeks and still hadn't sorted it, but didn't tell the passengers the credit card company conversion option wasn't available when booking in.
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