credit card points

[mysh442olds]

thats why I have a RCL VISA card. You can get as little as $50 off if you dont charge much. They give you $150 off just for taking out the card. I expect to get $300 off my next RCL cruise .. again.

 

Carnival used to be worse, and you had to only go thru their TA .. I hear its better than it used to be.

 

Or just get a card that lets you decide what to buy?

 

 

right but u pay 1/3 MORE ON ROYAL thank Carnival for the same rooms

[PAERRN20]

I redeemed my Fun Points today and it said that it will be applied to my balance the next day. I thought I would be getting a gift certificate to use towards my cruise, instead of just taking $100 off my credit card balance. Any insight into this??

[okwriter]

:mad:

okay so i got the carnival credit card. I am a 20 year old college student who loves to cruise. IS CARNIVAL CRAZY. that point system is dumb? does anybody else agree with me. Carnival needs to change this and fast. Very unhappy with this point system

 

Gee, that was an informative post. :confused: Nice of the OP to furnish so many details. :rolleyes:

 

BTW, I'm in the "love the Carnival Mastercard" camp. ;)

[jarrettdad]

The best advice to give to a 20 year old is:

 

DON'T USE CREDIT CARDS!

 

 

I wish someone had told me that at 20..... :mad:

[dclark]

Simple math still shows that the CCL card is for suckers. If you are excited about getting $500 back from it, you really should look at the numbers:

With a card that pays back 1%, you will have to spend $50,000! That's right, $50,000 on one card! I bet there are a lot of people reading this who don't even net $50,000 in one year, much less spend that much on one card!

Here's an example of something better (if it is still being offered, wife got it last month):

Get an American Air Visa, spend $2400, they'll give you 50,000 miles. If you book 8 months in advance, you can apply those miles for two "mile saver" round trip tickets. Assuming that the tickets are worth $425 each, that is $825 in value, or a 30% return on your spending. You can get that reward pretty quickly. Once you get the points, you can cancel if you want, enjoy your free flights and be happy you got this card instead of the cruddy, chintzy CCL card. Spend $2400 and get $850 back, or spend $85,000 to get $850 back, which makes more sense to you???

[okwriter]

I redeemed my Fun Points today and it said that it will be applied to my balance the next day. I thought I would be getting a gift certificate to use towards my cruise, instead of just taking $100 off my credit card balance. Any insight into this??

 

I'm a little slow (it's late for me...) and according to another poster, I'm also a *sucker* :D but I'll give it a shot.

 

If you charged your cruise to your card and then applied your Fun Points to your balance, it seems that is the same as getting a gift certificate to apply toward your cruise---but with a lot less effort. Yes? No?

 

If you wanted a certificate of some sort to take on board, I think you'd have to go to Carnival's site and order those Funship Dollars (or whatever they're called) and then have those applied to your S&S account on board.

 

Did that help or just muddy the waters? :)

[ShakyBeef]

Simple math still shows that the CCL card is for suckers. If you are excited about getting $500 back from it, you really should look at the numbers:

With a card that pays back 1%, you will have to spend $50,000! That's right, $50,000 on one card! I bet there are a lot of people reading this who don't even net $50,000 in one year, much less spend that much on one card!

Here's an example of something better (if it is still being offered, wife got it last month):

Get an American Air Visa, spend $2400, they'll give you 50,000 miles. If you book 8 months in advance, you can apply those miles for two "mile saver" round trip tickets. Assuming that the tickets are worth $425 each, that is $825 in value, or a 30% return on your spending. You can get that reward pretty quickly. Once you get the points, you can cancel if you want, enjoy your free flights and be happy you got this card instead of the cruddy, chintzy CCL card. Spend $2400 and get $850 back, or spend $85,000 to get $850 back, which makes more sense to you???

 

 

As I said before, it doesn't matter so much how much I spend to get my FREE rewards. I was buying those groceries, gas, clothes, etc. anyway. I didn't spend the money to get reward points. And I never paid a dime in interest. So all reward points (no matter how small the reward in cash value), are extra. FREE. Gravy. I didn't have to go out of my way to get them, flipping cards, etc. They are extremely easy to redeem and get me what I want - money back on cruising.

 

I'm sure you're right: there are a lot of people here that don't make $50K a year, but there are plenty of us that make more than that, too. And plenty of us who spend that much on one card in a year (easy, when it's the only card one uses, and one uses it for everything.;)).

 

One's income doesn't really matter in this situation. If the card is paid off every month, whatever FunPoints are earned = FREE MONEY FOR CRUISING. That's something that most of us here would like to get. This is a cruise forum, afterall.:)

 

And, let's not forget, you get double FunPoints for all purchases from Carnival-owned companies. That can add up relatively quickly for those of us who cruise with CCL, Princess, HAL, etc.

 

As for your example... that's all well and good, if you want to spend a lot of time and effort "churning" cards, as you do. And if you fly. Some here do not fly. Give me cruise rewards over air-miles anyday. I'll keep my "cruddy, chintzy CCL card", thanks. But thank you for trying educate this sucker, just the same.:rolleyes:

[LHARTWICK]

Although we have yet to cash in any of our Fun Points, the system does seem much easier than the old Sea Miles system. At least now you can use any agent, any where, any time and then just take the refund on the card. To me it's just better.

 

Now a question for those of you who HAVE cashed in your Fun Points: We currently have enough points for roughly an $1800 cruise. (according to the Fun Points web site conversion calculator) With the new system I'm assuming the $1800 "reward" can be used towards a cruise for 1 OR 2 people? i.e., it's based on dollar amount, not number of passengers? Does this make sense?

 

Having said/asked all of this, we have friends who have an RCCL card and they already have earned a second free cruise in less than the time it has taken us to earn ONE with the Carnival card. I know them pretty well and know our spending/charging habits are very similar. I haven't looked at the details yet, but it seems that the RCCL card is a better deal??

[bahama daydreamer]

We used our points on our cruise in Oct. We had charged 311.00 to our sail and sign and got a 300.00 credit on our bill. I use my card for everything and pay it off at the end of the month. Since Oct. we've accumulated 13300 points so we'll be using it again on our next cruise. I've had the card for 6 years and I like this point system better than the previous system. I'm keeping it.

[ShakyBeef]

We returned from our Carnival Pride cruise this Sunday. We had paid for the cruise with our Carnival FunPoints MC, of course, as well as using it for our sail-and-sign account (and for buying a FCC while onboard).

 

I couldn't remember how many FunPoints we currently had, but I was hoping we had enough to "pay us back" (get a credit on our MC account for the full amount spent) for our sail-and-sign account.

 

Well, as it turned out, we were able to "pay us back" the cruise fare, which was larger than the sail-and-sign total, by redeeming a lot less FunPoints than I thought it would take.:) We were on a FREE cruise, and we didn't even know it until we got home.

 

And the frosting on my free cruise cake is that after redeeming those FunPoints, I still have enough left over to pay for the FCC I bought. So that amounts to me getting $200 free money towards a future cruise. I am very happy with this credit card.:D

[Cruiser from MS]

Why is it dumb? I just received $400 obc on mine.

 

I agree, why is it dumb? We received a statement credit of $800.00 for our upcoming cruise. I am very happy.

[dclark]

I agree, why is it dumb? We received a statement credit of $800.00 for our upcoming cruise. I am very happy.

Read what I said about return, I gave actual examples and numbers.I spent $2400 and got more back from airline cards than you got spending $80,000!

 

Or spend $2400 on your card, you get back $2.40, spend $2400 on mine and you get over $800.

Tell me why you taking the $2.40 reward instead of the $800 reward is NOT dumb???

If you never fly and never will, I also have hotel examples, free rooms. Bottom line is not how much $ you are getting back off a cruise; it is how much you are getting off the whole vacation.In my book, $800 beats $2.40, but maybe you are using the "new math"?