Gift Card Bonus

[wesport]

Just received and email from HAL about a gift card bonus. Buy $500 get $100 bonus. Buy $1000 get $200 bonus. 20% return on your money. Better that a CD right now. 

[Krazy Kruizers]

Sounds interesting.

 

Thank you for the information.

[AlanF65]

The bonus needs to be spent by the end of the year, so I think it could be use for excursions and other items on a future cruise but its not clear

 

Terms & Conditions:

*Gift Card Bonus Offer: Order $500 in Holland America Line Gift Cards in a single transaction and receive a $100 Promotional (“bonus”) gift card. Order $1,000 or more in Holland America Line Gift Cards in a single transaction and receive a $200 Promotional (“bonus”) gift card. Offer is applicable to orders placed from March 26, 2020 6:00AM PST to May 31, 2020 11:59PM PST, while supplies last. Holland America Line reserves the right to terminate this promotion at any time. All gift card purchases and bonus gift cards will be denominated in USD. The Promotional gift card will be delivered to the recipient as a digital gift card only. No promo code is needed and Promotional gift card will be automatically applied to the qualifying transaction. Promotional gift card expires on December 31, 2020. Gift cards may be used for purchases on board Holland America Line vessels or applied as payment to a Holland America Line cruise booking. This card may not be redeemed for cash, unless required by law. Purchases made on bonus gift cards are non-refundable after December 31, 2020. Bonus gift cards are non-transferrable after December 31, 2020. Holland America Line does not accept responsibility for cards lost, damaged or stolen, or any unauthorized use of cards. Unauthorized resale prohibited. Complete gift card terms and conditions are available at hollandamerica.com/giftcardterms. Acceptance and/or use of this card constitutes acceptance of these terms and conditions, which may change at any time.

[HUNKY]

Unfortunately the gift cards and bonus would have no value in a bankruptcy.  (I don't think CCL will go bankrupt, but I'm not prescient).

 

Sort of reminds me of small independent restaurants selling gift cards which will probably never be able to be redeemed.  Better to support those restaurants offering to-go and delivery who are more apt to survive.

[DaveOKC]

While I think HAL will survive at least until next year, the issue of having to cruise by Dec 31, 2020 is a problem for me.

 

SW airlines is doing a similar thing - letting you purchase miles for a discount right now.  Not a bad deal if you need a few miles to book a free flight, but not really worth it IMO.

Edited April 18, 2020 by DaveOKC

[FlaMariner]

That is a good deal....but I'm starting to hesitate because of the complications of working through all my entanglements with HAL.....

 

• I'm still waiting on "government taxes" refund for cancelled cruise
• I tried to use my FCC (from cancelled cruise) to book a new cruise but was told I needed to cough up an additional $600 for deposit
• I tried to use my FCC (from cancelled cruise) on an already booked cruise but was told I needed to wait to receive my FCC (funny that was not a concern when I wanted to use FCC for bullet point 2)
• I tried to transfer OBC on cancelled cruise (big $50....the promo for booking a cruise after recently cruising) to existing booked cruise and was told "none of the OBC transfers"
• I asked if my shareholder OBC from cancelled cruise could transfer to existing booked cruise and was told "you need to send in the request again"

I feeling tapped out for now!  But I still keep trying hard to give HAL my business.  Starting to wonder if they really want me to sail again.  LOL. 

 

But Waffle House has a similar promo.....Buy $100 in Waffle House Gift cards and get $20 off!!!!! I'm all over that one!  Yahoo!  

 

Smooth sailing everyone.....when we can.

 

 

 

 

[Al Aboard]

On 4/18/2020 at 8:49 AM, DaveOKC said:

While I think HAL will survive at least until next year, the issue of having to cruise by Dec 31, 2020 is a problem for me.

 

SW airlines is doing a similar thing - letting you purchase miles for a discount right now.  Not a bad deal if you need a few miles to book a free flight, but not really worth it IMO.

Hi Dave,

 

I am not reading the limitation the same way you are.  I just purchased a $1000 gift card and received the bonus $200 card.  I immediately applied the $200 bonus card to my 2021 cruise booking - and it was accepted as payment.  My reading of the disclaimer was that the card had to be used this year.  Did you see or hear something different ?

 

Al

[victory2020]

On 5/4/2020 at 6:50 PM, al4282 said:

Hi Dave,

 

I am not reading the limitation the same way you are.  I just purchased a $1000 gift card and received the bonus $200 card.  I immediately applied the $200 bonus card to my 2021 cruise booking - and it was accepted as payment.  My reading of the disclaimer was that the card had to be used this year.  Did you see or hear something different ?

 

Al

This is how I'm understanding it - you can use bonus as a deposit on a cruise in 2021 or beyond

[Dicksonstuff]

We just booked and paid for a Spring 2021 12-day cruise on the Maasdam entirely using this gift cards promo. 

No problem redeeming them.  With the "Have It All" sale, pay in full discount + onboard credit, and our cruise.com booking credit, and the lefft over gift cards, we have have a package retail value of $6,676+ for the total cost of $3500.00.  So long as they don't go BK we should be good.

Edited May 25, 2020 by Dicksonstuff

[wdw1972]

I plan to do the same - buy the $1,000 gift cards and then use them and the "free" promo cards to fully pay off a March 2021 11-day Zuiderdam sailing.  Between the 10% fare discount, the extra $250 obc and the value of the promo cards, it's a savings of approx $1,300.  

 

Did you buy the physical cards or digital?  I've only ordered 1 so far and did the physical, but with making payment through my TA I don't see any reason to have gotten a physical card.  I'd just be emailing her the number!

 

Sue/WDW1972

[Al Aboard]

I bought the digital card.  They e-mailed the numbers to me in a couple of hours.  I already applied the gift ones and some of what I bought to my cruise booking and will call tomorrow with the final payment.  Didn't see how to get the discount and OBC applied paying online so I figure my PCC was supposed to do it.  I tried to contact him last week without success and fear he may have been laid off with the recent cuts so will try to talk to anyone.  With all the other perks, it is a great deal.  My cruise is in January. Just hoping it's a go then and not cancelled and we are comfortable with it at that time. 

Edited May 26, 2020 by al4282

[strickerj]

Anyone tried buying more than one $1000 gift cards and getting multiple bonuses? I'm thinking of doing this since we can easily spend more than $2400 on the remaining balance and shore excursions for our rebooked cruise for next year.

[Al Aboard]

4 hours ago, strickerj said:

Anyone tried buying more than one $1000 gift cards and getting multiple bonuses? I'm thinking of doing this since we can easily spend more than $2400 on the remaining balance and shore excursions for our rebooked cruise for next year.

Yes.  I purchased 2 on my sign-on and 1 on my wife's - together we got $3600  I bought them on separate occasions to make sure each one went through properly.  I used them to pay off our January 2021 cruise - the bonus cards first - and made the final payment via a phone call to take advantage of the early pay-off bonus.  My father-in-law did the same.  We had to call them for his purchases since it was rejected online - the problem was his e-mail address we used did not match his profile.  He tried to prepay his gratuities with one that he bought, but it was rejected with the message that you can't use gift cards to prepay for gratuities (they used some term like onboard services) - but we expect that they can be used for that purpose while on the ship.  He also tried to by the signature drink package and was unable to split the purchase between a gift card and a credit card - it appeared that the entire amount on gift cards would have been OK.  Make sure you keep track of the gift card numbers and pins until after your cruise is completed.  If there is any refund needed, it will be put back on the gift card it came from and if you lose the info you are out of luck.  I bought digital cards to get them ASAP. and saved the card image on my PC.

[Iris5383]

The offer dates have been extended. Buy the cards by June 30 and use by Dec. 31, 2021. Good to know you can buy multiple cards.

[CM1984]

1 hour ago, Iris5383 said:

The offer dates have been extended. Buy the cards by June 30 and use by Dec. 31, 2021. Good to know you can buy multiple cards.

 

This is great news that the offer has been extended through 2021.  Now it’s time to buy them for sure.  Thanks for the post.

[Iris5383]

Details are here.

https://www.hollandamerica.com/en_US/giftcard.html

[Horizon chaser 1957]

So - I live in Canada, and we have booked the 2021 Grand Africa. We bought 3 $1000 Gift Cards to apply to our booking. They are issued in USD, because that’s the only currency they come in. Now the booking department is saying that they can’t be applied to a Canadian booking. Not because it’s not allowed, but because the computer isn’t programmed for it. 
Our TA is fighting her way up the Gift Card department food chain to make this work.

Anyone else from Canada have this problem?

[Veenendaal6]

So - I live in Canada, and we have booked the 2021 Grand Africa. We bought 3 $1000 Gift Cards to apply to our booking. They are issued in USD, because that’s the only currency they come in. Now the booking department is saying that they can’t be applied to a Canadian booking. Not because it’s not allowed, but because the computer isn’t programmed for it. 
Our TA is fighting her way up the Gift Card department food chain to make this work.
Anyone else from Canada have this problem?

I’m not from Canada, but in the Netherlands I was told the same. Our booking is in EUR, so we can’t pay with USD gift cards. When I look at the Dutch website, it says you can pay current and future bookings, so I mailed them wether I can or cannot pay the booking with the giftcards. Don’t have an answer yet.


Sent from my iPad using Forums

[Horizon chaser 1957]

47 minutes ago, Veenendaal6 said:

 

I’m not from Canada, but in the Netherlands I was told the same. Our booking is in EUR, so we can’t pay with USD gift cards. When I look at the Dutch website, it says you can pay current and future bookings, so I mailed them wether I can or cannot pay the booking with the giftcards. Don’t have an answer yet.


Sent from my iPad using Forums

 

Our TA, who is a real fighter, took this higher and higher up the ladder. The final decision was that in spite of what the website says YOU CANNOT USE GIFT CARDS TO PAY FOR A CRUISE UNLESS THE BOOKING IS IN USD. The reason for this is not because of policy, it’s because their booking system can’t convert between currencies. They agreed that the write up in Terms and Conditions is misleading, and apologized. They even offered to refund the gift card purchase, which they don’t normally do.

We are keeping the cards to use as OBC, which IS possible. While this is frustrating, I’m just so relieved that we were using the cards for ourselves and not as gifts. To give someone a gift card that turned out to be useless would be a disaster!

[kapitch]

We have transferred our 2021 cruise reservation to the big box TA, can the gift card and bonus card be applied toward the remaining amount due?  If so, how would redemption work?  All future payments have to be processed by the TA?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Kathy

[TJR_0323]

17 minutes ago, kapitch said:

We have transferred our 2021 cruise reservation to the big box TA, can the gift card and bonus card be applied toward the remaining amount due?  If so, how would redemption work?  All future payments have to be processed by the TA?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Kathy

Your TA should accept the gift card just like a credit card (it has a unique number on the back side. There is also a pin number on the back but you have to scrape the surface (like a lottery ticket) to see it. I don't know if your TA will need the pin. 

[victory2020]

You do need the pin to pay. I bought a card before they extended the offer & the date of the bonus card. Does anyone know if my bonus card bought when the expiration date was Dec 2020 has been extended till 2021?

[Horizon chaser 1957]

How long does it take to get the bonus gift cards after you buy the regular ones? 
A couple of days ago we made 3 purchases of $1000 gift digital gift cards. We received them immediately. There’s still no sign of the bonus gift cards.

 

[CM1984]

 

 

We received our bonus card emails within a minute or two from ordering the $1,000 cards.  Good luck!

[strickerj]

2 hours ago, CM1984 said:

 

 

We received our bonus card emails within a minute or two from ordering the $1,000 cards.  Good luck!

Same here. The bonus $200 gift card was also in my cart prior to checkout and on the invoice.