Gift Card Offer from HAL

[richwmn]

Just got this from my Travel Agent!   One Week Only — Buy a $250+ Gift Card, Get 10% Back as a Bonus

Celebrate the 26th anniversary of Half Moon Cay with this special offer! Between October 4–October 11, 2022, when your clients buy a $250+ Holland America Line gift card, they’ll automatically receive a bonus gift card worth 10% of the purchase price. There is no limit on the number of gift cards a guest may purchase during this promotion. Bonus gift card will be delivered digitally and are non-transferable after December 31, 2023; purchases made using bonus gift cards are also non-refundable after this date. These cards make a great gift and can be applied toward future cruise fare purchases, shore excursions, specialty dining, and more! (removed link for travel agents)

Edited September 28, 2022 by richwmn

[sfaaa]

Great news. Thank you for the heads up.

[AFNavigator]

1 hour ago, richwmn said:

Just got this from my Travel Agent!   One Week Only — Buy a $250+ Gift Card, Get 10% Back as a Bonus

Celebrate the 26th anniversary of Half Moon Cay with this special offer! Between October 4–October 11, 2022, when your clients buy a $250+ Holland America Line gift card, they’ll automatically receive a bonus gift card worth 10% of the purchase price. There is no limit on the number of gift cards a guest may purchase during this promotion. Bonus gift card will be delivered digitally and are non-transferable after December 31, 2023; purchases made using bonus gift cards are also non-refundable after this date. These cards make a great gift and can be applied toward future cruise fare purchases, shore excursions, specialty dining, and more! (removed link for travel agents)

It will be interesting to see if this goes live on HAL's website on Oct 4-11 versus just to travel agents.

[Cruising-along]

2 hours ago, richwmn said:

Just got this from my Travel Agent!   One Week Only — Buy a $250+ Gift Card, Get 10% Back as a Bonus

Celebrate the 26th anniversary of Half Moon Cay with this special offer! Between October 4–October 11, 2022, when your clients buy a $250+ Holland America Line gift card, they’ll automatically receive a bonus gift card worth 10% of the purchase price. There is no limit on the number of gift cards a guest may purchase during this promotion. Bonus gift card will be delivered digitally and are non-transferable after December 31, 2023; purchases made using bonus gift cards are also non-refundable after this date. These cards make a great gift and can be applied toward future cruise fare purchases, shore excursions, specialty dining, and more! (removed link for travel agents)

Thanks, Rich.  The way it's worded it sounds like there's a limit of (1) gift card per person?  

[Seasick Sailor]

7 minutes ago, Cruising-along said:

Thanks, Rich.  The way it's worded it sounds like there's a limit of (1) gift card per person?  

 

It shows there's no limit.

[Cruising-along]

5 minutes ago, Seasick Sailor said:

 

It shows there's no limit.

Thanks Joy, I see that now 🙂  Trying to do too much at once today 😉  

[AFNavigator]

9 hours ago, richwmn said:

Just got this from my Travel Agent!   One Week Only — Buy a $250+ Gift Card, Get 10% Back as a Bonus

Celebrate the 26th anniversary of Half Moon Cay with this special offer! Between October 4–October 11, 2022, when your clients buy a $250+ Holland America Line gift card, they’ll automatically receive a bonus gift card worth 10% of the purchase price. There is no limit on the number of gift cards a guest may purchase during this promotion. Bonus gift card will be delivered digitally and are non-transferable after December 31, 2023; purchases made using bonus gift cards are also non-refundable after this date. These cards make a great gift and can be applied toward future cruise fare purchases, shore excursions, specialty dining, and more! (removed link for travel agents)

The HAL cards sold on AARP are actually a slightly better value.  They cost $450 for a $500 face value.  Let's say you buy 10 of those cards for $4,500 to get a face value of $5,000.  For the same $4,500 spent through this HAL 10% bonus card promotion, you would get $450 of bonus gift cards for a total value of $4,950, $50 less than through the AARP offer.

 

Of course, that better AARP deal assumes AARP's site is working properly.  Their site apparently has been having a lot of error issues the last 2-3 weeks on the gift card sales.  People have been getting charged for cards that don't go through or transactions keep hanging up and won't complete.

Edited September 29, 2022 by AFNavigator

[FlaMariner]

Yahoo!

 

Thanks for posting.....Final payment is due 12/15 so will save 10% off the cruise!  

 

Love it.

[FlaMariner]

17 hours ago, richwmn said:

Bonus gift card will be delivered digitally and are non-transferable after December 31, 2023; 

 

What does this mean?

[Mary229]

5 minutes ago, FlaMariner said:

 

What does this mean?

That is odd.  It used to be that gift card bonuses had a one year expiration date.  I assume it was meant to say that. 
 

@AFNavigator  as of this morning AARP is still not working.  Sigh, I have a bonus on a bonus expiring tomorrow 

[IPB4IGO]

10 hours ago, AFNavigator said:

The HAL cards sold on AARP are actually a slightly better value.  They cost $450 for a $500 face value.  Let's say you buy 10 of those cards for $4,500 to get a face value of $5,000.  For the same $4,500 spent through this HAL 10% bonus card promotion, you would get $450 of bonus gift cards for a total value of $4,950, $50 less than through the AARP offer.

Another point to consider is that the "bonus" cards from HAL expire 12/31/23.

[trk_koa]

Another caveat is that if you pay for your cruise but then cancel ( before penalties kick in), it takes a long time to get anything back. We canceled a cruise on August 30 that was paid for with a combo of credit card and gift cards. Still waiting for our  money back. 

[Mary229]

1 minute ago, trk_koa said:

Another caveat is that if you pay for your cruise but then cancel ( before penalties kick in), it takes a long time to get anything back. We canceled a cruise on August 30 that was paid for with a combo of credit card and gift cards. Still waiting for our  money back. 

That is another reason not to pay for the cruise until final payment date.  I always find a way to pay the smallest deposit possible.  I simply will not pay thousands of dollars as a deposit.  I either use a special sale with low refundable bonuses or I use a FCD 

[Charleston Lady]

Let's hope HAL will sell them in bigger denominations than $250 and give the bonus cards in bigger amounts than the $25 they gave last time. I had pages and pages of those #'s and pins. Such a trial for our TA.

Joined AARP to help with this, but that is currently not working out well.

We'll see.....

[Scrapnana]

I hope they have worked the kinks out of the processing of credit cards to purchase the gift cards.  When I was buying them in April/May, only a few went through the first time.  I usually had to call, have the representative fiddle with the information and then get the e-mail the next day that the transaction had gone through.  This happened with two different credit cards so it was not the credit card company holding up the process.  In the end, all the aggravation was worth it because the bonus cards paid for an entire 12-day cruise.

[Mary229]

It is live on the website now

[Destiny0315]

On 9/29/2022 at 4:01 PM, Charleston Lady said:

Let's hope HAL will sell them in bigger denominations than $250 and give the bonus cards in bigger amounts than the $25 they gave last time. I had pages and pages of those #'s and pins. Such a trial for our TA.

Joined AARP to help with this, but that is currently not working out well.

We'll see.....

It does allow you to purchase gift cards between $25 to $2,000, but not to exceed more than $10,000 per day. Any amount from $250+ would receive the 10% bonus credit.

[crystalspin]

On 9/30/2022 at 7:28 PM, Scrapnana said:

I hope they have worked the kinks out of the processing of credit cards to purchase the gift cards.  

I just tried to purchase a gift card and it 'hung up', giving me the error message that my information was incorrect... I clicked on Chat, and my chattee "May", told me that the error message I was receiving (9003 I think) meant that the credit card information had been automatically entered and needed to be typed in (manually?). Of course I had let Windows enter the data, verified by me entering the three-digit code on back of card, but that wasn't enough for the Buy A Gift Card protocol.

 

So try that if you get an error!

[Scrapnana]

1 hour ago, crystalspin said:

I just tried to purchase a gift card and it 'hung up', giving me the error message that my information was incorrect... I clicked on Chat, and my chattee "May", told me that the error message I was receiving (9003 I think) meant that the credit card information had been automatically entered and needed to be typed in (manually?). Of course I had let Windows enter the data, verified by me entering the three-digit code on back of card, but that wasn't enough for the Buy A Gift Card protocol.

 

So try that if you get an error!

I am noticing more and more websites are not allowing the automatic feature.

[Charleston Lady]

For those of you buying the $2000 cards, how are the bonus cards coming to you? $25?   $200?

Thanks!

[crystalspin]

1 hour ago, Charleston Lady said:

For those of you buying the $2000 cards, how are the bonus cards coming to you? $25?   $200?

Thanks!

When I put $1500 card in my cart, the bonus card showed as $150. When I changed that to a $1000 and a $500 cards, the bonus card STILL showed as $150. Since I want $100 and $50 cards to apply to OBC on my B2B, I was thwarted! 

 

Tried to make it into two purchases but was foiled at that too, as the charge didn't go through as described above. Going to try again today!

[Mary229]

14 minutes ago, crystalspin said:

When I put $1500 card in my cart, the bonus card showed as $150. When I changed that to a $1000 and a $500 cards, the bonus card STILL showed as $150. Since I want $100 and $50 cards to apply to OBC on my B2B, I was thwarted! 

 

Tried to make it into two purchases but was foiled at that too, as the charge didn't go through as described above. Going to try again today!

If you are using safari try Firefox instead and do not use auto fill.

[Vict0riann]

I don't see any mention of the bonus card when I go to the site.  Does it just show up as you are purchasing?

[crystalspin]

8 minutes ago, Vict0riann said:

I don't see any mention of the bonus card when I go to the site.  Does it just show up as you are purchasing?

Yes. 

 

It shows up on the second page (the Cart page).

[crystalspin]

32 minutes ago, Mary229 said:

If you are using safari try Firefox instead and do not use auto fill.

It worked with Chrome, when I did not let Windows fill in ANYTHING. Not credit-card info, mailing address, or e-mail addy! I bought $1000 (send digital to my husband) with a $100 bonus card sent to me. Then I immediately typed in a second $500 card... and our bank denied it! (Issue 440)

 

Going to wait a little but not so late that I can't call the bank!