Celebrity Gift Cards what can they be used for

[Salf777]

Question what can Celebrity Gift Cards be used for? 
can they be used to pay toward your sailing or can they only be used onboard for certain items. 
Have some Amazon credit I need to use and notice they sell Celebrity gift cards and I have a few cruises coming up

[NutsAboutGolf]

When I found some on a gift reselling site, they have specific terms that they're for booking I believe it was capped by a certain amount, $1k.  You state Amazon credit "need to use", which makes me think it's expiring.  You can a combo of different gift cards, like Apple, SouthWest Airlines, Starbucks, Uber, Lyft, Door Dash, Best Buy, any chain restaurant, etc

[NanaPam00]

I believe they can only be used to help pay for a new booking, not on board.

[anna4004]

Both replies before me are correct. Celebrity gift cards can only be use for new bookings, including final payment which is what I did. Gift card amount caps out at $1000 per cabin.

[GuyeCO]

17 hours ago, anna4004 said:

Both replies before me are correct. Celebrity gift cards can only be use for new bookings, including final payment which is what I did. Gift card amount caps out at $1000 per cabin.

Wonderful... If we have booked a cruise we can still apple a giftcard towards final payment? is there any limit?

[CruizinSusan70]

17 hours ago, anna4004 said:

Both replies before me are correct. Celebrity gift cards can only be use for new bookings, including final payment which is what I did. Gift card amount caps out at $1000 per cabin.

 

11 minutes ago, GuyeCO said:

Wonderful... If we have booked a cruise we can still apple a giftcard towards final payment? is there any limit?

Just re-read the above posting.  The cap or limit is 1000 per cabin, good towards the price of your cruise, not any onboard spending.  And it's good on new bookings, so you may have trouble applying it towards a final payment on an already booked cruise. YMMV.  We used it on our upcoming Beyond cruises B2B in November.

[anna4004]

4 hours ago, CruizinSusan70 said:

 

Just re-read the above posting.  The cap or limit is 1000 per cabin, good towards the price of your cruise, not any onboard spending.  And it's good on new bookings, so you may have trouble applying it towards a final payment on an already booked cruise. YMMV.  We used it on our upcoming Beyond cruises B2B in November.

It could be YMMV for final payment. I didn't have a problem. I was able to make a final payment with gift cards two months after I did the initial/new booking. 

[anna4004]

4 hours ago, GuyeCO said:

Wonderful... If we have booked a cruise we can still apple a giftcard towards final payment? is there any limit?

I was able to apply gift cards towards the final payment. Limit is $1000 per cabin. Not per person. Hope this helps.

[kguerriero]

Booked through a TA and they -would not- take gift cards for booking deposit, but was happy to apply to final payment or before final was due. 

 

I've read (but unable to confirm) that some TAs that offer bonus OBC based on a percentage of the fare will reduce the credit as gift card redemptions are not commissionable the same way. 

 

If anyone is brave enough, there are gift card sites selling X gift cards for as low at 15% off...I was too chicken to pull the trigger, but could be a good chunk of savings for the right person.

[pellanor]

On a comp Blue Chip booking I was told gift card cannot be used to pay for the port taxes and fees. Not sure if that restriction is specific to BCC bookings.

Edited January 26, 2023 by pellanor

[CruizinSusan70]

2 hours ago, pellanor said:

On a comp Blue Chip booking I was told gift card cannot be used to pay for the port taxes and fees. Not sure if that restriction is specific to BCC bookings.

You're getting a free cruise and you want to attempt to save 10% on your taxes and fees by redeeming a gift card.  SMH 

[tce40]

Sorry for another question, but I want to make sure I understand.  My CC company, where I have a lot of points allows me to buy Amazon Gift cards, but not gift cards for Celebrity.  Could I buy $1,000 in Amazon Gift Cards, apply them to my Amazon Account and then purchase $1,000 in Celebrity Gift cards, which I can then apply to my cruise balance?  If so, that's great news for a use of my points.

[anna4004]

53 minutes ago, tce40 said:

Sorry for another question, but I want to make sure I understand.  My CC company, where I have a lot of points allows me to buy Amazon Gift cards, but not gift cards for Celebrity.  Could I buy $1,000 in Amazon Gift Cards, apply them to my Amazon Account and then purchase $1,000 in Celebrity Gift cards, which I can then apply to my cruise balance?  If so, that's great news for a use of my points.

Sorry, I don't do Amazon and don't know anything about Amazon accounts. But, it sounds like this is a question for Amazon.

[Salf777]

1 hour ago, tce40 said:

Sorry for another question, but I want to make sure I understand.  My CC company, where I have a lot of points allows me to buy Amazon Gift cards, but not gift cards for Celebrity.  Could I buy $1,000 in Amazon Gift Cards, apply them to my Amazon Account and then purchase $1,000 in Celebrity Gift cards, which I can then apply to my cruise balance?  If so, that's great news for a use of my points.

I’m not sure if Amazon allows the purchase of gift cards with a gift card but I would be interested if you found out

[CruizinSusan70]

2 hours ago, tce40 said:

Sorry for another question, but I want to make sure I understand.  My CC company, where I have a lot of points allows me to buy Amazon Gift cards, but not gift cards for Celebrity.  Could I buy $1,000 in Amazon Gift Cards, apply them to my Amazon Account and then purchase $1,000 in Celebrity Gift cards, which I can then apply to my cruise balance?  If so, that's great news for a use of my points.

An even better way is to buy Celebrity gift cards on the AARP site at a 10% discount and then the 1000 that is applied to your cabin puts $100.00 in savings in your pocket.  AARP also sells cards at times for Carnival and Princess and both of them are not as restrictive and can be used for all cruise related expenses.

[GuyeCO]

There’s sites that offer 14%+ just an fyi. 

[CruizinSusan70]

3 hours ago, GuyeCO said:

There’s sites that offer 14%+ just an fyi. 

Are they reliable sites selling first hand cards or selling secondary cards that could possibly be worthless?

[tce40]

Here's the answer from Amazon.  It is a NO.  🙂

 

[NorthStarStateCruiser]

20 hours ago, tce40 said:

Sorry for another question, but I want to make sure I understand.  My CC company, where I have a lot of points allows me to buy Amazon Gift cards, but not gift cards for Celebrity.  Could I buy $1,000 in Amazon Gift Cards, apply them to my Amazon Account and then purchase $1,000 in Celebrity Gift cards, which I can then apply to my cruise balance?  If so, that's great news for a use of my points.

Are these gift cards offered at a discount from you cc company? If it's 1 to 1, couldn't you just convert that to cash?

[tce40]

Yes, it is 1-to-1 and yes I could convert to cash.  I saw "gift cards" yesterday and I wondered if you could do it that way.  It's actually worth more to me to use points to book travel as you get more than a 1-to-1 deal.  I think I'll hold on to my points to book a trip now that I'm going to travel again.

 

This will be my first trip this fall since I did a Transatlantic in November, 2019.  I'm so thankful I did that because little did I know, everything would stop.  

 

 

[kguerriero]

12 hours ago, CruizinSusan70 said:

Are they reliable sites selling first hand cards or selling secondary cards that could possibly be worthless?

 

CardCash is the site I was looking at, and they seem to be legit. They've been in business for a while, B rating from the BBB, and the cards available are in quantities large enough that they appear to be from a wholesaler or other distributor. They offer a 45 day guarantee, so I would try to apply within that timeframe, but it seems to be a decent option on paper.

[MisterBill99]

On 1/27/2023 at 11:23 AM, tce40 said:

Here's the answer from Amazon.  It is a NO.  🙂

 

 

This is actually incorrect. I have purchased Netflix and Chipotle gift cards using my Amazon gift card balance.  Even used a 40% off promotion from AMEX with it so long as I redeemed a single Membership Rewards point and then paid for the rest from my GC balance.

[NutsAboutGolf]

3 minutes ago, MisterBill99 said:

 

This is actually incorrect. I have purchased Netflix and Chipotle gift cards using my Amazon gift card balance.  Even used a 40% off promotion from AMEX with it so long as I redeemed a single Membership Rewards point and then paid for the rest from my GC balance.

Possibly different rules in different countries

[MisterBill99]

3 minutes ago, NutsAboutGolf said:

Possibly different rules in different countries

 

Unlikely, but you and I are both in the US. No idea where CruizinSusan70 is.

[scottlad]

I know this is an older thread, but wanted to let folks know that Celebrity lifted the cap on the amount of gift cards you can use for a booking. We booked Ascent for December and used $1500 (3 x $500) in Celebrity gift cards from AARP without any problem.

The AARP fine print for the Celebrity and RC cards says they had a cap of $500 per booking, so we asked our TA to confirm whether that was still the case so that we didn't overbuy. She checked with Celebrity and was told that the cap had been lifted, so we bought three (total booking was under $2k so $1500 was the most we could from gift cards).

I don't know if the cap is gone, or if there is just a new upper limit over what we used, but I recommend checking with Celebrity before you buy.