AARP Raises Limit on Gift Card Purchases

[brisalta]

1 hour ago, beg3yrs said:

I discovered an issue with copy and paste but it also involves the Excel spreadsheet program.

 

When I would receive a plethora of ten emails each month (mine and DW's), I would copy and paste the card numbers and PINs into a spreadsheet which also recorded the date purchased and could keep track of when and on what a particular card was spent.

 

Now and then I'd use the online gift card balance check to verify a card's balance and started to receive the "call Princess" error message. After several hours of sleuthing I found that Excel doesn't really like to directly paste long strings of numbers into cells as text. Instead it will change the last digit or two of the long number and not even give you a hint of a problem! Fortunately I had saved all the files and was able to recover the correct numbers.

 

The Excel workaround is to not paste directly into a cell (even Paste Special doesn't work correctly) but to use the formula bar at the top of the screen. First one must type a single apostrophe and then paste. Then everything works as Excel should, not as Mr. Gates and his minions implemented it!

 

Excel is designed to work with numbers as numbers with a given field length. It will do strange things if you abuse it. It does not handle numbers well as text.

The best way to store the information from the gift cards is in a text file created with a purely text editor that does not support formatting.  Windows Notepad, MacOS  Textedit both support pure text modes. You can also get pure text editors such as gvim or bbedit for free.

 

Your statement "Then everything works as Excel should, not as Mr. Gates and his minions implemented it!" is totally incorrect as Excel is working as expected as it is designed to work with numbers.

[SiliconCruiser]

How does this work and when/where can the gift cards be applied?

I found the giftcards on the AARP site, but just not sure how they are applied to the Princess booking. 

Also what are those points things that they credit to your account.  Been an AARP member for almost a quarter century, but wasn't aware of this.  Use it primarily for health insurance and some discounts.

 

[Rick&Jeannie]

2 minutes ago, SiliconCruiser said:

How does this work and when/where can the gift cards be applied?

I found the giftcards on the AARP site, but just not sure how they are applied to the Princess booking. 

Also what are those points things that they credit to your account.  Been an AARP member for almost a quarter century, but wasn't aware of this.  Use it primarily for health insurance and some discounts.

 

You simply go onto the website as if you were going to make a credit card payment.  Go SLOW.  There will be a checkbox or some type of selection (I don't recall exactly) to indicate that you want to use a gift card as opposed to credit card.  Easy.

 

I've never paid any attention to the points...

 

Edited April 7, 2023 by Rick&Jeannie

[GoDucksNation]

I just call my TA and give them the card number and PIN and they apply it 

[Thrak]

As for applying the cards to a booking: If I am booked through a TA I would assume I have to have him apply the cards but some postings seem to say that is not actually the case. Has anybody who is booked through a TA actually been able to pay on a cruise themselves?

[GoDucksNation]

Yes, I have booked through a TA.  I am not able to do it on the Princess website myself.  But I have not had any problems calling them and crediting 5 gift cards at a tome

[GoDucksNation]

Time 

[TenneSea]

On 4/7/2023 at 12:10 AM, Thrak said:

As for applying the cards to a booking: If I am booked through a TA I would assume I have to have him apply the cards but some postings seem to say that is not actually the case. Has anybody who is booked through a TA actually been able to pay on a cruise themselves?

I believe you have to go through the agent.  I called my TA to pay with GC, he got Princess on the phone and the 3 of us got the GC applied.  Pretty simple.

[PacnGoNow]

On 4/7/2023 at 12:10 AM, Thrak said:

As for applying the cards to a booking: If I am booked through a TA I would assume I have to have him apply the cards but some postings seem to say that is not actually the case. Has anybody who is booked through a TA actually been able to pay on a cruise themselves?

From past experience in 2022/23…

 

I would call your TA to have them enter your GC’s.  

You can call PCL yourself and have them add the GC’s….BUT the

problem is finding an agent, who knows how to add them.  They had so many problems with entering them, messing up my records, double adding, then getting them deleted completely, etc.  It took me several calls to straighten it out.  Never again.  All the agents were very nice and tried, but none were trained properly.
 

Now, I only give them to my TA for payment and I go to GS the first or second day OB, if I want to add them as OBC.

 

 

[Bwana Tom]

I'm new to this idea of AARP gift cards for Princess. Are the gift cards issued as an actual physical card mailed to you, or do they come in a digital format emailed to you immediately? And can they be used to offset the cost of initially purchasing a cruise and/or applied to your OBC account?

Thanks for the education.  

[linaka625]

7 minutes ago, Bwana Tom said:

I'm new to this idea of AARP gift cards for Princess. Are the gift cards issued as an actual physical card mailed to you, or do they come in a digital format emailed to you immediately? And can they be used to offset the cost of initially purchasing a cruise and/or applied to your OBC account?

Thanks for the education.  

The gift card is emailed to you within minutes.  They can be used towards the initial deposit and any subsequent payments on a cruise.

As far as OBC, I believe that the easiest way to do that is to bring a physical copy of the printed gift card to guest services once you are onboard.

[Steelers36]

On 4/6/2023 at 10:25 AM, beg3yrs said:

I discovered an issue with copy and paste but it also involves the Excel spreadsheet program.

 

When I would receive a plethora of ten emails each month (mine and DW's), I would copy and paste the card numbers and PINs into a spreadsheet which also recorded the date purchased and could keep track of when and on what a particular card was spent.

 

Now and then I'd use the online gift card balance check to verify a card's balance and started to receive the "call Princess" error message. After several hours of sleuthing I found that Excel doesn't really like to directly paste long strings of numbers into cells as text. Instead it will change the last digit or two of the long number and not even give you a hint of a problem! Fortunately I had saved all the files and was able to recover the correct numbers.

 

The Excel workaround is to not paste directly into a cell (even Paste Special doesn't work correctly) but to use the formula bar at the top of the screen. First one must type a single apostrophe and then paste. Then everything works as Excel should, not as Mr. Gates and his minions implemented it!

The issue is that if you do not set the field type in the Excel spreadsheet cell or column, the default is "General" and a number pasted in is going to be treated as a numeric value and not a set of characters.  Make the column which will hold the GC numbers and the GC PINs as type Text and then paste carefully and check the result before moving on and you should be okay.  

 

Try Googling for help on this aspect and I bet there is a step-by-step out there if you are not sure about Excel features.  

[brisalta]

2 hours ago, Bwana Tom said:

I'm new to this idea of AARP gift cards for Princess. Are the gift cards issued as an actual physical card mailed to you, or do they come in a digital format emailed to you immediately? And can they be used to offset the cost of initially purchasing a cruise and/or applied to your OBC account?

Thanks for the education.  

 

They are not AARP gift cards.  They are Princess Cruise Line Gift Cards sold by AARP at a discount. A link to the digital card is emailed to you.

[Steelers36]

If we book with a TA, everything to do with payments must go through the TA, so I agree with above posts on the matter, but there is no iffy-ness about it.  It doesn't make sense Princess would take a GC from a guest to pay down on balance owing.  OTOH, if you can purchase the OBC offered in Cruise Personalizer and pay with GC or CC, then that doesn't require the TA to be involved.

[bjkTX]

We saved another $500 today by purchasing AARP gift cards to pay for our Nov cruise.  First we applied for a new credit card that gives a large sign up bonus (in this case 170,000 IHG points) and requires you to spend X amount in 3-4 months.  Got the card in the mail today, the minimum spend requirement has now been met, and we saved $500 🙂  We used gift cards to pay for the two cruises we took a few months ago and had no issue having our TA apply them.

[northwestbear]

I really appreciate this information. It gave me a reason to join AARP. The gift cards were showing in denominations of $500 and $100 at 10% off the face value - I bought a few and was immediately able to apply them to the balance on a future cruise on the Princess website.  Really great deal. 

[brisalta]

Eleven pages for a thread with an incorrect topic title...not bad going. 😉

Edited April 13, 2023 by brisalta

[Rick&Jeannie]

4 minutes ago, brisalta said:

Eleven pages for a thread with an incorrect topic title...not bad going. 😉

Yeah...I really feel bad about the way I misled everybody! There really was something about a different category of gift card where you could get up to 25...and I did not read carefully enough!

[brisalta]

4 minutes ago, Rick&Jeannie said:

Yeah...I really feel bad about the way I misled everybody! There really was something about a different category of gift card where you could get up to 25...and I did not read carefully enough!

 

But you succeeded in reeling the punters in!  😉 Not bad for a simple topic announcing that AARP sells Princess Gift cards at a discount.

[pompeii]

15 hours ago, northwestbear said:

I really appreciate this information. It gave me a reason to join AARP. The gift cards were showing in denominations of $500 and $100 at 10% off the face value - I bought a few and was immediately able to apply them to the balance on a future cruise on the Princess website.  Really great deal. 

Just fyi, you don’t actually have to join AARP (ie, pay for a membership) to buy the gift cards. You just have to create a free account.