Question about using AARP GIt cards

[chubbypiggy]

I purchased five $500 Princess cards at 11 a.m. (PT) this morning and now it is 5:30 p.m. and I still haven't received the emails with the e-cards.  I have purchased many Princess cards in the past and have always received the emails within 10 minutes.  For this purchase, I used my new Amex Delta credit card (first time using this card), I wonder if that caused the delay.  I went to my Amex account, and it shows $2,300 has been charged by AARP.  

[red4u2]

Well, I did it!   bought ten $500 gift cards 9 $460 a piece) and applied toward our final payment. Princess said only ten cards can be applied.

 We received all cards within 10 minutes!  thanks everyone!😁

[beg3yrs]

8 hours ago, red4u2 said:

Well, I did it!   bought ten $500 gift cards 9 $460 a piece) and applied toward our final payment. Princess said only ten cards can be applied.

 We received all cards within 10 minutes!  thanks everyone!😁

I don't know who at Princess told you that there was a ten card limit but my personal experience is quite different. I've recently sent my TA almost twenty nine GCs for an upcoming booking. They were applied without any issues.

[red4u2]

On 3/22/2024 at 7:06 AM, beg3yrs said:

I don't know who at Princess told you that there was a ten card limit but my personal experience is quite different. I've recently sent my TA almost twenty nine GCs for an upcoming booking. They were applied without any issues.

WOW!! that's wonderful!   i used the chat feature twice to contact customer service at Princess and they both told me a limit of 10.    another example of the failing customer service at Princess then!  thank you for letting me know!

[AZjohn]

24 minutes ago, red4u2 said:

WOW!! that's wonderful!   i used the chat feature twice to contact customer service at Princess and they both told me a limit of 10.    another example of the failing customer service at Princess then!  thank you for letting me know!

If you read enough threads here on CC you will see that trying to get a question answered by a factual response by either calling Princess or doing the chat function is impossible. The people at the call/chat center are extremely inexperienced people in a foreign country who have no idea what they are talking about 90+% of the time. But yet, so many people believe them because they don’t know better. 
 

The stories here make it sound like they really just start making up their own answers without actually knowing the truth. I personally have never had to call them because I always use a TA that inexperienced and knows the true facts.

 

Regardless of my little rant, I’m glad you took advantage of the AARP gift cards. They have saved us a lot of $ throughout the years once I read about them on CC.

 

Cheers

[nanarena]

I bought a $500 gift card. I've done it several times now. This time, however, I did not receive my email rewards card. I went to the AARP help topics and checked the process. It said to wait 24 hours and to let them know if I had not received it.

 

I waited and called. I worked with a very nice service agent. She saw my purchase transaction and re-generated the email. I got it within a minute. Made my payment to Princess with no more issues.

[CRUISEWITHH]

What is the benefit of using AARP gift cards?  Are they discounted if you buy them from AARP?  How much of a discount can you buy them for?   At target I get a 5% discount when I make a purchase.  Is there any other way to get discounted gift cards?

[dreaminofcruisin]

3 minutes ago, CRUISEWITHH said:

What is the benefit of using AARP gift cards?  Are they discounted if you buy them from AARP?  How much of a discount can you buy them for?   At target I get a 5% discount when I make a purchase.  Is there any other way to get discounted gift cards?

 

8% - if you buy a $500 gift card, you pay $460

It's thru AARP rewards, so for the Princess gift cards, you need to join AARP Rewards (free), but you don't need to join AARP.

[chubbypiggy]

I logged in to my Princess account and applied my Princess gift cards to pay my final payment.

I entered 9 cards with $500 per card, everything went fine.  After that, I have a remaining balance of $21.87.  Then I applied my 10^th card, card balance is $500.  So, I entered $500 in the “amount” box.  Then I got the message “Amount is required” above the Amount box.  Am I not supposed to enter $500 (the balance on my card)?  Am I supposed to enter just “$21.87”, my remaining balance due?  I didn’t enter $21.87 because I am afraid my $500 card will be zero out after it deducted the $21.87.

Any assistance will be appreciated.

[chubbypiggy]

This is the picture I referred to in my last post. 

[JimmyVWine]

24 minutes ago, chubbypiggy said:

Am I supposed to enter just “$21.87

Yes.  Just enter the final balance. The card will not zero out and instead will carry the difference which you can use on board by going to Guest Services and have them upload that amount as OBC. Or you can just hold on to the card and use it for a future cruise payment.

[chubbypiggy]

2 minutes ago, JimmyVWine said:

Yes.  Just enter the final balance. The card will not zero out and instead will carry the difference which you can use on board by going to Guest Services and have them upload that amount as OBC. Or you can just hold on to the card and use it for a future cruise payment.

Thank you. I will use the remaining balance of that card on the other cruises I need to pay. 

[CRUISEWITHH]

Once I get onboard can I take my GC to Passenger Services and have it added to my existing OBC to cover upgrading to Princess Plus?  Then can I just leave a credit card to cover the remaining balance?

 

[that]

@CRUISEWITHH

 

yes

[JamieLogical]

Please, for the love of God, PRINT out your gift card before bringing them to guest services. I had to wait in line for literally 45 minutes while a father and daughter searched their emails for their gift card with all sorts of varying balances and then forward them one by one to the ONE and only guest services rep onboard who could process gift cards. At the end of all that, my five printed gift cards literally took 7 minutes to process.

 

Edited May 19 by JamieLogical

[bunzini]

I am new to this.  So if I buy Princess gift cards through AARP rewards, then I can apply them to my final balance even if I booked through a TA?

[jwattle]

24 minutes ago, bunzini said:

I am new to this.  So if I buy Princess gift cards through AARP rewards, then I can apply them to my final balance even if I booked through a TA?

Yes

[peagreenid]

On 2/23/2024 at 2:39 PM, Ken the cruiser said:

That could be true as our TA was loading 10 of them, as he has continually done for us very month. But maybe he did it too fast this time? Hopefully, AARP comes to the same conclusion and applies the $500 back to the card. 🤞

Did you get this resolved?  I just had this happen today.  I forgot to check the cards before applying them and the phone agent said they all processed but it appears only $2000 has been applied and not the full $2500.  They struggled with one of them and I had to give him the number several times.  I had this happen previously but when I entered the cards on the balance checker I found the one that didn't process and I was able to call back and have it added.  This time they all show zero.  

[Ken the cruiser]

17 minutes ago, peagreenid said:

Did you get this resolved?  I just had this happen today.  I forgot to check the cards before applying them and the phone agent said they all processed but it appears only $2000 has been applied and not the full $2500.  They struggled with one of them and I had to give him the number several times.  I had this happen previously but when I entered the cards on the balance checker I found the one that didn't process and I was able to call back and have it added.  This time they all show zero.  

Yes, but I had to call Princess for them to first verify the $500 was still on the card in question, and then Princess applied it to our booking. Our TA’s Guest Relations person did not help other than to give us the Princess number to call.

 

But TBH we no longer purchase the GCs as we’re old and don’t really want to deal with the stress that caused us if it happens again. 😁

 

Edited Sunday at 09:19 PM by Ken the cruiser

[peagreenid]

18 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Yes, but I had to call Princess for them to first verify the $500 was still on the card in question, and then Princess applied it to our booking. Our TA’s Guest Relations person did not help other than to give us the Princess number to call.

 

But TBH we no longer purchase the GCs as we’re old and don’t really want to deal with the stress that caused us if it happens again. 😁

 

Do you happen to have the number you used to call and verify?  I'm hoping it isn't the normal call center number.  And that might help me expedite the process instead of doing the normal loops around the Princess call center.

Thank you

[Ken the cruiser]

4 minutes ago, peagreenid said:

Do you happen to have the number you used to call and verify?  I'm hoping it isn't the normal call center number.  And that might help me expedite the process instead of doing the normal loops around the Princess call center.

Thank you

Unfortunately not. However, I would use the Online Chat function on the PCL website, tell them the issue, and I’m sure they’ll either be able to help or give you a number to call.

[peagreenid]

21 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Unfortunately not. However, I would use the Online Chat function on the PCL website, tell them the issue, and I’m sure they’ll either be able to help or give you a number to call.

Can we just say that I have embarked on 5 hours of hell!  The first chat agent was excellent and confirmed that only 4 were used and the 5th was declined. But they just told me to call the call center.  I have had one quick call after a 30 minute wait that told me to call the Princess Gift Card line and they quickly told me they don't handle the AARP cards but the Princess gift cards handled on their site.  I called back and waited for 30 minutes again to be disconnected. I am now on my 3rd call and waiting for a supervisor. But they are all just trying to get me off the phone by calling AARP.  HELP!  Does anyone have any idea who I need to deal with directly

[Ken the cruiser]

4 hours ago, peagreenid said:

Can we just say that I have embarked on 5 hours of hell!  The first chat agent was excellent and confirmed that only 4 were used and the 5th was declined. But they just told me to call the call center.  I have had one quick call after a 30 minute wait that told me to call the Princess Gift Card line and they quickly told me they don't handle the AARP cards but the Princess gift cards handled on their site.  I called back and waited for 30 minutes again to be disconnected. I am now on my 3rd call and waiting for a supervisor. But they are all just trying to get me off the phone by calling AARP.  HELP!  Does anyone have any idea who I need to deal with directly

Have you tried calling AARP yet and asking them what you should do in your situation? May be worth a try.
 

https://help.aarp.org/s/article/rewards-daily-deal-issue

[ebeluga]

Haha, the few times I had to deal with AARP customer support, they all sound like volunteers, reading off a script, absolutely no ability to solve a gift card problem!!

[Ken the cruiser]

5 hours ago, peagreenid said:

Can we just say that I have embarked on 5 hours of hell!  The first chat agent was excellent and confirmed that only 4 were used and the 5th was declined. But they just told me to call the call center.  I have had one quick call after a 30 minute wait that told me to call the Princess Gift Card line and they quickly told me they don't handle the AARP cards but the Princess gift cards handled on their site.  I called back and waited for 30 minutes again to be disconnected. I am now on my 3rd call and waiting for a supervisor. But they are all just trying to get me off the phone by calling AARP.  HELP!  Does anyone have any idea who I need to deal with directly

 

31 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Have you tried calling AARP yet and asking them what you should do in your situation? May be worth a try.
 

https://help.aarp.org/s/article/rewards-daily-deal-issue

I just reread my initial post 49. Did you follow my process? It doesn’t sound like you did. It appears after verifying the funds were gone using the info provided at post 45, I contacted AARP, who in turn gave me a number to call at Princess.

 

We encountered our first “insufficient funds” issue today when our TA tried to upload 10 AARP Princess gift cards and one of them rejected with zero funds on the card. Up until today, we had had zero issues purchasing our max number of gift cards every month for over a year now. We then verified the bad GC had zero funds using the link provided at post 45. Thanks @Thrak!
 

We subsequently contacted AARP, who in turn said we needed to contact Princess to verify the funds from the gift card in question had not been applied anywhere, to include recording the person’s name in case AARP had to subsequently open up a trouble ticket to figure out what happened to the missing funds.
 

We contacted Princess and their rep confirmed the funds from the gift card had not been applied anywhere and reconfirmed the card had zero funds. We then recontacted AARP, who then proceeded to open a trouble ticket. And now we wait for the 3-5 days for AARP to determine what happened. I’ll let you know what happens. 

Edited Tuesday at 12:30 AM by Ken the cruiser