Gift Card Warning

[dwayneb236]

Well, I purchased some gift cards from the RCI website the other day to use as OBC. I didn’t do any research apparently. I did after I bought them and saw many people had issues with them of course but by then it was too late. I began the applying procedure one I received the email for the first one using the online link. Seemed pretty straightforward. Stated it would take 48 hours to post to my booking.

 

Well, after a day or so, I saw that my account, which was paid off in full of course, showed to have a negative $100 balance. I just assumed this was part of the procedure, not realizing what it really meant. The second email came in for the other gift card and I applied it the same way.

 

After another day. I saw the negative $100 was gone, that the $100 showed up on my payment history list, but was not showing on my OBC. Later that day, I again checked my booking and it showed I had a $100 balance owed. This kind of got me concerned so I called RC and spoke with someone. He began looking at my booking and stated he had never seen anything like that before. He told me he would have to contact a supervisor and see what was going on. I stayed on the phone for around 15 minutes and he came back and stated they were both at a loss, but could see I was completely paid up and it should fix itself in a couple of hours.

 

So I waited a couple of hours and nothing changed. Still showing I owed $100 and afraid they would cancel my cruise at any minute. I called again and spoke with another rep. Again he had to go to his supervisor and was gone for about 25 minutes. He came back and assured me everything was fine with my booking and neither he nor his supervisor knew why it was doing what it was doing. Keep in mind this is a Friday so I’m doubting anything will get done over the weekend. I was told one of the gift cards had been applied towards paying off my booking and not OBC. Since I was already paid off it seems to have messed everything up. Makes no sense to me.

 

Spoiler alert: Nothing was done over the weekend.

 

So we come to Monday and with nothing changed, I remembered someone posting they were able to get things done by emailing Mr. Bayley’s office, which I did, explaining the situation. In about 6 hours I received a response email from Nelson Frau who explained he was assigned to my case. I felt much better after this. Today, Tuesday, I just received an actual telephone call from Nelson who advised me everything was taken care of. He was very helpful and definitely the way to go if you have unresolved problems.

 

I was able to finally check my account and everything is as it should be. I’m finally able to relax.

 

Moral of the story. Don’t use those dang gift cards. Just call them direct and do it. I did not know this.

Edited January 24, 2017 by dwayneb236

[coffeenut64]

Sounds a little like what I am dealing with right now. Booked my March cruise two weeks ago, paid in full via credit card but told them that I had corporate card rewards (basically like a gift card) which I wanted to apply to the reservation. Had to forward copies of the reward cards to their shared service department. Have called a couple of times but haven't seen anything applied to my credit card and today I went into my reservation and see they took the credit rewards and applied it to an OBC. I have done this before and the money is always put back on my credit card that was used to book the reservation. I will attempt to get to the bottom of this within the next couple of days. Would like to hear if anyone out there has had a similar situation.

[dwayneb236]

Good luck. It's kind of a shame we have to go through these issues when it should be a nice smooth process. It's not like they've never done it before. They do it hundreds of times a day.