Carnival Gift Cards - AARP

[biomedbob]

I am not an Allstate customer.  I went through the process on my phone and was able to be recognized on my laptop.  Later the same day, Tuesday the 23rd, I was able to purchase 4 one hundred dollar cards.  I received them in the mail today.

 

There was some conversation on this thread about "pin numbers".  There is a scratch off thingy on the back.  Is this what I need to redeem these cards with Carnival?  Thanks!

[Jerseygirl1416]

25 minutes ago, biomedbob said:

I am not an Allstate customer.  I went through the process on my phone and was able to be recognized on my laptop.  Later the same day, Tuesday the 23rd, I was able to purchase 4 one hundred dollar cards.  I received them in the mail today.

 

There was some conversation on this thread about "pin numbers".  There is a scratch off thingy on the back.  Is this what I need to redeem these cards with Carnival?  Thanks!

Yes. The PIN number is under there.

[Organized Chaos]

33 minutes ago, biomedbob said:

I am not an Allstate customer.  I went through the process on my phone and was able to be recognized on my laptop.  Later the same day, Tuesday the 23rd, I was able to purchase 4 one hundred dollar cards.  I received them in the mail today.

 

There was some conversation on this thread about "pin numbers".  There is a scratch off thingy on the back.  Is this what I need to redeem these cards with Carnival?  Thanks!

 

The conversation about PIN's in this thread is in regards to Carnival cards that some people bought on the first day of this new AARP Rewards program. Under the new program, the gift cards are e-cards. They're emailed to you. The problem was, on that first day, people were receiving cards without PIN's. Evidently it still hasn't been resolved.

 

AARP and Allstate used to stock e-cards all the time, but haven't for quite a long time.

[biomedbob]

An update.  Went to the Carnival website and pay for your cruise.  From the choices you can use Gift Cards.  Chose that and entered the cards I received today and reduced my amount owed.  Easy Peasy!  I'm still waiting on some Royal Caribbean certificate I bought about 3 weeks ago from AARP.  They insist that they go UPS with an adult sign for them. PIA.

[Joe817]

I was just on the AARP Rewards website. I played a few games which brought my points up some. But then I started searching for Carnival Gift Cards. Members only, everything, and didn't see ANY offers for Carnival gift cards EXCEPT 1 sweepstakes for a $500 g.c. So disappointed in not finding them.  Not liking this 'new' program aarp brought out at all. 

[jbethel11]

5 minutes ago, biomedbob said:

I'm still waiting on some Royal Caribbean certificate I bought about 3 weeks ago from AARP.  They insist that they go UPS with an adult sign for them. PIA.

Tell me how this process goes! Are you allowed pay off your cruise incrementally like Carnival? I know it cannot be used as an OBC, but I am also worried if it is non-refundable, even with a refundable deposit?

[darth frosty]

Ok was able to get thru and opt in and was greeted with

 

YOUR BALANCE

27,250PTS

[Organized Chaos]

5 hours ago, biomedbob said:

An update.  Went to the Carnival website and pay for your cruise.  From the choices you can use Gift Cards.  Chose that and entered the cards I received today and reduced my amount owed.  Easy Peasy!

 

Just an FYI for anyone who may not know. If you want to pay on the balance of your cruise, but don't want to use the entire amount of a single gift card, just enter the amount you want to deduct from the card in the "Other Amount" box on the payment page. For example, maybe you only want to use half the card to make a payment and the other half to buy something in the online FunShops. You don't have to use it all on a payment.

 

[Organized Chaos]

5 hours ago, Joe817 said:

I was just on the AARP Rewards website. I played a few games which brought my points up some. But then I started searching for Carnival Gift Cards. Members only, everything, and didn't see ANY offers for Carnival gift cards EXCEPT 1 sweepstakes for a $500 g.c. So disappointed in not finding them.  Not liking this 'new' program aarp brought out at all. 

 

They probably won't bring the cards back until they get the PIN problem straightened out. One of their moderators on the AARP community forums told everyone that they're aware that Carnival is "pushing back" (their term) on the PIN issue. Sounds like AARP is blaming Carnival and Carnival is blaming AARP. There's people who still have hundreds of dollars tied up into buying gift cards on day 1 of the new program and don't have anything to show for it. AARP should've started refunding money, but it looks like they're just telling people to wait.

 

Their rewards program has always been ran by a third-party company. It's now ran by a different one than before. The past company, Deluxe Rewards, used to offer e-cards all the time and in the few years I've been buying discounted cards through these rewards programs, they never issued cards without PIN's. Sounds like it's a problem with this new rewards company.

 

Even when the Carnival cards do come back, it doesn't do much good with this ridiculous one per month limit. AARP screwed up, I think. These Carnival cards are always in high demand and changes that came with the new program are going to cause a lot of people to leave.

[FLCruise7]

I can't even get into the rewards program.  Everytime I try, it says there's a problem & I need to refresh my browser.  Have already done this multiple times.  I think they are having problems.

[leight]

We bought the $500 gift card before the program ended and plan to pay for our drink package with it. However, I can no longer go on the cruise and DH will just be telling them at embarkation that I can't make it. Will he get a credit that can be cashed out at the casino or will he be sent a carnival gift card for the amount of my drink package? Thanks in advance.

[Organized Chaos]

47 minutes ago, leight said:

We bought the $500 gift card before the program ended and plan to pay for our drink package with it. However, I can no longer go on the cruise and DH will just be telling them at embarkation that I can't make it. Will he get a credit that can be cashed out at the casino or will he be sent a carnival gift card for the amount of my drink package? Thanks in advance.

 

I'm pretty sure it will be refunded in the form of the original payment method, so they'll mail you a new gift card. But just to be on the safe side, keep the original gift card just in case they refund it to that. I've seen a few people say that's happened, but I think it's very rare.

 

So if you haven't purchased Cheers yet, and knowing you'll be a no-show, you should decide if getting a refund on a new gift card is practical for you. Will you have any use for that gift card at a later date?

[2wheelin]

1 hour ago, leight said:

We bought the $500 gift card before the program ended and plan to pay for our drink package with it. However, I can no longer go on the cruise and DH will just be telling them at embarkation that I can't make it. Will he get a credit that can be cashed out at the casino or will he be sent a carnival gift card for the amount of my drink package? Thanks in advance.

There is a possibility if he cancels you at embarkation they will refund with OBC. They have done that for me when I canceled an excursion after getting to the ship.

[BlasianGrl]

I just logged on this morning to look for gift cards and they're not there.  My final payment isn't due until next year so I have plenty of time.

[blarko]

On 9/27/2019 at 6:33 PM, angela12345 said:

I am copying & pasting the below information . . .

This does NOT pertain to the Carnival gift cards without a PIN

 

If you redeemed your points for a gift card, received an email with a link to retrieve the gift card but it isn't working, I have found and fixed the problem (I have also notified AARP).

 

Here is a copy of the email I sent.

 

SUBJECT:  How To Fix The E-Gift Card Issue

 

Currently, all point redemption gift cards appear to be broken due to an incorrect URL encoding in the email.

 

I was able to resolve the issue myself and wanted to share the solution with you in case it helps others.

 

When you click on the link in the email, you get to a website that says:

 

Your eGift Cannot be viewed at this time

Sorry, this card is not valid.  Please contact the retailer from which you purchased this gift card and reference error code EGIFT_IRE3_504

 

The problem is the email has an improperly encoded URL

 

https://egift.activationspot.com/?tid=XXX&gcm=n&gs=n&gw=n&eid=XXX

 

Above is an example of what is being emailed out.  If you simply remove the cases of amp; from the URL, it works as expected (they were double encoded)

 

  https://egift.activationspot.com/?tid=XXX&gcm=n&gs=n&gw=n&eid=XXX  

 

The above is a corrected example - of course the XXX would be whatever the customers correct values should be.

 

 

In other words, if you click in your browser's URL bar and manually remove all instances of amp; from the URL and refresh it, it should work (it did for both myself and my wife)

 

Although you have explained this as well as possible, I’m computer illiterate and don’t really understand what you mean by “remove the cases of amp”.

 

Also when I try to see the URL in my browser bar, it just says

“egift.activationspot.com”. I’m not able to see the actual words/numbers in the web address.

 

Can you offer any other suggestions on how to get this thing to work? I’ve got a Whole Foods gift card that I can’t view.

 

Thank you for any help you might be able to give.

[cruises42]

Is anyone having trouble logging in? I type in my e-mail, password then the security challenge, hit log in  and the screen just goes back to the log in screen (usually with the same security challenge letters).

[Joe817]

11 minutes ago, cruises42 said:

Is anyone having trouble logging in? I type in my e-mail, password then the security challenge, hit log in  and the screen just goes back to the log in screen (usually with the same security challenge letters).

I had no problems at all logging in 20 minutes ago. Still nothing about the gift cards OR the missing PIN numbers on the e-cards. Same old message: "we are working on the problem and will let you know as soon as the problem is fixed."  She's been saying that now for the past week. Nothing's changed. Grrrrrrrr.

[cruises42]

37 minutes ago, Joe817 said:

I had no problems at all logging in 20 minutes ago. Still nothing about the gift cards OR the missing PIN numbers on the e-cards. Same old message: "we are working on the problem and will let you know as soon as the problem is fixed."  She's been saying that now for the past week. Nothing's changed. Grrrrrrrr.

I've had problems logging in since they went to the new Rewards program. A few times I got in but most of the time I can't. It is so frustrating.

[Joe817]

13 minutes ago, cruises42 said:

I've had problems logging in since they went to the new Rewards program. A few times I got in but most of the time I can't. It is so frustrating.

This new program is worthless. AARP has a forum and there are several threads several pages long about how upset people are with the new program. It's really a shame. 

[cruises42]

13 minutes ago, Joe817 said:

This new program is worthless. AARP has a forum and there are several threads several pages long about how upset people are with the new program. It's really a shame. 

It would be nice if I could log in and actually see the program!

[Joe817]

2 minutes ago, cruises42 said:

It would be nice if I could log in and actually see the program!

I assume you are doing the username, password, and the 3 letter security code after the p.w. I dunno. I'm using Chrome and it's working for me. Sorry you are having those issues.

[Organized Chaos]

3 hours ago, blarko said:

Although you have explained this as well as possible, I’m computer illiterate and don’t really understand what you mean by “remove the cases of amp”.

 

Also when I try to see the URL in my browser bar, it just says

“egift.activationspot.com”. I’m not able to see the actual words/numbers in the web address.

 

Can you offer any other suggestions on how to get this thing to work? I’ve got a Whole Foods gift card that I can’t view.

 

Thank you for any help you might be able to give.

 

I haven't bought anything so I don't have the email in question, but let me see if I can explain it differently.

 

If I understand you correctly, you're clicking on the link you were sent in the email. Do not click on it first. What angela is saying is that you have to "fix" the URL that they sent you. When she refers to "amp," she's talking about the parts of the URL that literally say "amp;" ... to include the semicolon at the end. Amp is short for ampersand. That's the name of this symbol ---> & <---. The problem is, the URL that they sent everyone, it includes that symbol AND the letters "amp" followed by a semicolon. It should only have the symbol.

 

So what you need to do is highlight the entire URL in your email, without click it, and copy it (right click, then click copy). Then paste the URL into your address bar (right click the address bar, then click paste). Just make sure the address bar doesn't already have a URL in it. You can also do this in a blank Notepad file or a Word file. Once you copy/past the whole URL, you have to delete all the times it says "amp;" and don't forget the semicolon. But be sure to leave the & symbol in there. Only delete each amp; and leave the rest. Once you've done that, you can hit Enter to see if the fixed URL takes you to your gift card page.

 

Hope that helps. Let us know how it goes.

[Organized Chaos]

3 hours ago, cruises42 said:

Is anyone having trouble logging in? I type in my e-mail, password then the security challenge, hit log in  and the screen just goes back to the log in screen (usually with the same security challenge letters).

 

That happened to me every time I logged in to the old Rewards for Good. I always had to log in twice. Except the 3-letter challenge would change. Oddly enough, it doesn't do that to me anymore with AARP Rewards.

 

2 hours ago, Joe817 said:

This new program is worthless. AARP has a forum and there are several threads several pages long about how upset people are with the new program. It's really a shame. 

 

I can't believe they didn't just refund people's money. Seems like that would've been the logical thing to do.

 

It's filled with some pretty ridiculous gift cards. I keep seeing ones that are maybe $1 off face value, $4 off. C'mon! There's even a $10 Krispy Kreme gift card for $10. Seriously?

[n6uqqq]

1 hour ago, Organized Chaos said:

 

That happened to me every time I logged in to the old Rewards for Good. I always had to log in twice. Except the 3-letter challenge would change. Oddly enough, it doesn't do that to me anymore with AARP Rewards.

 

 

I can't believe they didn't just refund people's money. Seems like that would've been the logical thing to do.

 

It's filled with some pretty ridiculous gift cards. I keep seeing ones that are maybe $1 off face value, $4 off. C'mon! There's even a $10 Krispy Kreme gift card for $10. Seriously?

 

Not only is it 10 dollars for the Krispy Kreme card, you have to be a member to get this killer deal 🤣. Move over Coke and Verizon rewards, I have a new worst rewards program that has been changed!

Edited October 4, 2019 by n6uqqq

[GalCruzer]

54 minutes ago, n6uqqq said:

 

Not only is it 10 dollars for the Krispy Kreme card, you have to be a member to get this killer deal 🤣. Move over Coke and Verizon rewards, I have a new worst rewards program that has been changed!

I do Coke rewards and have gotten a few maybe decent rewards, the latest being free movie tickets as well as a large popcorn and a couple of drinks to go with them...lol. But will look into Verizon to see what they offer..lol