I just loaded up on AARP Carnival gift cards

[Schoifmom]

25 minutes ago, tcmagnum said:

Can someone walk me through the process of how to put a gift card bought on the AARP web page toward a booking with Carnival?

 

Do we just go to our booking with Carnival and then enter the gift card number (like we would be adding a credit card but under gift card)?

 

Is it really that easy?

Anything I might be missing?  I understand if Carnival goes belly up - loose it all.

 

New to Carnival after a long absence.

It is absolutely that easy.  When you go to pay on your cruise, there is a section to pay with gift card.  Enter your information there.  Done.

[tcmagnum]

1 hour ago, Schoifmom said:

It is absolutely that easy.  When you go to pay on your cruise, there is a section to pay with gift card.  Enter your information there.  Done.

Thank you for reassuring me.

I will be doing this in next month or so.

Thanks!!

[tradercj]

When purchasing through AARP, who is it billed against, AARP or Carnival. Wondering if you could use a Carnival credit card and get extra points.

[SDPadreFan]

It's important to note that when you make this purchase through AARP, the purchase will be coded as Charitable Organization AND NOT Travel. I found this out when I used my Costco Credit Card to make my first purchase. I did not earn 3% Cash Back as a Travel Purchase but the generic 1% on "all other purchases". So the next time (tonight actually), I used my Chase DoubleCash Card and will earn 2%.

[SDPadreFan]

Another thing I learned while on our Alaska cruise in June. I had gone to Guest Services to apply a "balance remaining" Gift Card to our onboard account and I still had another $500 Gift Card attached to the first one. Guest Services applied BOTH Gift Cards to my account inadvertently but the simple solution they provided was to just go down to the candy store (name???) and buy a new $500 Carnival Gift Card and that charge was then put on my shipboard account. Easy to do. Just converted an AARP e-gift card (paper) to a shiny new plastic Carnival Gift Card.

[ZoeyVictoria]

I tried to purchase some gift cards this morning and received an error message regarding “technical difficulties”.  I hope they are resolved soon.

[Tom-n-Cheryl]

11 hours ago, SDPadreFan said:

It's important to note that when you make this purchase through AARP, the purchase will be coded as Charitable Organization AND NOT Travel. I found this out when I used my Costco Credit Card to make my first purchase. I did not earn 3% Cash Back as a Travel Purchase but the generic 1% on "all other purchases". So the next time (tonight actually), I used my Chase DoubleCash Card and will earn 2%.

 

Yep - I've learned that the hard way with the Chase Sapphire Reserve card. Parking at Pt Canaveral seems to never show up as TRAVEL, and I get the 1%...  Miami and Ft. Lauderdale have theirs coded/configured such that it goes though as TRAVEL.

 

Tom

[back-at-it]

I had two of the $500 gift cards and the website said it accepted them but the total for the cruise never went down.  I just called customer service and they got them entered just fine.

[ngrund]

On 11/3/2022 at 2:20 PM, tcmagnum said:

Thank you for reassuring me.

I will be doing this in next month or so.

Thanks!!

Please note that there is a limit to how many gift cards can be applied in one transaction(i think it was 8 or 9).

So, since I had $100 cards, I could not pay "balance in full", I had to make a couple of "other amount"payments.

 

 

[ngrund]

On 11/4/2022 at 11:32 PM, SDPadreFan said:

It's important to note that when you make this purchase through AARP, the purchase will be coded as Charitable Organization AND NOT Travel. I found this out when I used my Costco Credit Card to make my first purchase. I did not earn 3% Cash Back as a Travel Purchase but the generic 1% on "all other purchases". So the next time (tonight actually), I used my Chase DoubleCash Card and will earn 2%.

If you have a card that gives a bonus for internet spend (B of A cash rewards for example), the transaction gets coded as internet spend

[ngrund]

2 minutes ago, ngrund said:

If you have a card that gives a bonus for internet spend (B of A cash rewards for example), the transaction gets coded as internet spend

Also, if you have a Freedom card, you can pay with paypal which is a current 5% category

[Tom-n-Cheryl]

9 minutes ago, ngrund said:

Please note that there is a limit to how many gift cards can be applied in one transaction(i think it was 8 or 9).

So, since I had $100 cards, I could not pay "balance in full", I had to make a couple of "other amount"payments.

 

 

Two nights ago I was using them to pay off a Loft 19 Cabana rental for the week. The Cabana was $2,250, but had something like a $400 gratuity added on top. I had my gift "cards" all lined up. The most I could apply was $2,500 (5 cards @ $500 each), I paid the rest with a CC. Still, that right there saved me $250 - sweet !

 

Tom

Edited November 6, 2022 by Tom-n-Cheryl
Corrected savings amount...

[Tom-n-Cheryl]

2 minutes ago, ngrund said:

Also, if you have a Freedom card, you can pay with paypal which is a current 5% category

 

I'm guessing that the 5% spend/category has some monthly or annual limit of cash back?

 

I have a Freedom card as well, so I might look into that. THANKS

 

Tom

[ngrund]

2 minutes ago, Tom-n-Cheryl said:

Two nights ago I was using them to pay off a Loft 19 Cabana rental for the week. The Cabana was $2,250, but had something like a $400 gratuity added on top. I had my gift "cards" all lined up. The most I could apply was $2,500 (5 cards @ $500 each), I paid the rest with a CC. Still, that right there saved me $200 - sweet !

 

Tom

Maybe the limit was 5, I really don't remember.

 

for next time, you should have been able to cancel that transaction, start over selecting other payment for 2500, apply those 5, then do another transaction for the remainder, which is what I did

[ngrund]

3 minutes ago, Tom-n-Cheryl said:

 

I'm guessing that the 5% spend/category has some monthly or annual limit of cash back?

 

I have a Freedom card as well, so I might look into that. THANKS

 

Tom

Yes the 5% is limited to $1500 per quarter ($75 total cash back), then you get 1%