AARP e-gift card

[jwattle]

20 hours ago, theloo said:

I have never bought large gift certificates before, but this looks like a great deal.  I would like to buy one $500 card to put on my account (mostly to pay crew gratuities).  That sounds pretty easy to do on board, or possibly through my TA.  Next, I have a second cruise booked with final payment due in September.  Since I owe more than $5k, it sounds like I will have to buy 5 gift cards in July, August, and September.  I can use these to make final payment through my TA also?  Thanks for the explicit instructions.

You are correct.🙂

[Thrak]

On 5/28/2023 at 8:58 PM, theloo said:

I have never bought large gift certificates before, but this looks like a great deal.  I would like to buy one $500 card to put on my account (mostly to pay crew gratuities).  That sounds pretty easy to do on board, or possibly through my TA.  Next, I have a second cruise booked with final payment due in September.  Since I owe more than $5k, it sounds like I will have to buy 5 gift cards in July, August, and September.  I can use these to make final payment through my TA also?  Thanks for the explicit instructions.

 

If you both join AARP Rewards you can each buy 5 cards per month.

[Bgwest]

9 hours ago, Thrak said:

 

If you both join AARP Rewards you can each buy 5 cards per month.

Has been that no membership was required to buy Princess gift cards. Carnival, yes, but not Princess. 
has something changed since I Iast bought gift cards?

[Ken the cruiser]

8 minutes ago, Bgwest said:

Has been that no membership was required to buy Princess gift cards. Carnival, yes, but not Princess. 
has something changed since I Iast bought gift cards?

My DW has had a membership for quite a while. But when we heard about the Princess GC deal, I registered under the free AARP Rewards program to get my set of Princess GCs without an issue.

[can786]

I have searched the AARP website and cannot find where to buy the gift cards.  Can anyone point me in the right direction?

[Ken the cruiser]

9 minutes ago, can786 said:

I have searched the AARP website and cannot find where to buy the gift cards.  Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Try this.

 

AARP Rewards: Explore Ways to Reward Yourself

 

[can786]

23 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Try this.

 

AARP Rewards: Explore Ways to Reward Yourself

 

Despite the fact that I have joined AARP Rewards and am signed in, I cannot get past the initial page

[Ken the cruiser]

3 minutes ago, can786 said:

Despite the fact that I have joined AARP Rewards and am signed in, I cannot get past the initial page

The Princess GC links are on the first page associated with the above link. I'm confused. 

 

[milolii]

58 minutes ago, Bgwest said:

Has been that no membership was required to buy Princess gift cards. Carnival, yes, but not Princess. 
has something changed since I Iast bought gift cards?

It is confusing.  You don’t need to join AARP, but you do need to join “AARP Rewards”, which is free. 

[cruisers0708]

We intend to buy GC to purchase OBC just prior to our cruise.  Princess website says we can purchase up to $1500 which will cover our Plus Package for 11 day cruise.

[WeCruise23]

can786, don't know if you were able to get the AARP gift cards purchased, but in case you didn't, I had that problem when I first signed up for rewards. I had to log out of the AARP site, close my browser, reopen it and log back in, then the Redeem link under Rewards worked properly and showed the gift cards when I searched for Princess.

[Bgwest]

2 hours ago, cruisers0708 said:

Princess website says we can purchase up to $1500

Wasn’t aware at any maximum allowed by Princess. 
would you please post (link, maybe) where you found this information?

[PacnGoNow]

34 minutes ago, Bgwest said:

Wasn’t aware at any maximum allowed by Princess. 
would you please post (link, maybe) where you found this information?

That’s the maximum you can purchase of OBC. On PCL website.

 

Cruise personalizer-

Onboard Credits

Onboard Credits cannot exceed $1,500 per booking.

Review confirmed packages

Credits appear on your stateroom account and are automatically applied to onboard

 

Edited May 30, 2023 by PacnGoNow

[Bgwest]

13 minutes ago, PacnGoNow said:

That’s the maximum you can purchase of OBC. On PCL website.

 

Cruise personalizer-

Onboard Credits

Onboard Credits cannot exceed $1,500 per booking.

Review confirmed packages

Credits appear on your stateroom account and are automatically applied to onboard

 

Got it!

but no limit on applying gift cards to pay cruise fare?

[PacnGoNow]

3 minutes ago, Bgwest said:

Got it!

but no limit on applying gift cards to pay cruise fare?

No, not any limit paying for a cruise. Never had a problem.

 

I no longer try to add GC as OBC precruise, do to the lack of training of PCL agents.  I just take a printed copy of my egift cards once OB to GS.  No problems.

[beg3yrs]

3 minutes ago, Bgwest said:

Got it!

but no limit on applying gift cards to pay cruise fare?

In our experience we've not seen a limit on applying GCs to the cruise fare. However the maximum we've applied to a fare is just under $10K.

 

Also, applying GCs to your account folio while on board doesn't seem to have a limit. We did have an experience where a guest services supervisor stopped by during the process and warned me not to apply GCs in large amounts over what we expected to spend. Took one look at our current folio amount and said, "Oh, in your case that's not going to be a problem". 😱

 

The $1,500 limit before embarkation can hamper your use of the OBC to book excursions ahead of time though.

[Ken the cruiser]

6 minutes ago, Bgwest said:

Got it!

but no limit on applying gift cards to pay cruise fare?

That's correct. There is no limit on paying down the cruise fare with GCs that we've heard about. For us that's the big plus for purchasing these AARP Princess Gift Cards. 🙂

[can786]

On 5/30/2023 at 11:17 AM, WeCruise23 said:

can786, don't know if you were able to get the AARP gift cards purchased, but in case you didn't, I had that problem when I first signed up for rewards. I had to log out of the AARP site, close my browser, reopen it and log back in, then the Redeem link under Rewards worked properly and showed the gift cards when I searched for Princess.

I could not get it to work on my laptop yesterday (it would not let me get past the home page for the AARP Rewards), but I could find them on my Ipad.  I didn't buy them at the time because I wanted to confirm with my TA that she can apply them to my final payment.  Today I was able to get the Rewards page to work on my laptop and have ordered 3 gift certificates.  Since final payment isn't due until December I am spacing out my gift card purchases.

 

One other question though - our next cruise is Australia/New Zealand on the Majestic Princess and all onboard charges are in Australian dollars.  The OBC I have from a booking promo, TA promo and FCC have all been applied at a 1:1 US dollar to Australian dollar rate.  Does anyone know whether they would do the same with a gift card, or would they use the actual exchange rate and give me a higher amount in Australian dollars?

[Ken the cruiser]

25 minutes ago, can786 said:

One other question though - our next cruise is Australia/New Zealand on the Majestic Princess and all onboard charges are in Australian dollars.  The OBC I have from a booking promo, TA promo and FCC have all been applied at a 1:1 US dollar to Australian dollar rate.  Does anyone know whether they would do the same with a gift card, or would they use the actual exchange rate and give me a higher amount in Australian dollars?

Wow, you're only getting US$0.65 of value for the OBC your US TA and Princess are giving you? If that is the case, there is no way I would give them any Princess Gift Cards purchased with US $$$ through AARP.

Edited May 31, 2023 by Ken the cruiser

[can786]

6 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Wow, you're only getting US$0.65 of value for the OBC your US TA and Princess are giving you? If that is the case, there is no way I would give them any Princess Gift Cards purchased with US $$$ through AARP.

While I have bought several gift cards to use toward final payment, I have no intention of using the gift cards for OBC unless I can confirm that they use the actual exchange rate.  While I'm not happy about the 1:1 exchange rate on the OBC that I already have, I did not pay out of pocket for it so I am not going to make a big deal about it.

[Thrak]

55 minutes ago, can786 said:

While I have bought several gift cards to use toward final payment, I have no intention of using the gift cards for OBC unless I can confirm that they use the actual exchange rate.  While I'm not happy about the 1:1 exchange rate on the OBC that I already have, I did not pay out of pocket for it so I am not going to make a big deal about it.

 

I'm paying for my Aus/NZ cruises - including the flights - with gift cards. The final bill shows it all together and I just give the cards to my TA and he pays with them. I can't believe that they would possibly take USD for OBC and then change it 1:1 with AUD. They can do that with the FCD and Shareholder OBC because it is plainly spelled out on the paperwork in advance.l It clearly states that the OBC will be applied in the currency used on the cruise. Actual, purchased, OBC is different. I "think" they use the exchange rate at the time you make the purchase.

 

Although I wish I was getting the FCD and Shareholder OBC at the US rate it works out great for those from Australia who book US cruises. They get the US rate for that OBC so it's a nice bonus for them.

[milolii]

2 hours ago, can786 said:

 

One other question though - our next cruise is Australia/New Zealand on the Majestic Princess and all onboard charges are in Australian dollars.  The OBC I have from a booking promo, TA promo and FCC have all been applied at a 1:1 US dollar to Australian dollar rate.  Does anyone know whether they would do the same with a gift card, or would they use the actual exchange rate and give me a higher amount in Australian dollars?

There was a post /thread about this maybe a month ago?  The poster reported he/she had learned a painful lesson and the gift cards lost their value. It may be somewhere in this thread or the second one about the GCs.  Or it may of been a separate thread. Maybe that poster will reply here.  Use caution with this. Smart move to investigate before purchasing to use as OBC for Australia/New Zealand cruises.     

 

[Calnev1]

On 4/12/2023 at 12:51 AM, caribill said:

 

 

But if you give them a gift card in US$ it will be converted to Australia $ using whatever poor exchange rate Princess currently uses.

Just to clarify, do you (or anyone) have actual experience using a Princess gift card (denominated in US dollars) to purchase OBC (denominated in Australian dollars)?  Either in advance of the cruise or once aboard the cruise?  I am suspicious about whether Princess will accept these gift cards for OBC denominated in Australian dollars.

[caribill]

4 hours ago, Calnev1 said:

Just to clarify, do you (or anyone) have actual experience using a Princess gift card (denominated in US dollars) to purchase OBC (denominated in Australian dollars)?  Either in advance of the cruise or once aboard the cruise?  I am suspicious about whether Princess will accept these gift cards for OBC denominated in Australian dollars.

 

My Australia based cruise disappeared with the pandemic, so I did not get the chance to do this.

[Lilz]

I just looked on the AARP site, and I am a member, but I can no longer find the Princess gift cards. I have used them in the past since they are such a great deal. Anyone know if they are gone for good? I logged out and back in with no luck. 

 

Edited June 5, 2023 by Lilz