Integrity brought into question by HAL agent

[Stateroom_Sailor]

I had a couple of old gift cards from 2019 - 2020 popping up with an error when I looked up the balances.  I called the number on the back of the card to investigate further.  The agent told me that the first card had $760 on it, and that the 2nd card had $833 (at least that's what I thought I heard).  She claimed that these cards needed to be reissued as new e-gift cards, and quickly processed the first.  The 2nd one kept getting rejected, and reprocessed, until $300 was offered.  I asked why it was lower, and upon investigation, she claimed that the 2nd gift card was now showing a balance of $88. 

 

I called to my TA to make payment on our upcoming Alaska cruise, and only the $300 e-gift card worked.  The $760 e-gift card showed a balance of $0.

 

The 2nd HAL gift card agent claimed both of our physical cards, and "new" e-gift cards, were all old cards that I had already used up.  She accused me of not telling her the full story, that I hadn't actually called in earlier, and that old gift cards would not be resubmitted to the customer.  She claimed that the $760 balance had already been used towards our Eurodam cruise, and that I had just used a $300 gift card unrelated to anything on the table.  Like the first agent, she claimed that my 2nd physical gift card showed an inactive balance of $88 remaining, which I didn't pursue.  I tried to thank her for trying to clear everything up, but she remained annoyed and suspicious sounding.

 

I can say I honestly don't know what's going on, these inactive gift card balances seem to be quite a jumbled mess.  We had lots of cancellations in 2020 like everyone else, which I'm sure doesn't help.  I don't appreciate having my integrity questioned without basis.  We won't be taking advantage of any more gift card promotions.  Should this problem bleed into other areas, we'll shift our business accordingly.

[rodndonna]

6 hours ago, Stateroom_Sailor said:

I had a couple of old gift cards from 2019 - 2020 popping up with an error when I looked up the balances.  I called the number on the back of the card to investigate further.  The agent told me that the first card had $760 on it, and that the 2nd card had $833 (at least that's what I thought I heard).  She claimed that these cards needed to be reissued as new e-gift cards, and quickly processed the first.  The 2nd one kept getting rejected, and reprocessed, until $300 was offered.  I asked why it was lower, and upon investigation, she claimed that the 2nd gift card was now showing a balance of $88. 

 

I called to my TA to make payment on our upcoming Alaska cruise, and only the $300 e-gift card worked.  The $760 e-gift card showed a balance of $0.

 

The 2nd HAL gift card agent claimed both of our physical cards, and "new" e-gift cards, were all old cards that I had already used up.  She accused me of not telling her the full story, that I hadn't actually called in earlier, and that old gift cards would not be resubmitted to the customer.  She claimed that the $760 balance had already been used towards our Eurodam cruise, and that I had just used a $300 gift card unrelated to anything on the table.  Like the first agent, she claimed that my 2nd physical gift card showed an inactive balance of $88 remaining, which I didn't pursue.  I tried to thank her for trying to clear everything up, but she remained annoyed and suspicious sounding.

 

I can say I honestly don't know what's going on, these inactive gift card balances seem to be quite a jumbled mess.  We had lots of cancellations in 2020 like everyone else, which I'm sure doesn't help.  I don't appreciate having my integrity questioned without basis.  We won't be taking advantage of any more gift card promotions.  Should this problem bleed into other areas, we'll shift our business accordingly.

 

I know exactly what you are going through ... we purchased a slew of gift cards in 2020/21  at different times to pay for cruises which then had cancellations .. rebooked some ... etc..it was ongoing ..

 

I hadn't really kept good accounting of the cards (didn't realize I would need it, I was so optimistic - haha). To make things more complicated, when refunds were issued back to gift card, they didn't always go back to the original card  (which I had wrongly assumed it would).

 

Long story short, I had to bite the bullet and spend the better part of a day going through every HAL gift card purchases and then every HAL invoice in my emails to trace every purchase (you can see the final four codes of the Gif card to identify them) and every refund. It took a lot of time, but was then able to verify what final balance I should have had on the gift cards against what I could see in-line as my balance.

 

Thankfully, on a couple of our cruises, we were able to just apply cards with a large balance remaining and any unused balance was refunded back to our credit card rather than a gift card Was surprised but I think it may be because they seem to have changed the company that does the gift cards from when we bought ours.

 

Anyway - you're right - they can be a headache if you have a lot of then (especially when all the bonus cards were small denominations)