Princess Gift Card Problem — AARP

[Daniel A]

11 minutes ago, cheetosrevil said:

No option even when you click on the available printers on your computer? What options do you see when you click on the Print Card button? For me, my choices start with Print, Destination...

 

This is not a Princess issue at this point based on what I am hearing.

Thanks for your help on this.  I was able to see the above when I hit the "Print Card" button, but I wasn't aware that "Save To PDF" was an option in the print dialogue box.  I now have the cards saved as PDFs.  Thank you!  

 

Since I wasn't aware of that option, there must have been another easier option when opening the gift cards from the e-mail. but with your help, I have them. now.

[cheetosrevil]

2 minutes ago, Daniel A said:

Thanks for your help on this.  I was able to see the above when I hit the "Print Card" button, but I wasn't aware that "Save To PDF" was an option in the print dialogue box.  I now have the cards saved as PDFs.  Thank you!  

 

Since I wasn't aware of that option, there must have been another easier option when opening the gift cards from the e-mail. but with your help, I have them. now.

Awesome and you're very welcome! Glad to hear it worked for you.

 

I have only recently started buying the AARP gift cards so guess I had a head start on the "new procedures."

Edited October 5, 2023 by cheetosrevil

[KKB]

I always just screen shot the bar code on the gift card when it is sent to me.

Will this not work now?

[JimmyVWine]

4 hours ago, Daniel A said:

Thanks for the help on this.  I have the full Adobe Acrobat installed on my computer and there is no option of "Print to PDF" when I click on the "Print Card" button.  Again , I'm not sure why they decided to complicate something that worked fine before...

Your computer will definitely have a “Print to PDF” option. There is nothing that either AARP or Princess can do to override that. 

[Daniel A]

11 hours ago, JimmyVWine said:

Your computer will definitely have a “Print to PDF” option. There is nothing that either AARP or Princess can do to override that. 

Yes, thank you.  With the help from @cheetosrevil I was able to eventually find that option, but we shouldn't need to search for and find a workaround for a feature which was there earlier.  I'm pretty confident that I won't be the only person who won't know this workaround.

 

I save up my gift cards and e-mail the PDFs to my TA when final payment is due.  I don't use them as I get them as I need to immediately notify my trip insurer whenever I make any payments on a cruise.  I then get a new invoice from the insurer for insuring the additional funds paid for that sailing.

[Rick&Jeannie]

I've purchased probably as many as 25 gift cards so far now.  I have always just done the "Print to PDF" function which any current Windows (Apple?) PC can do...you just "pick" a different printer from your selection list.  My problem is I always forget to switch it back to my physical printer so that the next time I want to print it tries to go to a PDF! 😝

[jwattle]

I may be an outlier, but I do screenprints on my phone of all my travel docs, including the GCs that I take for OBC. Then they're on my phone in tidy little folders (I have the Galaxy Z-Fold so it's easy to read at Guest Services, airports, etc). 🙂

 

[Rick&Jeannie]

32 minutes ago, jwattle said:

I may be an outlier, but I do screenprints on my phone of all my travel docs, including the GCs that I take for OBC. Then they're on my phone in tidy little folders (I have the Galaxy Z-Fold so it's easy to read at Guest Services, airports, etc). 🙂

 

I do basically the same thing, though from my desktop PC.  I have EVERYTHING printed out...just in case.

[Torfamm]

1 hour ago, jwattle said:

I may be an outlier, but I do screenprints on my phone of all my travel docs, including the GCs that I take for OBC. Then they're on my phone in tidy little folders (I have the Galaxy Z-Fold so it's easy to read at Guest Services, airports, etc). 🙂

 

I keep everything on Google drive but really important things are saved directly on my phone as photos or as attachments to emails. I've had Guest Services just ask me to email the gift cards saved as photos to them and they have also used an iPad to take their own photo of the document on my phone.  

[AZjohn]

We are truly at the point we save everything electronically on the cloud/email/hard drive.

The occasional time we do get paper documents we shred them after copying from scanner to pdf.

 

It made me think of times not that long ago we got so excited when our cruise documents in a professional pouch would arrive. Looking at all the excursions details deciding what to book when we got on the ship.

 

Lol….. those days are long gone forever now 🙂 

 

And some people still wonder why internet on the ship could be very import.

 

Cheers

[mina]

Just a tip for anyone booking free casino cruises online and wanting to use gift cards for your room port costs and deposit.  You have to pay in full on booking, so you can not get to your cruise personalizer to apply the gift card when you are booking.  Instead, you get a page with option to pay thru credit card or thru PayPal.  You can not save the cruise to pay later so you can get to the gift card button on cruise personalizer.   I discovered by accident, that if you put in a wrong expiration date or other info in for your credit card, the system automatically says you inputted an invalid card number and it saves the cruise to your account and asks you to go to cruise personalizer to pay.  Viola, you can then access the payments screen where’re the gift card button option is. 

[Rick&Jeannie]

36 minutes ago, mina said:

Just a tip for anyone booking free casino cruises online and wanting to use gift cards for your room port costs and deposit.  You have to pay in full on booking, so you can not get to your cruise personalizer to apply the gift card when you are booking.  Instead, you get a page with option to pay thru credit card or thru PayPal.  You can not save the cruise to pay later so you can get to the gift card button on cruise personalizer.   I discovered by accident, that if you put in a wrong expiration date or other info in for your credit card, the system automatically says you inputted an invalid card number and it saves the cruise to your account and asks you to go to cruise personalizer to pay.  Viola, you can then access the payments screen where’re the gift card button option is. 

Probably the one and *only* time that a Princess IT bug comes up in your favor!

[Daniel A]

I don't use a smartphone.  I do save copies of documents on my laptop and take that with me when I cruise.  DW also maintains a paper file of all of our documents (including the all-important trip insurance policy) and take that with us.

 

It drives me nuts when I am behind somebody in a line, and they can't locate a bar code or QR code on their phone when going through a check in line at an airport/cruiseport or other venue or trying to use their phone to pay at a store checkout.  Usually, they're scanning through cute pictures of their cats or grandkids while I am behind them with hard copies ready to go.

[minnesotasisu]

I purchased three $500 Princess gift cards from AARP and for two upcoming cruises. I applied one of the $500 cards to the first cruise and two of the $500 gift cards to the second cruise (since it had more excursions). We were hoping to use this OBC to pay for excursions, crew incentives, and Wi-Fi but now I find out that since the gift cards were put under MY name in the sailing we can not use any of this OBC towards paying for my wife's excursions, crew incentives, and Wi-Fi !!! I tried to purchase some OBC for her using my OBC but it only allows you to buy OBC with a credit card. What a scam. Buyer beware!!!

[minnesotasisu]

3 hours ago, minnesotasisu said:

I purchased three $500 Princess gift cards from AARP and for two upcoming cruises. I applied one of the $500 cards to the first cruise and two of the $500 gift cards to the second cruise (since it had more excursions). We were hoping to use this OBC to pay for excursions, crew incentives, and Wi-Fi but now I find out that since the gift cards were put under MY name in the sailing we can not use any of this OBC towards paying for my wife's excursions, crew incentives, and Wi-Fi !!! I tried to purchase some OBC for her using my OBC but it only allows you to buy OBC with a credit card. What a scam. Buyer beware!!!

so I was on the chat with Princess for over an hour this morning with no luck and tried calling them this afternoon to try and get this resolved. They would not allow me to transfer one of the $500 gift cards to my wife's name so she can use it. They also would not allow the gift cards to be used for crew appreciation, Wi-Fi, or to pay for excursions. The only thing I can to with them according to who I spoke to was using them for onboard services, such as the spa, specialty restaurants, etc. once onboard. There is no way I am going to spend $1000 on spa treatments, etc.

 

Has anyone been able to use them as I had intended? I am fuming mad right now and feel the only way I may get this money back is to cancel the cruise which wouldn't take much of a nudge from me to do so. I may never cruise with Princess again if this can't be resolved.

Edited November 20, 2023 by minnesotasisu

[Rick&Jeannie]

Just now, minnesotasisu said:

so I was on the chat with Princess for over an hour this morning with no luck and tried calling them this afternoon to try and get this resolved. They would not allow me to transfer one of the $500 gift cards to my wife's name so she can use it. They also would not allow the gift cards to be used for crew appreciation, Wi-Fi, or to pay for excursions. The only thing I can to with them according to who I spoke to was using them for onboard services, such as the spa, specialty restaurants, etc. once onboard. 

 

Has anyone been able to use them as I had intended? I am fuming mad right now and feel the only way I may get this money back is to cancel the cruise which wouldn't take much of a nudge from me to do so. I may never cruise with Princess again if this can't be resolved.

Once you are on board you can simply have them applied to your account where they will cover *anything* you can purchase or pay for. It's just like handing them cash for pre-payment of services. 

[Daniel A]

8 minutes ago, minnesotasisu said:

so I was on the chat with Princess for over an hour this morning with no luck and tried calling them this afternoon to try and get this resolved. They would not allow me to transfer one of the $500 gift cards to my wife's name so she can use it. They also would not allow the gift cards to be used for crew appreciation, Wi-Fi, or to pay for excursions. The only thing I can to with them according to who I spoke to was using them for onboard services, such as the spa, specialty restaurants, etc. once onboard. There is no way I am going to spend $1000 on spa treatments, etc.

 

Has anyone been able to use them as I had intended? I am fuming mad right now and feel the only way I may get this money back is to cancel the cruise which wouldn't take much of a nudge from me to do so. I may never cruise with Princess again if this can't be resolved.

I'm just curious, does your wife share your name and are you showing a different source of payment for your wife's purchases?  I have had no issues applying our $8600 AARP gift cards to both of our bookings, but we do share the same last name and we have our stateroom account set up where anything my wife were to charge will be applied against my credit card.  Just a thought.

[Rick&Jeannie]

1 minute ago, Daniel A said:

I'm just curious, does your wife share your name and are you showing a different source of payment for your wife's purchases?  I have had no issues applying our $8600 AARP gift cards to both of our bookings, but we do share the same last name and we have our stateroom account set up where anything my wife were to charge will be applied against my credit card.  Just a thought.

Same here...have never had any issues the past 5 or 6 cruises. 

[minnesotasisu]

12 minutes ago, Daniel A said:

I'm just curious, does your wife share your name and are you showing a different source of payment for your wife's purchases?  I have had no issues applying our $8600 AARP gift cards to both of our bookings, but we do share the same last name and we have our stateroom account set up where anything my wife were to charge will be applied against my credit card.  Just a thought.

she shares the same last name and same source of payment. We did not use the gift cards to pay for the cruise. We were hoping to use them to pay for excursions, crew appreciation, and Wi-Fi.

[jwattle]

1 hour ago, minnesotasisu said:

she shares the same last name and same source of payment. We did not use the gift cards to pay for the cruise. We were hoping to use them to pay for excursions, crew appreciation, and Wi-Fi.

Once you're onboard,  it's all blended into one,  so you'll be fine

[Ken the cruiser]

I don't know if this will help, but here is a link to the Princess Gift Cards FAQ web page.

 

Frequently Asked Questions - Princess Cruises

 

Go down towards the bottom and look under Gift Card Transaction Disputes. Note: The phone number is listed in the actual text on the web page.

 

Q: I didn't make a transaction.  Can the amount be credited back to my card?
A: Please contact (phone number).  Our Princess Cruises Gift Card Customer Service has access to each card’s transaction history and if an error is found, we will process an adjustment to your card's total balance promptly.

[AZjohn]

1 hour ago, minnesotasisu said:

she shares the same last name and same source of payment. We did not use the gift cards to pay for the cruise. We were hoping to use them to pay for excursions, crew appreciation, and Wi-Fi.

I think you might be trying to prepay those items with the $1,500 worth of gift cards which you can’t (unless you got the plus package for crew tips and Wi-Fi). The only thing I know you can use gift cards on before cruise is the actual cost of the cruise.

 

What others are trying to tell you is once you embarked go to customer service desk and give the the $1,500 worth of gift cards to put on your onboard account and then you and your wife could use them as you want.

 

if you are trying to pre-book your excursions before the cruise you can not use the gift cards. You can use gift cards if you book the excursions when you’re onboard the ship after putting them on your onboard account.

 

Cheers

[minnesotasisu]

3 hours ago, AZjohn said:

I think you might be trying to prepay those items with the $1,500 worth of gift cards which you can’t (unless you got the plus package for crew tips and Wi-Fi). The only thing I know you can use gift cards on before cruise is the actual cost of the cruise.

 

What others are trying to tell you is once you embarked go to customer service desk and give the the $1,500 worth of gift cards to put on your onboard account and then you and your wife could use them as you want.

 

if you are trying to pre-book your excursions before the cruise you can not use the gift cards. You can use gift cards if you book the excursions when you’re onboard the ship after putting them on your onboard account.

 

Cheers

I have already redeemed the gift cards to Princess and they put them in an account that is used to pay for onboard services.

[jwattle]

1 minute ago, minnesotasisu said:

I have already redeemed the gift cards to Princess and they put them in an account that is used to pay for onboard services.

Then you are all set once you're onboard 😀

[damiross]

I have $5,000 worth of gift cards that I had used to pay for a cruise I needed to cancel.  I paid for a cruise so now I have a balance of $3,0872.  I was hoping to pay for excursions additional OBC.  Sadly, even though the cards were bought from AARP, they are still issued by Princess and Princess won't allow me to buy anything with them outside of the cruise fare.  I had planned on using them for excursions. 

 

Guess I'll be spending some time at Guest Services converting 10 electronic gift cards. each with a 16-digit code, into OBC 

 

As soon as possible after the conversion, I'll head out to the casino, play a few games, and then cash in.