Organized Chaos

Codes come few & far between nowadays. Not that I really need them, I have more than I'll ever use, but I'm curious why they slowed to a trickle.

I don't know if this will help, but it's worth a look. Go into your account details and look at your payment method. Is your old card (with old CVV) saved to your account? If so, maybe that's why it won't accept the new card. You also have to make sure the billing & shipping addresses match. Beyond that, I'm not sure what's going on. Obviously an issue between your account and the new credit card since PayPal works. I'll bet they lost it, then found it. UPS is good for that sometimes. I had a package go missing a couple months ago. It made it all the way to my nearest facility, but never got put on the truck. It showed up about a week after it was due. Carnival's gift card website has a balance checker: https://carnival.ourgiftcards.com/checkbalance See if the cards still have funds on them. If it were me and they were still good, I'd use them. But I'd do it soon just in case they take time to cancel in the system.

Daily Getaways, that's the name of it. I couldn't think of it. 👍 Looks like they have almost all hotel deals. If I remember right, they used to have a lot more variety. I see a lot of people talk about the Kroger fuel program, but all of our Kroger stores closed around here. The couple we did have didn't have gas stations. I forgot, Newegg .com offers 8% off Carnival cards once in a while. I sure wish companies would bring back those 15% off cards once in a while. The ones that did it back then were always limited to a few per person, but they were still nice. And it wasn't hard to double the limit with another person.

I get the feeling that Carnival cruisers play a big role in keeping Allstate Rewards going. As a whole, we've kept their Carnival cards in very high demand for years. I'd love to see their stats for Carnival cards sold over the years vs. all the other gift cards. I wish other companies/websites would get in on the action. Several years ago, PayPal owned a subsidiary that ran an eBay store that sold gift cards. On a couple different occasions, they sold Carnival cards for 15% off and they sold out within a few hours both times. Around the same time, the U.S. Travel Association was running a summertime promotion that partnered with many companies to offer discounts & such to promote travel. They, too, sold Carnival cards for 15% off one year and they sold out very quickly. The following year, they advertised that they had partnered with Carnival again, but the cards never showed up. If companies realized how in-demand discounted Carnival cards actually are, they could take advantage. **ghostly whisper** If you sell them, we will come. 😁

I understand your point about the AARP fee vs. free on Allstate. When AARP changed their rewards program and made Carnival cards for members only, it angered a lot of people. We had already been paying members by then, but I still thought it was a dirty move to do that to people. Their old way used points just like Allstate, except on AARP, we could take quizzes to earn points (plus some in emails). But this thread made it much easier to earn points on Allstate. I'm coming up on 900,000 points. Partly because I've been doing it for 6 years now and also because we don't take many cruises, so I've been racking them up. If by some chance Allstate Rewards does go belly-up, it'll be a shame to have wasted all those points, but it's not like it cost me anything except a little of my time. This thread has definitely made it a fun ride. As far as biting the bullet and paying for an AARP membership, it helps to look over all the other benefits they offer, too. If anyone's on the fence about joining and think you'll get some use out of any of the other benefits, in addition to Carnival cards, it makes it that much better of a deal.

That's odd, the only emails I got were from AARP itself, but we're able to go into our account settings and choose to eliminate those. I use an alternate email account that I use for things I sign up for, that way if I get spam, it's not going to my primary email. You could create one and change it over in your AARP account settings. AARP's normal fee is $16/yr. Even at that price, getting the discount on 2 Carnival cards pays for the membership, and then some. We also use our AARP to rent cars & hotels. The discounts on those two things cover more than the membership fee, so it really is a pretty good deal. AARP & Allstate use a third-party company to operate their rewards programs. They used to both use the same company, then AARP revamped their program and switched to a different one. Since then, Allstate has switched to a new one, too. It's hard to say how much control they (AARP & Allstate) have over things like the discount amount & shipping fees. Allstate's shipping fee used to be 59 cents per card (no matter the card amount). That was a pain, but to raise it to $1.75 is ridiculous. And to go up to $5 for $500 cards is robbery, because no matter the denomination, THEY ALL WEIGH THE SAME.

Round & round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows. Except me, I know...3 strikes, that's where it stops. But I did get my memory game points, so there's that. I've been having issue logging into the website for some time now. I use my bookmark, try to log in, get a white screen for a few seconds, then get a "secure log in" screen with a blue background. So I have to click my bookmark again where it then takes me to the screen for policy holders. I have to click "Log Out" in the upper right corner. Back to my bookmark and it finally lets me login for real. I clear my cookies all the time, so it's not that. It's the long way around, but I finally get there. 😔

I'm late to the excitement, but I'm guessing you copied a clickable link (aka a hyperlink) that lead back to your account when you posted it here. I've seen that done before when people copy/pasted codes from their emails. FYI if you ever want to copy/paste a clickable link, like one of these codes, but post it as a plain-text word, you can copy it, paste it into your browser's address bar, then do a normal copy/paste from there. That will remove the clickability. The clickable-ness. Whatever.

If you created an Allstate Rewards account online (without being an Allstate policy holder), then you'll probably have to call customer service and have that account deleted from their system. Then create one from the Allstate mobile app first. Again, that's only for non-policy holders. We can still join Rewards, but have to jump through hoops to do it. AARP changed their rewards system a few years back. For Carnival cards, you no longer have to accumulate points, but you do have to be a paying member (you don't have to be 50 anymore).

Oh yeah, well I have a debit card from my small, regional bank and I can use my points to buy junk from the site they've partnered with. How do you like them apples? 😝😂 I usually just get a Visa gift card. Joking aside, I've gotten by without a credit card for years, but I think it's time to get back in the game. Side note, I got 100 points from the memory game this morning. Didn't that used to give us 1,000 or am I thinking of something else?

Whoa! Won 2,000 on scratch off. That's the most I've won with that. Just like crossword uses the same words over & over, the memory game uses the same images. I like both of those games, I wish they'd change them up a little. That's the first time I've ever heard anyone have that problem with Allstate (or AARP) cards. Let's hope you get it resolved soon and it doesn't become a more common problem. The only time I've ever heard that happening was a few years ago, but it was because people were unwisely buying them off of sites like eBay and sellers were selling blank ones. It became such a problem, for a while Carnival insisted on verifying the validity of gift cards onboard cruises. They had to go through HQ to ensure they were legit and the process took up to 24 hours. That was a pain, but thankfully it didn't last long. I never understood their idea to verify them because it wasn't that the cards weren't legit Carnival gift cards, it was that people were getting robbed by crooked sellers.

Both worked for me, too. Thanks. Not too long ago, every code they released had at least 2 alter-egos. All we had to do was tweak it a little bit, like move the year from the end to the front, or like you did, change a 1k to 2k. Things like that. And it always added up to 3k-4k points. They must've figured out that we figured out their trick, because they stopped doing it. Is it just me, or do codes come much more infrequently nowadays?

Holy cow! I haven't bought cards for some time. Shipping used to be 59 cents/each. $1.75 is ridiculous. Oh cool, I didn't know e-cards could be put in Wallet. Thanks for that little tidbit, that'll be handy.

Scratch & win gave me 500 yesterday and 1,500 today. Plus the crossword. Get it while it's hot!! I'm not a policy holder, so can't help you there. And getting help from customer service about Rewards is a crap shoot.

Won 500 on scratch off today. I like scratch off the least, it's boring. I wish they'd come up with some more exciting games. I like crossword, but like someone else said, they use the same dumb words every time. In my mind, I've always thought that Allstate the insurance company treats Allstate Rewards as an afterthought. It's ran by a third-party and they use a separate customer service team for it. So much so, if you call the regular customer service, they know very little to nothing about Rewards. I've always been worried they'd abandoned it, but then again, it's been going fairly consistently for the 6 years I've been a member, so who knows.

For what it's worth, ever since AARP revamped their rewards system a couple years ago, I've never seen them run out of Carnival e-cards. Well, except for once shortly after the revamp, but I think that was because they were having problems with the new system.

Yeah, they're on the Spirit. I think they said it's a 12 day. They also stop in Tahiti. It sounds like a nice cruise. They were looking for something kind of similar to Carnival. Didn't want one filled with kids, but not filled with seniors either. Nothing overly fancy & "stuffy," so to speak. They like to have some drinks & have fun, good music, things like that.

They said the package they got included alcohol and one or two specialty dining meals, plus some other things that'd be extra on Carnival. Oh, and it includes their flight because they fly to Hawaii first, then cruise back. So after doing the math, they said after paying for the extras they like on Carnival, NCL came out to about the same.

That's a sound strategy right there. 👍 Yep, you've reached your annual winning quota. Better luck next year. 😄 The wheel was broken last night...it gave me 500 points. They fixed it though...nothing tonight.

I know a couple that recently booked their first NCL cruise. Long-time Carnival cruisers, never cruised with anyone else, but they were on the Celebration last month and had their worst ever Carnival experience. One bad cruise isn't going to turn them off to Carnival completely, but it did get them to look elsewhere for the first time. They looked at other lines and the price was right on an NCL Hawaiian cruise, so they went for it. I think it isn't until Sept., but I'm eager to hear how they like it.

If you ever have trouble getting the e-cards, be sure to check your spam/junk folder. Your AARP membership also includes one additional membership for someone in your household. They limit Carnival cards to 5/month, but if you have a second member, they can create their own separate AARP Rewards account online to give you 10/month. Not that I check their site regularly, but ever since they revamped their rewards program a few years ago (and switched Carnival cards to members only), I've only ever seen them run out of e-cards once, and I think that was because they were having technical problems.

I just played and it slowed down, almost stopped on a $5 gift card, then sped up to go around to the X. 😠 I know they set it not to win often, but they don't have to make it so obvious. I'm the same way. It's not crazy if you know you're going to use it. And if you know how to cash out in the casino, no harm no foul.

I was never a huge Pac Man fan...Atari or arcade versions. But I do remember when it came out for Atari, we got it for Christmas that year and the entire family gathered around taking turns. It was the first and only video game my mom ever played. It was too nerve-wracking for her. I can still hear her screaming running from them ghosts. LOL She tried it once and never touched a video game controller ever again. 😆

Yeah, you have to have the direction pressed well before you want to make the turn. Feels very buggy, I gave up after a couple plays. 1,500 pts. from scratch & win tonight. I think that's the most I've ever gotten from it. Plus 1k from the memory game. 👍

Yep, members only, but like n6uqqq said, it's not hard to recoup the cost of a membership. They often have deals, especially if you sign up for more than 1 year. I've seen good membership deals on Black Friday, too. We drive to cruise ports so with the discounts AARP gives us on rental cars & hotels, the savings easily pay for the membership. Plus there's a lot more benefits you might like. And we don't have to be 50 yrs. old to join anymore. They only sell e-gift cards for Carnival and they do limit them to 5/month, but each membership comes with a complimentary membership for 1 other person in your household. They can set up their own account and get another 5/month if you need more.