GiftCard Disaster

On December 21st, I canceled an excursion which is partially paid for using a Carnival giftcard (22$). I called Carnival several times for a refund, but there was nothing they could do for me. They were clueless and kept on sending back and forth to wrong departments. Finally, I sent a message to Carnival on faceb**k asking for a new giftcard. They sent an email to the gift card department for me. I only received a response on February 4th (1 and a half months later) claiming that they would ship the card (to Canada) and needed my home address. They replied that it would be shipped soon. Fast forward to today, I received the package at the door without sufficient postage on it.The delivery man wanted me to pay 5$ for the package, but I refused because Carnival should have paid the shipping cost (The unnecessarily used Priority Mail when Letter-Mail would have cost less than 2$). I have 15 days to either pay the 5$ or the post office will destroy the package. Now I am faced with a dilemma. I either pay 5$ and my 22$ giftcard turns into a 17$ gift card, or I refuse the package and "attempt" to get a new card which could take another several months (but I could risk losing my money)

I'm guessing they use priority so they could track the package, to make sure it was delivered.

I'm guessing they use priority so they could track the package, to make sure it was delivered.

True, but I still should not be responsible for a cost that could be totally avoided. Sending a new code by email would have been much easier.

Pay the $5 and be done with it.

I'd pay the 5 bucks and then send them an email hoping to recoup the money out of pocket since it was their error not putting the correct postage on the package. And if I didn't get it back, I'd be pissed, but trying to figure out the logistics of getting them to send another card seems like it would take up more than $5 of what my time is worth.

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You should have just forgotten about the measly $22. Not worth your time and losing your sanity over.

I would certainly pay $5 to save a headache. My time has value.

Yep pay the $5 and take that loss.

There's no dilemma. Pay the $5 and move on with your life. Yes they should have sent it with sufficient postage. They screwed up. Don't make the situation way more trouble than it's worth. Pay the postage.

I am curious why so many people pay with gift cards. Are these gift cards actually gifted to guests or are people buying them to pay later? Wouldn't it be just as easy to save the money up in a bank account?

I am curious why so many people pay with gift cards. Are these gift cards actually gifted to guests or are people buying them to pay later? Wouldn't it be just as easy to save the money up in a bank account?

You can get gift cards at a discount, the savings beats anything a bank can offer.

This is a recent thread on the topic

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2596758

Pay the five dollars and send a nasty email to customer service.

This post made me chuckle. Paying thousands for a cruise, and want to argue about $5.00, and is willing to refuse to pay $5.00 and end up loosing $17.00? What a dilemma, lose $5 or lose $17? Why not chose the lose $17 option to stick it to them? :confused:

Yeah, send that nasty gram to customer service......granted they won't think twice about it but you'll feel better so take that CCL! or..........

On your next cruise eat $17 worth of extra food that you ordinarily wouldn't have eaten! Life's too short!

So let me get this straight. You booked an excursion with a gift card, YOU chose to cancel excursion which would give you a refund of $22 to a gift card, Carnival sent it priority which was the right thing to do so it could be tracked. Why should Carnival eat the $5 additional postage when it was you who cancelled? Pay the $5 and be glad to have $17 back.

Pat

I am curious why so many people pay with gift cards. Are these gift cards actually gifted to guests or are people buying them to pay later? Wouldn't it be just as easy to save the money up in a bank account?

I pay everything in gift cards because if my cruise fair + gratuities + on board spending total $5,000, I can use the discounted gift cards and spend a total of $4,500 for the gift cards. That saves me $500 on my cruise. I know for some people $500 isn't much and they don't care about saving money but for me, that $500 can go toward my airfare, hotel the night(s) before/after the cruise, excursions I do at the ports, etc.

This post made me chuckle. Paying thousands for a cruise, and want to argue about $5.00, and is willing to refuse to pay $5.00 and end up loosing $17.00? What a dilemma, lose $5 or lose $17? Why not chose the lose $17 option to stick it to them? :confused:

Actually, I would choose the $17 option if I wanted to stick it to them. This incentivizes one to try other lines, feeling burned. You mentioned it yourself, these cruises cost thousands. Losing even one sailing is hardly worth Carnival's wild, to pocket the money.

"Disaster"...per the title of the thread...a five dollar disaster? Wow. But what do I know?

Yeah I’d hardly consider this a disaster. I’d pay the $5 because most likely the OP got this at a discount so really not out $5 just ahead $5 instead of $10 and who knows, maybe Carnival added to the gift card to account for postage.

This can serve as a cautionary tale to those of us who are using the discounted gift cards to pay for stuff. Maybe you don’t want to pay for things you may ended canceling like excursions unless you are willing to deal with trying to get a refunded gift card?

Note to self

Book excursions with credit card.

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We are also dealing with a gift card issue. As other posters have mentioned, we buy gift cards from Verizon (under the old program) or All State in order to save a bit of money. On our last cruise we saved several hundred dollars just using the gift cards to pay off our cruise fare. Just before our cruise sailed in November, I purchased another $600 of gift cards which would be put on our account to essentially pay off our Cheers purchase. Every time I've done this, I've selected the electronic gift card option and I've had the e-gift card in my email within minutes of making the purchase. This time I immediately got the confirmation email, but then NOTHING. I waited a bit thinking there was just a delay. I then tried to call their customer service desk, but got no answer as it was after normal business hours. I guess they are a Mon-Fri 8-5 only service center. I tried several times on Friday, Saturday and Sunday (the day our cruise left) to get a hold of someone to no avail. We never received the gift cards and ended up just paying our cruise balance out of pocket. Now I've been trying in vain to get our money refunded. I'm being told that the gift cards are non-refundable. Which is fine if I just elect to not use them. But I never got them (and no they weren't in my spam folder). The chick at All State tried to tell me it was because the email address they have on file is mrogers2 and the email address I gave them was mdunn3. I told her that those email addresses go to the same inbox. The mdunn3 is just an alias of my original work email address and was updated after I got married and changed my name. It doesn't matter which one of the two you use...it all goes to the same place. And again, I got the confirmation email. So it's not like they didn't have a good email for me. We weren't planning on cruising for a while (my hubby is ready to try other vacations). So I'd prefer to get my money back. But now, I am researching other cruises for us later this year cause if I can't get my money back, I'd rather at least use them!

Lesson learned?? Order the gift cards well in advance of your sailing date rather than in the days leading up to it! :)

Suck it up and go pay to retrieve your mail. The card will still have $22 on it. You can buy 45 packs of ramen noodles with that kind of windfall. Host a party.

"Disaster"...per the title of the thread...a five dollar disaster? Wow. But what do I know?

My thoughts exactly. All this drama over $5??? I just wasted $5 of my time reading and responding of this post. What a disaster!!!! :eek:

Threadstarter's definition of a "disaster" must be a whole lot different than my definition of a disaster.

Even if one is willing to tweak the definition of disaster so that this incident meets the criteria to be labeled as such, any reasonable person would trade $5 to bypass a disaster.

Thanks threadstarter, I'm still chuckling over the drama in this thread.

Well aren't you all hyper-critical today!!!

OP may have been a bit overly dramatic in describing the ordeal as a disaster, but what he was trying to convey was what a hassle it was to get a refund using a gift card- being in Canada only made it worse!

Lighten up, all of you! You'll all be in a position to vent here on CC some day- wouldn't it be nice that instead of being attacked, someone just agreed with you and said 'yeah, that sucked'?