Resort Credits MAY NOT be used for purchases from outside vendors

**randymon** · January 4th, 2011, 11:08 AM

Greetings to all:

As you may know, we allow local outside vendors to sell their wares (carvings, paintings, straw bags, jewelry, etc) on certain days at each of our resorts.

To protect you from potential fraud issues, we strongly suggest you do not use a credit card to make purchases from outside vendors.

Please be advised that resort credits MAY NOT be used to pay for goods purchased from outside vendors.

To repeat, guests MAY NOT use resort credits for any purchase from outside vendors.

I trust you all understand and appreciate our position in this matter.

**Marnies** · January 4th, 2011, 11:13 AM

Makes perfect sense Randy. Besides, David would kill me if I bought a whack of paintings and expected him to get them into the suitcases!

Marnie

**John_NH** · January 4th, 2011, 07:57 PM

Hi Randymon,

In a past posting, announcing 2011 Travel Promotion dated Feb 1, 2010, Shandi posted "2 - $500 Resort Credit for stays of 7 nights or longer, if you can charge it to your room, the credit will apply.”

Now you post says “As you may know, we allow local outside vendors to sell their wares (carvings, paintings, straw bags, jewelry, etc) on certain days at each of our resorts… Please be advised that resort credits MAY NOT be used to pay for goods purchased from outside vendors.”

In past visits, I have been able to purchase cigars form the vendor that is set up in the evening outside The Cassava Terrace Restaurant. I was able to charge this to our room.

There were other vendors in the evening that sold woodcarvings & paintings, I had to pay cash, & could not charge these items to our room.

My question is, if I can charge the cigars to our room, will the resort credit cover it?

Thanks,
John

**Vickyj** · January 5th, 2011, 06:17 AM

What about excursions booked through the tour desk at the resort? Also, is there any chance of increasing the jewelry selection at CTI? When they did the renovations, they took out the duty free jewelry, cigar rum shop. Or when staying at CTI if we take the trading spaces day to CSS can we use the credits at the jewelry shop at CSS? I am just trying to plan on how I can help Michael spend the resort credits when we return to CTI in July.

**melody** · January 5th, 2011, 06:31 PM

The photo people are outside vendors, right? We charged that to our room I believe. Are we talking about those things too or just the folks who sell their goods (sandals, jewelry, paintings, etc) on the beach walkway? I don't know where they are at other resorts but that's where they set up at CSA.

**Happytimes42** · January 8th, 2011, 08:37 AM

we purchased pic that were taken on resort this past Dec. Thinking they would be covered by our credit. Charged to our room, when we checked out, we found out they weren't. We had to pay for this. Just an FYI

**SueandBill** · January 8th, 2011, 02:52 PM

Some more confusion around the credits. We will be at CSA soon in February and hope this will be cleared up for all of us by then. John, we still plan to come to CN on Wednesday, the 23rd. Will meet you and Kim on the beach. Where?

**John_NH** · January 9th, 2011, 12:44 PM

I hope the confusion about the credits can be cleared up. Last year the credits were spelled out, I think, $250 for the Spa and $150 for the Gift Shop. When we checked out, the front desk said we didn't do the Spa credit correctly and we had to "run" to the Spa right before the goodbye bus left for the airport, to get them to put the credits into the system. Then they said the cigars I bought, from the vendor, wouldn't be applied to the Gift Shop credit. That was no problem, because it did say Gift Shop credit.

I just want to be sure what we can use the credit for, and that the front desk also knows, to avoid confusion.

On a side note, Sue, you and Bill will have to meet us at MoBay on the 23rd. I was thinking Friday would be better. We usually hang out by the water sports area. Look forward to seeing you again. It's funny that we are only a few miles apart & have to go to Jamaica to see you. It's been a very busy summer, and we can get caught up soon.

**melody** · January 9th, 2011, 09:31 PM

Originally Posted by Happytimes42

we purchased pic that were taken on resort this past Dec. Thinking they would be covered by our credit. Charged to our room, when we checked out, we found out they weren't. We had to pay for this. Just an FYI

That really sucks. This whole time they have been saying we could use it for anything that we could charge to our rooms. Very confusing.

**hillystyles** · January 10th, 2011, 10:34 AM

wow I was hoping for some clarity by now...I too am confused. We are going to be at CN in 16 days and was hoping to use some of our resort credit towards purchasing Cigar's from the vendor. Randy please clarify! Is it only spa, and gift store stuff that we can use our credit for?

Thanks,

**SueandBill** · January 10th, 2011, 03:37 PM

Confusing indeed. Since the $500 credit was a perk for booking early, and quite an attractive one at that, we all need to be on the same page. I thought it was quite clearly stated by the CRO in response to a post by Cynthia as follows: "As long as you booked 2011 for seven nights or more, then you will receive credit. The credit may be used for anything you may charge to your room."

John, we will plan on coming over to CN on Friday, then, as the airport is not conducive to a meet-up!

**pynk322** · January 11th, 2011, 10:16 PM

I got an email that said that exclusions could not be paid for with the credit.

**YanksSox** · January 12th, 2011, 10:52 AM

Randymon,

I don't see that you every answered the questions on this thread.

So can the credit be used for Photos or excursions?

We are going to CTI in April. Thanks for your time

**Patty3404** · January 12th, 2011, 07:01 PM

I hope this gets resolved as well . My husband and I are renewing our vows and planned on using the resort credit for a photo package . I had previously emailed the coordinator who said it could be used for that .

**pynk322** · January 13th, 2011, 11:28 AM

Okay, so I shouldn't have reply after working a 12-hour night shift : )

I emailed Couples and was told that Randy made an error and that excursions could not be paid for with the credit. "The excursions are not charged to the room, as they are handled by an outside service at the resort." You can use it for everything
else. The credit was a selling point for us too and I was hoping to go on an excursion that was booked through the tour desk and used the credit.

Here was the post that I inquired about:

The $500 resort credit for 2011 travel may be used to purchase anything you are
able to charge to your room, including:

Spa treatments, telephone calls, upgraded wines, gift shop, optional excursions

through our tour desk, photographs from our photo concession, private dinners,
romance packages.

__________________
Randy Russell
Chief Romance Officer and Senior Vice President
Couples Resorts

**Zazu** · January 13th, 2011, 04:30 PM

The latest information about using the resort credits for excursions made it easy for me to make a decision! We love CSA and CSS. We were going to try CN. We booked when the $500 credit was in effect. We were informed that we could not change to CSA without losing the $500. So we are giving up the $500 and going back to CSA. We were having a tough time making this decision until I read the posts this morning. CSS and CSA one week each next December! Can't wait!

**busr25** · January 13th, 2011, 09:35 PM

Sure would like clarification on this. The $500 credit was HUGE for us booking as well. Can we, or can we not charge off site excursions to our rooms??? Randymon???

**melody** · January 14th, 2011, 02:59 PM

Originally Posted by pynk322

Okay, so I shouldn't have reply after working a 12-hour night shift : )

I emailed Couples and was told that Randy made an error and that excursions could not be paid for with the credit. "The excursions are not charged to the room, as they are handled by an outside service at the resort." You can use it for everything
else. The credit was a selling point for us too and I was hoping to go on an excursion that was booked through the tour desk and used the credit.

Here was the post that I inquired about:

The $500 resort credit for 2011 travel may be used to purchase anything you are
able to charge to your room, including:

Spa treatments, telephone calls, upgraded wines, gift shop, optional excursions

through our tour desk, photographs from our photo concession, private dinners,
romance packages.

__________________
Randy Russell
Chief Romance Officer and Senior Vice President
Couples Resorts

Now I am even more confused as this lists photos and at least one person has said that they were not allowed to use the credit for photos.

**jamaicamecrazy** · January 15th, 2011, 02:32 PM

It may seem confusing here, but when you're there, it's really not, we found. We used our resort credit at CTI for the logo shop, gift shop, spa, photo cd (from the resort photo shop), and upgraded wine and champagne on NYE at a table setup poolside. We just asked if it could be charged to the room. The answer was yes, as they were not outside vendors, but selling for the resort (as with the cigars, which hubby bought 2 of). So all of that came to just over $500 so we just paid the front desk cash for the difference (or you can pay credit card)
It's quite obvious that you can't charge wood carvings and such to your room. You negotiate the price with the vendor and pay cash.
We didn't do any outside excursions, but we were well aware that those are not covered by the resort credit. I don't even know if those can be charged to the room.

The only thing I should warn is that if you also receive the $50 repeaters gift shop credit you should bring that into the gift shop and spend it rather than charge to the room and be reimbursed. If you spend over $50 the remainder will be charged to the room. We didn't know this and we had to go to the gift shop and get it sorted before checkout, but it wasn't a big deal for us, just a bit of a pain for the nice lady at the logo shop.
We actually weren't given our resort credit on checkin and had to inquire about it, but it was quickly sorted out and given to us. We found that Couples makes everything easy. No problem, mon.

**Chris** · January 16th, 2011, 11:21 AM

The vendors on the beach (Wednesday at SweptAway, as I recall), even those who are invited to the resort by Couples, have not been able to arrange for charging items to your room. These transactions have always been between you and the artist/vendor. Once you've been to a Couples resort, this would become clear.

Its still a fairly clear policy... if you can charge it to your room, its eligible as part of your credit. If you can't charge it to your room, handle the purchase between yourself and the vendor.

Randy's post is alerting you to use caution when using your CC for these purchases. Our experience has been to bargain and then pay with greenbacks.

Chris

**iandi** · January 16th, 2011, 04:09 PM

Whats all this about? We are newbies to jamaica.
Do we get any credit or not? our 1st time at CTI on 22/1/11...for 10 days.

**busr25** · January 17th, 2011, 05:13 PM

I would still like clarification from Randymon as to whether or not outside excursions can be charged to our room. He has told me on this MB that they are, then someone just gets back and says they weren't allowed to use the $500 credit. This credit being used for outside excursions was a HUGE selling point for us when we booked our trip last year for next month... RANDY???

**melody** · January 17th, 2011, 05:22 PM

Originally Posted by Chris

The vendors on the beach (Wednesday at SweptAway, as I recall), even those who are invited to the resort by Couples, have not been able to arrange for charging items to your room. These transactions have always been between you and the artist/vendor. Once you've been to a Couples resort, this would become clear.

Its still a fairly clear policy... if you can charge it to your room, its eligible as part of your credit. If you can't charge it to your room, handle the purchase between yourself and the vendor.

Randy's post is alerting you to use caution when using your CC for these purchases. Our experience has been to bargain and then pay with greenbacks.

Chris

It was clear but now it isn't. The photos from the resort photographer can be charged to your room but now you can't use your credit to pay for them. Same with excursions. When the credit was first announced those two things were specifically mentioned in the list of things that the credit could be used for but they are from outside vendors and now people are checking out they have to pay for those things themselves.

**hillystyles** · January 17th, 2011, 06:55 PM

I sent an e-mail to couples and just received a reply from Sean. He said we cannot use the resort credit for cigars purchased by the vendor that visits CN but can use it for ones purchased at the gift store. But at CTI your Cigars were covered??? Now I'm more confused than ever! At CTI they have a great gift shop as well as the Couples specific shop, but CN's shop is much smaller plus we get $75 for our rewards level. We don't drink wine and since this is our third trip we really don't need a lot of souvenirs...so now I want to make sure we can at least use it in the spa....otherwise there is no way on earth we can come close to using $500. We were so excited when this credit was announced because we both enjoy cigars and wanted to bring some of the Jamaican ones home this time. I even emailed the vendor to make sure they still have the Blue Mountain Cigars...how disappointing!!

**klmurphy2005** · January 18th, 2011, 12:52 PM

I sent an e-mail to Debbie since we are getting married in March 2011 at CSA and asked her if I could use the $ 500 resort credit to put toward my picture package for my wedding, and she replied yes! :O)