A question for AP holders.

[DLgal]

I am wondering if this has happened to anyone else.

I have a Signature AP. For the past year, my pass has been experiencing this issue where, when I try to use it for a discount, the cashier gets an "AP is invalid" error message. AP works fine for park admission. Works fine for parking (most of the time...one time it didn't). So, when this happens to me, I have to go to the ticket booth and stand there and explain it and then the CM looks totally perplexed, has to call a supervisor, they call IT, nothing gets resolved. So, after this happening several times last year, and after IT admitted they didn't know how to fix it, I was reissued a NEW AP, as thought I had just bought it, new number and everything. They backdated the expiration date to match my original expiration date, and created me a new profile, which I then had to re link to my Disney profile in the app by manually adding in the new AP number. This happened last September.

Everything was fine for 10 months. About 3 weeks ago, it happened again. I stood in ANOTHER hour long ticket line in the sun, then spent 45 minutes AT the window dealing with this again. This time, the supervisor said "this was a new issue last year and IT didn't know how to fix it but they are confident they can fix it this time..give it two weeks and it should be fixed." She said this after talking to IT on the phone in front of me. She gave me anytime/anyday fastpasses valid for 3 weeks for our family to ride Radiator Springs Racers. That expired yesterday so I took my kids to the park to use it and spend the day at the park. AP was STILL not fixed. Could not get my discount at a counter service location but the CM let me use one of the kid's AP's for the 10% discount at least. UGH! The line at the ticket booth was INSANE all day yesterday and it was hot as heck, and I knew my kids would not be able to handle that again (they have autism, and they were with me the last time and almost melted down).

So now, I am faced with the task of returning to stand in the ticket line AGAIN to deal with this issue for the 5th time in a year. I had to renew my son's DAS yesterday and I sort of went off on the CM (not in a mean way, but in a "this has been really frustrating and is there any other way to handle it rather than standing in the ticket booth line," kind of way). She seemed to sympathize, but said that these kinds of issues can ONLY be handled there. SO, back I go, at some point this week, because I have a TS reservation for the Fantasmic dining package on Saturday and you better believe I am GETTING MY AP discount that is owed to me! LOL.

SO, does anyone have any advice for me before I go deal with this again? It is supposed to be in the upper 90's/100 the next few days and I am not looking forward to this chore.

Up to this point, I have been VERY nice about all this and the CM last time was like "I don't know how you are being so calm...if this happened to me, I would be SO upset!" My thing is, it's not the CM's fault so I try never to get angry with them. I know they deal with crabby people all day, so the least I can do is be nice, but I've had ENOUGH! I am really upset now. Last year, the day they reissued my AP, the Supervisor gave me $60 worth of dining vouchers and a stack of fastpassses for my trouble, I didn't ask for anything. This time, I feel like I have dealt with his enough times that I should be compensated somehow. I have not had full use of my pass for several months, I have missed out on my full discount numerous times. The aggravation factor has been super high because I never know when this is going to happen again and they cannot figure out why it keeps happening in the first place.

What would you do, if anything? What would you feel is an adequate response here? I'm thinking "free Maxpass." Is that a reasonable request? Because the other thing I needed to do this week was buy Maxpass, but now I'm worried that I will buy it and it will "disappear" from my pass, so I'm wary to pay for it...

 

[whoever]

Honestly, I would have saved all my receipts and had them credit me the discount after the fact. As far as what you should get, I think included Maxpass is a valid option. As far as this IT issue, I honestly can't believe a production defect would keep going on without resolution.

 

[az4boys]

I would definitely put it all in writing with details on your lost savings and lost time.

 

[DLgal]

Honestly, I would have saved all my receipts and had them credit me the discount after the fact. As far as what you should get, I think included Maxpass is a valid option. As far as this IT issue, I honestly can't believe a production defect would keep going on without resolution.

I agree with the keeping receipts, but feel that the $60 worth of dining vouchers more than made up for that. They have honestly just missed out on a lot of merchandise sales though, that I decided against since I couldn't use my discount.

I can't understand the IT aspect of it either. What they said was that last time, my AP profile literally disappeared. The admission portion is apparently separate from the "benefits" part of the pass, so the park admission was never affected, but when the system goes to use a discount, it has to access your profile and my profile was nonexistent. It is so weird. It's not happening to anyone else in my family.

 

[Malcon10t]

Yes, I had had this happen last year. It was finally resolved around Thanksgiving last year, by replacing the card. Now you have me fearing the worst for next weekend!!

 

[DLgal]

I would definitely put it all in writing with details on your lost savings and lost time.

Thankfully, they have been making notations on my account every time so when I go to the booth and they scan my pass, they can see the history of complaints and what has been done at each step. They probably have a better record (with dates and such) than I do.

 

[DLgal]

Yes, I had had this happen last year. It was finally resolved around Thanksgiving last year, by replacing the card. Now you have me fearing the worst for next weekend!!

Okay, so I know it's not just me! Sorry you had to deal with this too. Actually, I just vented to my sister about this and she said it happened to her last year too, but it was fixed and hasn't happened again.

I just seem to be very unlucky here...

 

[Geemo]

Okay, so I know it's not just me! Sorry you had to deal with this too. Actually, I just vented to my sister about this and she said it happened to her last year too, but it was fixed and hasn't happened again.

I just seem to be very unlucky here...

Go to this thread and read post #4
https://www.disboards.com/threads/purchasing-maxpass-as-an-ap-holder.3629871/#post-58119501
I'm hoping "cpster" will let us know where the AP Serving Booth is located.
I was thinking the line there might be a little easier to deal with than the ticket booths.

Geemo

 

[DLgal]

Go to this thread and read post #4
https://www.disboards.com/threads/purchasing-maxpass-as-an-ap-holder.3629871/#post-58119501
I'm hoping "cpster" will let us know where the AP Serving Booth is located.
I was thinking the line there might be a little easier to deal with than the ticket booths.

Geemo

I know where that booth is, it's inside DL next to City Hall, BUT it is only open after 6pm.

 

[Kender]

Only issue I had recently was at Pacific Wharf Cafe where my pass (Sig+), my mom's (Sig+), and my friend's (Sig) apparently did not pop up with our 15% discount. We were given 10%. I complained.

I was given two explanations:
-My card errored (I'm guessing like what you got?) and it was a "customer service courtesy" the CM did giving me the 10%. Same for the other two orders. They didn't give me more information beyond "it errored".

-The 15% was new (my friend seemed to believe this and didn't realize it had been 15% when we had Premiums) and the system hadn't converted correctly to apply it. This answer annoyed me since it was blatantly false.

Both of these explanations were from the same supervisor at Pacific Wharf Cafe. It was like she didn't realize she'd given me two different answers.

I made them refund me and recharge me with the correct discount both for me and my mom (my friend didn't want to deal with it). If they had refused, I would have saved the receipts and gone to have it dealt with elsewhere. I was of course polite as well, but I was firm that I needed to know exactly what the issue was because when I first got my Sig+ in 2015, it was having trouble reading at all for discounts back then. If I needed to get my card fixed, I wanted to know.

I haven't encountered it again, but I always check my receipt now.

 

[Skyegirl1999]

I know where that booth is, it's inside DL next to City Hall, BUT it is only open after 6pm.

It isn't always open, either.

 

[DLgal]

So, update...problem seems to have been FINALLY resolved. I dealt with a great supervisor who was able to figure out WHY it kept happening and essentially had to delete my old file entirely and start from scratch. Previously, they would just cancel my old pass and reissue another one under the same corrupted profile. She said she had never seen this happen before...basically my old AP was not tied to a file number...it pointed to a profile that had all zeroes in the spots where it should have a file number. She was surprised that I was able to even gain park admission.

She listened to my complaints and said she would make all this trouble worth my while. It took a good hour again at the booth, although luckily there was no ticket line today. She ended up getting permission from HER supervisor to extend my whole family's APs for an additional month (we got the 13 months for 12 deal already but she added another month). So now our APs expire at the end of next August instead of next July. I am happy with that. It is worth more than MaxPass. I did go ahead and add MP to my pass and I paid for it (my kids have DAS so we don't really need MP for everyone) but I go solo or with friends often and wanted MP for my pass.

I did make a purchase to make sure it worked okay and it was fine. I needed a new hat anyway.

Sigh...so much drama! Glad it seems to have been resolved.

 

[ashley0139]

Wow, what a hassle! That has never happened to me, but good to know what the issue probably is if it does. Glad you got it resolved!

 

[SteveMP]

I remember something happening with mine once, he said "hold on a second" and called a manager over. It seemed like it wasn't working and he got a manager to overrride it, but I don't know the details; it only took a few seconds and didn't really inconvenience me. Seemed like just a fluke though.