If I were you, I wouldn't worry about the contract. Do what you feel right doing. All bets are off IMO in relationship to the broker agreement. IMO, a broker in a different country is not going to bring you to court. But, that's just my opinion, you have to follow your heart.
Personally, I'd take the odds of the broker coming after me.
Although if they are stating 2000+ rentals have already been affected and this goes on for another 2 months we could be looking at 5000+ rentals. If they were for an average of $3000 each we are looking at $15,000,000. If 40% of that has already been payed to owners we are talking $9 Million still in their possession. If 50% of that can be rebooked through cash bookings for a new (or existing but different) company, they get their commission on that and then could claim additional monies owed to a different LLC by ramping up their debt from another company. The above is all fictional and could be on the very high end, I'm just trying to illustrate the amount of money that could be in play here.
This doesn't take into account reservations that are not affected and still paid in full for other months. This broker has literally millions of dollars at their disposal. This unwillingness to "take a loss" is just ridiculous. Obviously no one wants to lose money, but anyone and everyone in the travel industry is losing money.
Personally if I were you I would start by contacting the rental company first, explain the situation, ask what would happen if I cancelled and what would happen (i.e, would you receive your 30%) if I didn't and Disney ends up being closed.
As an owner with multiple active reservations with David's stretching through October, I would love being contacted by the renter and work out such a plan - but only if David is bankrupt, or in default of a previous contract. The additional 30% due the owner is actually only an additional 23% payable by the renter, since David takes a $4.50 per point. An even fairer system is for the renter to only pay ~11.5% extra (or ~$2.20 per point) - this would in effect share the loss caused by David's bankruptcy between the owner and renter.
I would not expect David to have millions of dollars at his disposal. His $4.50 cut has most likely already been spent on business expenses (including wages to his staff) and dividends to the owners. The only cash he has is the 30% due to the owners, but this is offset by the liability of making these payments once check-ins resume at the DVC resorts. Depending on how long the resort closure continues and the success rate of credit card chargebacks, it may be in David's best interest to declare bankruptcy and move on - there is no alternative once the chargeback amount exceeds the 30% held in reserve, he would just be out of cash.
This is great to know - thank you so much for sharing!
This is wonderful information, thank you for sharing!
Thats how i feel. Earlier in this thread someone mentioned that if Davids offers you the voucher maybe the credit card company wouldnt help you with a charge back. However, the lady specifically said that if its not your original trip that you booked you have the right do file a dispute. So once my date comes I think that is what i will do and they just booked with Disney.
Yeah, my husband and I just decided we'll go for the dispute and just get our money back. When we go next year, we'll just pay extra to book with Disney. The peace of mind to be able to cancel is worth way more than any savings we got renting. I got travel insurance too when I booked last year, in line with all the advice I saw, and that doesn't even help.
We bought a DVC resale contract last year that came with extra points that we rented out. I rented about 25% of them through David's, and the other 75% I rented on my own. I was really nervous renting on my own for the reasons you stated above. Renting on my own ended up being a great experience though. I had a good contract drawn up and when one of my renters wanted to change their dates I was able to do so and felt good about helping them (even though they acknowledged I was under no obligation to do so). I was able to check in with each of my renters before their trips to make sure everything was in order (ME, dining plan, room requests) and afterwards as well to ensure they had a good experience. I made more money doing it that way and it was nice to have contact with the renters myself. I liked knowing who was using our points.
If we based on 5000 rentals @ an average of $3000 per rental @ $19 a point Davids would have $3.5 million in commissions. I don't think his staffing and other business costs come anywhere near that, especially when we are talking only 1/4 of the year at that point.
