Dont let this happen to you!

[CindysGusGus]

My friend and I checked into the AKL on May 22nd. We had went to DTD to purchase our APs about 20 minutes prior to checking in. I paid for my AP's with a check and they verified the funds.
No problem as I had tons of money for the vacation in my account
We went over to the AKL to check in and pay the balance which was less than $1000. I asked if I could pay with a check and she said thats fine. I have duplicate checks and I like to have paper record. She went to verify the check and it came back declined. After having my voice go up 2 octives when I said What???? she explained she didnt know why and I needed to call my bank. I deal with this a lot in my work and I know it was nothing she would know. The funny thing is that my check card was accepted. After everything was taken care of I called my bank and they said everything on my account was perfectly fine. The only thing I can surmise is that WDW does not like for you to write 2 checks in that small of a time frame. I cant understand why because they can verify the funds and put a hold but thats the only thing I can think of. The rest of the vacation went fine but if I didnt have a check card I wouldnt have been so fine.

I hope this helps anyone else. On the bright side we were put on a 5th floor pool view when I booked plain pool view. It was a great location. Room 5424!

 

[MAGICinMYHEART]

The simplest thing that probably happened was the company that they use to verify their checks through didn't have access to your bank at the time, they sometimes just say declined with no other reasons. I had this happen at a restaurant and was floored they said that it had been declined...called the bank they said their system had gone down for a few minutes there was no trouble with my account.

 

[mousebrat]

Another possibility - this happens a lot with credit cards - is that there are security features that will decline your check or credit card if it seems that the spending you are doing is out of your normal spending pattern. They do this to try and stop theft, but can be a major pain. My Disney Visa was declined when I tried to pay for my Disney vacation b/c it was an amount that is uncharacteristic for me.

It's always a good idea to let your financial institutions know that you will be travelling so they can suspend some of the security features on your account, saving you time and embarassment later on.

 

[CindysGusGus]

Mouse...thats just the point...My bank wasnt the one to stop it. My written check was declined but the checkcard drawing from same account was approved instantly.

 

[stinkerbelle]

Originally posted by CindysGusGus
Mouse...thats just the point...My bank wasnt the one to stop it. My written check was declined but the checkcard drawing from same account was approved instantly.

This happened to us once at Lowe's.

We were buying over $800 worth of stuff (new house - we were buying all the light fixtures) and our check was declined...however we could use our check card no problem.

There was actually a LIMIT on as to how much we could write a check for - how NUTS is that?

 

[kylara]

If WDW uses a company for approval, it could be the company won't accept two large checks from the same person in the same day. I had this happen to me when traveling with students from the college. They accepted one check for the hotel, but wouldn't accept the other. I called our AP department and they even told the hotel they would get the bank to verify approval and funds but they said they couldn't, they had to go through the system the hotel had. I ended up having to put the amount that was on that check on my amex..talk about a pain.

 

[Mom2Ashli]

Wow. Good information to know. Because I would have died right there is they told me something like that. How embrassing if anyone around you heard. It was not a big deal because you understood what was going on. But anyone around you didn't.