DVC left us without a room

[New Mouse]

We should probably stop calling them glitches and start calling then something more appropriately since a glitch is unexpected

 

[DonMacGregor]

At this point, I'm not sure how anyone is surprised by this. How many DIS DVCers are resale-only members, and know exactly what that means, but happy to take advantage of discounts they know they are not supposed to be getting? How many of those then complain when it's "not consistent" or, worse, when the loophole is finally closed?

It's the old "But officer, EVERYONE was speeding! It's not fair that only I get a ticket!" routine.

 

[Brian Noble]

That one turns out to be true. A guy in Ann Arbor got out of a speeding ticket on a road notorious for speed traps. Turns out one mechanism for setting speed limits in Michigan is something like the 85th percentile speed of natural traffic. By that standard, the limit on the road should have been non-trivially higher.

The limit remains where it was and I still stay within five of it, because I don’t have time for that.

 

[sndral]

We made reservations over a week ago for Grand California Hotel through the DVC website. Everything was confirmed for a trip in August, around the 7 months mark. I booked plane tickets from Charleston, SC to Los Angeles, booked a rental car, etc. Then today I received a phone call from DVC (over week later from the booking), stating they had to cancel our reservation. The reason provided was that they had a "system malfunction" and over booked the studios for the nights I reserved. I figured they were going move us to the hotel side. To my surprise there was nothing else offered, they just told us that the reservation was cancelled and the points would be refunded.
…
The phone call ended with me nicely telling her I'm showing up for those dates and expecting a room. What an obvious shift away from the customer experience by management and (from what i'm told) another IT failure. How in the world does a company like Disney have such bad IT. Anyway, I just wanted to share my experience incase anybody wanted to know what current DVC members are dealing with.

Last year when the same debacle happened I recall that they did move folks to the resort side, so interesting that this wasn’t the solution this year. Inexcusable that the same issue happened again, but it looks like they caught it a lot faster, were quicker to shut it down, & quicker to notify folks who thought they’d scored a unicorn. I’d guess that they learned from last year’s experience thus the different approach this year.
Perhaps I’ve become jaded, but so many folks have had travel abruptly canceled, like the poor folks right now learning in midair that their cruises have been canceled. Then there are the people testing positive who suddenly have to cancel trips to places requiring testing to visit/fly to. Heck in 2020 DVC canceled my week long stay at AKV that I’d been planning for 11 months w/ about 2 weeks notice when they shut WDW down - they gave me back my points, I think they even unborrowed some for me, which I assume they would have done for OP if needed. I never did recoup the $ for my airfare - my credit disappeared into United’s system somewhere, & I didn’t get any credit for the AP I’d bought in Dec. planning to use again on the canceled trip, my friend who’d bought park tickets for that trip did get a refund for them & she managed to use her flight credit.
7 months lead time seems like more than enough time to make alternate arrangements compared to what so many are dealing with.
I’d be thinking maybe I should make lemon aid out of lemons & see what availability at Aulani looks like - LAX typically has pretty cheap flights to Hawaii.

 

[Chuck S]

I know not what you want to hear....but depending on the airline, even the cheap seats may be cancelled and those funds held for a future booking. That what SWA did for us when Disney closed, the funds were available for about a year. We used them for our Thanksgiving trip. Of course we had to pay the price difference for the new trip, but we did get the full credit of funds.

 

[DonMacGregor]

Last year when the same debacle happened I recall that they did move folks to the resort side, so interesting that this wasn’t the solution this year.

I'm wondering how many reservations slipped in before they caught it, and what the occupancy rates are right now on the hotel side. They may not have any rooms (or not enough).

 

[bumbershoot]

A large amount of Inventory was released across wdw a few months back and I picked up a tough reservation that wound up being real. How can I distinguish what is real or not when the DVC reservation cast can't?

Well...last year a ton of inventory suddenly showed up at WDW. I jumped and got beach club. I checked on it every single day for something like 3 months, expecting it to disappear. Even now I'm a bit nervous.

But the thing is...WDW was opening inventory around that time, and it made some sense that things would open. Maybe that's the situation with your reservation as well.

It wasn't a small single DVC resort in Anaheim.

 

[DonMacGregor]

Well...last year a ton of inventory suddenly showed up at WDW. I jumped and got beach club. I checked on it every single day for something like 3 months, expecting it to disappear. Even now I'm a bit nervous.

But the thing is...WDW was opening inventory around that time, and it made some sense that things would open. Maybe that's the situation with your reservation as well.

It wasn't a small single DVC resort in Anaheim.

This right here. They are still bringing resort rooms back online in Orlando as we speak. Anaheim is fully open, and the last time I looked, GCH and DLH were headed back to their pre-pandemic occupancy rates for the spring months. What are you going to do, put a DVC owner who lost a 2BR villa in a standard room at Paradise Pier? They don't even have a food location there currently.

Also keep in mind, as the DVC tower goes vertical in the next few months, they will be taking Frontier Tower rooms offline due to safety, noise, dust and just the literal proximity to the new tower.

 

[howardlee2]

this should have been picked up in the 1st 24 hours after reservation for a nonexistent room was made. Disney should offer to pick up any fees you encounter to change or cancel airline tickets that were bought in support of this reservation.

 

[Sandisw]

this should have been picked up in the 1st 24 hours after reservation for a nonexistent room was made. Disney should offer to pick up any fees you encounter to change or cancel airline tickets that were bought in support of this reservation.

I think they were caught pretty fast and people were contacted. But..and not making an excuse because the system has been horrible…something like seeing an abundance of days for months when there were not any, even if you snagged one, should have made one wonder…and at least called MS or given it a bit before investing in other costs.

 

[DonMacGregor]

That one turns out to be true. A guy in Ann Arbor got out of a speeding ticket on a road notorious for speed traps. Turns out one mechanism for setting speed limits in Michigan is something like the 85th percentile speed of natural traffic. By that standard, the limit on the road should have been non-trivially higher.

The limit remains where it was and I still stay within five of it, because I don’t have time for that.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure in most places the speed limit is what that big white sign with the black letters says it is.

 

[sndral]

this should have been picked up in the 1st 24 hours after reservation for a nonexistent room was made. Disney should offer to pick up any fees you encounter to change or cancel airline tickets that were bought in support of this reservation.

I’m getting ready to pay my MF’s so perhaps I’m sensitive to solutions like this - but is it Disney the Corp. or DVC in it’s role as the trading component who pays these fees, or is it the VGC owners who pay them through their MFs, if the latter my question is should those owners who likely paid top dollar for their points & made their reservations at 11 months have to pay higher MFs to compensate for yet another DVC tech debacle? If there’s a mechanism to assure that costs associated w/ the fallout from incompetence like this comes from DVC’s share rather than MFs then I agree, but I suspect the costs are passed on to the owners?

 

[sheilafri]

I don’t get the criticism of the OP for relying on a reservation to move forward in trip planning. Not everyone keeps up on everything Disney. A dump of rooms doesn’t seem like a red flag as resorts keep expanding capacity after so many shut downs over the pandemic.

 

[YeOswaldianSociety]

This type of thing is absolutely egregious and Disney owes you a room, there is no other way around this. Disgusting business practice on their part and their feet should be held to the fire.

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

I don’t get the criticism of the OP for relying on a reservation to move forward in trip planning. Not everyone keeps up on everything Disney. A dump of rooms doesn’t seem like a red flag as resorts keep expanding capacity after so many shut downs over the pandemic.

DVC resorts have been fully open for well over a year. In general that are no big dumps of rooms and hasn't been for months. I don't blame the OP but with the relaxing of change rules with airlines it is doubtful they are without options. My credits with Delta have now been extended to the end of 2023 plus there are no change fees. Full credit back. The disappointment is understandable of course.

 

[KAT4DISNEY]

this should have been picked up in the 1st 24 hours after reservation for a nonexistent room was made. Disney should offer to pick up any fees you encounter to change or cancel airline tickets that were bought in support of this reservation.

I think it was maybe a few hours before VGC reservations were shut down. This time it was not even close to 24 hours.

 

[Yinn]

The CEO is the problem.... welcome to the new Disney. Money matters most.

I'm still waiting for the announcement that internal Disney transportation will now have a fee. I can see it now. Genie+ for the gondola from Riviera...

 

[_auroraborealis_]

With the number of users out there who knew it was a glitch and gleefully wondering "what will Disney do to compensate us?" it's not a big shock they didn't move heaven and earth to pay for units on the resort side.

Additionally, when DVC has done that in the past, there are always complainers about "I wanted a VILLA and they are giving me a HOTEL ROOM and this is an OUTRAGE."

Even if we assume the cost of the compensatory units comes from management fees, there are points beynd which they cannot do it anyway.

 

[DonMacGregor]

I don’t get the criticism of the OP for relying on a reservation to move forward in trip planning. Not everyone keeps up on everything Disney. A dump of rooms doesn’t seem like a red flag as resorts keep expanding capacity after so many shut downs over the pandemic.

I don't think anyone is critical of the OP. In fact, a few posts (mine included) actually make a point of excluding the OP from any criticism and assume their reservation was made based solely on checking availability on their dashboard.

The criticisms are directed towards the many others who DO keep up and are often mavens of these forums who jump on these "opportunities" and, when the "glitch" is discovered, just make things more difficult for people like the OP to get resolution because Disney has that many more overbookings to resolve.

 

[andyman8]

Some aren’t going to like to hear this, but I don’t think it’s totally fair to make assumptions about what the OP or others were thinking when making the reservation. I’m certain that there were folks looking for an opportunity or to take advantage of what they assumed was a glitch, but I’m also certain there were many members booking who didn’t realize that this was unusual. As a newer member, I’m not intimately familiar with the booking patterns of particular DVC resorts. If the calendar is showing availability, I assume there is indeed availability. I think we sometimes forget that there are well over 200,000 DVC Members. We represent a small fraction of that group. The vast majority of members are not checking DISBoards’ DVC forums constantly or tracking resort availability closely. They rely on the information Disney provides them, so I don’t know what the OP’s intent was when making the booking, but it’s certainly possible that s/he was not aware of the glitch. Odds are many who booked that day were not, given how many members rely on Disney for their information.

What makes this particularly inexcusable is that this isn’t the fist time this has happened. In other companies, such an IT glitch would be a career-ending event for an employee, but I suppose if Disney conditions their Guests to just expect less from them and not incur any cost due to the glitch then what’s the incentive to fix the system? When other glitches have happened in other units of the company outside of DVC, they generally at least attempt some sort of make-good. Remember in 2020 when a bunch of ADRs popped into the system one morning and then Disney had to cancel them all since they overbooked the restaurants accidentally? They provided affected Guests $25 per cancelled reservation.

If GCH, DLH, and PP are indeed all booked and do not have sufficient occupancy for affected Guests, there are options — even if not equivalent in value — that at least demonstrate an attempt at Guest Recovery. Another poster mentioned park tickets. As someone who worked closely with GR CMs, I can tell you that comp tickets costs the company nothing, which is why they are one of the most commonly-used forms of Guest Recovery at WDW’s Guest Relations locations. Even if that’s too much, they could provide affected Guests with a small Disney Gift Card for each night that was cancelled. Like I said, that’s what they did for the ADR glitch. Doing nothing, to me, just seems to send the wrong message to your Members.

OP, like others have suggested, I’d suggest reaching out to Member Satisfaction. Over the last five or so years, Disney has moved more towards a reactive Guest Recovery position rather than the proactive Guest Recovery position they championed for years, so you might just need to speak with the right CM (outside of Member Services).