DVC Member Cruise and DCL Customer Service

[Kidguile]

After waiting for a total of 5 hrs to get thru to DCL, I found out if you have a DVC member cruise, DCL was not able to do anything with those reservations (modify etc) and that I would need to call DVC customer service. SMH

 

[lanejudy]

If you booked through DVC, DVC is the "travel agent" and all transactions must go through the TA. You may be able to get some general questions asked/answered, but not much else.

 

[JAM9842]

Yes....it is a pain! I wish DVC would have an email that they could answer questions about DVC cruises. If you try to the Online Chat they just say they cannot answer cruise questions so you have to call in.

 

[Travel60]

Also, apparently if you book with DVC points and there is any cause for refunds (missed ports, lower than anticipated port fees), you either don't get it back at all or get it back in reservation points that may have short lived.

We are just off Panama Canal cruise where everyone was talking about refunds or onboard credits for a few hundred dollars. I talked to DCL guest services (during cruise) and was told I needed to contact DVC. DVC acted like they'd never heard of the refunds but "if they do" I will get reservation points with the same life as original points (cruise rescheduled from 2019.....).

Sigh..... another reason not to sail on points.

 

[Kidguile]

I paid cash option - stopped using points for DCL exchange. But great to know !

 

[JAM9842]

Also, apparently if you book with DVC points and there is any cause for refunds (missed ports, lower than anticipated port fees), you either don't get it back at all or get it back in reservation points that may have short lived.

We are just off Panama Canal cruise where everyone was talking about refunds or onboard credits for a few hundred dollars. I talked to DCL guest services (during cruise) and was told I needed to contact DVC. DVC acted like they'd never heard of the refunds but "if they do" I will get reservation points with the same life as original points (cruise rescheduled from 2019.....).

Sigh..... another reason not to sail on points.

We are in a "battle" to get our refund from DVC. We were originally booked on the DVC sailing on the Wish. When the dates changed we could not make the new dates work. I called to switch to a different date. Since we used Disney gift cards to pay for a portion of the original Wish sailing they said the refund would go to those gift cards. Perfect! I waited the 15 business days and no refund. I called and was told there was a mistake and the gift card numbers were never given to the right department so they resubmitted them and I was told to wait 15 more business days. The 15th day was this Friday. I tried calling Saturday but the DVC DCL phones are just as bad as DCL so I did not get though. It has been over 6 weeks since they said we would be refunded and so far nothing.

 

[CM Dad]

I paid cash option - stopped using points for DCL exchange. But great to know !

I wish I had been able to book with just cash. For the DVC chartered cruise that followed the inaugural Wish cruise, they required that at least one of the passengers pay with points, so we did one with points and the other cash. For the rescheduled cruise, we were given a 50% discount. I did see a credit to my Visa for the cash portion. I don't see anywhere on DVC site that shows either returned Vacation points, or Reservation points. I have tried calling DVC member services, the see if it is possible to turn these Reservation points back into Vacation points so that I can bank them, but I only have until the end of March to do any banking.

Calls to member servers either end up being on hold for theoretically a little over 100 minutes, and then after 90 minutes getting an update saying expected wait time is 85 minutes and then having the phone disconnect, or getting a message as soon as I connect that all agents are busy, and to go away and try later.

I tried online chat and was almost immediately connect to an agent. The problem with this is that they said they couldn't help and I would have to call MS.

Used the Contact Us to send an email, but I have no idea if/when I'll get a response.

 

[erionm]

I wish I had been able to book with just cash. For the DVC chartered cruise that followed the inaugural Wish cruise, they required that at least one of the passengers pay with points, so we did one with points and the other cash. For the rescheduled cruise, we were given a 50% discount. I did see a credit to my Visa for the cash portion. I don't see anywhere on DVC site that shows either returned Vacation points, or Reservation points. I have tried calling DVC member services, the see if it is possible to turn these Reservation points back into Vacation points so that I can bank them, but I only have until the end of March to do any banking.

You need to look at your point transaction history to see the returned reservation points.

 

[Kidguile]

I wish I had been able to book with just cash. For the DVC chartered cruise that followed the inaugural Wish cruise, they required that at least one of the passengers pay with points, so we did one with points and the other cash. For the rescheduled cruise, we were given a 50% discount. I did see a credit to my Visa for the cash portion. I don't see anywhere on DVC site that shows either returned Vacation points, or Reservation points. I have tried calling DVC member services, the see if it is possible to turn these Reservation points back into Vacation points so that I can bank them, but I only have until the end of March to do any banking.

Calls to member servers either end up being on hold for theoretically a little over 100 minutes, and then after 90 minutes getting an update saying expected wait time is 85 minutes and then having the phone disconnect, or getting a message as soon as I connect that all agents are busy, and to go away and try later.

I tried online chat and was almost immediately connect to an agent. The problem with this is that they said they couldn't help and I would have to call MS.

Used the Contact Us to send an email, but I have no idea if/when I'll get a response.

Sorry to hear about this. I was thinking about this cruise as well but when I saw the one reservation in points, I was turned off immediately.

I think they did this particular DVC member sailing with the one person in points due to the Disney Wish being a new ship and wanted to “exclude” the resale members as a way to get people to buy direct. Hopefully they do not do this on future DVC cruises with the one person in points.

 

[erionm]

I think they did this particular DVC member sailing with the one person in points due to the Disney Wish being a new ship and wanted to “exclude” the resale members as a way to get people to buy direct. Hopefully they do not do this on future DVC cruises with the one person in points.

Resale purchasers that are not eligible for membership extras can't book any DVC Member Cruise. This includes the ones where DVC allows you to pay all "cash".

 

[CM Dad]

You need to look at your point transaction history to see the returned reservation points.

Thanks I had just seen that somewhere else and was starting to look. Now I am getting Stitch with Someone ate the page. We have 8 contracts (have 4 adult children so split each of our 2 purchases into 4 contracts to make transferring easier in the future). So the initial reservation took points from multiple contracts. I saw that on Mar 3 I had some contracts where Reservation Points were added and also had a transaction that said that that same number were used. I saw one contract where Reservation Points were added but not used. I was trying to go back thru the contract activity to see if I missed anything when I started to get the error page.

Currently on hold with DVC member services with a theoretical 99 minute wait time.

 

[JAM9842]

Thanks I had just seen that somewhere else and was starting to look. Now I am getting Stitch with Someone ate the page. We have 8 contracts (have 4 adult children so split each of our 2 purchases into 4 contracts to make transferring easier in the future). So the initial reservation took points from multiple contracts. I saw that on Mar 3 I had some contracts where Reservation Points were added and also had a transaction that said that that same number were used. I saw one contract where Reservation Points were added but not used. I was trying to go back thru the contract activity to see if I missed anything when I started to get the error page.

Currently on hold with DVC member services with a theoretical 99 minute wait time.

Good Luck!!

 

[MomOTwins]

I wish I had been able to book with just cash. For the DVC chartered cruise that followed the inaugural Wish cruise, they required that at least one of the passengers pay with points, so we did one with points and the other cash. For the rescheduled cruise, we were given a 50% discount. I did see a credit to my Visa for the cash portion. I don't see anywhere on DVC site that shows either returned Vacation points, or Reservation points. I have tried calling DVC member services, the see if it is possible to turn these Reservation points back into Vacation points so that I can bank them, but I only have until the end of March to do any banking.

Calls to member servers either end up being on hold for theoretically a little over 100 minutes, and then after 90 minutes getting an update saying expected wait time is 85 minutes and then having the phone disconnect, or getting a message as soon as I connect that all agents are busy, and to go away and try later.

I tried online chat and was almost immediately connect to an agent. The problem with this is that they said they couldn't help and I would have to call MS.

Used the Contact Us to send an email, but I have no idea if/when I'll get a response.

In general, once points become reservation points, that is a final transaction and can't go back to vacation points. Doing so would create a point imbalance for all DVC members (too many vacation points in one use year) because when you booked your cruise, it was exchange that went both ways: you traded in the system to get reservation points, but your vacation points still stayed in the system but you no longer owned them, and most likely they have already been used for DVC resort reservations. Giving you back vacation points would double that amount of points in the system, and, at a big enough scale (there were thousands of people on that DVC cruise, and the point minimum was high, so that is a lot of extra points in the system in one year), that would make it even harder for DVC members to book rooms on points before the end of their use year.

My recommendation would be use your reservation points to book a pre- or post- cruise stay at a Disney hotel (i.e., not a DVC resort--for example Boardwalk Inn instead of Boardwalk Villas, Wilderness Lodge instead of BRV or CC... etc.). The point value is not great, but neither was the point value of the cruise. At least then you can get some use out of your reservation points.

 

[MomOTwins]

Sorry to hear about this. I was thinking about this cruise as well but when I saw the one reservation in points, I was turned off immediately.

I think they did this particular DVC member sailing with the one person in points due to the Disney Wish being a new ship and wanted to “exclude” the resale members as a way to get people to buy direct. Hopefully they do not do this on future DVC cruises with the one person in points.

I agree it was a very odd requirement. As pp said, resale are not eligible for cash DVC cruises either, so that isn't it. I suspect that they may have been finding people have been banking a lot more than usual because of the pandemic--e.g., people who didn't want to go until kids could be vaxxed, or UK DVC members who couldn't visit the US until late last year--and reading the tea leaves Disney figured that there were enough of those people who'd be willing to dump points on a cruise for them to be able to make points a requirement. This is all based on anecdotal reports I've seen of people booking the DVC member cruise specifically to have somewhere they could drop hundreds (or thousands) of points in one go that didn't involve a monthlong stay. I seem to recall they did the same thing with starcruiser, i.e., if you wanted to book on the advance DVC booking date you needed to use points for at least one person. But that was a bit more low-stakes because if you were willing to wait until the general public booking date you didn't need points.

 

[CM Dad]

In general, once points become reservation points, that is a final transaction and can't go back to vacation points. Doing so would create a point imbalance for all DVC members (too many vacation points in one use year) because when you booked your cruise, it was exchange that went both ways: you traded in the system to get reservation points, but your vacation points still stayed in the system but you no longer owned them, and most likely they have already been used for DVC resort reservations. Giving you back vacation points would double that amount of points in the system, and, at a big enough scale (there were thousands of people on that DVC cruise, and the point minimum was high, so that is a lot of extra points in the system in one year), that would make it even harder for DVC members to book rooms on points before the end of their use year.

My recommendation would be use your reservation points to book a pre- or post- cruise stay at a Disney hotel (i.e., not a DVC resort--for example Boardwalk Inn instead of Boardwalk Villas, Wilderness Lodge instead of BRV or CC... etc.). The point value is not great, but neither was the point value of the cruise. At least then you can get some use out of your reservation points.

I called member services around 12:20 today. Message said my wait time was approximately 99 minutes. The actually answered after around 30 minutes later, and said that since I called, they would be able to convert them back to regular Vacation points. I got put on hold while they did their magic. A few minutes later I had my points restored, and asked the agent to bank all of my outstanding balance.

Today wen a lot better than I expected, based on my experience trying to call in last week and during the weekend

 

[MomOTwins]

I called member services around 12:20 today. Message said my wait time was approximately 99 minutes. The actually answered after around 30 minutes later, and said that since I called, they would be able to convert them back to regular Vacation points. I got put on hold while they did their magic. A few minutes later I had my points restored, and asked the agent to bank all of my outstanding balance.

Today wen a lot better than I expected, based on my experience trying to call in last week and during the weekend

Wow that is very surprising given all the warnings they have that reservation points can’t be changed back to vacation and the experience people on this board had being stuck with reservation points after 2020 cruises cancelled.

Given how generous they are being—50% off for some, point restoration that is supposed to be impossible for you, the lawyer me is getting suspicious there is something going on here that is making them feel like they are on thin ice. Perhaps they had information at the time they sold the June cruises that the Wish likely was not going to make its scheduled launch date and sold the rooms anyway, and now they are worried about getting hit with a fraud suit.

Or maybe it’s just sad that I’ve gotten to the point where disney customer service has been so abysmal, it is hard to believe when they do something above and beyond. Still, would be nice if they had treated 2020 cruisers the same.