DVC Referral and subsequent reward??

[goofy4tink]

Here's my situation....friends of ours visited WDW last November. At that time, they checked into DVC, gave our names as DVC referring members. They ended up buying at BLT. Okay, great. So, I wait patiently to hear something about that first $200 reward perk. Nada. I finally send them an email late Dec...get a response stating that yes, our friends had purchased and we were due the reward..(something was posted on our DVC site but I never saw anything). Since it hadn't been redeemed, they would send me a packet via snail mail. Okay...I figure that's good, somethings being done. Nope. Last week I finally called them..this was on Wednesday or Thursday. I spoke to a wonderful young woman, Willow, who was very apologetic about the whole thing. Said she didn't see anyhing on my account that said anything about a referral being due. She said that it should have happened long ago. She took all the info needed (our info, our friends info) and said someone would call me back. Okay.....she called me back about 4 hrs later and told me that it would be most likely Tuesday (Monday being a holiday) before I heard anything, but a manager had all our info and would be looking into it. Well...here it is, Thursday, and not a peep out of DVC. I'm going to WDW in April and would really like to have that gift card. Have any of you had to work so hard for this??? Any suggestions on how to proceed??

 

[Deb & Bill]

Did you buy a resale?

(sorry, couldn't help it)

 

[kadaten]

Nope, didn't have a hard time at all.

Ours came in the mail and we didn't even know our friends had finally bought! So it was a nice surprise!

Keep tracking it down though!

 

[pumpkinboy]

Ordinarily, you get a thank you note when they put your name down, and then a reward letter after they buy with redemption options (which you can do on line now), all by snail mail. Heck, I have even gotten DVC to credit my referral after they bought but had forgotten to leave my name (but they were staying on my points). I am not sure what the holdup is there. I say keep calling if you don't get something next week.

As for the reward itself, we have always simply applied ours to Maintenance Fees and reduced payments down the line, but I suppose a gift card would be nice too. Good luck!

 

[mom3sonstt]

We had a hard time receiving ours when our friends bought. We went in with our friends to the Doorway to Dreams in Schaumberg. Our friends did the tour and presentation, we sat in on most of it with them. When they decided to buy they asked the guide if we would get any credit for bringing them in. The guide went and looked their names up in the computer and said that they had already been referred by somebody else. After finding out the name of the "referrer" our friends said they did not know anybody by that name and that they wanted us to receive any benefit that there would be. The Guide spoke to their manager and both said it would be taken care of.

We waited, our friends didn't buy that day because they wanted to use their Disney Visa which they had not brought with them, but they did finalize their purchase within a week or so. I called to see when we should be expecting anything and was told it would take a few weeks after they closed. We waited some more for them to receive their signed paperwork back and we still hadn't heard anything. I called and checked again. Eventually after waiting a few months and not getting return calls from the Guide (who we bought some add-on points with at the same time our friends bought theirs) I finally caught him in and asked him again. He acted like he had never heard of us, or the referral before - he looked up our friends names and told us that somebody else was the referrer. I recounted the whole visit to him again and he ended the conversation with "there's nothing we can do". That ddidn't sound very "Disney" to me and left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I sent a letter to the Manager of that location, and I think to some High-up person at DVC giving them the dates of our visit, what we were told, what our friends were told, the run-around I received from the Guide after we talked our friends into buying and bought more ourselves, and just in general the poor way I felt this was handled.

One day I received a Priority Mail envelope, inside it was a plain white envelope with 8 Disney gift cards. No letter, no explanation - just a stack of cards. They totalled $200.

Since we were never asked how we wanted to redeem our referral bonus, I always thought that they sent me those just to shut me up and that if we would have had a second referral within the time period, that it wouldn't have been treated like a second one.

Had they told us that day in the office that they could not switch the referring member, we would not have fought it. Our friends may have because they were not happy that somebody could submit their names without them knowing....or knowing them. But since we were told that it would be "no problem" to switch it I was willing to fight to get it.

 

[Sandisw]

I had difficulty getting mine in the fall last year as well. I ended up contacting my guide who looked in to it for me and was able to contact the referral department and get it straightened out for me.

It did take several weeks, but at least I had someone I knew working on it for me.

 

[goofy4tink]

Did you buy a resale?

(sorry, couldn't help it)

Guess I'll call them back again today. It's been over a week now. Man, this shouldn't be so hard.