DVC T &C Personal Use - Only Thread to Discuss!

If the Rental Brokers try to do this they will go out of business quickly. Cancelled reservations is one thing, but someone coming to the internet to post that their reservation was cancelled through no fault of the renter and DVC Rental Store or David's refuses to refund? Yeah, that would be enough to drive their business under. Nobody would use them. Doesn't matter what they write in the contract.

I seem to remember a few months ago, last year sometime, a few renter's reservations were cancelled by Disney. I don't remember what happened with that situation however. It didn't seem to have any ripples in the DVC rental industry.
 
I have tried to book one for months now, I can't even start a walk because for example as of right now the first day one is available is 11 months + 2 days, so I can't even try. It's been like that for months. The only way to get one is to do a waitlist and pray, but that is no way to plan a vacation. I can't compete with bots.

Just because you are one of the unlucky ones doesn’t mean that all the lucky ones are renters.

I have a friend who got one last year at 11 months for a July trip. No walking and not a renter.

Same happened to me in Dec with a RIV RV studio. Someone here had been shut out for weeks and my first day trying, for my 11 month window I got it.

Pure luck. Next day, when I need to try for my second one, I had to book PV.

Use stalking and waitlists and did eventually end up with two RV studios.

Just shows that when you have way more owners wanting too few rooms, some owners will lose out, and while some who got it may have done so to rent it, your average owners are also getting them.
 
I have tried to book one for months now, I can't even start a walk because for example as of right now the first day one is available is 11 months + 2 days, so I can't even try. It's been like that for months. The only way to get one is to do a waitlist and pray, but that is no way to plan a vacation. I can't compete with bots.
I can second that situation, I have been trying to start a Boardwalk walk for Summer 2026 and all Resort Studios are 11 months + 2 days out. Do they open post other walking yes, but I would like to know I got my room then go day by day hoping to add it al together.
 
Not often I use an absolute but on this I can state 100% no I wouldn't feel differently. It's 1st come 1st served. Flexibility comes with the offset of you may not get what you want. I purchased flexibility knowing I wouldn't necessarily get my most preferred room or even preferred time.
If that hadn't been acceptable I wouldn't have bought. (There wasn't a guaranteed week product at the time which was ok).

1st come 1st served never envisioned what we have taking place today- it's more like "early bot gets the room" or "he who walks first walks best". It's who can cheat the system the best. It's all fun and games until quantum computer AGI bots start booking rooms. Then you will be saying, to quote Arnold, "I know now why you cry".
 

100% I honestly have a leg up on a majority of people. I homeschool my son so I have no commitments that would take me away from trying to book exactly at 8am as most members do. Must be stressful to own a product you spent so much money on and have to leave a meeting at work to book your room or otherwise miss out. But even I cannot compete with bots.

It is even worst for us on the west coast, we need to be up at 5am to book when the window opens. Which is why I just about never do it.
 
One thing not mentioned is how much of the perceived scarcity has been brought about by DVC decisions, some often attributed to member feedback. Multiple room view categories that have a small number of rooms in each. Adding a 5th sleep surface to many of the older resorts while leaving the 1BR's at 4. Allowing new owners to buy in at 50 points. And probably another couple that aren't immediately coming to mind.

I have tried to book one for months now, I can't even start a walk because for example as of right now the first day one is available is 11 months + 2 days, so I can't even try. It's been like that for months. The only way to get one is to do a waitlist and pray, but that is no way to plan a vacation. I can't compete with bots.
It goes back to the best advice, and this isn't new, is to not buy with the expectation of getting the scarcest or least expensive rooms. That pre-dates everything online - decades of advice. I'm sorry that along the way you received the impression you could book the concierge easily (or ever) but it is not going to change. The truth is you were always going to be disappointed if that is what you purchased for.
 
Today you have 100 owners going after 5 studios, but what they don't know is those 5 studios are locked up in a walk by renter bots who own thousands of points. So they have a 0% chance of getting one. Soon they'll have a 5% chance of getting one. I was an art student - not a math student - but I'll take a 5% chance over a 0% chance any day of the week.
I have both a AKV-C and AKV-V booking this year but both were only snagged waitlisting behind walkers, I’m going in August so maybe my chances are 1-2%, if I was going in autumn/Christmas maybe it’s near 0%
 
If the Rental Brokers try to do this they will go out of business quickly. Cancelled reservations is one thing, but someone coming to the internet to post that their reservation was cancelled through no fault of the renter and DVC Rental Store or David's refuses to refund? Yeah, that would be enough to drive their business under. Nobody would use them. Doesn't matter what they write in the contract.

Are we all just going to choose to ignore the elephant in the room? David's appears to be thriving once again, despite the debacle over refunds during Covid.
 
DVC is cracking down on rentals… already? :laughing:

It was inevitable that clarification would become necessary. So much has changed over the last decade or so. The average WDW/DVC planner has a wealth of experience utilizing online resources that is quite different than 2010 or even 2015. The tools, the knowledge to use them, the demographics… all have changed.

DVC is sold as a vacation club for personal use. It is peppered throughout the contract. Rentals being allowed by the contract and the law does not mean carte blanche. Plenty of things already exist in the contracts that enable DVC to protect the membership from detrimental commercial and non-personal use. I’d argue they actually have a responsibility to do so.

When it comes to bots, I don’t think it matters that capchas don’t necessarily work. Tracking a membership (or even multiple memberships tied by individual(s), address, LLC, etc) that is routinely scraping/pounding the site seems like enough for a further look into these accounts and question the activity if it does not appear to fall under personal use.
 
Yes. As I said before I am fine if another owner gets a room. I am not okay with people who buy contracts with the sole intent of renting rooms for profit. Not sure how any member would be okay with that. Do you rent your points?

But I think we are now talking about two different things.

Should an owner who need to occasionally rent be barred from renting a popular room vs should DVC stop commercial renters?

If I decide I need to rent one year some of my points, should I be prevented from renting certain rooms?

I think that’s where I differ. I simply do not want to see DVC now telling owners who have the right to rent that certain rooms are off limits if they are not renting frequently or regularly.

I really am hopeful DVC won’t.
 
It goes back to the best advice, and this isn't new, is to not buy with the expectation of getting the scarcest or least expensive rooms. That pre-dates everything online - decades of advice. I'm sorry that along the way you received the impression you could book the concierge easily (or ever) but it is not going to change. The truth is you were always going to be disappointed if that is what you purchased for.

Absolutely I know that club level rooms are hard to get. I did not buy my AKL points expecting to stay club level regularly. If I did I would be very disappointed obviously. I'd just rather be competing with owners who actually want to stay in those rooms, and not bots. I'm okay with a fair fight.

I have both a AKV-C and AKV-V booking this year but both were only snagged waitlisting behind walkers, I’m going in August so maybe my chances are 1-2%, if I was going in autumn/Christmas maybe it’s near 0%

That is exactly my experience as well. Sometimes the walkers will stop and you'll see the club level rooms available at 8AM the morning of the 11 month window, but it's not happened all year so far this year (I've been checking). And it may not. We'll see. I'm hopeful that when they start taking down Jambo inventory for refurb it'll disrupt the bots enough that we'll get a sniff.
 
Cancel reservations you made (forcing you to have to refund your renters) and suspend your account for a period of time from making new reservations. At least, that's what happened with other developers.
No other timeshare developer has disneyworld as a destination for their timeshares where Disney makes multiples of people’s lodging cost. It’s the only timeshare where you only lose 50% (instead of 99%) the moment you buy. And a vibrant rental market where owners can rent out to pay their maintenance fees, instead of having the timeshare developer chasing it down. Disney would be stupid to crush all that.
 
That would be me. Still don't know how you did it, but every time you say this, a DVC employee gets their wings. It's really making a mess of things at DVC HQ.

And that is the whole point! Some of us are getting hard to get rooms and we are not commercial renters…heck I don’t rent at all…and we have chosen not to walk.

I give reservations away for free!!

Frustrating yes, but IMO it’s not a accurate to blame 100% of the difficultly for hard to get rooms on owners who have become serial renters or walkers.

Now, if we see commercial renters out of the game, I think that we might see some impact on things in general.

But, those really hard to get rooms? I think they are still going to be hard to get.
 
Nothing has really changed with renting.
Eh, that's not true. The renting ecosystem has exploded over the last decade. There are constant advertisements for the board sponsor on literally every podcast, youtube video, disney blog, etc. It's become a real beast. It wasn't like that at all back in 2015.
 
If the goal of this change is to stop large commercial renters, I am not sure this is going to work. DVC allows LLC to buy points and setting up a LLC is dirt cheap, like as cheap as $40. Won't a commercial renter just setup a LLC, run it till caught, shut it down, then start up another one?

Havin watched the DVCFan video on this topic, Paul even talked about some rental companies that encouraged individual owners to do spec rentals. So even if the commercial renters are all gone, owners who just want to do 1 or 2 rentals are still going to do spec rentals if they want to maximize their rental income.

If the pain point for owners is seeing confirmed reservations available for rent while they can't book the same room, then what would stop that? Not being allowed to change leads on reservations? Limiting the number of changes so the reservations can't be walked forever till a renter is found?
 



















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