Interesting - New Incentive?

[kjd469]

O.K...so we bought AKL a couple weeks ago with all the great incentives they offered. Well...my good friend was at Downtown Disney on Friday night and she was curious about DVC because we had just bought and she wanted to see what it was all about. The Guide at the kiosk was trying to entice her and told her that she could apply part of her vacation that she was currently on towards her payment - I know this used to be many years ago, but hadn't heard about it recently...I was very surprised to hear they offered this to her...has anyone else had this offered to them?? Maybe this will be the new incentive??

 

[AKV707]

I have never heard of that before. It wouldn't make much of an incentive for owners considering an add on, however.

 

[TenThousandVolts]

Wow! That is something they did years ago. I wonder if the onsite agents have special permission now to do that again.
They must be having a hard time making sales. First, lowering the buy-in to 100- and now this. Pretty interesting.

 

[penguins1]

I sort of hope this isn't true... I just got back from a trip where I stayed at the CR with a MK view and went on the DVC tour. That would have been a nice downpayment!

 

[kjd469]

What she told her was she could apply "part" of the cost of this trip towards her payment...she didn't specify how much...she was also offered the 100 point minimum, AND she was offered the special fast passes if she went to the presentation...sounds like the guide was pulling out all the stops to get her to go to the DVC office...which by the way, she didn't

 

[WDRabbit]

When we purchased our membership in December of 2007 our guide told us that we could essentially get our money back from our current trip if we were at a Disney resort. He made it sound like we could apply our points to our current trip, and get a refund for the cash we had paid for the current trip. Unfortunately we were at the Dolphin which doesn't count

 

[janni518]

This was offered years ago when we first considered dvc. I was sad it wasn't an option when we finally purchased this year.

 

[disneynutz]

I have complained to DVD in the past about their inconsistent use of incentives when buying a DVC interest. Their response was "that's the way it is".

We didn't think that it was fair that there were so many different deals going on at close to the same time. Disney Cruise, Doorway to Dreams, WDW, DL, all have different incentives.

It's great if you just happen to be buying from the right place at the right time, but not so great when you find out that you could have had a better deal else where.

 

[Crisgw]

They told us (a few weeks back when we bought) that the discount off of the points and the "downpayment" from Disney was a "discount" for our current trip. We were staying at AKV. We got $500 gc, 94 or 96/pp (i can't remember) and 1850 (or close) downpayment from them.

 

[MJ6987]

I wonder if they actually reduce the total price by this though, or just make it so that the down payment is less but the amount to be paid in total is not affected?

 

[bangzoom6877]

DH read something about this incentive recently (or maybe he saw it on that show on the Travel Channel?). The way it works is that yes, they do allow you to apply the amount you paid for your on-property room toward your down payment, so your current trip is like "using part of your DVC membership". However, they do deduct the points from the contract which you buy. Let's say, for argument's sake, you stay at Pop Century, which is a value resort. You go on the tour and you buy, for argument's sake, a 200-point DVC contract with this incentive offered. Well, since DVC does not offer Value resorts as an option to stay on points, they "charge" your membership the same points it would have cost you to stay at a moderate, as written in the Dream Book on the Disney Collection points chart. If you stay at Contemporary, they will deduct the points it would have cost you for that, and so on. So, is this a good deal? IMO, hardly...the non-DVC WDW properties are many more points than staying at a DVC resort. And it certainly does not seem like a deal if you are staying at a Value but they have to take points for a moderate. So, what Disney is doing is yes, helping people spend less money in these hard economic times (if you are put on the spot and are being told your current accommodations will be "paid for" it seems like such a great deal, kind of like those $199-for-5-nights-but-sit-through-3-hour-presentation deals), but remember, although it is not costing the person extra money to stay on property AND purchase DVC, it is ultimately costing that person points.

So, if that 200-point contract purchase with this incentive ends up costing that person 400 points to get that incentive, there goes this year's points plus next year's from borrowing. That means no DVC vacations on points for at least one year, and if that person wanted to use all 200 plus borrow for their trip they would have to wait even longer. Or wait a while to catch up at least. So if you are not planning to use a lot of your points right away, yes, this could be a great deal. But if you want to take advantage right away, it really is something to think about whether or not it is worth paying maintenance fees and waiting a year or 2 to use your membership.

 

[perdy1234]

We purchased our dvc in May in California. We were offered a variety of incentives including: Fastpasses just for going, we then got $1650 towards as payment for our trip that was taken off of our price for dvc, by the way we were not staying on property!, so this amount actually did pay for our trip. Other incentives were $500 gift card, which we applied to our dvc account, and then he gave us a whole bunch more fastpasses, which we used some and gave some away to pass on the magic. So in the end with these offers we really couldn't say no.

 

[kerrik]

When we joined back in 2005, we were staying in a suite at the Contemporary for 6 days. They paid for our entire trip by applying the amount to our down payment. We did NOT loose any points off our contract for this, it was simply their way of thanking us for joining! Of course it didn't lower the cost of the actual contract, just the amount we had to put down, but it was nice!

Kerri

 

[dgb]

We were told we could buy DVC on our current trip, use the points and get the money we paid for a cash resort refunded. We were also given the choice of special fast passes or $30 in Disney gift cards if we took the DVC tour. And there was free ice cream at the end of the tour too!

 

[jimmaher69]

Can some explain the above post. "MONEY OFF THE DOWN PAYMENT" Am I missing something?


It sounds like I should wait until my April trip to buy a DVC. Yes or no?

 

[jimmaher69]

If my last post was not clear, I don't understand this.

"When we joined back in 2005, we were staying in a suite at the Contemporary for 6 days. They paid for our entire trip by applying the amount to our down payment. We did NOT loose any points off our contract for this, it was simply their way of thanking us for joining! Of course it didn't lower the cost of the actual contract, just the amount we had to put down, but it was nice!"

 

[castleri]

In 1997 they had something like this except they took the number of points your stay would have cost in a studio at your DVC resort for the time you were there and multiplied it by $10 I think and deducted this from the amount you needed to pay. You also lost those points. Our stay(in a POFQ room) would have been 40 points - 5 nights in an OKW studio in Sept so they would have given us $400 off the deposit and we would have not had 40 of our 220 points. We originally took the offer but then called when we got home and said put the points back and we will pay the $400. We used those towards the GV we got for our very first DVC trip the following year.