Maintenance / Annual Dues Payment Question..

[fearthisinc]

I tried doing a search but didn't quite find the answer to my question.. Not a huge deal but was curious about the payment of annual dues.. We just passed ROFR and as part of the sale we are paying the 2017 dues on the 2017 points.. We have a December Use Year... I understand that when paying dues you have two options.. You can either pay the dues in full in January or you can pay them monthly.. My question is this.. If you decide to pay monthly, are you paying for the current use year before January or after? For example, I had to pay the dues for the 2017 Use Year Points.. If I were to pay monthly would the payments from February - December of 2016 pay for the 2017 points or would the payments made January to December of 2017 pay?

The reason I ask is now that we paid the 2017 dues at closing, are the 2018 dues going to be due in full this coming January or will be have January 2018 - December 2018 to pay them monthly? I just wasn't sure how they collected the payments for each year when doing the monthly payments.. Hope this isnt too confusing..

 

[Cyberc1978]

You can pay them monthly.

You can however only prepay for the upcoming year. So here in 2017 you would prepay monthly for 2018. In 2018 you can prepay for 2019. What you pay is only an estimate as the actual mf for the upcoming year is unknown.

 

[LisaS]

Dues are paid by calendar year and cover the cost to operate the resort, Member Services, Disney transportation, etc. for that calendar year. If you pay in full in January, you are paying in advance for the entire year and in exchange for giving them all the money for that calendar year up front, Disney allows you to pay by credit card. Your other option is to pay "as you go", by monthly direct debit from a US bank. Since you are paying the money as it's needed each month, your only option is direct debit so that they get the money in full (no credit card fees) and on time.

As far as how the dues you pay each calendar year relate to your points, you look at how the calendar year and Use Years overlap. With a December UY, the dues paid for the 2017 calendar year cover the last 11 months of the Dec 2016 UY and the first month of the Dec 2017 UY, so the 2017 calendar year dues pay for 11/12ths of the Dec 2016 UY points and 1/12th of the Dec 2017 UY points. The dues to be paid in the 2018 calendar year cover the last 11 months of the Dec 2017 UY and the first month of the Dec 2018 UY, and cover 11/12ths of the Dec 2017 UY points and 1/12th of the Dec 2018 UY points.

 

[fearthisinc]

Ok.. So if I have it right then come January 2018 I will have the choice to pay the full amount or have them do direct debit.. If I decide to do direct debit for the 2018 year then they will take monthly payments starting in January 2018.. From now until January I would not be making any monthly payments for dues since i paid in one lump sum at the closing, correct?

 

[LisaS]

Ok.. So if I have it right then come January 2018 I will have the choice to pay the full amount or have them do direct debit.. If I decide to do direct debit for the 2018 year then they will take monthly payments starting in January 2018.. From now until January I would not be making any monthly payments for dues since i paid in one lump sum at the closing, correct?

Correct. Your dues for the 2017 calendar year will be paid in full so you will owe nothing until January 2018. If you want to pay monthly for 2018 and beyond, you must sign up at least a few weeks in advance. Member Accounting gets very busy at the end of the year generating all the annual dues bills so I would sign up for monthly payments no later than the end of November, just to be sure it gets set up in time.

If you do decide to go with monthly payments, you can make additional payments at any time by credit card or gift cards. This gives you the option of a hybrid approach: start the year with monthly payments but at some point pay off some/all of your balance either with a credit card to get reward points or with Disney gift cards. There are some past threads (and there will be more as we get closer to January) about various ways to get discounted Disney gift cards that you can then use to pay off your dues balance.