Missing Disney World Ticket Refund / Unauthorized Gift Card Usage

[Ingram4]

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Missing Disney World Ticket Refund / Unauthorized Gift Card Usage

I’m posting to see if this has happened to anyone else:

Back in 2019, I purchased two park tickets for Walt Disney World using Disney gift cards for a 2020 trip. When COVID hit and the trip was canceled, Disney issued me a refund in the form of gift cards sent to my email for future use. I made sure to save that email in a specific folder so I wouldn’t lose it.

Fast forward to this year-we’re planning a trip for September and I went to find that email so I could use the credit… and it’s gone. Completely missing.

I contacted the Walt Disney Help Center, and they were actually great to work with. After about a month, they were able to track down the gift cards tied to my refund. Because their systems have changed since 2020, they had to dig pretty far back to locate the information.

Here’s where things get concerning: they told me both gift cards were already used.

• One gift card for $1,000 was “moved over” on August 24, 2020 and then used on May 19, 2022 at Walt Disney World.
• The second gift card for $150 was “moved over” on May 14, 2024 and then used the very next day (May 15, 2024) at Disneyland.

I did not use these gift cards and didn’t authorize anyone else to use them.

The Help Center advised me to contact the WDW Ticket Help Desk for further investigation. Which I just did this morning. I do have the last 12 digits of both gift cards and a file reference number from the Help Center to provide.

At this point, I’m trying to figure out:

• Has this happened to anyone else?
• Were you able to recover the funds or get a resolution?

This whole situation is pretty concerning, especially since the refund was originally sent directly to my email.

If you made it this far in my post, thank you so much!

 

[fla4fun]

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Missing Disney World Ticket Refund / Unauthorized Gift Card Usage

I’m posting to see if this has happened to anyone else:

Back in 2019, I purchased two park tickets for Walt Disney World using Disney gift cards for a 2020 trip. When COVID hit and the trip was canceled, Disney issued me a refund in the form of gift cards sent to my email for future use. I made sure to save that email in a specific folder so I wouldn’t lose it.

Fast forward to this year-we’re planning a trip for September and I went to find that email so I could use the credit… and it’s gone. Completely missing.

I contacted the Walt Disney Help Center, and they were actually great to work with. After about a month, they were able to track down the gift cards tied to my refund. Because their systems have changed since 2020, they had to dig pretty far back to locate the information.

Here’s where things get concerning: they told me both gift cards were already used.

• One gift card for $1,000 was “moved over” on August 24, 2020 and then used on May 19, 2022 at Walt Disney World.
• The second gift card for $150 was “moved over” on May 14, 2024 and then used the very next day (May 15, 2024) at Disneyland.

I did not use these gift cards and didn’t authorize anyone else to use them.

The Help Center advised me to contact the WDW Ticket Help Desk for further investigation. Which I just did this morning. I do have the last 12 digits of both gift cards and a file reference number from the Help Center to provide.

At this point, I’m trying to figure out:

• Has this happened to anyone else?
• Were you able to recover the funds or get a resolution?

This whole situation is pretty concerning, especially since the refund was originally sent directly to my email.

If you made it this far in my post, thank you so much!

There have been a lot of posts regarding unauthorized use of Disney gift cards, especially e-cards, and especially those stored online. Most have occurred through the Disney Gift Card website though, not through someone’s personal email. I don’t store any Disney gift cards online as a precaution. I have a couple of really old empty physical cards and I transfer the ecard value onto the physical cards and then delete anything online associated with them. That way, even if someone has the card information, if they try to use it the balance will show as zero. I’m curious how they got into your email though, without getting any other information. Either the card would have needed to be compromised at the point of issue by an employee or by someone hacking Disney’s outgoing emails, or your email would have to be compromised. I hope you will let us know which was the case.

I am sorry you are having to deal with this though. I hope you are able to recover the value.

 

[Ingram4]

There have been a lot of posts regarding unauthorized use of Disney gift cards, especially e-cards, and especially those stored online. Most have occurred through the Disney Gift Card website though, not through someone’s personal email. I don’t store any Disney gift cards online as a precaution. I have a couple of really old empty physical cards and I transfer the ecard value onto the physical cards and then delete anything online associated with them. That way, even if someone has the card information, if they try to use it the balance will show as zero. I’m curious how they got into your email though, without getting any other information. Either the card would have needed to be compromised at the point of issue by an employee or by someone hacking Disney’s outgoing emails, or your email would have to be compromised. I hope you will let us know which was the case.

I am sorry you are having to deal with this though. I hope you are able to recover the value.

Looking back, I realize I could have transferred the balance, but I believed it was more secure to keep it in its original form along with the original receipt in case any issues arose with the e-gift card. Thank you so much for your thoughtful response

 

[fla4fun]

i think it is more likely someone on Disney’s side was either hacked or an employee was involved. For the email to be recalled (moved out of your mailbox) someone would have to have access to Disney’s side of the email to do so. Based on what you said, “moved over”, it doesn’t sound like the email was simply deleted. It might be a good idea to change the password for your email account just in case though. I would hate to see you dealing with compromised emails from your banks, credit cards, and other important places.