My NIGHTMARE with Disney Vacation Account : My advice, stay away

[bsusanmb]

Little by little I made deposits into my DVA totally $25,000 using gift cards, some $50, some $100, and some $1000. We planned to take my BIL and SIL on DCL 12 night British Isles Cruise, renew our wedding vows on the ship, and do an ABD in London prior to the cruise; all was PIF. Unfortunately we had to cancel as my BIL has developed some difficulty walking distances. I called DCL and changed everything to a 3 night concierge with renewal of wedding vows and an ABD to Scotland on 2/2. I was to have $14,000 + refunded. I was foolish to assume that the money would go back into my DVA. So I began calling DVA on 2/3; 2/5; 2/8; 2/13; 2/19 and there were conversations with them and DCL and this is what I got:
Now understand had I NOT called, I would have NO IDEA where my money is, no one notified me
Some nice person named Kevin at DCLon 2/8 said he could see that the money was going to be returned in various payments as follows:
24.44 to account ending in 1234 (I am using fake numbers)
975.56 to account 1234
1000 to 3111
500 to 1778
600 to 9999
7034.30 to 9999
1000 to 9888
To which I asked, what are they? He didn't know. Could be GIFT CARDS (YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!! I HAVE HUNDREDS), a cc or anything I used to pay.
Yep, that's it. So I had to look back on my cc numbers; ok one amount did go back there, and sure enough $600 went to my DVA, and then I found others on the gift cards....ok, so all is accounted for except the $7034.30. which is to go to my DVA also. So where is that money. I call and call and no one can tell me anything except that it is pending. I keep getting told it take 7-10 business days and that CC's take longer...NO THEY DON"T I say, as my cc was credited immediately, and so were the gift cards but where is my MONEY??? I want to pay for my ABD and I need that money into my account. Right now I am on hold with Disney Customer Service while accounting from DCL has her on hold. It is 20 days later, so why are they holding my money?
My biggest concern is that why doesn't anyone tell you that your money has been refunded to this gift card, and this gift card and so on???? Why did I have to call them to find out where my money is??? Ok, the guest services CM just told me that she is still on hold and will call me back. Apparently the DVA account would not accept the large repayment, so they may have to mail me a check...WHAT???? So why didn't they just tell me that way back when? And what about the $20 gift cards I would have gotten with that 7 grand???? I didn't ask for it to be refunded.
You decide. Was it worth it? I need to figure out how to write a letter to inform Disney of the horrible way they are doing business with DVA. UGH. So disgusted. I am glad I am retired because this has taken hours of my time tracking down my money.

 

[bsusanmb]

Maybe the podcast team should use this as an example of what can happen to your money using DVA.

 

[bsusanmb]

I forgot to add that I had requested $4,000 withdrawal and was asked how I wanted the money returned. I took the time to carefully type out the following:
Please put $1000 on card #****
$200 on the following**** listing each card number and typing it twice to make sure it was right. I got the following response:
Susan,
In order to process your refund request as quickly as possible, we have loaded $1000 onto each of the first four cards you provided:
9**** $1000.00
3**** $1000.00
6**** $1000.00
5**** $1000.00
You may visit www.DisneyGiftCard.com to transfer balances between your other Disney Gift Cards.
Thank you,
Disney Vacation Account Refund Team

I was so angry. I wanted to give gift cards to my children and grandchildren in the amount of $200, and now what was I going to do with this? The person was too lazy to do what I asked. It was my money. I sent the response saying that this is not what I wanted and you cannot split up a $1000 gift card on the website. It can't be done. and I got no reply. So I called, and I was told they would get back to me. No one did.

 

[Marionnette]

Little by little I made deposits into my DVA totally $25,000 using gift cards, some $50, some $100, and some $1000. We planned to take my BIL and SIL on DCL 12 night British Isles Cruise, renew our wedding vows on the ship, and do an ABD in London prior to the cruise; all was PIF. Unfortunately we had to cancel as my BIL has developed some difficulty walking distances. I called DCL and changed everything to a 3 night concierge with renewal of wedding vows and an ABD to Scotland on 2/2. I was to have $14,000 + refunded. I was foolish to assume that the money would go back into my DVA. So I began calling DVA on 2/3; 2/5; 2/8; 2/13; 2/19 and there were conversations with them and DCL and this is what I got:
Now understand had I NOT called, I would have NO IDEA where my money is, no one notified me
Some nice person named Kevin at DCLon 2/8 said he could see that the money was going to be returned in various payments as follows:
24.44 to account ending in 1234 (I am using fake numbers)
975.56 to account 1234
1000 to 3111
500 to 1778
600 to 9999
7034.30 to 9999
1000 to 9888
To which I asked, what are they? He didn't know. Could be GIFT CARDS (YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!! I HAVE HUNDREDS), a cc or anything I used to pay.
Yep, that's it. So I had to look back on my cc numbers; ok one amount did go back there, and sure enough $600 went to my DVA, and then I found others on the gift cards....ok, so all is accounted for except the $7034.30. which is to go to my DVA also. So where is that money. I call and call and no one can tell me anything except that it is pending. I keep getting told it take 7-10 business days and that CC's take longer...NO THEY DON"T I say, as my cc was credited immediately, and so were the gift cards but where is my MONEY??? I want to pay for my ABD and I need that money into my account. Right now I am on hold with Disney Customer Service while accounting from DCL has her on hold. It is 20 days later, so why are they holding my money?
My biggest concern is that why doesn't anyone tell you that your money has been refunded to this gift card, and this gift card and so on???? Why did I have to call them to find out where my money is??? Ok, the guest services CM just told me that she is still on hold and will call me back. Apparently the DVA account would not accept the large repayment, so they may have to mail me a check...WHAT???? So why didn't they just tell me that way back when? And what about the $20 gift cards I would have gotten with that 7 grand???? I didn't ask for it to be refunded.
You decide. Was it worth it? I need to figure out how to write a letter to inform Disney of the horrible way they are doing business with DVA. UGH. So disgusted. I am glad I am retired because this has taken hours of my time tracking down my money.

Maybe the podcast team should use this as an example of what can happen to your money using DVA.

I forgot to add that I had requested $4,000 withdrawal and was asked how I wanted the money returned. I took the time to carefully type out the following:
Please put $1000 on card #****
$200 on the following**** listing each card number and typing it twice to make sure it was right. I got the following response:
Susan,
In order to process your refund request as quickly as possible, we have loaded $1000 onto each of the first four cards you provided:
9**** $1000.00
3**** $1000.00
6**** $1000.00
5**** $1000.00
You may visit www.DisneyGiftCard.com to transfer balances between your other Disney Gift Cards.
Thank you,
Disney Vacation Account Refund Team

I was so angry. I wanted to give gift cards to my children and grandchildren in the amount of $200, and now what was I going to do with this? The person was too lazy to do what I asked. It was my money. I sent the response saying that this is not what I wanted and you cannot split up a $1000 gift card on the website. It can't be done. and I got no reply. So I called, and I was told they would get back to me. No one did.

I am so very sorry that you are having such a problem with the DVA. Hopefully, others will benefit from your warning. I stopped putting money into my DVA last spring when the website went down and remained down for well over a week with little to no information coming from their customer service. I finally closed all of my accounts and asked that the small balances be refunded to me on new GCs. We'll see how long it actually takes them to send the refunds. Their customer service has been beyond abysmal. No bank would be allowed to get away it. I wish you well with your efforts to get your money back. Please keep us informed.

 

[AlohaNow]

Just last week I initiated a full refund and the closing of my DVA. One business day later I received an e-mail that the process had begun and all funds will be returned via original payment method, which in my case was a credit card. It stated that each payment into the account will be credited back separately and it may take 1-2 billing cycles (seriously?) for the credits to appear. Based on everything I had read on the DIS I was holding off on loading in all my discounted gift cards until just before I was to pay for my trip, as I don’t really trust their system given all the wacky things I’ve read on here. Sure am glad I held off!

My dollar amount is not anywhere near OP’s, but oh this should be fun seeing when each of my six deposits gets refunded. The reason I closed it out is that I had a recurring transfer into the account off my SW credit card and the last date where there should have been an auto transfer I received an e-mail saying simply that they could not make the transfer. Plenty of available credit on that card…..what the heck is the problem? I am a budget boarder through and through and would love to have had any bonus money I could earn, but the DVA is just not worth it. It is a Chase product in partnership with Disney. You know, Chase, the bank that gets hacked and has to reissue my credit cards on average once a year. I put up with them to fly my family for free on SW. Disney corporate needs to figure this one out!

OP, please let us know how it goes. I cannot imagine having that much money tied up and not being able to access it. We feel your pain!

 

[AmyAnne]

I want to say thank you for sharing this; this is why I love these boards. I had thought about opening a DVA account a while back but some of the other posts scared me off. So, you really are helping others by sharing. And I hope DCL will get your money back to you soon.

 

[Ava]

Have people experienced a lot of problems with using the DVA to pay for trips, or do most of the problems seem to be with refunds? I have been going back and forth on opening one, but if even using the funds to pay has been a problem I probably won't bother. Getting a $20 GC for every $1000 spent (effectively a 2% discount) is not worth a ton of hassle, IMO.

 

[Minnesota!]

Ew. I am sorry. I will say, though, that it is how they process refunds on anything - back to the original type of payment. Which is why I have never, ever, thrown any gift cards away, even when they are dead, lol. Too afraid that somewhere down the line, money will be credited back..

 

[QVCshopper]

I'm sorry you are dealing with this problem, but I do think I read somewhere on their FAQs that they refund back to the method of payment used. So, I combined 10 $50 gift cards onto one $500 gift card and then deposited that into the DVA, 4 times, leaving me with $2,000 in the DVA that should I need to cancel, would go back to only four cards. I thought about it before doing this method; so far, we paid our deposit without any problem.

 

[bsusanmb]

Yes, I read all of the FAQ's and rules and so on. Completely agreed with everything. I had 25 GRAND in there to begin with and it was open for 9 months. I did payments from it for all my Disney things, including the vow renewal. No problems at all. However, when you have used over 500 disney gift cards to deposit into your DVA account, how do they come up with the numbers to refund? Why did they refund the cards and not my DVA account? I didn't use any gift cards to pay for the vacation. So, if they are going to put money onto the GC's, they should at least have the decency to tell you they are doing it. I had no idea and no tracking of the $14,000 I was to get back to the original payment which was my DVA. I had paid the original $1000 on the cc, but forgot I had done that as it was almost a year ago. I never got an email saying how the money was to be refunded. I got a reservation from DCL that the new cruise cost X and that I paid Y and a refund of $14,000+ was owed. That's it. And 20 days later I am still trying to find my money. Had it not been for some nice guy at DCL finding the last 4 numbers of those gc's when I called, I wouldn't know where it is. I saved ALL of the cards. And as for the request for the withdrawal of $4000, I was immediately notified by email asking me how I wanted the money returned and if I wanted new gift cards. I told them I have a lot of cards, and they responded with an email to give them the card numbers and amounts and they would refund the money to the cards. Like I said, I have no use for $1000 cards, but someone was too lazy to do what I asked and gave me FALSE information that I could go to the DGC website and split the $1000 cards however I wanted. That is just ridiculous to tell someone false information. How hard would it have been for him or her to do what I asked? I feel like my $25 grand is just a bunch of nothing to them, but to me it is a lot of hard work and a lot of savings.
I just received a call back from Guest Services CM that the problem is not with a second accounting department and they too are having difficulty putting the $7000 back into my DVA. They will have a resolution by the end of the day and may end up sending me a check. The CM will call me back tomorrow. Just think of this, if everyone had to call to find their money they would get NOTHING done!!! There should be a system in place for this, and the consumer should be informed where the money is going. This really is one for the podcast to review. Seriously, MODERATOR, please refer this. I am glad that our vacation isn't until June 1. Our final payment for the ABD Scotland trip is in March. I need that money. If I were to pay with my cc, and then they decide to give me money on GC's I am still stuck with $7 grand in gc's! and a bill for 7 grand from the cc company. Something better happen by tomorrow.

 

[davper]

This scenario has always been a possibility. And something to keep in mind before using. It is also stated as such that refunds would be processed to the original payment method. I always kept my GCs in a drawer until after my trip for this reason.

I have processed about 10k through DVA with not one little issue. Knock on wood.

Good luck at getting your money. I hope all goes well.

 

[Stacy's a freak]

So sorry you're dealing with this! That is a lot of money to mess with But this is a GREAT thread about how refunds work with Disney gift cards. I have also heard that using GCs to book trips can be problematic if your travel agent finds a better deal and has to cancel your existing reservation to book the discounted reservation - all of the funds have to be credited back to their original cards. So you can imagine the nightmare in that situation.

 

[havaneselover]

It's probably a good idea to keep a spreadsheet with gift card numbers, pins, and amounts deposited to your DVA. I haven't done this but should going forward.

As far as prices dropping, I'm a DCL traveler and book on opening day so I don't worry about that. It's way too rare.

 

[bsusanmb]

It's probably a good idea to keep a spreadsheet with gift card numbers, pins, and amounts deposited to your DVA. I haven't done this but should going forward.

As far as prices dropping, I'm a DCL traveler and book on opening day so I don't worry about that. It's way too rare.

I didn't see anything about prices dropping. However they do if you will take a GTY stateroom. Our original cruise was 8 grand each, and this one is 4 grand for 3 days, but I decided to go just one time for a one bedroom suite, and a cabana. Afraid I will be spoiled.
Just thought of something funny, if Disney gives me a check, take that and turn it around into more discounted gift cards! LOL

 

[havaneselover]

I didn't see anything about prices dropping. However they do if you will take a GTY stateroom. Our original cruise was 8 grand each, and this one is 4 grand for 3 days, but I decided to go just one time for a one bedroom suite, and a cabana. Afraid I will be spoiled.
Just thought of something funny, if Disney gives me a check, take that and turn it around into more discounted gift cards! LOL

Yeah, if you book opening day GTY rates will still be higher in almost all cases. I've seen my cruises double in price from the time I book until sailing.

I'm sure you will love the suite and the cabana! Hope this all gets sorted out quickly.

 

[CalDisneyMomof2]

It's probably a good idea to keep a spreadsheet with gift card numbers, pins, and amounts deposited to your DVA. I haven't done this but should going forward.

As far as prices dropping, I'm a DCL traveler and book on opening day so I don't worry about that. It's way too rare.

The worst that has happened to me with DVA is I asked for the remainder to be sent on a gift card. I had no idea when I got it that instead of $834.45 (something like that) it was actually $834. About a week later I was sent a $5 gift card and an apology for shorting me $.45.

However, due to all the issues everyone else is having I'm going to keep a clear spreadsheet of every Target, eBay and Disney gift card I purchase. I will continue to use DVA and hope nothing happens to me. It seems, at least from what I have seen, that every person who has had an issue has had it resolved. Just takes a bit of effort that we shouldn't have to make.

 

[bsusanmb]

edited

 

[jmmess]

Sorry you are dealing with this. I have not had the same experience, but I use the account yo fund my DVC dues, so luckily refund is not a problem. I've successfully used the account to pay for dues and MVMCP tickets, and request my $20/$1,000. Just want to let people know it does work - although not for the intended purpose and obviously where a refund isn't necessary.

 

[bsusanmb]

Just to clarify, I have used it to book rooms at WDW and when I cancelled I immediately saw the money back into my DVA. Used it for tickets and all kinds of things. Just this time with the refund in a large amount has caused a catastrophe.

 

[tcherjen]

Yuck!! Sounds like a mess. Thanks for the heads up.