Phone lines too often busy!

[OnMedic]

Is there something going on at MC? The phone lines have 9/10 times, or more, been busy the last day or so.....

 

[jimh13432]

This is the 11 month point for Christmas season 2008. Very busy time for MS

 

[DVC Mike]

I tried calling MS today. Tried the (407) number for 45 minutes but just kept getting a busy signal. Tried the (800) number and got through on the first attempt.

 

[OnMedic]

I tried calling MS today. Tried the (407) number for 45 minutes but just kept getting a busy signal. Tried the (800) number and got through on the first attempt.

You got lucky.... hours now of trying the 800 # and busy!

This is nuts! Online reservations would fix all this!

 

[rkdahl]

You got lucky.... hours now of trying the 800 # and busy!

This is nuts! Online reservations would fix all this!

But for some reason (beyond me) when DVC asks, the majority vote no to online reservations!

 

[DVC Dude]

But for some reason (beyond me) when DVC asks, the majority vote no to online reservations!

I vote YES for online reservations.

This is the 11 month point for Christmas season 2008. Very busy time for MS

That makes sense now....I never visit during that time.

 

[jekjones1558]

I will not support online reservations until DVC shows that it can get its act together and provide a working website. I can just imagine the outcry if reservations were messed up like the online dues and previously the vacation details sections of the DVC website. The "sorry for the slow log-in" problem is the latest example of DVC not being able to get simple tech issues fixed. Imagine the mess with online booking!

 

[micki7337]

At times the MS line is busy but once you get thru it is a fast process.
Last week I got tons of busy signals at 9 am but when i called at 9:30 I got thru no problem. Then I spent 90 minutes on the line redoing all my reservations for our stay at the Boardwalk 5/4-5/10 of this year. this included all of our dining reservations. the reason it took this long was we needed to re book the dining reservations and cancel the old ones. I was trying to make every thing special for our anniversary trip.

On the subject of online reservation I say no with all the issues with the DVC site. I would have to see them fix that issue first before I could say it would be worth it. Last week I could not tell if they properly credited my vacation points due to service issues with the site

 

[epicureangirl]

I will not support online reservations until DVC shows that it can get its act together and provide a working website.

 

[rinkwide]

There's got to be some way to blame this in the renters.

 

[JimMIA]

But for some reason (beyond me) when DVC asks, the majority vote no to online reservations!

This came up in one of Doc's threads about the Annual Meetings. The DVC execs were surprised that a very small percentage of us expressed an interest in online booking in their surveys.

As I remember the survey, though, it really sounds like you are given a choice of one, and only one, type of booking. I would love to have online booking, but I sure wouldn't want to give up the ability to speak to a real human in situations where I needed help. A lot of others cited the same problem with the survey. I think it's a "Garbage In, Garbage Out" problem with the wording of the survey.

Of course, for online booking or even availability checking to ever happen, DVC will have to drag their computer system kicking and screaming into the 20th Century.

 

[RAD]

I will not support online reservations until DVC shows that it can get its act together and provide a working website.

Agreeded, their web site must have been put together by Goofy. This week I went to pay the dues online, went through all the pages and when I hit accept on the last screen I got another page from the non-member DVC part of the site saying the page can't be displayed.

 

[mjy]

Of course, for online booking or even availability checking to ever happen, DVC will have to drag their computer system kicking and screaming into the 20th Century.

You know, I think I would be happy if they just dragged their computer system into the 19th Century. Somehow, the 20th Century seems like it would be too much of a miracle!

 

[llmurphy17]

Trying to book day by day ressies this week and every day it took around 4 hours to get through.

 

[boettj]

I hope I am not giving up a big secret, but I called on Saturday and got right through. I mentioned this, and was told that many don't realize they are open Saturday's. I had to call twice, as I was booking for my brother-n-law and didn't have all of the information.

During the week, I only had to hit redial 2 or 3 times to get through. Not sure why someone would have to wait 4 hours. That is crazy.

I am all for online booking as well as call in.

If they need help dragging them into the 20th or even the 21st centuries, send me the job offer and I am there.

 

[icydog]

I spent two days trying to get through. I want on line reservations. Marriott has them as do most timeshares. They also have people manning the phones but the ability to reserve on line would be seamless to me. YOu would have a copy of the reservation in hand so the issue of them screwing it up is moot. I think folks are afraid of Disney's Mickey Mouse Website, but with a good website group the on line thing could work. It would take money, time and commitment on Disney's part but there's no reason it can't be done.

By the way, after two days of trying I got through on the first ring on Saturday at 5 PM. I think people didn't realize that member svcs stays open six days a week until 5:30 PM.

 

[SuzanneSLO]

When I think about online reservations for DVC, I keep gettign a deja vu of trying to get CP dinner reservations in DL in 2006 and 2007. Before '06, reservations were by phone and, I understand, involved lots of time on hold but most who called the firt day were successful in getting a dinner resrvation of some kind that also guarantees seats to the CP.

In 06, the computer system crashed after rejecting CC numbers. Three days later, I did get an e-mail saying that I had a reservation! I understand that I was one of the lucky ones.

In 07, I spent 2 frustrated hours trying to book a resrvation. After many attempts, I would get to the resrvation screen, choose the time and date, get the message that my reservation was being held, quickly enter my CC info, then get the message that it was sold out for that time. So, I would start over to try to get to the resrevation screen, then try to book, then enter CC info, then get told that time was also sold out! We never received a resrvation that year.

Once a year is frustrating enough, I can't imagine having to go thru something like that day by day!

-- Suzanne

 

[rkdahl]

I think we need to approach the online reservation project from the point of view that it WILL work accurately, because it would have to. If it didn't work, the entire reservation process would break down. And that just isn't going to happen.

So please don't vote 'No' to an online reservation survey because you had a bad experience on one of Disney's or the DVC web sites. It's apples and oranges, or Mickeys and Goofy's, two totally seperate things.

When DVC asks us, and I'd even go so far as that we should strongly request, an online reservation system, just as other hotel timeshares have done (ie Hilton and Marriott). I own HGVC with Hilton and I can book up to a year in advance at my home HGVC property, 7 months at any HGVC property and within 30 days for "open season" (ie cash rates) at any HGVC property. They have many more locations than DVC does and it works just fine. All online! I can see availability at each resort by day and I can book, modify or cancel any reservation at anytime 24 hours a day and I never talk to a human. Works great!

DVC needs this and DVC members need this. Why? To drastically reduce member services call volume, which will reduce member services staff, which will reduce member services labor costs, which will keep our dues lower. It would also increase members satisfaction with the reservation process.

Again, I believe we need to vote/request for the online reservation capability, plan on it working as it needs to and if it doesn't work, DVC will deal with it. I promise! They can't have a broken reservation system, they will fix it.

So please, vote, ask, request, send letters and talk to DVC staff about the need for an online reservation system. We will all benefit from it.

 

[DVC Mike]

So please don't vote 'No' to an online reservation survey because you had a bad experience on one of Disney's or the DVC web sites. It's apples and oranges, or Mickeys and Goofy's, two totally seperate things.

Again, I believe we need to vote/request for the online reservation capability, plan on it working as it needs to and if it doesn't work, DVC will deal with it. I promise! They can't have a broken reservation system, they will fix it.

So please, vote, ask, request, send letters and talk to DVC staff about the need for an online reservation system. We will all benefit from it.

I'm not so sure that we can expect an online booking system to be any better than the current DVC web site. If they can't get the basic web site to be up and functional, why would we expect them do be able to do this with an online booking system?

I have 13 contracts spread across 4 resorts, with points banked, etc. I would be worried how easy to use their online booking system would be. The current system that MS uses doesn't have to be that user friendly, as the MS cast members get training. It would be difficult to make an online booking system usable to all the DVC members, especialy those that aren't knowledgeable about all the rules.

I'm not against it -- in fact I would prefer it over the current approach. It's just that DVC hasn't demonstrated their ability to provide a fully functional web site that is up all the time and accessible. That scares me when we talk about them building an online reservation system.

 

[roadtripper]

Tried 7+ times already today when I realized I was 7 months out--busy signal. The other night, I called MS on my way into a wake, left myself on hold (phone in the car--I'm not THAT insensitive!) and was still on hold when I came out. This is getting annoying.