Technical Flaw in the Waitlist System?

[cvjw]

I don't know how other people feel, but we don't use the waitlist. We book home as soon as we can (generally eleven months) and then if we want to try something else, we make a list of the resorts according to preference and call at seven months - all or nothing, no waitlist - and if nothing is available, hold our original reservation. We bought a resort we don't mind getting stuck at.

Each trip is only one of many.

We own at multiple resorts and also book at 11 months out - not intending to have to use a waitlist. We just found out that there are unexpected times when a waitlist is needed for us - we decided to extend our upcoming May trip from 9 nights to 14 nights. We just decided a couple of weeks ago and had to use the waitlist - as we couldn't get all 5 nights together at one resort. We had a great outcome with our waitlist coming thru after only a week.

 

[dmoore22]

We own at multiple resorts and also book at 11 months out - not intending to have to use a waitlist. We just found out that there are unexpected times when a waitlist is needed for us - we decided to extend our upcoming May trip from 9 nights to 14 nights. We just decided a couple of weeks ago and had to use the waitlist - as we couldn't get all 5 nights together at one resort. We had a great outcome with our waitlist coming thru after only a week.

We try to avoid the waitlist but it is a nice option when the unexpected happens.

 

[crisi]

We try to avoid the waitlist but it is a nice option when the unexpected happens.

Yep, I can see that. But my preference is still not to use the WL at all. Don't have the patience for it.

 

[Dean]

great~...one more thing that isn't right .

obviously, there are those in member services bypassing the

wait list. who can we call that is in charge of running this ?

( let me guess, the card~board cutout fella welcoming you in
at the dvc store? )


someone else, felt it was unreasonable to expect availability @
your home resort ( 11mos ). , what other reason
would anyone would buy into dvc in the first place if not to
get a room?

is it encouraged for disney employees / guides ....to make any promises
they can think of just to sell? do anyone here know their
boundaries?

home resort? is a home resort where a person has the majority of
their points? [ so i know when others are making a point &
what resort they are referring to when they own @ several. ]

maybe that what we all should do, stage a "call~in"? *pay no
attention, just a flashback to the 60's,

It seems clear that DVC is not for you. Even 11 month out calling when they open is no guarantee, esp for high demand options like AKV concierge. While most people will be successful if you call upon opening 11 months out, that is not always the case and if you miss a day calling, your chances will drop dramatically depending on the inherent demand of the option/time involved.

MS is not bypassing the WL, their simply searching for a room as requested by a member. I doubt they have access to the WL at that time nor would they be expected to not book a room available when they search. As a group DVC guides (timeshare sales staff) are the best and most honest in the industry. Granted, that's not necessarily saying a lot for a group that overall falls below used car sales. However I can only recall a couple of times over my years here where it was reported that DVC guides gave purposeful and wrong information and relatively few reports of even pushy sales tours. For example, a guide might have told someone 2 years ago that there had only been one reallocation and the points would remain the same. At the time that wasn't necessarily inaccurate but it was incomplete. It's impossible to be truly complete in a 2-3 hour sales tour nor is it good business. Remember the guides are often the last to know about changes, we often know before they do. Just like a business doesn't necessarily tell you a given item will be on sale next week when you're looking to buy it, even if they know ahead of time.

The WL is far from perfect but as set up it's better than not having one at all. With all it's imperfections, DVC is still one of the top timeshares systems in the world and would still be the top at least in member satisfaction and flexibility.

 

[JimC]

I don't know how other people feel, but we don't use the waitlist. We book home as soon as we can (generally eleven months) and then if we want to try something else, we make a list of the resorts according to preference and call at seven months - all or nothing, no waitlist - and if nothing is available, hold our original reservation. We bought a resort we don't mind getting stuck at.

Each trip is only one of many.

We regularly book at eleven and seven months with no problems. We also have used the waitlist when we wanted to change a reservation close in. There is no risk, so I am unsure why you would avoid it. If it comes through -- great! If not, then you are where you originally booked. I don't see any downside to using it.

 

[disneynutz]

With all it's imperfections, DVC is still one of the top timeshares systems in the world and would still be the top at least in member satisfaction and flexibility.

With all due respect, it's not difficult to be at the top if everybody else has decided to stay on the bottom.

During that past two years DVC has taken a turn for the worse and for some reason most members don't seem to mind. The more that I deal with the DVC/DVD and it's people and departments, the more I see behind the curtain.

I am convinced that our frequent vacations to WDW and the number of contracts that we own has increased the opportunity for problems. Members who book a reservation once a year have a better chance of not having problems. We booked 11 resorts last year and we often had problems. Even the Managers that we get refereed to with repeat issues tell me that they are sorry, but they don't make the system, they are just forced to use it.

Bill

 

[crisi]

We regularly book at eleven and seven months with no problems. We also have used the waitlist when we wanted to change a reservation close in. There is no risk, so I am unsure why you would avoid it. If it comes through -- great! If not, then you are where you originally booked. I don't see any downside to using it.

I don't like the stress of not knowing. For me, the certainty of knowing where I will be at the time of booking far outweighs the attractions of any single resort.

I know myself. I avoid that sort of stress. Its nothing against the waitlist, which works for a lot of people, it has more to do with my personality and the idea of a waitlist at all.

 

[PoohNFriends]

(RE: Where one stands on the waitlist)

There really is no meaningful way to communicate where someone stands on the waitlist because of the variances in arrival dates and trip durations. You could be the first person with a waitlist request for Day 1 of your trip, then you could be 10th on the waitlist for Day 2, 5th in line for Day 3 and so on.

The matter is also complicated by the duration of the trip. Even if you were "first" in line for every night of your desired stay, if you are on the waitlist for a 10-day trip the odds for success are far smaller than a member waitlisting 3 nights.

In order for a waitlist to be matched, every single night must come available simultaneously. If only part of a trip is matched, the member is bypassed and the dates slip to the next person on the list. Telling a member that she is first (or 3rd or 20th) would create false expectations in many instances.

I kind-of knew that but didn't think it all thru so thanks for clarifying!

 

[LisaS]

I don't like the stress of not knowing. For me, the certainty of knowing where I will be at the time of booking far outweighs the attractions of any single resort.

It also makes it harder to make your dining plans if you don't know for sure where you will be staying. Since we rarely rent a car, for the days planned out as pool days I will book an ADR at or near our resort. I make our ADRs as early as I can so it helps to know where we will be staying and not be wondering if we will be at one of two different resorts depending on whether my waitlist comes through. We bought where we were most interested in staying so that we wouldn't have to deal with the waitlist. The times I have tried it were when we had to change our trip dates long after I made the original reservation and then couldn't get the booking category we wanted. We've been successful only one time out of three.

 

[crisi]

Yep, the inability to plan in a complete way is part of the stress - particularly around ADRs. We do a similiar thing.

I do however, wish they worked in a more fair fashion, not for my sake but because I think jumping in line because you called at the right time when someone else has been on the waitlist for months is wrong.

 

[Lil' Grumpy]

wow, that's is exactly how we do our vacations & one of the reasons

we felt dvc was prefect for us. at this moment, we have our next

2 years planned out. when we looked into dvc, we already had several

vacations planned. ( not counting dcl cruises-currently we have 4
already booked, which is not usually for us. )

we never knew anything about the wait list, because we never expected
to need it. when we met with a guide, we knew exactly what our
"vacation needs" were and we purchased our points to covered those
needs @ the 11 mos. period. since we were not going for the top of
the line rooms with limited availability, even the managers were
shocked that 3 cat.s were not available @ 9am. ( 11mos. out)

while i do not profess to be some kind of dvc expert, i am in the "people
business". the best way to lose one's respect is to be untruthful. however,
we are not sure if this was unintentionally or not. our current concerns,
are the lack of actions from dvc in responding with corrective measures
if the wait list is being done as described, is a current problem for us.



as for the other "intrusive" observation,

maybe it's just your nature to be bold, but do you have the proper dvc
credentials to support your recommendations? if so, we would like
to get you together with the guide that made these promises.

 

[maburke]

since we were not going for the top of
the line rooms with limited availability, even the managers were
shocked that 3 cat.s were not available @ 9am. ( 11mos. out)

What were you trying to get? For when?

 

[Dean]

With all due respect, it's not difficult to be at the top if everybody else has decided to stay on the bottom.

During that past two years DVC has taken a turn for the worse and for some reason most members don't seem to mind. The more that I deal with the DVC/DVD and it's people and departments, the more I see behind the curtain.

I am convinced that our frequent vacations to WDW and the number of contracts that we own has increased the opportunity for problems. Members who book a reservation once a year have a better chance of not having problems. We booked 11 resorts last year and we often had problems. Even the Managers that we get refereed to with repeat issues tell me that they are sorry, but they don't make the system, they are just forced to use it.

Bill

I don't agree, there may be an occasional lapse but I don't think the timeshare itself has changed significantly in the core and contractual areas. What I feel has happened is that some have equated some of the changes in the last couple of years (banking changes, loss of free valet, reallocation) with a degradation of the product itself and I think that is grossly inappropriate and unreasonable. If you truly feel that MS and housekeeping are worse, that's fine and you're welcome to that opinion which I do not share.

wow, that's is exactly how we do our vacations & one of the reasons

we felt dvc was prefect for us. at this moment, we have our next

2 years planned out. when we looked into dvc, we already had several

vacations planned. ( not counting dcl cruises-currently we have 4
already booked, which is not usually for us. )

we never knew anything about the wait list, because we never expected
to need it. when we met with a guide, we knew exactly what our
"vacation needs" were and we purchased our points to covered those
needs @ the 11 mos. period. since we were not going for the top of
the line rooms with limited availability, even the managers were
shocked that 3 cat.s were not available @ 9am. ( 11mos. out)

while i do not profess to be some kind of dvc expert, i am in the "people
business". the best way to lose one's respect is to be untruthful. however,
we are not sure if this was unintentionally or not. our current concerns,
are the lack of actions from dvc in responding with corrective measures
if the wait list is being done as described, is a current problem for us.



as for the other "intrusive" observation,

maybe it's just your nature to be bold, but do you have the proper dvc
credentials to support your recommendations? if so, we would like
to get you together with the guide that made these promises.

DVC may be right for you but I have to question whether you are right for DVC. You're stressing where you shouldn't be and seem clearly unhappy over minor details. The WL is what it is, a secondary hit or miss option that is not perfect and never will be. I see no reason for you to meet with a guide to discuss a disagreement as it doesn't matter. Worst case scenario is it comes down to your word against theirs. To be purposefully misleading is very rare with DVC, to have misunderstandings is fairly common. If you have proof you were misled, you don't need the guide and can deal directly with Member admin and the legal department. You can get a direct audience with DVC is you want but I can't imagine they will put you or an employee in the situation of you calling them a liar when they state you misunderstood. You also have the right to nonbinding arbitration which will get you a different audience. I'm sure you could also get an appt with various VP types in Celebration if you want.

As for categories not being available at 11 months out, I don't think it's uncommon for the higher demand ones and/or the higher demand seasons. Sounds like they were likely patronizing you (just agreeing to agree) if they said they didn't believe it.

 

[TagsMissy]

I too work with an Inventory System for a retailer and while yes we also would love to see live sales it isn't realistic. The amount of processing and server resources to do the uploads overnight is extremely extensive and all other processes basically get placed on hold when updates occur and that is just updating daily sales... imagine a system that has to cross reference various systems and batches to find matches... I'd guess to wager the batch jobs are more complicated than most realise who don't work in an inventory system. This is why when you check store availability on websites, etc it always says to call the store to confirm availability. The numbers most likely are previous days inventory numbers and not live.

I've worked quite a bit with inventory systems. And while a real time system like members would like for the wait list process would be nice, a real time system that would run through the waitlists with a cancellation would likely be very intensive processing and slow the overall system down beyond usefulness. This sounds like a situation when using a batch process when the system is down overnight makes sense.

Since there are a lot of individual reports of inconsistent waitlist results, it makes me think that either the batch program isn't run every night (maybe weekly?), someone has to kick off the batch program and doesn't every night (whoops!!), or the program is limited to what it can systematically accomplish so there is a waitlist team that periodically fills waitlists manually that didn't system-fulfill.

I kind of like the idea of putting the cancelled room into a holding category (available, pending/holding, unavailable) for fulfilling the waitlists. But as a business you would probably rather not park that inventory to the side to see IF a waitlist is needed when you have another customer willing to take/buy the inventory - from a company perspective you'd rather take the sure order than what might be.

 

[disneynutz]

I too work with an Inventory System for a retailer and while yes we also would love to see live sales it isn't realistic. The amount of processing and server resources to do the uploads overnight is extremely extensive and all other processes basically get placed on hold when updates occur and that is just updating daily sales... imagine a system that has to cross reference various systems and batches to find matches... I'd guess to wager the batch jobs are more complicated than most realize who don't work in an inventory system. This is why when you check store availability on websites, etc it always says to call the store to confirm availability. The numbers most likely are previous days inventory numbers and not live.

We don't really know what system if any is used. When Disney's own employees can't come up with the same answer on how the system works and pending wait lists are filled when you just happen to call in makes you wonder what's really going on.

Bill

 

[Tiger926]

We don't really know what system if any is used. When Disney's own employees can't come up with the same answer on how the system works and pending wait lists are filled when you just happen to call in makes you wonder what's really going on.

Bill

Exactly, Tiger

 

[crisi]

We don't really know what system if any is used. When Disney's own employees can't come up with the same answer on how the system works and pending wait lists are filled when you just happen to call in makes you wonder what's really going on.

Bill

I'm in IT and I don't completely understand what is really going on with some of the systems I'm a business owner for. Some of them I have two or three engineers, each understands a different part of the system, but no one could really explain what is "really" going on with the system as a whole.

It isn't reasonable to expect reservations CMs - which is not the highest paying job in the world - to understand the intricacies of inventory and batch processing.

To discover how the system "really" works, we'd need access to the architecture documentation - probably the use case analysis - its possibly several thousand pages worth of system documentation. That's assuming the system was properly documented when created (yeah....) and it isn't the case that this feature was bolted on without proper documentation by some contractor that hasn't been at Disney in ten years (cause that NEVEr happens).

 

[SuzanneSLO]

I'm in IT and I don't completely understand what is really going on with some of the systems I'm a business owner for. Some of them I have two or three engineers, each understands a different part of the system, but no one could really explain what is "really" going on with the system as a whole.

It isn't reasonable to expect reservations CMs - which is not the highest paying job in the world - to understand the intricacies of inventory and batch processing.

To discover how the system "really" works, we'd need access to the architecture documentation - probably the use case analysis - its possibly several thousand pages worth of system documentation. That's assuming the system was properly documented when created (yeah....) and it isn't the case that this feature was bolted on without proper documentation by some contractor that hasn't been at Disney in ten years (cause that NEVEr happens).

I agree that we are expecting too much from the CMs who answer the reservation phones at MS.

And just so that the other view is represented, I have been successful in getting 3 WLs for our last trip and our next 2 trips with no extra phone calls to MS. Each was placed about 6 months out. They were for 2 nights AK CL studio in May, 2 nights GCV 2BR in June and 1 night BWV BW view studio on Columbus Day weekend.

I would be very disappointed if the WL was enhanced out of existence because its implementation was not perfect. -- Suzanne

 

[disneynutz]

You didn't read my previous posts. The CM's and Managers do not know if the wait lists are filled live, batched during the day, batched at night, every couple of days, or if it truly does exist.

They say that they can't check status because a computer is in control, but there is CM's filling wait lists because I have talked to them.

I get the feeling that filling wait lists isn't important to Disney and that they just go through the motions to placate the members.

Bill

 

[dbs1228]

I would not like the WL to go out of existence either.

I think one of the reasons you did get your WL on 3 occassions is because you were only doing 1 and 2 night stays. I have called on several occassions and MS had what I wanted for 1 or 2 nights out of 6 or 7 then when I call back they would have a different night. I do not like chancing grabbing 2 nights in the middle of my stay in hopes the rest will come through because if they do not it is way too much moving around for me.