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

[kaytieeldr]

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

Yes. Depending exactly when in your billing cycle the credit is processed, it could take that long to appear on your statement. Not for the credit to process, just for you to have a printed record.

Very likely it'd be much sooner, but it prevents customers from calling every ten minutes.

Plenty of available credit on that card…..what the heck is the problem

Did you ask DVA? Or your bank?

 

[bsusanmb]

I didn't know DVA was a Chase product. Maybe that's why the refund of $1000 immediately posted to our Disney Visa. I have had my chase cards hacked a few times. My refunds came in 6 payments; 5 immediately to cc and to gc's and $600 to my DVA. The missing one is the $7000 to DVA. If the system could accept $600 I don't know why it wouldn't take $7000. I guess I will find out today. I am pretty much done with gift cards after all of this.

 

[kniquy]

I am sorry you are dealing with such a frustrating ordeal. Disney trips are supposed to be something to look forward to. I have been funding my DVA for our upcoming trip and MF mainly only to get the little benefit of the $20 GC. I have also been keeping all the GC so in the event of needing to refund the payments made, I will hopefully will not have an issue. I guess dealing with that large sum of money is a bit risky with putting it into a DVA. With that amount of money i guess it is a much safer idea to just put in what will get you the $20 GC and just leave the rest in the bank.

Thanks for letting us know and how we can all be a little safer when dealing with the DVA

 

[Halloweenqueen]

Sorry that you are having difficulty, but the DVA was created for a way for families to budget a vacation in the future. It's not a gift card depository. You would have been much better off consolidating those gifts cards on the Disney gift card website first. You can add gift cards together up to $1000 and your account can have up to 5, $1000 cards. You could do more by just taking off cards that you have consolidated. This way you would have $25 gift cards rather than hundreds.

I understand the savings when using gift cards. Gas points, etc. are good perks, but hardly worth the effort of a $25,000 mess. And for what? Earning a $20 gift card for every $2000 you put on your DVA? That's less than $250 for hours of putting in card numbers and frustrating phone calls.

Most companies, just not Disney, have to return funds to the original form of payment. Disney clearly spells this out in their terms and conditions. Credit card fraud is a massive problem and the easiest way to prevent someone stealing your $25,000 is to return it from where it came.

I think people who have had issues with DVA have used it because they wanted the gift card perk, not because they were budgeting for a dream trip that they would have to make monthly payments for years in order to afford. The DVA is works great for these families.

 

[robinb]

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.

I had the same experience when I booked a room with my DVA and then cancelled. It went right back into my DVA. So I'm confused why the refund for the cruise and ABD didn't go back to into your DVA. My DVA is now at $0 since i used it to pay for my DVC dues but I think that I will keep a spreadsheet of all my cards that I use in the future since I end up throwing them out when I'm done entering them.

 

[bsusanmb]

I had the same experience when I booked a room with my DVA and then cancelled. It went right back into my DVA. So I'm confused why the refund for the cruise and ABD didn't go back to into your DVA. My DVA is now at $0 since i used it to pay for my DVC dues but I think that I will keep a spreadsheet of all my cards that I use in the future since I end up throwing them out when I'm done entering them.

Even Disney doesn't know why the money won't go back into my account, some did, some didn't. Just posted to warn anyone who uses this to keep track of your money very carefully if you are getting a refund. Strange situation, could only happen to me, perhaps.

 

[robinb]

Even Disney doesn't know why the money won't go back into my account, some did, some didn't. Just posted to warn anyone who uses this to keep track of your money very carefully if you are getting a refund. Strange situation, could only happen to me, perhaps.

I wonder if one of your two reservation's (cruise and ABD) cancellation was processed back to your DVA and the other as a full refund back to your gift cards. My guess is that one of them messed up the refund.

 

[bsusanmb]

I wonder if one of your two reservation's (cruise and ABD) cancellation was processed back to your DVA and the other as a full refund back to your gift cards. My guess is that one of them messed up the refund.

That is exactly what I think. Since they did credit some of the gift cards without notifying me, they may have done it again and I have no idea where to find my money. Oh well. this too shall pass

 

[Poola]

How many gift cards did you actually have? Not literally "hundreds"?

 

[robinb]

How many gift cards did you actually have? Not literally "hundreds"?

I'm sure it may very well been literally hundreds of cards for $25,000.

I think the idea mentioned earlier about combining the cards first and then loading them into the DVA makes a lot of sense. I don't think it's really any more work and you end up with fewer cards to keep track of in the end. I combined all of my cards (2,500 worth in $25-$100 increments) into 4 main cards. I took one with me to WDW on my December trip to pay for meals, etc. and I entered the others into DVA to pay for my dues.

 

[linzjane88]

I didn't read the full thread after your OP but I had a very similar thing happen to me. I have posted about it before on here but IIRC I ended up with over 9 different phone calls to them and over 4 hours on the phone trying to get the situation corrected. In my case the website glitched and "ate" my cards ( about 3 $150 gift cards). By "ate" I mean it drained the balance on the GC but never updated the balance on my account. Even though I CLEARLY saw this happen and knew I was out money they absolutely refused to acknowledge it happened. Attempts to escalate went ignored. And believe me, I was never unkind/rude/demanding. I am as nonconfrontational as they come. It was utter ridiculousness that they couldn't see that 'my balance was X. I added $150 in gift cards. It should now be X+$150'. They just kept 'nicely' telling me that didn't happen from what they could see on their end but kept promising phone calls from higher ups (which never happened).

Long story short they eventually did see the error (or maybe just refunded me to get me off their back but it's not like I was making it up---either way I was due my $150 back). However, they never told me of which cards they refunded it to. I assumed it was the ones with the error that started the whole debacle but NOPE! Cards they choose at random. So out of the 30 or so Disney gift cards I had they chose which to refund and never told me which ones.

Reason #294 why you should never get rid of the Disney gift cards, even when they are empty! Or use DVA for that matter----very VERY poor customer service that is not at all the same as you receive from the rest the Disney brand. Side point: the 2 person magic band boxes make perfect gift card containers!

 

[AlohaNow]

Sorry that you are having difficulty, but the DVA was created for a way for families to budget a vacation in the future. It's not a gift card depository.

I consider the DVA to be one of the worst possible ways for a family to save for a vacation, as it does not pay any interest. My only ‘interest’ in it was to seed it with a few SW credit card charges to double dip on miles, then at the end load up a combined gift card or two (from all my discounted gift cards) to get my mere 2% reward. Additionally, I know many on here use it to cover DVC dues and I would too if I owned DVC. Why wouldn’t anyone use the account as a pass-thru and get free Disney money in the process? That is a no brainer for DVC owners. I understand that there are many who have placed tens of thousands of dollars in these accounts and never experienced a problem, but folks are just posting their real life experiences with this product. And at times that has been faulty. We all just want each other to have magical vacations, and perhaps to avoid something that may detract from that.

Earning a $20 gift card for every $2000 you put on your DVA? That's less than $250 for hours of putting in card numbers and frustrating phone calls.

The bonus is $20 for each $1,000. OP stood to get $500 for free upon completely spending down the account.

Oh, by the way, I checked last night and I’ve been fully refunded to my SW card!

 

[IBelieveInTheMagic]

Thank you OP for sharing your terrible experience and I can only imagine how frustrating it's been for you. I'm not going to judge you or question why you used the DV account and see nothing wrong with the way you were using it, but that's just my two cents. I think we can all agree it's had many issues. I've had two minor hiccups but they were resolved so I can't complain too much but I know it's very glitchy.

To your main point - I'd love to know why you weren't refunded back to the DV account since that is how you paid. Yes I understand you deposited gift cards to fund the DV account but from other posters above and my own experience any of my refunds have always gone to the DV account. I do keep my cards but golly I'd have quite a time finding the gift cards if they really did that to me. Luckily I haven't had to cancel or refund anything major like you did.

If you get a definite response on why they only refunded a portion to the DV account I'd love to know. I really hope you get this resolved soon and can move forward with your plans. Thanks again for sharing with us and again, sorry this happened to you!

Heather

 

[ToodlesRN]

I have to thought about opening a DVA for a cruise we want to book not using our DVC points, but wondered what the process would be if we had to cancel and getting money refunded! Thanks for sharing and I hope it gets figured out for you!

We bank with Chase and they have a reloadable debit card called Liquid Debit Card, which is not linked to your checking act. I opened one and have been putting money on it since, you can use it as a debit/credit card or take cash out of the cash machine. I have it so when I get paid I can transfer money right over to it. The plus part is that I can not transfer money back to my checking I'd either have to go to the cash machine or use it! I don't carry the card with me its tucked away waiting to be used during our trip! The other plus is if we do have to cancel a trip I have the cash it's not tied up in someone else's hands or in gift cards! It's reloadable so I plan to keep it and use it for all further trips!

 

[bsusanmb]

Well I was promised a phone call today with an answer but no call. So I called. As usual after explaining why I was calling I was put on hold. CM came back to say she just spoke with guest services and it takes 5-7 days to process a refund. Ugh. No you don't understand. It is 21 days and someone is working on this. On hold 10 min. Ok guest services will call you back. Got call back. Person in accounting called in sick today. She will call me tomorrow morning. My reason for posting is just that if you cancel and expect a refund tell the CM how you want your money refunded. I should have said I want all of this back into my DVA sine I paid all but $1000 with it. Anyhow that's what guest services told me. Get it in writing. They are too new at this and do not have all their business plan in order.

 

[eliza61]

thanks for the update op.

I had a small glitch with dva a while back. It was only 500 (though, I don't blow money)bucks but it took me well over 8 hours total to get resolved. that was enough for me to simply write this off as a product not worth the time invested.

 

[linzjane88]

Well I was promised a phone call today with an answer but no call. So I called. As usual after explaining why I was calling I was put on hold. CM came back to say she just spoke with guest services and it takes 5-7 days to process a refund. Ugh. No you don't understand. It is 21 days and someone is working on this. On hold 10 min. Ok guest services will call you back. Got call back. Person in accounting called in sick today. She will call me tomorrow morning. My reason for posting is just that if you cancel and expect a refund tell the CM how you want your money refunded. I should have said I want all of this back into my DVA sine I paid all but $1000 with it. Anyhow that's what guest services told me. Get it in writing. They are too new at this and do not have all their business plan in order.

Ugh I feel for you trying to deal with them! I can't tell you how many front line CM's I got promising me a return call by a higher up. Nobody ever called me but twice --once when the issue first took place and they were going to look into it and once when they had looked into and decided there was no error to be fixed. It still makes my blood boil thinking back to that stress--and that was only over $150!

 

[MermaidMommy]

Ugh I feel for you trying to deal with them! I can't tell you how many front line CM's I got promising me a return call by a higher up. Nobody ever called me but twice --once when the issue first took place and they were going to look into it and once when they had looked into and decided there was no error to be fixed. It still makes my blood boil thinking back to that stress--and that was only over $150!

DVA's customer service is abysmal. I had two different problems with them, each of which required multiple phone calls -- in large part, because none of the CM's I spoke to would actually enter my information into their system, so it was starting over from scratch each time I called. It was ridiculous, and it was for FAR less money that the OP had to worry about.

I never would have started using DVA, but I started using it to consolidate gift cards before you could do that on the website. I'm so glad I don't have to go through DVA anymore.

 

[linzjane88]

DVA's customer service is abysmal. I had two different problems with them, each of which required multiple phone calls -- in large part, because none of the CM's I spoke to would actually enter my information into their system, so it was starting over from scratch each time I called. It was ridiculous, and it was for FAR less money that the OP had to worry about.

I never would have started using DVA, but I started using it to consolidate gift cards before you could do that on the website. I'm so glad I don't have to go through DVA anymore.

Completely agree. Although for me they would always say they were "putting in a ticket" and they would ask explicit details of times, GC numbers, etc. I would get hopeful....then the next call they would ask all the same info again . By about the third time I politely declined stating I had given them that info many times before. Then the cast member magically discovered the info on the last ticket.

 

[Shmily1]

Even Disney doesn't know why the money won't go back into my account, some did, some didn't. Just posted to warn anyone who uses this to keep track of your money very carefully if you are getting a refund. Strange situation, could only happen to me, perhaps.

From what I've heard, it's totally not just you. I hear they aren't the best at dealing with their customers' money. I wanted to do it, but just didn't want the hassle.