Something Strange with Re Titled Contracts

[Frederic Civish]

Hi everyone, I'm just putting this out here as kind of information, in case it happens to anyone else.

I had 2 contracts from Poly, purchased Direct, a couple of years ago, Titled in the name of my wife and myself.

About a year ago, in the same Use Year as my Poly contracts, I purchased an Animal Kingdom contract on the resale market, but I put the Title in the names of my wife, myself, and my 4 adult children.

Later on last year I went through a Title company and started the process to Re-Title the Poly contracts in a gratuitous transfer, putting them in the names of my wife, myself and our four adult kids. Disney was finally able to register the name changes a couple of months ago.

Now we had 3 contracts, all in the same Use Year, all Titled the same. So, since the Direct Poly contracts were newly titled, I asked member services to move them all together into one Membership Number with the Resale AK , and they did this a month or two ago. And they assigned a new membership number for all of them.

So, here is where something a bit strange happened. I went to reserve Riviera, in the 0 to 7 month window, and I had to walk it a little bit, to get to the dates I want. The first couple of times, there was no problem. I used the AK points first and the Poly points second. But then, all of a sudden, when I was walking it one day, the program no longer gave me the option to use the AK points and said I could only use the Poly points.

So, I called up member services and here is what we found out. Even though I had owned the Animal Kingdom contract for over a year, because a new Membership Number was created and the 3 contracts were moved together a month or two ago, the Disney 'system' was NOW counting my AK contract as though it was a Resale from AFTER January 19th of this year. And it was telling me I could NOT use it to book Riviera, at all.

I called member services to find out why the reservation program was no longer letting me use it, and then I explained that the AK contract WAS NOT a new resale from after January 19th, 2019, but was only moved into a different Membership Number.

No big deal. They are fixing it, though I don't know whether it will take days (probably) or weeks (probably not, but they said this is the first time this has happened, so they need to look at it closely). I expect it to be resolved, and they kind of seemed to find this to all be interesting, since it is something new.

Anyway, keep this in mind. If you Re-Title one of your Resale contracts, in a gratuitous transfer, OR if you somehow have your Resale contracts moved to a new membership number, the system might get a bit confused, and think it is a new Resale contract with reduced privileges.

 

[CarolMN]

Thanks for sharing your experience. I'm not surprised, though. This is the first time I've ever heard of them moving contracts to a new Membership number to accommodate title changes such as yours. In fact, I'm surprised they agreed to do it at all. IMO, you received some major pixie dust!

 

[cvjw]

I am actually surprised that you only had 1 problem after Disney moved all your contracts into a new membership. I would consider that a win - could have been so much worse.

 

[Frederic Civish]

This morning I was able to grab a new reservation at Riviera, in a Standard Studio, for 4 of the 5 mornings I want, and I was able to use the points from AK contract.

I placed the other day that I want on a Waitlist, using the AK points. It is the FIRST day for the block that I want.

Yesterday, I was online and ready at 8 AM Eastern, and I was able to graB the Standard Studio reservation I wanted (SUCCESS!!), for all 5 days. It let me step all the way through the reservation, choosing the contract (yesterday ONLY Poly was still available) and putting in the information for my wife and I, and then I got to the last page to hit the CONFIRM button. But when I confirmed, instead of giving me the confirmation, it gave me the Dwarven Screen of Death (We're working on it.) And when I rechecked, my reservation was nowhere to be seen. Which is why I was there this morning, trying again, but missing the first day.

 

[jamiecarr@dvcstore]

That is great information and thanks for sharing. In the past, Disney used one of the existing membership numbers that you already had to merge multiple contracts, so the creating a new membership number is not something I have ever heard of. Based on the issue it caused, I can see why in the past they used an existing membership number. Glad you got it all sorted out. Enjoy your trip!

 

[Frederic Civish]

I think what happened with the membership numbers is first, they made a new membership number for just the 2 Poly contracts. Then when I called them (right away) and reminded them that this now matched the title of the AKL contract, they moved the AKL contract in with those 2. So that is why there was a new membership number. I remember they noted that they now had 2 membership numbers and asked me if I had a preference which one I wanted to keep and I said I didn't care which one they used, as long as everything was together.