DVC Website needs more advanced points usage controls when booking

[ehh]

Mini-rant: I recently booked a stay at 7m and had to jump through hoops to get the 'right' points to be used. I know a CM could do it on the phone, but I wanted to do it without calling.

Situation: I wanted to book a 322pt stay using two different contracts:

• Contract A is a 150pt contract
  • 150pts banked
  • 150pts in current UY
  • 150pts borrowable
• Contract B is a 240pt contract
  • 0pts banked
  • 12pts in current UY
  • 240pts borrowable
• I wanted to use the 150pts banked points from A, the 12 current UY points from B, and borrow 160pts from B

In short, it simply wasn't possible to do this when booking the 322pt room. Online booking tool would always prefer to use the 150 current UY points from A instead of letting me borrow the full 160pts from B. For many booking this might make sense, but next year I need three UY of points from Contract A.

The workaround I had to use is booking a 172pt stay (a 172pt stay took some time to find) with just Contract B, borrowing exactly what I needed, and then cancelling it. And then booking the 322pt stay I really wanted. Because points were 'pre-borrowed', the booking tool now prioritized them over the current UY points from A.

Workarounds are not good solutions, though.

 

[EatMoreVeg]

I've had similar experiences and it's frustrating that you cannot choose which points from which contracts to use. I had transferred points that actually had a longer "shelf life" than banking my current UY points. Therefore, I wanted to use the current UY points before using up the transferred points. But the system wants to use up transferred points before current UY points, no matter what order you select the contracts in.

My work-around was to cancel the room I had booked, book another room for the exact amount of points I needed "saved" from the transferred points so that the system would pick up the right combination of current UY points and transferred points when I rebooked the original reservation. After making that booking, I cancelled the other reservation I had made with the transferred points so I could free up those transferred points.

It was a lot of mental gymnastics to figure out what I needed to do to spare those transferred points! For what it's worth though, I don't think MS can really do anything different. They are probably just more informed on how the system picks points than the average owner. I had originally called to ask them to modify which points were part of the original reservation, and after being on hold for 15-20 minutes, the cast member told me that there wasn't a way for them to do it as they would need to cancel my reservation and rebook it. It was then that it dawned on me that they are likely only doing the same thing I would do to shuffle points around. The problem at the time I called was that exact same room category wasn't available. It was only through stalking availability that the room became available again. It was a nerve-racking 15 minutes to do all that cancelling and rebooking to get my points in the right place!

 

[tx911]

They need an "advanced" button you can push and from there be able to micro-manage your points in a more granular fashion.

 

[GGGT]

I agree. We travel so frequently to WDW, with so many of us with different accommodations, sometimes the only way I feel "comfortable" is speaking to MS to make sure we use the right points in booking and especially while modifying reservations.

Edited to add; And with multiple contracts for each resort, we always attempt to, and prefer to keep some smaller contracts "intact".

 

[Sandisw]

Personally, I think it’s probably wise not to play around with allowing borrowing when there are current points in the membership.

Borrowing is a final transaction and if they allowed one to do what you wanted, people could mess up and then be stuck.

If a CM does it and messes up, it can be fixed.

But, if I ever need to do this, I just borrow for a fake reservation first, at least 31 days out but in the same UY of the trip, then cancel.

It puts the borrowed points there and then the system will take my banked and borrowed from all contracts first.