Why does it now take up to 10 days to combine nights into one reservation (same membership)?

[disneyberry]

I just needed to rant about this:

I was really surprised when I chatted with DVC Member Services earlier this week.
I have an upcoming 4 night reservation where three of the nights were available when I booked it, but the 4th wasn't. So I waitlisted for it and it matched.
In the past, combining nights booked on the same membership was a quick phone call or chat and it'd be done within minutes.
This time, I was told that they had to submit a Merge Request and it can take up to 10 days for it to be completed.
I thought, oh, hopefully this is just what they tell people and it'll be done later today or tomorrow. But, nope, it's been 3 days and still no change.

Why is there such a backwards change in the way reservations on a single membership are handled. Very disappointing.
I did leave feedback in the exit survey about this and hope DVC actually reads those.

 

[OKW Lover]

Please report back when the reservations do get consolidated. I'd be curious to know how many days it actually took.

 

[We’reAllMadHere]

This happened to me recently but the merge was processed two days after my request.

 

[RachaelA]

I consolidated 5 reservations in 1 like 6 weeks ago and it was done within like 2 hours.

 

[kes601]

There are only certain cast members at member services who are allowed to merge reservations. A couple(?) of years ago somebody lost a Beach Club reservation because the merge was done incorrectly (if memory serves they were able to get it back by stalking the site). After that the process was changed. That is why they quote a certain number of days.

 

[Narcoossee11]

MS wants to give them self plenty of time due to holidays, system issues, weekends.
Staffing can be short. Normally 2-3 days business days.
You have the days booked so really no worries on your part.

 

[ohana7]

To combine our two reservations it took 7 days, I thought This may have been due to the request being made in December and MS was busy, but maybe not

 

[rentfn]

The same thing happened to me. I chatted with someone and they said it's take a couple of days to merge on the website.

 

[stat]

For what it's worth, I asked for 6 reservations to be grouped into 3, and they quoted me at 5-7 business days.

 

[jess2022]

I’ve always had it completed pretty quickly even though they say it will be up to 10 days. I think the longest was 4-5 days but the other times were really quick.

 

[disneyberry]

It was finally done this morning (so the 5th day).
It's still a downgrade in service/staffing/training after all these years. I'm pretty sure in 2023 it was still a within-minutes thing.

It also shouldn't be something that has to be that complicated if Disney IT would write a proper tool for Cast Members to do it without ever having the issue of potentially losing a reservation, but as we all know, Disney IT isn't the greatest and Member Services' tools are probably all written in spaghetti code at this point. :\

 

[Simba's Mom]

As someone who had part of their reservation "mysteriously" cancelled years ago (I suspect now that it had to do with attempted merging), I'd much, much rather have it take longer than get dropped.

 

[Sandisw]

My last one took about 2 days and have some done within hours. Honestly, I don’t care because always plenty of time before I travel.

 

[DanCali]

I just needed to rant about this:

I was really surprised when I chatted with DVC Member Services earlier this week.
I have an upcoming 4 night reservation where three of the nights were available when I booked it, but the 4th wasn't. So I waitlisted for it and it matched.
In the past, combining nights booked on the same membership was a quick phone call or chat and it'd be done within minutes.
This time, I was told that they had to submit a Merge Request and it can take up to 10 days for it to be completed.
I thought, oh, hopefully this is just what they tell people and it'll be done later today or tomorrow. But, nope, it's been 3 days and still no change.

Why is there such a backwards change in the way reservations on a single membership are handled. Very disappointing.
I did leave feedback in the exit survey about this and hope DVC actually reads those.

I actually had the opposite happen to me. I had a 2-night reservation in one (my desired) view category and the third night in another view category at the same resort. I waitlisted that third night for the view category I desired (with instructions to cancel the original).

When the waitlist cleared they did a few things pretty much at the same time - (i) the 3rd night was processed as a modification to the desired view category, and then (ii) they merged the reservations - the 2 nights reservation was modified (retained reservation number) to a 3 night reservation and the single night reservation was cancelled.

It was what I wanted, but it made me wonder what if I didn't actually want to merge the reservations?!

 

[muppets3d]

Honestly, does it really matter? As long as it's merged in plenty of time before you travel, what's the big deal?

 

[Genie+]

I needed one merged last year a few months out from the trip and called. MS said it may take a week or so to process. I can’t remember exactly how long it took… maybe 5 - 7 days?

Last month I sent a merge request via chat about 3 weeks out from trip, and they were able to do it during the chat.

 

[disneygrandma]

I'm still waiting on a merger request that I called in last Sunday, Febr 9th. I was told at the time that it could take up to 10 days. Today I had another merger request. I was told today that the merger requests are done on a daily basis based on when the check in date is. So each day they work on the closer arrival dates before they move on to later arrival months. I was told to expect it in 5-7 business days, not counting today.

 

[stat]

I'm still waiting on a merger request that I called in last Sunday, Febr 9th. I was told at the time that it could take up to 10 days. Today I had another merger request. I was told today that the merger requests are done on a daily basis based on when the check in date is. So each day they work on the closer arrival dates before they move on to later arrival months. I was told to expect it in 5-7 business days, not counting today.

Same, still waiting on my requests from last Sunday. It's for trips 5+ months out so maybe that's why.

 

[disneygrandma]

Today is the 7th business day, and I'm still waiting.

 

[miksicnarf]

My experience: I've done this a few times, making the request through online Chat. The first few times the reservations were merged in a short time, maybe within the day or a couple days at most. The last time, I was quoted a week or so and after a week, still no merge. I called and they were merged instantly.