Our trip is booked for the end of April. I’m trying to be optimistic that it will still happen, but, of course, I still need to realize that it may not. Has anyone had any luck in canceling from a DVC company and getting any money back? We knew, when booking, that our trip was nonrefundable, but we NEVER imagined anything like this happening!!
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Welcome!
There’s a whole thread going on about this topic right now. It’s called “big problem with David’s vacation and owner”.
If you haven’t already, contact the company you rented from. I’m sure they are very overwhelmed right now but you should let them know you want to cancel.
Best of luck! I hope you don’t have to cancel after all!
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Thanks so much – I will look for that thread!! I actually sent them an email because we have not added our dining plan yet and they want you to add it 30 days before your trip, which would be March 28…but I obviously don’t want to add it before I def know we are going. They have not returned my email yet (that was about 4 days ago).
If they happen to have a phone number, give that a try if you don’t get a reply to your email by tomorrow.
Honestly, no matter how swamped a business is, they could at least set up an auto reply message so customers know they received the email. A little reassurance goes a long way.
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This is for anyone looking up their options for later this year.
By all the “Reservation for Rent” postings on many sites’ DVC rental forums this fall, you can see that many people still want to cancel DVC reservations, whether by owner or point rental. I haven’s seen many get picked up (though if you want to go, there are some bargains out there). Whether you can do so without penalty depends on the Usage Year (UY) of the points you rent, and the circumstances of the renter.
In our case, we rented a large number of points (over 500) for a week-long, multigenerational family trip this month (Sept 2020). This took a lot of doing by the renter, combining points with a friend, and multiple reservations; a lot of these rentals do rely on goodwill. By April we knew we wanted to cancel if possible, but more than half the points (280) were Dec 1 UY19 which had been rolled into 2020 for us. Those points expire Nov 30, 2020, and re-renting them unlikely so those could not be cancelled; the owners agreed to take back the rest and roll them into next year.
So we scaled down the trip, mostly by attrition because of all the family members who were daunted by the Florida COVID numbers, or the quarantine we’d have to do afterward. We do have travel insurance, but it only covers if someone gets sick, or other typical reasons; not for the increased risk. We are therefore going, in a smaller group, for a shorter time, and going to enjoy what we cn of this very strange time. Hopefully, a respite from the stress.
Bottom line, though most people can cancel a WDW vacation, those who rented points before the pandemic for this fall and winter cannot necessarily do so without losing most or all of their cost (if WDW remains open). The owners are often sharing some of the losses as well. I’ve never faced anything like this in renting DVC points before, it’s always been smooth and wonderful. But then, it’s 2020. Nothing’s that way this year 
Lisa
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I’m glad you will still be able to salvage some kind of vacation! Sounds like it would have been an incredible gathering absent COVID! Hope the rest of you have a great time.
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