Has anyone found trip cancellation/interruption insurance that will cover COVID-19 for late 2020 or early 2021? Most policies I’ve found online now exclude it as a known risk. I’ve read some horror stories on here and elsewhere about people losing their payments for DVC rentals. I need to pay David’s for our DVC rental and I’m not keen to lose thousands of dollars because Disney happens to be closed in January 2021.
Unfortunately, I think most trip insurances won’t cover it at this point. Personally, I don’t think I would rent at this point unless there was some stipulation about getting money back in the event of a closure.
2 Likes
I’m in the same boat as you … I have a DVC rental already made for January 2021 and frankly, am very worried now even though it is still 9 months away. I have trip insurance and it is was a waste of money for COVID-19. Even with the “cancel for any reason” insurance you will lose a lot of money when you factor in it’s high purchase cost and reduced reimbursement schedule as you get closer and closer to the reservation date. Add into it some DVC owners holding to their “no refund” position even though Disney is currently returning points to them for cancelled reservations while the parks are closed, and my broker’s (not David’s) “we’re only an intermediary” excuse, this COVID-19 crisis has exposed the incredibly risky nature of renting DVC points unless you are fortunate enough to rent from an understanding owner (and to be fair, there are many of them out there). But good luck finding one on the front end through David’s, or any broker for that matter. Nonetheless, I’d reserve a resort at Disney’s rack rates with it’s more generous cancellation provisions before I’d ever touch a DVC rental these days. Don’t do it.
1 Like
Yeah I have to agree - I have rented points for late May that I will probably lose most if not all of. There is no amount an insurance company would accept to bear that risk, at least not that would be cheaper than just reserving a rack rate room. Unless you want to take the risk of possibly losing the money, I would wait until we know more about the future of this pandemic before renting again.
Incidentally, this could eventually cause rental points to be cheaper and maybe even be worth taking on the risk. But wait till that happens, IMO.
1 Like
I’m thinking the broker market is going to need to significantly change their terms of sale with all the risk this has revealed.
1 Like
Agreed - if owners want to be able to rent their points at all going forward, they will have to absorb (or agree to split with the broker) the risk that the parks are completely closed. Otherwise, the market of renters could evaporate. Hopefully the parks don’t close again, or if they do close again, not for as long. So owners will hopefully be able to eventually rent out their points before they expire in a given use year.
But it’s a much bigger risk for the renter to have to choose a single week and hope that it’s not one of the ones that the parks are closed.
1 Like
I only have a superficial knowledge of how this all works, just watching it unfold out of curiosity, but it strikes me the real damage is going to be to DVC owners with multiple contracts that extended themselves assuming they could always offload extra points at a certain rate that are now having their points devalued going forward, even if they personally did the right thing by their current renters. There is certainly plenty of pain and suffering going around on so many levels…
1 Like
Well said.
Unfortunately I think one of the long term solutions may be for Disney to disallow the practice of subletting or renting DVC points. I think Disney helps create the issue. My wife and I attended a DVC sales presentation several years ago when the idea of owning one appealed to us. When the CM learned that we were actually renting a BC villa for our stay then, he quickly pointed out that renting was always an option to help offset our cost. And I’ve read post on the “owners” web site about the merits of buying in order to rent as an “investment”. Seriously. But then things go wrong and the owner is stuck with an unused expense and cite Disney’s DVC reservation system as justification for “no refunds.” And renters are stuck paying for accommodations for an expensive vacation they can’t take. The only effective trip insurance available for DVC rentals in the COVID-19 world is called “social distancing.”
Please tell Dave’s you won’t rent because of these concerns. Perhaps that will push them to fight a little harder for some kind of solution.
Thanks everyone. I decided not to go with the rental right now, even though it took 3 months to find someone with enough points and availability and I likely won’t find it again for our upcoming trip. I kept the single night at Bay Lake because it was only one night. I couldn’t find insurance to cover it and I didn’t want to assume 100% of the risk. I would have been willing to assume some risk, but that didn’t seem to be an option. I was honest with them about the reason. Hope to be able to rent once we know more a few months from now. Or go through Disney. They’ll likely have good discounts on during our trip given recent events and the time of year we plan to go. Who knows. Time will tell.
1 Like
It’s my understanding that one of the DVC rental companies offers “cancel any reason” insurance that is covering COVID-19-related cancellations albeit limiting how much they’ll pay out the closer the cancellation date is to the scheduled start of the vacation.
If I’m misunderstanding this, please feel free to educate me.