Trash will now be taken every day

[keishashadow]

I'll write a letter that is specific to the incident. Here are a couple of examples that I read about from another board. The room occupied sign was up, but housekeeping knocked at 9 AM. The person said they were in their underwear and the rest of the family was sleeping. Housekeeping still demanded entry. Another person did not have a sign up all day but put one out at 3 PM to take a nap and informed the concierge of it. The phone starts ringing demanding entry simply because the housekeeper's shift was coming to an end. This is ridiculous. As I suggested, if we must endure this nonsense, then a better policy has to be put into effect.

'Demanded entry' ? I'd like to think if they ignored the occupied sign on the door & knocked they then have the decency to respect a stated request to come back @ "X time"

I plan on taking post-it notes next trip and indicating on the door hanger what time I expect to vacate the room. Can't hurt to try

When on adult only trips we have been known to (gasp!) sleep in until after 9 am. Linger in the room over coffee, hit up the pool, come back & shower & not head into the parks until 1 or 2 pm...just because we can

LOL, yep ... just an excuse to enter the room. We just completed 4 nights at Copper Creek. On the 2nd morning, our "sleep-in morning" with the "Room Occupied" door hanger clearly displayed, the doorbell rang and was followed by a sharp (forceful) knock on the door. We let her in, while we were sipping coffee wearing our PJs. Don't you know .. there was still a basket full of trash remaining in one of the bathrooms after she left.

We mused, "Hey, if you are going to use the pretext of taking out the trash ... how about if you really do take out the trash???" Sigh. What shenanigans.

Our response to the problem is simple: We no longer tip housekeeping.

I was with you up until your last sentence. In this country tipping housekeeping isn't mandatory but it is standard & generally expected. The housekeepers surely didn't come up with this policy. They are just doing their job, perhaps with little guidance as to how it is best to gain access to the room daily. I'm sure the last thing they wanted was more tasks in their work day. I profer that better management/coaching is needed as to how to accomplish the objective.

I would be on the phone immediately with the front desk/housekeeping supervisor. However, I would never dream of penalizing them for doing 'their job'.

 

[bwvBound]

I was with you up until your last sentence. In this country tipping housekeeping isn't mandatory but it is standard & generally expected. The housekeepers surely didn't come up with this policy. They are just doing their job, perhaps with little guidance as to how it is best to gain access to the room daily. I'm sure the last thing they wanted was more tasks in their work day. I profer that better management/coaching is needed as to how to accomplish the objective.

I would be on the phone immediately with the front desk/housekeeping supervisor. However, I would never dream of penalizing them for doing 'their job'.

You may not have seen my additional information provided in post #344 (quoted below) ... but housekeeping did not deserve a monetary tip for this past visit. In addition to the housekeeping issues I noted, I will place full blame on them for the engineering issues. After all, there is no way that housekeeping didn't notice the warped door or its inability to be property closed. They should have reported this, along with the unit's other glitches, to engineering for repair before we arrived. But no, they let the guest deal with the unit's maintenance issues.

And, yes, I do find them at full fault for disturbing a guest's "Room Occupied" sign in the morning hours. I'm on vacation. I'm on a different timezone and may wish a "sleep in" morning. Was my intention to enjoy a lazy morning respected? Nope.

So my tip? Leaving the unit in better shape than we found it. Done.

It is "just life." Try to roll with it. I earnestly hope that DVC will meet your every expectations ... but honestly, it is only a hope.

Our recent visit was like every visit before: Lots of glitches; lots of face time with engineering.

• The front door was warped, preventing it from closing without a measure of force on the door handle. Engineering required 3 visits to file things down and get the latch to close securely.
• The microwave kept resetting, sometimes remaining "in-op" for several hours between resets. Engineering never understood the root cause but kept tinkering until it finally remained powered on.
• The pocket door on the guest shower room has no latch and leaves a 1" gap .. hope that doesn't bother anyone's sense of privacy?
• The audio bar on the living room TV wasn't hooked up ... but we fixed that for them. Engineering noticed our changes when installing the DVD player that is no longer considered a standard room feature.

As related to housekeeping ...

• Our unit did not include hot pads (those nifty squares used for protecting your hands when removing a hot dish from the oven). We used the kitchen towels as our workaround.
• The guest shower never received any shampoo.
• There were no hand towels except for the guest bath. Not sure why they didn't place some in either the master bath or guest shower room?
• The unit was missing one TV remote.
• And, as stated earlier ... the daily "trash service" is simply a ruse that may, or may not, result in trash being removed from your unit.

Even so, we loved our unit and were again reminded that we made a good decision when we bought into Disney's timeshare many, many years ago. Hope you will be able to say the same!

 

[CarolynK]

You may not have seen my additional information provided in post #344 (quoted below) ... but housekeeping did not deserve a monetary tip for this past visit. In addition to the housekeeping issues I noted, I will place full blame on them for the engineering issues. After all, there is no way that housekeeping didn't notice the warped door or its inability to be property closed. They should have reported this, along with the unit's other glitches, to engineering for repair before we arrived. But no, they let the guest deal with the unit's maintenance issues.

And, yes, I do find them at full fault for disturbing a guest's "Room Occupied" sign in the morning hours. I'm on vacation. I'm on a different timezone and may wish a "sleep in" morning. Was my intention to enjoy a lazy morning respected? Nope.

So my tip? Leaving the unit in better shape than we found it. Done.

I have said many times to my husband (while waiting for Maintenance to pick up the phone when I'm reporting an issue) that housekeeping HAD to have known about this. Of course, I understand they can't check functionality of everything, (like a burner on the stove), but a warped door? Come on. I don't enjoy being on hold to report broken/missing items. Funny enough, one of the things I reported last trip was that our living room phone wasn't working...which I discovered when I was trying to call Maintenance to report that the dishwasher door wouldn't stay closed!

We returned home January 5th from BWV, so haven't had to deal with this "daily trash pickup" yet. We are definitely not early risers - our FP's often start at 1 pm or later. We'll get to see how this works in a couple of months. Can't wait.

 

[disneynutz]

IMO, housekeeping doesn't report anything to maintenance, they don't want to take the time. They wait until we report it and then spend part of our vacation dealing with it.

On our last stay we had burned out light bulbs, a broken sleeper sofa, and a dishwasher that wouldn't start. First maintenance showed up and replaced the lower light bulbs. He said that the dishwasher was fixed. Guess what it wasn't. Called again, next guy said that it was broken but he had to call someone else. Next guy showed up, found out that the unit had moved too far into the cabinet and the door wasn't fully closing, he fixed it. I asked about the high burned out bulbs and the sofa. He came back with a tall ladder, replaced the bulbs with the largest that he had and apologized that they didn't stock larger bulbs because these high fixtures really need them. He made a call and more maintenance people and housekeeping showed up to work on the sofa bed. The mechanical is a maintenance issue, the mattress is a housekeeping issue. They fixed the bed and replaced the mattress. Total time for all repairs, about two hours. We have room issues about 50% of the time.

Bill

 

[dvcdisney]

I'm really late in the game replying to this thread, but I wanted to comment that this was the first visit we had that we did not leave any tip for the housekeeping. Our first visit to the Copper Creek 1 bedroom villa appear wonderful at first. It was a rather large room and a nice location. However, when we were ready to make the sofa bed for the kids, the linens were not replaced from the previous occupant. It was quite obvious that housekeeping didn't bother opening the sofa bed to check. We called down and they were very apologetic, and changed the sheets. The kids wanted some popcorn so we opened the microwave to find disgusting ground-in food splatter from the previous guest. Again, housekeeping did not check that. I started wiping down everything, more than I usually do. Then we usually run the dishwasher with the cups and glasses and a few tableware, we discovered there were no dishwasher detergent. We requested that and they provided.

We realized that housekeeping did minimal cleaning and I was sure that they barely clean what appeared cleaned. That was not a pleasant stay, even though it's was a beautiful villa. We loved the space and decor.

As with the trash removal, I would hope that if we have the sign on our door, they would honour it. If they really need to remove the trash, I think they should leave a voicemail or written message slipped under the door for us to call when they could come in. But we don't really need trash to be removed, we rarely have enough to fill the basket for our entire stay. We also don't need any other cleaning because we don't need it. I wash the towels in the ensuite so I don't need towel service either. The reason we enjoy our stay is that it's not like all other hotels that need to come in and make up the room. There is no need to waste the towels or linen changes. I would be very disappointed if it changes. I don't want or need daily housekeeping or trash removal.

 

[keishashadow]

You may not have seen my additional information provided in post #344 (quoted below) ... but housekeeping did not deserve a monetary tip for this past visit. In addition to the housekeeping issues I noted, I will place full blame on them for the engineering issues. After all, there is no way that housekeeping didn't notice the warped door or its inability to be property closed. They should have reported this, along with the unit's other glitches, to engineering for repair before we arrived. But no, they let the guest deal with the unit's maintenance issues.

And, yes, I do find them at full fault for disturbing a guest's "Room Occupied" sign in the morning hours. I'm on vacation. I'm on a different timezone and may wish a "sleep in" morning. Was my intention to enjoy a lazy morning respected? Nope.

So my tip? Leaving the unit in better shape than we found it. Done.

No i did not see that post. I agree that a prudent person would expect housekeeping to notice the sort of issue you describe.

I'm really late in the game replying to this thread, but I wanted to comment that this was the first visit we had that we did not leave any tip for the housekeeping. Our first visit to the Copper Creek 1 bedroom villa appear wonderful at first. It was a rather large room and a nice location. However, when we were ready to make the sofa bed for the kids, the linens were not replaced from the previous occupant. It was quite obvious that housekeeping didn't bother opening the sofa bed to check. We called down and they were very apologetic, and changed the sheets. The kids wanted some popcorn so we opened the microwave to find disgusting ground-in food splatter from the previous guest. Again, housekeeping did not check that. I started wiping down everything, more than I usually do. Then we usually run the dishwasher with the cups and glasses and a few tableware, we discovered there were no dishwasher detergent. We requested that and they provided.

We realized that housekeeping did minimal cleaning and I was sure that they barely clean what appeared cleaned. That was not a pleasant stay, even though it's was a beautiful villa. We loved the space and decor.

As with the trash removal, I would hope that if we have the sign on our door, they would honour it. If they really need to remove the trash, I think they should leave a voicemail or written message slipped under the door for us to call when they could come in. But we don't really need trash to be removed, we rarely have enough to fill the basket for our entire stay. We also don't need any other cleaning because we don't need it. I wash the towels in the ensuite so I don't need towel service either. The reason we enjoy our stay is that it's not like all other hotels that need to come in and make up the room. There is no need to waste the towels or linen changes. I would be very disappointed if it changes. I don't want or need daily housekeeping or trash removal.

Unacceptable indeed! Please tell me you called housekeeping and a manager immediately sent staff to rectify the issue. It's not ratting housekeeping out if they don't do their job, management needs to know.

 

[Judique]

Bathroom doors have locks, use them and always take a robe or cover up in the bathroom with you.

Just stayed at BWV. There is no lock on the studio bathroom. Was staying with my little granddaughters and their mother and it was a lot of fun trying to go to the potty.

 

[bwvBound]

Bathroom doors have locks, use them and always take a robe or cover up in the bathroom with you.

FWIW, the guest's shower room (shower + sink but no toilet) in the Cascade Cabin has a sliding pocket door without any form of latch. So it is impossible to "lock" the door for privacy. Furthermore, in our unit the pocket door wouldn't stay closed. After sliding the door to a close it immediately rolls back 1" from the frame leaving a gap. The shower enclosure is all glass ... so, no privacy for that shower!

 

[dvcdisney]

Unacceptable indeed! Please tell me you called housekeeping and a manager immediately sent staff to rectify the issue. It's not ratting housekeeping out if they don't do their job, management needs to know.

Yes we did speak to the housekeeping manager. She was very apologetic and professional. She was very concerned about the state we found our villa. She offered fastpasses but we turned it down. We explained to her that she needs to address this and the only resolution is for this not to happen again. No amount of fastpass would change it. We thanked her for her offer since we know she just wanted to make us feel better. But I think she understood.

 

[TLSnell1981]

It will take far less time for a supervisor to handle one complaint than for that same supervisor to run around a large resort and knock on every room that happens to have a room occupied sign out. Especially when the rules about entering are clearly detailed on the room occupied sign.

Maybe, Disney should change the wording from "reserve the right to enter" to "demand immediate access". It would be more accurate in some circumstances.

 

[keishashadow]

Yes we did speak to the housekeeping manager. She was very apologetic and professional. She was very concerned about the state we found our villa. She offered fastpasses but we turned it down. We explained to her that she needs to address this and the only resolution is for this not to happen again. No amount of fastpass would change it. We thanked her for her offer since we know she just wanted to make us feel better. But I think she understood.

Oh, I 100% agree re declining the offer of FPs. Find it insulting, always the first thing they profer - mickey hush money of a sort.

Realize it's supposed to take the sting out of an complaint but I often wonder if they really do follow through & resolve the the root of the issue or granting the FP signals the end of it.

 

[disneynutz]

I'm really late in the game replying to this thread, but I wanted to comment that this was the first visit we had that we did not leave any tip for the housekeeping. Our first visit to the Copper Creek 1 bedroom villa appear wonderful at first. It was a rather large room and a nice location. However, when we were ready to make the sofa bed for the kids, the linens were not replaced from the previous occupant. It was quite obvious that housekeeping didn't bother opening the sofa bed to check. We called down and they were very apologetic, and changed the sheets. The kids wanted some popcorn so we opened the microwave to find disgusting ground-in food splatter from the previous guest. Again, housekeeping did not check that. I started wiping down everything, more than I usually do. Then we usually run the dishwasher with the cups and glasses and a few tableware, we discovered there were no dishwasher detergent. We requested that and they provided.

We realized that housekeeping did minimal cleaning and I was sure that they barely clean what appeared cleaned. That was not a pleasant stay, even though it's was a beautiful villa. We loved the space and decor.

As with the trash removal, I would hope that if we have the sign on our door, they would honour it. If they really need to remove the trash, I think they should leave a voicemail or written message slipped under the door for us to call when they could come in. But we don't really need trash to be removed, we rarely have enough to fill the basket for our entire stay. We also don't need any other cleaning because we don't need it. I wash the towels in the ensuite so I don't need towel service either. The reason we enjoy our stay is that it's not like all other hotels that need to come in and make up the room. There is no need to waste the towels or linen changes. I would be very disappointed if it changes. I don't want or need daily housekeeping or trash removal.

Maybe you miss it. Disney is inspecting the rooms daily for security reasons, taking out your trash is intended to warm you up to the idea of daily intrusions.

Bill

 

[TLSnell1981]

We've had issue with patio door locks on out last three trips to BW. Twice in a two bedroom and once in a grand villa. The grand villa looked quite worn in places and the door jam was busted to the balcony. It wouldnt stay closed. We had five under the age of nine in the room. Not being able to secure that door was safety issue. We waited for hours (until after midnight) for a temporary fix...three different maintenance crews. I was not happy spending that much time, Waiting up for the door fixed Finally, they screwed the door shut. Another crew came back and did a permanent repair the next day. Disney could have cared less..
.

 

[dvcdisney]

Maybe you miss it. Disney is inspecting the rooms daily for security reasons, taking out your trash is intended to warm you up to the idea of daily intrusions.

Bill

I understand. But that doesn't mean they should be able to enter whenever they want. As I mentioned, if they leave a voicemail or note under the door so that we can call them to let them know when they can come in. This would go a long way to being less obtrusive and may encourage people to "warm up" to the idea. I'm sure there are others like myself who would prefer for housekeeping not to waste their time with taking out the trash if it's not necessary. If it's truly checking to make sure we're not doing anything wrong in the villa, they should just say so. I understand. Let the managers do the drop by for those of us who don't need that service.

 

[Ben E N]

I understand. But that doesn't mean they should be able to enter whenever they want. As I mentioned, if they leave a voicemail or note under the door so that we can call them to let them know when they can come in. This would go a long way to being less obtrusive and may encourage people to "warm up" to the idea. I'm sure there are others like myself who would prefer for housekeeping not to waste their time with taking out the trash if it's not necessary. If it's truly checking to make sure we're not doing anything wrong in the villa, they should just say so. I understand. Let the managers do the drop by for those of us who don't need that service.

If they say "hey, we are looking for drugs and guns" it would probably turn more people off than you being turned off the the trash service. It really is the purpose of this though. The trash piece is just them being nice about it.
If they told you they were coming, you could just hide the contraband better.

 

[disneynutz]

I understand. But that doesn't mean they should be able to enter whenever they want. As I mentioned, if they leave a voicemail or note under the door so that we can call them to let them know when they can come in. This would go a long way to being less obtrusive and may encourage people to "warm up" to the idea. I'm sure there are others like myself who would prefer for housekeeping not to waste their time with taking out the trash if it's not necessary. If it's truly checking to make sure we're not doing anything wrong in the villa, they should just say so. I understand. Let the managers do the drop by for those of us who don't need that service.

Disney has almost 31,000 rooms at WDW. Can you imagine trying to set up appointments for room checks to keep guests happy?

Bill

 

[Norm1]

I am staying at Kidani Village now. After the 3rd day of being woken up at 8:30 am to collect trash I told the housekeeper under no circumstances will he knock on my door until after 12 noon. I am on vacation and will be sleeping very late. By the time I shower , have coffee and dress it will be the afternoon. I've been a DVC member since 1995 and have no desire to rush out of my room. The very next day and from then on my trash was never collected before 2 pm or it was collected after I left my room for the day. We had several housekeepers so they must have spread the word. So I believe if you notify your housekeeper or call housekeeping they will honor your request.

 

[dvcdisney]

I am staying at Kidani Village now. After the 3rd day of being woken up at 8:30 am to collect trash I told the housekeeper under no circumstances will he knock on my door until after 12 noon. I am on vacation and will be sleeping very late. By the time I shower , have coffee and dress it will be the afternoon. I've been a DVC member since 1995 and have no desire to rush out of my room. The very next day and from then on my trash was never collected before 2 pm or it was collected after I left my room for the day. We had several housekeepers so they must have spread the word. So I believe if you notify your housekeeper or call housekeeping they will honor your request.

Thanks for posting. I think perhaps a note on the sign saying to come back at a certain time or just in the afternoon would work. My family wakes up late...we've been going to Disney a long time and do not go for rope drop or anything like that. So, afternoon would be best. I think if they are aware of this, there would be less intrusion.

 

[Simba's Mom]

I am staying at Kidani Village now. After the 3rd day of being woken up at 8:30 am to collect trash I told the housekeeper under no circumstances will he knock on my door until after 12 noon.

Please do come back and let us know how much they follow your instructions now of not knocking before noon. I'd be interested to know.

 

[DenLo]

I am staying at Kidani Village now. After the 3rd day of being woken up at 8:30 am to collect trash I told the housekeeper under no circumstances will he knock on my door until after 12 noon. I am on vacation and will be sleeping very late. By the time I shower , have coffee and dress it will be the afternoon. I've been a DVC member since 1995 and have no desire to rush out of my room. The very next day and from then on my trash was never collected before 2 pm or it was collected after I left my room for the day. We had several housekeepers so they must have spread the word. So I believe if you notify your housekeeper or call housekeeping they will honor your request.

I understand you can notify the front desk of a good time to pick up the trash.