Doing that would require the very servers that were down.
Nope! Nope, nope, nope. That's not the right answer.
As we've seen at WDW, and from multiple people who were at Disneyland, this was a purposeful decision in advance to handle an App outage this way. There wasn't a massive power failure that caused all computers and cash registers and modern society to be inoperative, it was a technical glitch with one part of the App.
The
Go-Back-To-City-Hall-To-Stand-In-Line-For-Store-Credit was their pre-planned response to this scenario.
And that's a big
Nope!
Not at all. Payment processing systems vs their Genie Database would be separate. Worse case if their payment processing systems were down they would still issue a refund when back online.
Have you ever had to get an in person refund for a digital purchase?
Exactly. The solution they have come up with for App failures like this is simply not acceptable.
It's barely acceptable at Walgreens, but it is simply
not acceptable at an expensive place like Disneyland that pretends it is a
"Resort" that offers
"World Class Guest Service!".
I made similar points in the WDW Genie thread. A gift card should be an option, and should be handled digitally so that there’s no need to line up at Guest Relations.
An automatic refund to form of payment should also be an option through the app as well.
Store credit being the only option and having it be a physical card for a digital purchase screams someone didn’t think this through.
Thank you! I thought the same thing when reading about
@milordsloth and the options they were offering yesterday to paying customers who bought this failed product.
All of the proper ways to refund the cost of Genie+ and provide an apology offering of a gift card can and should be handled via App.
And be planned and trained for in advance.
Even if it's just a note pushed out to every customer's phone via the App saying that full refunds will be processed once the servers come back online
(which everyone would understand) and that physical gift cards as a token of apology are an option
(at the following park locations, if the App is so totally broken it can't distribute digital gift cards to App users).
What TDA ridiculously offered yesterday was pre-planned and on purpose, in the event of an App outage.
It's tacky, it's cheap, it's hokey. And it's clearly designed and approved by executives who have no idea how their customers use the parks and what they routinely expect from an expensive day at Disneyland. 
blogmickey.com
