What should Disney do?

Image: Disney

Technically speaking, Disney does have the right to refuse to sell items to guests. In theory if a guest tries to purchase multiples of a limited edition item, or come through the line multiple times, have family members purchase extras, etc, Disney does have the right to refuse the sale. Some limited edition items do have limits per transactions on them as it is, but this does not stop guests from visiting multiple stores, going to different registers, or doing any of the aforementioned ways around this.

Random refusals to sell based on cast member judgement could understandably run into problems. Having worked as a merchandise cast member myself, I know that I would not want to be the person to refuse a sale without concrete evidence to back it up. Even letting some guests know that they could not use a family member or friend’s discount could be problematic, so not selling the items altogether would no doubt be worse.

Image: Disney

A probable solution in my opinion would be to track these purchases using park tickets, the same way pharmacies sometimes record license numbers to make sure customers aren’t buying suspicious quantities of certain drugs. If one person exceeds his or her allowed number of purchases for a limited edition item, the transaction would be refused and the cast member would have an official explanation as to why. Of course, resellers would probably still find ways around this, and I would never recommend that Disney impose limited on non-limited items, like the blankets I mentioned before, but it would be a starting point.

What should you do?

Image: Disney

My recommendation is to avoid supporting reseller businesses. These “businesses” may not even be properly registered as official businesses in the first place, making their activity illegal. They are scamming you, the consumer, by charging upwards of 50% markups with the profits going right into their pockets. And they are keeping guests who are actually in the parks from being able to purchase items direct from Disney for the actual retail prices.

During my conversations with resellers, I was repeatedly told that these owners are just trying to make a living and support themselves. I am 100% supportive of small businesses, and I would always choose to purchase from a small business over a large chain entity when given a chance. But there is a stark difference between purchasing envelopes from my town’s local stationary store instead of Hallmark and spending more money for a reseller to profit off of me from an item that Disney sells for less.

Image: Disney

I know that certain items can be tempting to purchase when you are not local to the parks, and sometimes getting them from illegitimate sources online may be your only option. If you absolutely must have the item, I would suggest doing some research into the seller. Even if overpriced, if the seller appears to be a genuine individual who purchased something they no longer want, this would be a better option than going through a business. Joining a Facebook group run by a reselling company in my opinion, would be supporting scam artists, and essentially would be throwing your hard earned money away—while also encouraging this behavior to continue, making these items less available for guests in the parks.

What would you do? Do you have experience purchasing items from resellers? Would you do it in the future? Let us know what you think in the comments!