Last night, we reported on the possibility that the controversial FuelRod swapping fees across Walt Disney World kiosks would be reversed due to impending legal action and negative guest feedback. While kiosks across property were meant to be re-skinned to reflect the new swapping fees overnight, it appears that none of these changes actually took place:
It would appear that the $3 FuelRod swapping fees meant to go into effect today, November 1st, 2019, have been reversed.
Kiosks no longer show any signage denoting swapping fees of any kind, and when you tap through to swap, the machine does not prompt guests for payment.
We hope that the decision to opt out of swapping fees for Walt Disney World guests is a permanent one, but we’ll keep an eye on the kiosks for any further changes.
I would never buy one of those as I always carry a wall charger and my own good battery. However, glad to see people voicing their opinions and making a company listen to their combined voice. Good job getting a company to reverse course based on public backlash.
Just wait until Disney decides to raise the price of the initial purchase.
They’ll get their dollars, and then some.
*sigh* While you have every right to be angry at Disney for a multitude of things, the charger kiosks are NOT a Disney product (if they were I am sure you would see Disney character chargers instead of plain white ones). The kiosks and the chargers are owned by a company called FuelRod. FuelRod gives Disney money (piece of the profits, maybe a flat rate to allow their kiosks to be placed in the parks). So Disney is not the one raising the price, FuelRod is. Be angry at FuelRod for attempting to change their policy, not Disney. I am not a Disney apologist, but getting angry at Disney over this is equivalent to getting angry at Disney if the Lacoste store at Disney Springs started charging more for their polo shirts.
Disney will get your dollars and then some in some other way. But for this saga, Disney is innocent (… Orrr are theyyyy? *dramatic music*)
It’s actually both. I contacted fuel rod to get a refund, along with many others. According to emails I exchanged with fuel rod they were charging $1. The other $2 was tacked on by Disney. Maybe they lied to me, but I doubt it.
its likely the company will end up going out of business though because of this. It isn’t a sustainable model. Enjoy while it lasts!
Totally sustainable. they are selling something worth a dollar for 30.
Anything is possible I guess, but these chargers are quite small. They can be had in bulk qty for less than a dollar. (Container qty from China) a few people overuse the service, but for the most part people swap relatively infrequently over the whole sample size. The chargers are estimated to be less than 2000mah which requires very very minimal costs for them to recharge. In my opinion $30 is a nice sweet spot for them as it’s small enough for the customer to buy as an emergency 1 time use and yet still enough for them to make money on the purchase for probably 95% of customers. They would still have a profit if everyone swapped their fuel rod 25 times. In my opinion the average is probably much closer to a single digit number of swaps.
If they instituted price to swap I wouldn’t be using the service, so any future swaps I can get while they stay in business is fine by me. I think the best way to have it is not to charge per swap, but to charge a subscription-style service where for fee you get unlimited swaps. I wouldn’t mind paying that for unlimited swaps, but the charge-per-swap model was horrible. Mainly my problem is them advertising “free unlimited swaps” and then saying “lol just kidding give us $3 per swap now”. I wouldn’t WANT to pay anything since that isn’t what I purchased, but a subscription-style service would be at least more consumer-friendly I think. I could rationalize a subscription for the service of charging my phone, but to charge-per-swap, when a fuelrod can barely charge my phone, is absurd.
Thank you so much for keeping up on this issue-I truly believe that you are the main reason that this policy was changed! Keep up the good work!
Yeah I would say it was actually the class action lawsuit that did that…