Stinkin' Shell Vacation Club maintenance fee lies

don't you mean Wyndham

You do mean Wyndham, Shell wasn't like this. When Wyndham purchased Shell, I was afraid this would happen.. Here we are....

rickandcindy23 said:

Our fees for the West Club are up 8.7% over last year's which is a huge increase. Shell used to bill a certain amount for the first 1,350 points ($330.41 for the first 1,350 owned) + .1975 per point for additional points + $165 club fee.

Now they are charging a flat fee:

Your Board of Directors has recently approved the 2016 budget with a cost per point of .2178, resulting in an average overall increase of 3.62% on an average points package of 5,023 points. There is also the $171 club fee

This actually is a huge increase when a person owns a lot more points than the measly 5,023 points.

If you just own 1,350 points, wow did your point cost go down. SUCKS to own Shell.

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ronparise said:

thanks.

so at 22 cents a point mf a shell owner will pay $1276 for the most expensive season, and a Wyndham owner (if they can find the availability) at $6/1000 points pays a little less...

Just from this one example it looks like Wyndham wants to manage shell and Club Wyndham resorts to the same standards..

So what are you guys thinking.. Wyndham will retire all the outstanding Shell points and issue owners Club Wyndham Access points at about a 31 to 1 ratio (in my example 182000 wyndham points for 5800 shell points).

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We have 8500 points and so ours went up 6%.
That week at Vino Bello would cost us $1380 at our net cost of $0.2379 per point. Most people are probably paying more like $0.24 to $0.29 per point depending upon how many points they have.

We don't know what is going to happen between Wyndham and Shell, but I can tell you as a Wyndham Platinum member, I don't think they want me to have another Platinum membership in Wyndham. I can just see the greedy salesperson's eyes when I tell him/her that we have not one--but two Wyndham Platinum accounts and would love a third, if they will let me! Of course they won't.

I will be listing my weeks in Hawaii with a resale company there. Kauai salespeople can try to sell those for their commission and the transfer fees. I won't be getting a dime, but I won't pay a dime either.

Wyndham point cost b.s.

I just started looking at the 2016mf bills and holy smokes, they have totally changed the way the maintenance fees are calculated. It's out of line all the way, .22 - .26 cents per point depending on the club. I can't believe it, tell me its a mistake and that they can't just change point calculations overnight. YIKES!!!! B.S.

team2win said:

I just started looking at the 2016mf bills and holy smokes, they have totally changed the way the maintenance fees are calculated. It's out of line all the way, .22 - .26 cents per point depending on the club. I can't believe it, tell me its a mistake and that they can't just change point calculations overnight. YIKES!!!! B.S.

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It's all very distressing. We own 25,300 points in the West Club. I told Rick we need to list them with a broker and see if we can get those sold. I don't care about making money at all.

In my opinion Worldmark is a great product that has not been affected much at all by Wyndham, and I am glad to own resale Worldmark for that reason, but Shell's takeover by Wyndham is a disaster to all Shell owners because they just keep increasing our costs of ownership.

Our housekeeping fees are up; our transaction fees are not transparent (I have no idea when they give me my free fee because I never see any transaction showing as "Free"); and Wyndham is taking away II next year.

Wyndham's takeover of Shell is definitely a hostile one. Owners cannot be happy with the way Wyndham determined fees this year. Mine are .22 per point, and we own in the cheaper club. I am a bit angry, but I did really love my exchanges in II. I plan to book several exchanges for 2017 while I can.

So Shell is going back to RCI in 2018?

I meant 2017

blr666 said:

So Shell is going back to RCI in 2018?

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blr666 said:

I meant 2017

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That was told to a tugger at a sales pitch. I was at a sales pitch after that and was told that I needed to upgrade to Wyndham so I could use RCI because II doesn't have as much inventory as RCI. So, which sales person was lying?

I know this is an old thread, but...with Wyndham having Shell inventory at about 9 months, including all of the harder to get resorts, and with us having status with Wyndham and not any status with Shell, I just called Wyndham to deedback all of our Shell points.

rickandcindy23 said:

I know this is an old thread, but...with Wyndham having Shell inventory at about 9 months, including all of the harder to get resorts, and with us having status with Wyndham and not any status with Shell, I just called Wyndham to deedback all of our Shell points.

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I deeded back all mine in the first quarter of 2019. I don't know what the deedback program is like now, but back then at least, even though I was on either a monthly or quarterly MF payment schedule, as part of the deedback program I was permitted to use the entire current use year's points with no penalties. So I emptied out all my points and converted them into debit cards. I had nearly 175k points and if I recall it ended up being around $20k+ basically cash in my pocket more or less for only 3 or 4 months worth of MF payments.

It sounds like I will lose all RCI reservations that I currently have booked, and I will lose all of the RCI points I had to deposit a few years ago. They were not going to be extendable past 2/2024. I will lose about 17,000 points that are in RCI and the money I spent extending them to 2024. I was hoping for an exchange to Maui for February to use some of them. I would have taken anything.

I didn't know I could use points for debit cards.

rickandcindy23 said:

We don't know what is going to happen between Wyndham and Shell, but I can tell you as a Wyndham Platinum member, I don't think they want me to have another Platinum membership in Wyndham. I can just see the greedy salesperson's eyes when I tell him/her that we have not one--but two Wyndham Platinum accounts and would love a third, if they will let me! Of course they won't.

I will be listing my weeks in Hawaii with a resale company there. Kauai salespeople can try to sell those for their commission and the transfer fees. I won't be getting a dime, but I won't pay a dime either.

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Keep us informed on how that goes. I've always been skeptical of the resale companies that advertise or have island storefronts. It costs the agent nothing to show a listing at a price per point that will entice a seller. What I'd really like to know is what buyers actually pay: is it really that much more than you can get from a TUG or Red Week listing?

presley said:

Depending on season, it runs from 4400 to 5800 Shell points.


I don't own Wyndham, so I can't say if it is easier/harder, but I can say that is is extremely easy to book Shell within Shell. It's a very rare occasion that I can't find dates and in those cases, it is very close to check in.

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Wyndham to Shell is a flat 40:1 - that is, take the Shell point cost of a unit, multiply by 40, and you get (exactly) the Wyndham price of the same unit at the same time.

Lsfinn said:

Keep us informed on how that goes. I've always been skeptical of the resale companies that advertise or have island storefronts. It costs the agent nothing to show a listing at a price per point that will entice a seller. What I'd really like to know is what buyers actually pay: is it really that much more than you can get from a TUG or Red Week listing?

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I am in the process of giving them back to Shell/ Wyndham. I have no intention of trying to get rid of them any other way.

I have a Platinum Founders' level of ownership with Wyndham and can get anything I want in Shell that way. It's a no-brainer to give them back. I will lose a lot of points in RCI, unless some of my trades come through soon. I have a lot of ongoing searches set.

rickandcindy23 said:

I am in the process of giving them back to Shell/ Wyndham. I have no intention of trying to get rid of them any other way.

I have a Platinum Founders' level of ownership with Wyndham and can get anything I want in Shell that way. It's a no-brainer to give them back. I will lose a lot of points in RCI, unless some of my trades come through soon. I have a lot of ongoing searches set.

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We converted our Shell to Wyndham in 2020 (while we could still do it for no-cost): as we saw it, the writing was on the wall for Shell and there was no downside to the conversion. We ended up with 1.6m Wyndham Plus: also Platinum Founder.

At the end of 2022 we looked into deed-back for a few of our contracts and decided to give resale (through a real estate agent) a try. We succeeded in selling those with a (very) small net: we're now waiting (and waiting and waiting) for Wyndham to process the title change.

Based on the experience the small net is not - to us - worth the sturm-und-drang of the process; so, when we next scale back we'll take advantage of the deed-back (assuming it is still available).

My Shell points would be worth 40X 25,300 or 1,012,000.

How many points did you own with Shell? They did the converstion free from Shell to Wyndham? No charge at all? I would never do it, but I am curious. Did they allow you to PIC weeks at the time you converted?

rickandcindy23 said:

My Shell points would be worth 40X 25,300 or 1,012,000.

How many points did you own with Shell? They did the converstion free from Shell to Wyndham? No charge at all? I would never do it, but I am curious. Did they allow you to PIC weeks at the time you converted?

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Sorry for the delayed reply: I didn't see your post until just now.

We converted (all our) 40,000 Shell points for 1,600,000 Wyndham Plus points. No charge at all. PIC weeks never came up; but, we didn't ask (spent too much time pre-retirement locked into rigid/inflexible work schedules).

I'm curious: what benefit do you see in keeping some/all of your Shell points?

We just this year sold 394,000 Wyndham Plus points on the resale marked for a net (after realtor fees) of $500. Both we and the buyers are waiting (& waiting & waiting) for Wyndham Title Services to do their bit and actually transfer the title. [When the sale was finally agreed to, all the pprwork signed and $$$ received by title/escrow we were told at least 60 days. Based on the relative speed of resale vs developer sale and deed-back timescales it is clear that Wyndham Title Services has a two-tier system, with resale market always moved to the end of the line.]