# Giving TPI a try



## tschwa2 (Jun 25, 2015)

I found out one of my new resorts comes with premier access to TPI so I thought I would take another look at them.

Couple of thoughts.  It is nice you can see available inventory without depositing.  It is nice that they have a decent amount of Hawaii deposits in advance even during summer months.  Too bad Hawaii is too hard and expensive for a family of 5 including some special needs provisions.  
While their lack of trading power as it relates to location and time of year seems to simplify the exchange process, like others that do the same, it also seems to encourage those with "good deposits" to save them for RCI or II and deposit the off season with TPi.

To make up for the simplicity of the one deposit- one week, they have a ridiculously complicated matrix for size.  If you don't find an exchange that is exactly the same size then you need to downgrade to a smaller size or pay to upgrade.  For example I own a 2 br sleeps 6.  I was looking at the Grand Bliss units (of which they have many and also many Mayan Palace).  No 2 br sleeps 6.  So my options would be to downgrade and get a 1 br sleeps 5 paying the exchange fee or _upgrade_ to a 2 br sleeps 8.  

Which brings be to the next pet peeve.  They don't really publish the fees anywhere and without actually depositing and then going through the process of reserving the unit, you don't know how much the exchange fee and upgrade fee would be.  So in my case the upgrade fee would be $50 to exchange my 2 br sleeps 6 for a 2 br sleeps 8.  While I can appreciate the need for upgrade fees, I would think that exchange companies that charge these fees should have some kind of a credit system so that if I went a size smaller one time, the next time I should be entitled to a size larger without paying.  

Why are international exchanges more?  At one point all exchange companies did this.  RCI and II got rid of it.  If you are working with specialty office to source exchanges, I guess I can see the rationale.  But as TPI admits most inventory is Canadian, US, and Mexician.  I would guess most members are US.  Verifying Canadian and Mexican deposits is not so labor intensive or fraught with problems that it requires an extra $30 or so per exchange confirmation.

Oh well.  I put  in a request at 2 of the resorts also in the Oceana family of resorts with TPI for 2016 and I will see how it goes.  Hopefully like DAE and unlike SFX if worse comes to worse I can at least get a week during school vacations on the East Coast in the same size I deposited even if it is just Williamsburg.


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## rickandcindy23 (Jun 25, 2015)

The size upgrades are annoying with the alternative exchange companies, I agree.  Some 2 bedrooms sleep 8, while some 3 bedrooms sleep 8.  If I have a 2 bed sleeps 8, they aren't going to let me have a 3 bed without an upgrade fee, either.  

$50 is reasonable, if that is all you pay, but TP Maui is a lot more.  Oddly, my Shell points will be my choice for booking a 3 bedroom at Peacock Suites to get a 3 bedroom Maui Lea without paying an upgrade fee.  The 3 bedrooms are the same number of Shell points as a 2 bedroom, but the 2 bedrooms are MUCH nicer.


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## WinniWoman (Jul 23, 2015)

I think it was TPI that told me when I exchanged my 2 bedroom (sleeps 8) for a one bedroom (sleeps 4) that they considered my 2 bedroom as sleeping 6- that there was no way to put it in the system as sleeps 8! (I could have this wrong as I used DAE once last year for an exchange and it could have been them- can't remember now)


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