# Monarch Grand Vacations to Diamond



## pjb (Nov 1, 2014)

I'm an owner of Monarch Grand Vacations which is now managed by Diamond.  What are other Monarch owners doing with their ownership?

My first experience with a Diamond representative was VERY disappointing last year.  He first indicated he wanted to provide me with an update about how great Diamond is and all the new benefits I'm entitled to.  But then proceeded to tell me my current Monarch ownership is completely worthless and than I'm dumb if I don't buy more points to upgrade to Diamond.  There was also mention of a letter he said that I signed and returned turning down a great initial upgrade offer.  The offer of course was a one time only offer and he could only get close to that price since i turned down the initial 'deal of a lifetime'.  He could never produce the letter I was supposed to have signed and returned.  I don't respond well to strong arm sales tactics.  

Today I just received a late notice that I haven't paid maintenance fees since April.  I was told that Diamond is a 'GREEN' company and doesn't send out paper bills anymore.  While technically they are probably correct that maintenance fees are due regardless of receiving a bill I always did receive one from Monarch.  So far I'm not pleased with the Diamond takeover.

I'm interested what other Monarch owners have done and what my options are with Diamond.  Is Diamond a company I really want to continue using?  The maintenance fees are higher than other timeshares I own.  I'm seriously considering getting rid of this club.

I'd appreciate any feedback from both those who like and benefit from Diamond and those Monarch Owners that are also deciding what to do.

Thanks,

Paul


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## Bill4728 (Nov 1, 2014)

First a few things  MGV pts =60 DRI points so if you own 133 MGV pts you now have 7980 DRI points But remember you still get your MGV pts every 24 months but all other DRI owners get their pts every 12 months.

Second we still get our MGV bills in the mail. 

We have found that using our MGV points for Interval trading is a great value.  Most of the time we can make great trades for about about 1/2 the points we'd have used for a week pts reservation ( ~4000 DRI pts or 134 MGV pts)

We can not give our MGV pts away so they are worthless BUT  DRI points are equally worthless.  You can pickup DRI point collections for free without much effort.


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## VegasBella (Nov 2, 2014)

what do you own? points or week?


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## pjb (Dec 28, 2014)

VegasBella said:


> what do you own? points or week?



We did own 310 MGV points, not weeks, so it is now 18,600 Diamond points.  We have continue to use it at either Las Vegas Cancun Resort or Palm Canyon for mostly long weekend stays. I've also had good luck renting a week at Palm Canyon but it never quite covers the maintenance fee.  MGV and/or Diamond have the highest maintenance fees of the three timeshare companies we own. It now works out to about $1450 per week.   We haven't stayed at the Riviera Beach or Riviera Shores for a long time.  Can I rent a week at one of these beach resorts at a high enough rate to cover maintenance fees?


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## MGVOWNER-LV (Jan 19, 2015)

*mgv owners?*

I am a MGV 460 point owner (27600 DRI points)

How can I find out how many MGV owners are still out there?

Will this "special assessment" fee due to the hurricane in Cabo Azul go to all DRI owners, or just MGV owners?

I recently stayed at Cancun LV and did an owner update meeting.  I was told my MGV points are worthless, that a special assessment was coming.  I was offered to increase my worthless points for free to 50 some odd thousand, and those points would be used to increase my points in the DRI system if I purchased XXXX points for XXXX dollars.

One of the offers would have been good, except when I said something about it being lower monthly payment that I currently have, I was told it was on top of my current payments.

I immediately said no to all offers, as there was not way I was going to add to my debt load, he left and a "corporate" person came in and tried to sweeten the deal by offering a "trial package".

Again no sale.


If I understand what is going on (which I probably don't)  DRI still has to honor MGV owners and their contracts that they bought from bankruptcy court, forever, unless they sell us into a DRI contract.

Is that correct?


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## Bill4728 (Jan 19, 2015)

MGVOWNER-LV said:


> I am a MGV 460 point owner (27600 DRI points)
> 
> How can I find out how many MGV owners are still out there?
> 
> Will this "special assessment" fee due to the hurricane in Cabo Azul go to all DRI owners, or just MGV owners?


First  As if right now there is no "special assessment" (SA) fee due to the hurricane in Cabo Azul.  If and when there is one, it would have to be evenly distributed among the "owner weeks" of the people owning at Cabo Azul. DRI has been saying since they bought out the MGV inventory  that they were trying to remove as much MGV  "owner weeks" at Cabo Azul as they could  so even if there is a huge SA  it should not fall too heavily on MGV owners. Remember that ownership at Cabo Azul is spread between three different pools of people. 
1 MGV pt owners 
2 DRI point owners
3 DRI corporate ownership

The amounts each group owns should be a known amount but is not something that is easily discovered to someone like me or you. 


> I recently stayed at Cancun LV and did an owner update meeting.  I was told my MGV points are worthless, that a special assessment was coming.  I was offered to increase my worthless points for free to 50 some odd thousand, and those points would be used to increase my points in the DRI system if I purchased XXXX points for XXXX dollars.
> 
> One of the offers would have been good, except when I said something about it being lower monthly payment that I currently have, I was told it was on top of my current payments.
> 
> ...


 Good Play.  There is no reason to buy into any TS company which tells any of their owners that their ownership is worthless.


> If I understand what is going on (which I probably don't)  DRI still has to honor MGV owners and their contracts that they bought from bankruptcy court, forever, unless they sell us into a DRI contract.
> 
> Is that correct?


YES,  DRI has to honor all the contracts that MGV pt owners had with MGV. The only way for it to go away is for you to give up your MGV pts and sign up for DRI point contracts. 

Good Luck


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## MGVOWNER-LV (Jan 19, 2015)

Thanks Bill.

Like most people in threads I have been reading, no way out.  I have not had the experience some have about not being able to reserve, but I usually plan several months in advance.


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## Bill4728 (Jan 20, 2015)

As I said earlier  we have found that DRI points trade really well.  So maybe you should consider using your points to trade in II.  We find that we can get great trades for about 2500-3500 DRI points  (or about 40-60 MGV points) IMHO this is a steal since most weeks at the MGV resorts cost about 8000 -94000 DRI pts (133-155 MGV pts).


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## pedro47 (Jan 21, 2015)

How much will the resort home owners insurance policy pick up and pay after a major hurricane disaster?  Is that a dumb question.


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## Bill4728 (Jan 21, 2015)

pedro47 said:


> How much will the resort home owners insurance policy pick up and pay after a major hurricane disaster?  Is that a dumb question.


I would have imagined that the resort should have had insurance and it should have picked up most of the cost  BUT  who knows??


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## rojocrandall (Jan 23, 2015)

MGVOWNER-LV - it seems your "DRI update" experience at Cancun was identical to what I went thru up at Cedar Breaks a couple weeks ago: 
that there will be a huge special assessment in Jan 2015 for MGV owners due to Hurricane Odile, and that my MGV points are worthless.
Fortunately, I did not bite.

There is not much information out there on the damages to Cabo Azul.
If you google "cabo azul hurricane odile damage" you will get some pics and info about the damage, but there are not many details. 

I just got a *DRI email saying the July 2015 opening date was pushed out to Sept. 2015.
*Edit: it was not a DRI email, I saw it on the Cabo Azul twitter feed: https://twitter.com/CaboAzulResort


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