# Help - RCI has changed - weeks exchange



## tiadeg (Mar 3, 2011)

We have been with RCI for years - we own a week in shawnee that was passed down to us from my in-laws.  We have traded for some great and some not so great places - overall very satisfied.  We only trade about once a year.  I was looking for something in April of this year - checking in on the 15 - 17th - east coast - Maine to FL.  There is nothing!! Florida used to be a dime a dozen.  Even our home resort Shawnee always had something.  Our week's trading power is only 11.  I checked into the summer (fl) and there are very few choices with trading power level.  Do we not do anything this year, deposit for next year and then combine those trading powers (that's an additional $99 to do that right?) Do we look into convering it to points instead of having a week?  I'm so confused.  Any and all help/advice is appreciated. I just want to use our week!


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## Judy (Mar 3, 2011)

When you do your online search in RCI Weeks, click on the blue bar where it says, "click to change".  In the pop-up window, choose the bullet that says, "show all available RCI Vacations".  then click "update search".  Now your searches should show you everything and the TPU cost of each, not just what your TPU can buy at this moment.  With that information, you can make a better choice of how to proceed.


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## elaine (Mar 3, 2011)

you are looking for a prime week. April 15-17 are check-ins for the week prior to Easter. Much of the East Coast, esp. the NE has spring break this week. Normally mid-April would be much easier. But, even so, I do not know what you could get for 11 trading units. I know there are lots of units in Orlando in the summer that you can get for 15 and under. You might have to pool 2 weeks. Next year Easter is early April. You will have much better luck for mid-April 2012. Elaine


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## Egret1986 (Mar 3, 2011)

*If you can pick up and go on short notice, you might find something discounted*

Also, you will probably have to be flexible with your destintion.  And lastly, you will have to be vigilant in watching for these discounted exchanges starting 30 days from check-in.  RCI discounts the number of TPUs on many exchanges as the time gets closer to check-in.

As Elaine said, you're talking about Spring Break for many East Coast school systems.  If you're working with Spring Break for next year, you need to get started now and consider an ongoing search.  You need to familiarize yourself with the new Weeks system.  You can use the calculator to determine your max/current TPUs for a deposit made in 2011/2012/2013.  You can also check the approximate number of TPUs needed to get what you want.  No need to put in that ongoing search for something that you will not have enough TPUs to get.

I would not recommend converting your week to Points.  The cost factor is prohibitive.  You may need to try to give your week away unless you can feasibly rent it out or want to use it for family vacations every year.  You'll just need to determine if this ownership is going get you acceptable vacations for the costs required (increasing maintenance fees, RCI annual membership, exchange fee, potential special assessments).


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## BevL (Mar 3, 2011)

With 11 TPUS, you are going to have to travel seriously off season - early December, for example, and definitely not a holiday week.

Or, as mentioned, if you have the flexibility to really plan last minute, like within a few weeks to a month, you can pick up some awesome trades for five to 10 units.  But it requires diligence on RCI, basically spending a lot of time trying to pluck off something good.

Or combine your deposits to have medium trade power - I hate to say it but 22 is not that great.

If you have a floating week, be sure to check the deposit calculator.  It may be that you can pick a week to deposit, if you have that option, that will give you more credits than you're getting now.

I believe that exchanges are harder to make with the ability to combine deposits and the transparency that allows you to see everything in the spacebank.  I think more people are able to get what they want if they're willing to spend the units, and that could be why there are fewer deposits, especially for a week that includes Easter.  But that's just my two cents worth.

It's probably not the response you were hoping for, but it's the new reality with RCI.  It's working out well for some, not so well for others.

Bev


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## MuranoJo (Mar 3, 2011)

Tiadeg,

When did you deposit your week with RCI?  That may also be a factor in the low TP--seems most are suggesting depositing around the 9-month mark to get the best TPU.

Yes, it is a bit late to be looking for something that is within Spring Break timeframe for families with kids in school.  A lot of folks on this forum have good luck entering an ongoing search way ahead of time for peak seasons, so you may want to consider that for 2012.

Hope something works out for you.


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## tombo (Mar 3, 2011)

You have picked the only 3 weekend check in dates in April, May, or June where orlando has zero availability. If you had 100 TPU's you could not check in on April 15th, 16th, or 17th because not a single resort has any availability. If you want to exchange for an Easter Week, you need to exchange for it long before now. 

If you expand your search you can find plenty of April, May, and June weeks in Orlando for 11 TPU's or less. There are 22 diffrent orlando resorts available in April with one bed units requiring only 5 to 8 TPU's for a week. For May there are 36 Orlando resorts with 1 and 2 bed room units for 8 TPU's or less, and several are gold Crown 2 bed units. For June there are 27 resorts with 1, 2, and 3 bed units with none requiring more than 10 TPU's.

If you want prime weeks like Easter, 4th of july, thanksgiving, Christmas, and New years then 11 TPU's will not do you any good. These are prime weeks and demand a lot of TPU's (as they should). If you realize that your resort is valued very low at 11 TPU's and are very flexible with check in dates and resorts, then you can actually trade for a lot of Orlando resorts during some really nice travel times.


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## tiadeg (Mar 3, 2011)

Thanks for your feedback.  We were planning to look at colleges for my son, to be honest, the holiday didn't even cross my mind.  Last year, we got a place at Myrtle Beach last minute, but our spring break wasn't the same week as Easter - the holiday does make it a bit more difficult.  

I guess we'll stay with the weeks - once our kids our older my husband and I will be able to travel off season.  We did this when the kids were younger and had some awesome vacations.  Guess I was wishing those days back again!

Next year I will plan ahead . . .


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## tombo (Mar 3, 2011)

There is a studio at vacation Village Weston Florida for 6 TPU's Checking in on April 15th. if you want it you had better jump on it because it is the only week you can get in the whole state for the dates you want.

Heck there is also one resort with one unit available for the 16th and the same resort has one unit available for the 17th, but both require 16 TPU's. That is the only 3 units available in the entire state of Florida to check in on April 15th, 16th, or 17th. You sure did pick a popular travel time.


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## ambrosij (Mar 3, 2011)

*Im points...but have read plenty about the TPU's*

I have a couple tidbits of advice/observations:

1st - The TPU values of the resorts appears to fluctuate to represent the demand of a particular unit at a particular time, unfortunately while Shawnee was once the go to place in the Poconos, it is suffered as the Poconos have from a mass exodus of folks from that region.  The Poconos are simply not a goto destination outside of the PA/NY/NJ area, at least not anymore...this may be why your TPU is so low.  If you have a high maintenance fee you may want to consider getting rid of the unit altogether, and if you choose to keep timesharing there are TONS of high quality properties that will cost you very very little over there maintenance fees, these are mostly available on EBAY. I dont know what your maintenance fee is but judging from what I have read you could probably, for the same MF, find a place that provides you with TWICE the TPU's. Of course if you use your week at Shawnee alot then thats what you should keep, maybe buy at a resort with a real small MF to give you some XTRA TPUs.


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## Carolinian (Mar 4, 2011)

The bottom line seems to be that RCI has moved the goal posts and your week will not trade for what it used to.  That is why one resort manager I talked to said they had been receiving lots of calls from members who exchange who were upset by the new RCI ''Points Lite'' and wanted to get rid of their weeks.  She expected more of those calls once many of the one week a year owners finally had what RCI had done sink in.  Even my summer UK weeks at a resort that is rarely availible in the RCI system any time of year has had its value whacked.  That is why I now deposit them with SFX and DAE instead of RCI.

You might want to consider independent exchange companies like:

www.daelive.com

www.htse.net

www.platinuminterchange.com

www.tradingplaces.com


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## tombo (Mar 4, 2011)

Carolinian said:


> The bottom line seems to be that RCI has moved the goal posts and your week will not trade for what it used to.  That is why one resort manager I talked to said they had been receiving lots of calls from members who exchange who were upset by the new RCI ''Points Lite'' and wanted to get rid of their weeks.  She expected more of those calls once many of the one week a year owners finally had what RCI had done sink in.  Even my summer UK weeks at a resort that is rarely availible in the RCI system any time of year has had its value whacked.  That is why I now deposit them with SFX and DAE instead of RCI.
> 
> You might want to consider independent exchange companies like:
> 
> ...



I like the new weeks program better than RCI points or the old RCI weeks. I don't know how they could make it much better.  I understand some people don't like the TPU's they get for depositing their week, but other than that what is not to like?

Under the old weeks program I always wondered if there was no availability at all for a week I was trying to get or just no availability using my deposit. I knew which weeks I had that were stronger traders because I could see more availability with them, but I never knew which weeks would trade for HGVC, Disney, the hard to get stuff. Could I only see studios because that was all there was, or was that all my deposited week would pull? Now I can see everything available on the entire web site and see what it takes to trade for it. No more calling an RCI rep sothey could tell me if my week could or couldn'tpull XYZ resort, and wondering if they were telling me the facts or their opinions. No more secret trading power that RCI wouldn't reveal. I can now see what every week I have will be worth if I deposit it (before I deposit it) and exactly what it will trade for. Perfect. Way to go RCI.

Now that I can see how much trading power my weeks actually have. I can decide if I want to dump some weeks because I can determine their MF $'s/TPU values. No more visiting the TUG sightings board, seeing a mass deposit listed, logging on and not seeing many if any weeks available and wondering if everyone had sucked them up or if I just couldn't see them with my curent deposit(s). 

No more keeping a strong trader deposited when I wasn't looking for a hard to get week just so I had a way to see what was available in case the urge hit me. Now I can deposit just enough to get what I want. If a week costs 12 TPU's, why deposit a 30 tpu week? Deposit a 12-15 TPU week.

If you have a weak trader with low TPU's, you can deposit 2 years worth and combine them for $99 allowing you to tade for things you never could have unde old weeks. Take two 18 TPU weeks and you have 36 TPU's of trading power. In the past you had 2 deposits that would neither get a good week, now you have made two weak weeks become a strong week. If you have weeks that were expiring in the past you could pay extra per week to extend them so the deposit would not expire. Now every year or two combine all existing points and make them good for 2 years so nothing ever expires.

Yes points required for resorts get lower as the check in date approaches. Yes you have to pay more TPU's to reserve a June 2012 week than a June 2011 week. Why shouldn't you? Your deposit is worth less the closer you get to check in date. That is what all people do, hold out for a good price until it gets close to check in, then take whatever you can get so that you don't eat the week. Why would RCI be any different? A week you can plan for a year in advance is more valuable than one with 45 days or less to make plans to both the exchanger and RCI. I have no problem with RCI lowering TPU's on trades and deposits as long as they give you what you were told you were getting when you deposit your week (they do)  and as long as they don't later lower the value you received on your deposited week(which they don't).

Best of all is you get to keep the change. Under the old program if you gave a strong trader for a week that you could have gotten for a lesser trade, you got a weak week for a strong week deposit. Now deposit a 35 TPU and trade for 2 weeks like I did Monday and Tuesday, and still have change left over. I deposited a one bed 1.5 bath week with 35 TPU's  and monday I exchanged for a gold crown 2 bed 2 bath Wyndham oceanfront Panama City Beach for 17 TPU's. Tuesday my secretary told me that she has never stayed in a condo and she had always dreamed of her whole family staying together for a week in Orlando so they could go to Disney together. I got back on line and found a June Silver crown 3 bed 3 bath Cypress pointe and booked it for 12 TPU's. I booked a Gold crown 2 bed 2 Bath week and a SilverCrown 3 bed 3 bath week for a one bed one and a half bath silver crown deposit that has MF's of $550, and I have 6 TPU's left over. In the old weeks program I would have gotten either week for my week, not 2 weeks with change left over! What's not to love?


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## bellesgirl (Mar 4, 2011)

tombo said:


> If you have a weak trader with low TPU's, you can deposit 2 years worth and combine them for $99 allowing you to tade for things you never could have unde old weeks. Take two 18 TPU weeks and you have 36 TPU's of trading power. In the past you had 2 deposits that would neither get a good week, now you have made two weak weeks become a strong week.



Great analysis Tombo.  I would like to add one thing.

If you do have a weak trader, you can combine two weeks as you mentioned.  This would allow you to have a better exchange than before and, probably, have change left over to make a decent second trade.  You still get your two trades from RCI, just in a different manner.  The extra cost is $99 but you have the potential to get something you might not have been able to get before.


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## Carolinian (Mar 4, 2011)

bellesgirl said:


> Great analysis Tombo.  I would like to add one thing.
> 
> If you do have a weak trader, you can combine two weeks as you mentioned.  This would allow you to have a better exchange than before and, probably, have change left over to make a decent second trade.  You still get your two trades from RCI, just in a different manner.  The extra cost is $99 but you have the potential to get something you might not have been able to get before.



If you have weeks that RCI does not give much value to, combining them makes little sense.  That is two m/f's plus a combining fee.  The smart move is to bail out of them, and if you still want to do timeshare exchanges with RCI then buy a week they give more points lite to, often from a big developer whose weeks were overpointed in an insider deal.  Or even better move your weeks to a different exchange company as I did with my summer UK weeks.  RCI used to get them but not any more.  While they haven't been trashed as bad as some, they do not trade any more for the things they used to and their points lite numbers are an insult when compared with certain overbuilt resorts where developers have an insider deal with RCI.  

The resort manager I spoke with a few weeks after this thing came out was not getting calls of support for the new system.  She was getting calls of outrage from her members, who were wanting out of timesharing.


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## Carolinian (Mar 4, 2011)

The problem is simple - they have moved the goalposts and many weeks will not trade for what they used to, while others are obscenely overpointed.  You may have been lucky but many others weren't.  They have also trashed the 45-day window which was part of the chemistry that made the ownership / exchange model of timesharing work.

Combining weeks can make sense in a mid level situation.  It does not toward the lower end.  If I get the right weeks reserved at my SA float resort, then they would be mid range and a combination may make some sense.  Otherwise it would be just nuts.

When they have devalued our weeks, what good is it to know what the new values are?  We can see clearly from looking up numbers of past trades that the weeks are devalued.  Why would I give a week to RCI that they have devalued when SFX will take it and give me something comparable based on its real value?   I am talking here about a prime week at a resort that is hard to find availibility at RCI any time of year.




tombo said:


> I like the new weeks program better than RCI points or the old RCI weeks. I don't know how they could make it much better.  I understand some people don't like the TPU's they get for depositing their week, but other than that what is not to like?
> 
> Under the old weeks program I always wondered if there was no availability at all for a week I was trying to get or just no availability using my deposit. I knew which weeks I had that were stronger traders because I could see more availability with them, but I never knew which weeks would trade for HGVC, Disney, the hard to get stuff. Could I only see studios because that was all there was, or was that all my deposited week would pull? Now I can see everything available on the entire web site and see what it takes to trade for it. No more calling an RCI rep sothey could tell me if my week could or couldn'tpull XYZ resort, and wondering if they were telling me the facts or their opinions. No more secret trading power that RCI wouldn't reveal. I can now see what every week I have will be worth if I deposit it (before I deposit it) and exactly what it will trade for. Perfect. Way to go RCI.
> 
> ...


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## bellesgirl (Mar 4, 2011)

Carolinian said:


> If you have weeks that RCI does not give much value to, combining them makes little sense.  That is two m/f's plus a combining fee.  The smart move is to bail out of them, and if you still want to do timeshare exchanges with RCI then buy a week they give more points lite to, often from a big developer whose weeks were overpointed in an insider deal.


You are right, the smart thing is to bail out of them.  Unfortunately, that is not as easy as it sounds.  Also, some of the independents, like SFX, might not take the weeks either.  So I am offering another way to look at the situation.


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## ambrosij (Mar 4, 2011)

*Could you imagine*

I just had a thought...could you imagine if RCI created a program where the market was able to determine the value of a particular week....here is what I mean. RCI lists a minimum "price" for a particular week...lets say 10 TPU, 10,000 points...what ever, and then RCI members basically bid on that particular unit for a preestablished time, a unit that is very high demand could go for two or three times what the minimum was, all depending on how much that family wants to vacation at that particular time at that particular resort.  The amount that is received over the RCI starting "price" is then deposited in the owners account...of course greedy RCI would probably just keep the extra without giving any additional incentive to the actual owner...anyhow just a thought that crossed my mind.


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## Conan (Mar 4, 2011)

RCI has not so much moved the goalposts as revealed the goalposts. Unfortunately not every week in every location gets high value in the exchange marketplace (unlike that town where all the children are above average). 

RCI's greatest sin, their practice of siphoning off high-value deposited weeks to their rental outlets, is not the issue here except to the extent they may be snapping up last minute availabilities. 

Even if there are some properties that get higher-than-deserved values from RCI, that wouldn't unbalance things significantly especially since the points-to-reserve figure is often lower than the points-given-for-deposit figure.

The long-term downside to the new transparency is that owners of low-value weeks may indeed head for the exits, depriving the people who own summer, etc. weeks at the same property of the subsidy the low value week maintenance used to provide. 

The new transparency also means I know the value of what I own, I know what's available for me to spend it on, and I can make informed decisions about what to exchange, what to sell, and what I might want to buy.


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## tombo (Mar 4, 2011)

Carolinian said:


> The problem is simple - they have moved the goalposts and many weeks will not trade for what they used to, while others are obscenely overpointed.  You may have been lucky but many others weren't.  They have also trashed the 45-day window which was part of the chemistry that made the ownership / exchange model of timesharing work.
> 
> Combining weeks can make sense in a mid level situation.  It does not toward the lower end.  If I get the right weeks reserved at my SA float resort, then they would be mid range and a combination may make some sense.  Otherwise it would be just nuts.
> 
> When they have devalued our weeks, what good is it to know what the new values are?  We can see clearly from looking up numbers of past trades that the weeks are devalued.  Why would I give a week to RCI that they have devalued when SFX will take it and give me something comparable based on its real value?   I am talking here about a prime week at a resort that is hard to find availibility at RCI any time of year.



If your week is lowered in value now, perhaps your week was overvalued before. I know for a fact that some of my weak traders got me things they shouldn'thave in the past. So it is rectified now. Simply sell those weeks that have poor Mf/TPU values and buy some good value cheap resale weeks that have good TPU values. You can search using the deposit calculater and buy some that you know have good TPU's in advance of owning them.

Why do owners feel they know what their weeks are worth in TPU values more than RCI?  Most owner feels their resort is great or they wouldn't have purchased there. The majority of RCI traders might not like it so much as you do.

Of course there are those who bought for no reason other than to trade for good places. A south Africa week is worthless to me and to most exchangers. I wouldn't go there if it was 1 TPU's. Most TUGGERS who own there bought because everyone jumped on the buy SA timeshares because they are cheap, MF's are low, and they trade for anything. Most TUGGERS who own in SA have never been there. Now that strategy is backfiring and people are mad. If owners don't want to stay at their own resort, why should they expect others to?


I have a prime mountain week I love that does not have great TPU value. Apparently others don't know how great my resort is, or perhaps they are not famiiar with the area because it is wonderful. I love it, many apparently do not. It gets low TPU's even though it is a 2 bed with loft and over 1400 square feet. I can cry and raise cain, but why would RCI change my TPU's because I don't like the value they assiged it? If everyone got to say how much their resort is worth the TPU's on a february Myrtle Beach studio would be over 100. Facing reality as it exists in RCI I can keep the mountain week because I love it personally, or sell it. I don't expect RCI to give me the TPU's I think it is worth, just what they think it is worth.

SFX will not accept but a few limited resorts. MOST of the  RCI resorts are not acceptable to SFX. What good is SFX to an owner that can't deposit their week with them? 

Will SFX let you get 2 or 3 or 4 weeks from a single deposit? RCI will. 

SFX only accepts deposits from 28 resorts in the Orlando area. RCI exchanges with and for 90. 

In the North Carolina mountains SFX has 1 resort they will accept. RCI has 19. 

In the entire state of Tennessee SFX accepts a total of 4 resorts. RCI has exchanges at 31 different resorts.

In New Orleans SFX has 4 acceptable resorts. RCI has 19. 

People here complaining about their devalued South Africa weeks. Don't try SFX because they won't even accept them for deposit according to their web site since they have zero listed.

SFX has far less members depositing far less weeks in far fewer resorts. RCI has plenty of members depositing plenty of weeks at almost every timeshare resort not associated with II.  RCI is the big dog and they assign point values based on the demand they see allowing you to buy at any resort and at least get some trading value rather than totally excluding low demand resorts from the exchange process like SFX does. 

SFX is good for limited places and limited resorts, but to infer that the majority of TUGGERS could use SFX in place of RCI is ridiculous. I would have 4 or 5 deposits a year that I get good exchanges using RCI that SFX would not even accept for deposit.

As I said originally other than those who don't like the TPU's assigned to their weeks, what is there to not like about the new weeks program?


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## Egret1986 (Mar 4, 2011)

*I think your $.02 may has merit.*



BevL said:


> I believe that exchanges are harder to make with the ability to combine deposits and the transparency that allows you to see everything in the spacebank.  I think more people are able to get what they want if they're willing to spend the units, and that could be why there are fewer deposits, especially for a week that includes Easter.  But that's just my two cents worth.  Bev



I have both RCI Weeks and RCI Points.  I stopped depositing into Weeks about 3 years ago when I got into Points.  Awhile back I purchased a "Weeks" timeshare that came with a free spacebanked week.  It has 27 TPUs.  Over the last six weeks I've made 4 Points exchanges.  I can't seem to find anything I would want in Weeks for this 27 TPUs.  I like the features of the new "Weeks" system, but I'm still not ready to jump back in because I'm still not convinced this is going to work for me.  Or maybe I'm just not as fast as I used to be in learning new things to "work it" to my advantage.    I just can't bring myself to deposit anything else into "Weeks", though I do believe this system is an improvement over the older version.


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## Carolinian (Mar 4, 2011)

SFX likes my UK resort and the time period I own.  For me that and DAE are my best bets.

As to value of weeks and RCI moving the goal posts, it is actually quite easy to objectively figure that out.  All you have to do is look at your past trades, and compute the number today of what you received and what you gave.  If you start finding that you can no longer make your own past RCI trades, then RCI has moved the goal posts as to your weeks in a negative way.  JLB did a poll on another site and it was about 50/50 as those who could do their own past trades 1 for 1 under the new system and those who would need more than one week now to make the same trades they made 1 for 1 in the past.

As to South Africa, first, I HAVE been there.  Second supply and demand in the timeshare system is global not provincial.  Some people in the US would not get on a plane and fly to London, but that does not make a London timeshare worthless.  Indeed, it has the highest demand over supply factors in the world, which is the reason that RCI's VIP system allows resort managers a bargain basement way to trade into any RCI property anywhere in the world EXCEPT London.  But London is one of the places shortchanged in Points Lite (BTW, I do not own in London).  South Africa is a very popular vacation destination for Europeans.  Indeed when I was there for three weeks, I did not run into another American the whole time but I ran into lots of tourists from many European countries.  That is why RCI's availibility tables that are published in the European version of its directory shows that South Africa has a better supply / demand curve than Florida, that is that it has more demand relative to supply based on global factors.  The whacked of points lite assigned to SA in the changeover to Points Lite was arbitrary.  One excuse given by an RCI representative to a Tugger was that they had changed the system to base it on supply from American owners versus demand from American owners, which would be the only place in the world where that would be done.  Someone else later from RCI gave an equally inane explanation.

Your post seems to suggest that everyone analyzes what weeks are worth based on subjective feelings of their own resort.  Horsehockey!  Some of us look at it based on places in high demand and with low supply, things like St. John, USVI, in winter season, French Riviera in August, Charleston, SC in summer, etc. and we compare that with overbuilt resorts in overbuilt areas at the other end of spectrum.  Based on numbers at the extremely hard to get locations versus the dime a dozen locations, supply and demand are NOT the factors RCI uses in assigning points lite under the new system.

There are also local markets that some of us know well, such as the OBX where I spent a number of years as an HOA board member, including three as president and had lots of interaction with the rest of the timeshare community there such as HOA leaders and managers.  When I look at RCI's numbers racket there, they value the second highest demand resort on the OBX, an oceanfront resort, lower than the lowest demand resort in the area, which is way off the beach.  Why?  The low demand resort is still in developer sales and has a tight relationship with RCI.  I had an executive with that developer tell me face to face a few years ago, when they were negotiating their RCI Points numbers some of the details of how they were playing that game.  RCI's numbers racket is as corrupt as the day is long.  Another Tugger once gave some RCI Points examples in other parts of the country of some of the corrupt numbers there.  I wish I had kept that link.

You seem to believe all of RCI's bunk without looking under the hood.  I suggest you open your eyes.






tombo said:


> If your week is lowered in value now, perhaps your week was overvalued before. I know for a fact that some of my weak traders got me things they shouldn'thave in the past. So it is rectified now. Simply sell those weeks that have poor Mf/TPU values and buy some good value cheap resale weeks that have good TPU values. You can search using the deposit calculater and buy some that you know have good TPU's in advance of owning them.
> 
> Why do owners feel they know what their weeks are worth in TPU values more than RCI?  Most owner feels their resort is great or they wouldn't have purchased there. The majority of RCI traders might not like it so much as you do.
> 
> ...


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## Carolinian (Mar 4, 2011)

RCI's claims not to have changed values have been revealed by the facts observed since the change simply not to be true.  Too many people have looked back at past trades and found the new numbers don't allow them to make them any more.

Higher than deserved values DO queer the entire system.  The recipients, especially since they tend to be at very large resorts have lots of extra undeserved points lite to spend so they take inventory that leaves less for everyone else.

To be fully transparent, RCI needs to reveal the mechanism for setting points lite numbers and the supporting data, like they have done for years (at least to the resorts) for the numbers backing up award status of resorts.  As long as they hide that information, the system is likely to remain corrupt.




Conan said:


> RCI has not so much moved the goalposts as revealed the goalposts. Unfortunately not every week in every location gets high value in the exchange marketplace (unlike that town where all the children are above average).
> 
> RCI's greatest sin, their practice of siphoning off high-value deposited weeks to their rental outlets, is not the issue here except to the extent they may be snapping up last minute availabilities.
> 
> ...


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## Conan (Mar 4, 2011)

Carolinian said:


> Too many people have looked back at past trades and found the new numbers don't allow them to make them any more.


 
My week 26 Palm Beach Shores 1-BR now gets 18 TP. (*Please* stop saying "points lite.")

Pre-changeover I traded it for 
Lawai Beach Resort, Hawaii in September (now on offer at 19-20 TP), 
Palm Springs Tennis Club in December (now on offer at 17 TP)
Paniolo Greens, Hawaii in December (now on offer at 22 TP)
Leoniki Resort, Crete in September (now on offer at 22 TP)
Massanutten in March (now on offer at 7 TP)

All very good exchanges at modest cost, and all in the same range as before (except Massanutten, where pre-changeover RCI kept the "change.") 

Speaking of the benefits of transparency, the new TP scheme allows me to see how many points I get relative to the week I choose to deposit (mine is a floating week, deeded to week 26).  It turns out I can get 26 TP for my week by reserving the President's Day week and depositing that into RCI, so I'll actually get better trades in the future by taking advantage of the new system.  Perhaps I could have done this in the old scheme, except I was not made aware of the possibility and which week to deposit even had I known would have been a matter of guesswork (and I would not have guessed "February" as the optimum choice).

So no, the goalposts did not move.


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## tombo (Mar 4, 2011)

Carolinian said:


> SFX likes my UK resort and the time period I own.  For me that and DAE are my best bets.
> 
> As to South Africa, first, I HAVE been there.  Second supply and demand in the timeshare system is global not provincial.  Some people in the US would not get on a plane and fly to London, but that does not make a London timeshare worthless.  Indeed, it has the highest demand over supply factors in the world, which is the reason that RCI's VIP system allows resort managers a bargain basement way to trade into any RCI property anywhere in the world EXCEPT London.  But London is one of the places shortchanged in Points Lite (BTW, I do not own in London).  South Africa is a very popular vacation destination for Europeans.  Indeed when I was there for three weeks, I did not run into another American the whole time but I ran into lots of tourists from many European countries.  That is why RCI's availibility tables that are published in the European version of its directory shows that South Africa has a better supply / demand curve than Florida, that is that it has more demand relative to supply based on global factors.  The whacked of points lite assigned to SA in the changeover to Points Lite was arbitrary.  One excuse given by an RCI representative to a Tugger was that they had changed the system to base it on supply from American owners versus demand from American owners, which would be the only place in the world where that would be done.  Someone else later from RCI gave an equally inane explanation.
> 
> .



Simple explanation. There are lots of SA weeks available for cheap TPU's, and no one is reserving them. Currently at 47 south african resorts there are 592 available units. for TPu's from 9 to 24. If the demand is there, why are these cheap units unreserved? Europeans can see this availability too. Why would or should a week that people won't trade 15 TPU's to get be able to get enough TPU's to get Disney or HGVC? Unlike SA weeks, DVC and HGVC weeks disappear as soon as they show up for exchange? That is demand.

Lots of Gold Crown 2 bed South Africa units just sitting there instead of TUGGERS and others jumping on them. Why is that? If 10 TPu's was actually a steal for a SA week, they would be listed on sightings with TUGGERS trying to beat other RCI customers to reserve them. No one wants them at 12 TPU's, much less 25 or 30.   Why should they be assigned more for a deposit than people are willing to pay to get the week?  They shouldn't and they aren't. They should not trade for DVC, and they can't. It is Supply and demand. 

To interject london into the equation is inserting a red herring. My comments were and still are about South Africa weeks lack of demand, and the availability shows that I am correct. If you think it is such a hot location you need to reserve some of these high demand South Africa weeks at RCI's ridiculously low TPU requirements before they are all gone.


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## tombo (Mar 4, 2011)

Carolinian said:


> There are also local markets that some of us know well, such as the OBX where I spent a number of years as an HOA board member, including three as president and had lots of interaction with the rest of the timeshare community there such as HOA leaders and managers.  When I look at RCI's numbers racket there, they value the second highest demand resort on the OBX, an oceanfront resort, lower than the lowest demand resort in the area, which is way off the beach.  Why?  The low demand resort is still in developer sales and has a tight relationship with RCI.  I had an executive with that developer tell me face to face a few years ago, when they were negotiating their RCI Points numbers some of the details of how they were playing that game.  RCI's numbers racket is as corrupt as the day is long.  Another Tugger once gave some RCI Points examples in other parts of the country of some of the corrupt numbers there.  I wish I had kept that link.
> 
> You seem to believe all of RCI's bunk without looking under the hood.  I suggest you open your eyes.



We know. You own OBX weeks and to you it is the best place in the world. We also know you hate Delta airlines.

Every comparison you have to complain about OBX being cheated. Well many of us don't want OBX. Florida is te number one tourist destination in the US, not the OBX. Many people want HHI and will drive right by the OBX to get there. You like it, good for you, but you need to realize the OBX is not a must do destination or even a dream destination like Hawaii or Aruba. Some people do not want to drive to the OBX when they have beaches as nice or nicer much closer to home.

Having said that every beach has good demand in the summer. Right now on RCI there are several August one bed room OBX weeks at 2 different resorts. One is an unrated resort and costs 19 TPU's and the other is a hospitality resort and it costs 17 TPU's. That seems pretty high considering I recently reserved a Gold Crown oceanfront Wyndham in Panama city labor day week  for 17 TPU's. I can ssure you I would rather spen 25 TPU's for this brand new resort in a 2 bed unit than 19 TPU's for ONE bed room Duck station where you have to use an alternative pool at a nearby resort. The wyndham is less than 3 years old, Moses might have been around when most of the OBX resorts were built (sarcasm). I have been to Panama City, Myrtle Beach, HHI,  and the outer banks, and I assure you the beaches at PC are prettier than any of the affore mentioned locations. 

Seems to me that RCI has valued those OBX units higher than they should be valued and undervalued the brand new Wyndham. Wyndham and Panama City are both being robbed. I need to talk to some resort mgrs and find out what deal OBX has with RCI to make them committ such a travesty of justice. Perhaps 60 minutes or 20/20 can do an investigation and get to the real reason why RCI refuses to give PC the trading power it deserves. I might write my congessman. this is an outrage!

Of course RCI doesn't care that you love the OBX and they don't care that I love the Florida panhandle. RCI  rates weeks and locations like they want based on their criteria and let us  members decide if it is worth depositing or exchanging at the values they assign. To me it is worth it, to you it is not. I am happy about everything regarding the new system. I am not happy about RCI renting deposited weeks, but that is for another thread.

I suggest you dump RCI since they refuse to give proper respect to the aging resorts on the OBX and cheat you and all other owners out of the TPU's you deserve. Surelly they must know that an aging one bed room unit with no pool should be worth 50 or more TPU's since the old resort is in OBX for goodness sake. You show RCI and take your business to SFX. But if you do take your valuable OBX weeks to SFX I hope that you only own at the Outer Banks Beach Club 2 because that is the only OBX resort that SFX will accept on trade. For wonderful  top notch resorts in such a high demand location you would think that SFX and RCI would understand and beg for those coveted weeks to be deposited. Heck be mad at SFX too. RCI doesn't give OBX units enough TPU's in your opinion, but even worse is the fact that SFX doesn't want OBX weeks at all with the exception of one OBX resort. That has to be unacceptable!!! Just show them all. Cancel RCI, SFX, II, and keep your weeks because nobody but you realizes how valuable those OBX weeks really are. I also suggest that you take off the OBX blinders as you so kindly recommended that I remove my RCI blinders.


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## Carolinian (Mar 5, 2011)

In your case, it may be that rather than a moving of the goal posts (although that might have happened to you, too), you are likely seeing the result of the huge negative change with Points Lite (it is no longer a weeks-based system, so calling it Weeks is just plain wrong) that more than counteracts any positive aspects.  Under the old system, trades were done within a band or range and now they have gone to an exact number system. Since it is almost impossible to generate fair exact numbers, using a range is simply much more fair.  If your trading power was within the band or range, then you could get anything in that band that was availible.  With an exact number system, if you are one number short, tough luck.  Trade tests on TUG at one point determined that there were six bands, and a later trade test after people noticed changes in trading showed an increase in the number of bands.  Loss of band trading and moving to an exact number system is the huge loss to members in the change, and it is heightened by the corruption in some of the numbers.  That was expected since a system that reveals the end result but not the method of attaining that number invites fraud since it creates both an incentive (to developers in sales) and an opportunity (hidden system to set numbers) for cooking the books.  The old system had no incentive for that since the numbers were not public.




Conan said:


> My week 26 Palm Beach Shores 1-BR now gets 18 TP. (*Please* stop saying "points lite.")
> 
> Pre-changeover I traded it for
> Lawai Beach Resort, Hawaii in September (now on offer at 19-20 TP),
> ...


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## Carolinian (Mar 5, 2011)

Set up a straw man, then knock it down.

I have never compared OBX to other areas in any analysis I have posted on Points Lite.  The only OBX examples I have given are between resorts WITHIN the OBX, where RCI has colluded with a developer still in sales to overpoint the lowest demand resort there.  Indeed, the points lite that would be given to my summer week there are actually reasonable and much closer to real value than those awarded to my summer south England weeks.  But that week is either used or rented, not exchanged.

My comparisions are between the really hard to get exchanges, which is an honest system based on supply and demand would be at the top and those in overbuilt areas which in an honest system based on supply and demand would be much lower.  And if you haven't figured it out yet, Orlando is one of the most overbuilt places in timesharing on earth, along with others like the Canary Islands.  Nice places, just too much timeshare for the demand.

Wyndham's numbers tend to be low quite often and the reason is simple.  They are in common ownership with RCI, so there is no danger of the developer moving to another exchange system.  Therefore they can give lower numbers to Wyndham and not worry about the developer walking.  They care about keeping the developer happy and don't give two cents about whether the member is happy or treated fairly.





tombo said:


> We know. You own OBX weeks and to you it is the best place in the world. We also know you hate Delta airlines.
> 
> Every comparison you have to complain about OBX being cheated. Well many of us don't want OBX. Florida is te number one tourist destination in the US, not the OBX. Many people want HHI and will drive right by the OBX to get there. You like it, good for you, but you need to realize the OBX is not a must do destination or even a dream destination like Hawaii or Aruba. Some people do not want to drive to the OBX when they have beaches as nice or nicer much closer to home.
> 
> ...


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## Conan (Mar 5, 2011)

Carolinian said:


> Under the old system, trades were done within a band or range and now they have gone to an exact number system. Since it is almost impossible to generate fair exact numbers, using a range is simply much more fair.


 
What can I say?  The above makes no sense to me.


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## tombo (Mar 5, 2011)

Carolinian said:


> My comparisions are between the really hard to get exchanges, which is an honest system based on supply and demand would be at the top and those in overbuilt areas which in an honest system based on supply and demand would be much lower.  And if you haven't figured it out yet, Orlando is one of the most overbuilt places in timesharing on earth,
> .



Please re-read an earlier post of mine. I took a high demand one bed one and a half bath location I own and received 35 points from RCI. I think that is a fair amount of points for a 1 bed silver crown resort which is the only ocean front resort in a high demand area, and I can only assume they based it on demand. I traded for a late JUNE week in a 3 bed 3 bath Silver Crown ORLANDO resort which only cost me 12 TPU's. I assume they gave it 12 TPU's because it is in Orlando. I don't know of any other place in Florida where you can get a late June week in a Silver Crown 3 bed 3 bath unit for less than 30 or 40 TPU's other than Orlando. They have given Orlando lower TPU's tan it would get anywhere else because it is overbuilt. Just check the various resorts and see the assigned Orlando TPU's compared to similar resorts in other locations. 

Perhaps you refuse to see the obvious, and that is that in virtually evey case the RCI TPU's assigned factor in resort rating, unit size, location, season, and demand. We discussed South Africa (they have higher TPU's than I think the should have) and they have medium to low TPU's assigned for the quality of the resorts based I assume on location, demand, and on RCI's idle unreserved SA inventory, but still lower than it would be in a high demand area. As you said OBX gets good values for the  quality of the resorts based on what we have to assume is demand. And Orlando resorts gets low TPU's overall for the quality resorts they have because as you said it is overbilt.

Is the new system perfect? Nope. Will they change TPU values in the future? Absolutelly. 
If they currently assign a resort 20 TPU's and they are snatched up as soon as they list it, they might raise it to 25 or 30 to balance supply and demand. If they list a resort for 30 TPU's and they sit there for months (like the South Africa inventory), they might lower it to 25 or 20 to move slow moving inventory. It is a new system, but I really don't know of anything they could do to make it more transparent or member friendly. JMHO.


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## Carolinian (Mar 5, 2011)

So you found 592 weeks availible in 47 South African resorts, huh?  Out of the 184 RCI resorts in that country?  And you postulate that this is some sort of glut.

Let's compare some other areas.  RCI currently has 10,293 weeks availible in the Canary Islands, 3149 in Finland, 1957 in Hungary, and 6184 in Orlando.

And since you have apparently never travelled to South Africa, you also seem unaware that the country is seasonal.  When I was in Capetown, I heard about their winters - lots of cold and wind and rain.  That is why they have some underground shopping centers.  Capetown is a great place, and quite high demand in the tourist sector in warm weather, but RCI or anyone else could not give me a week free in their winter.  Durban, on the other hand, is reasonably warm all year, although some seasons are more popular than others.  In the game park areas, you can see animals all year, but there are some times that more of them are around and those are more popular.  I would certainly expect low points lite numbers in the off seasons.




tombo said:


> Simple explanation. There are lots of SA weeks available for cheap TPU's, and no one is reserving them. Currently at 47 south african resorts there are 592 available units. for TPu's from 9 to 24. If the demand is there, why are these cheap units unreserved? Europeans can see this availability too. Why would or should a week that people won't trade 15 TPU's to get be able to get enough TPU's to get Disney or HGVC? Unlike SA weeks, DVC and HGVC weeks disappear as soon as they show up for exchange? That is demand.
> 
> Lots of Gold Crown 2 bed South Africa units just sitting there instead of TUGGERS and others jumping on them. Why is that? If 10 TPu's was actually a steal for a SA week, they would be listed on sightings with TUGGERS trying to beat other RCI customers to reserve them. No one wants them at 12 TPU's, much less 25 or 30.   Why should they be assigned more for a deposit than people are willing to pay to get the week?  They shouldn't and they aren't. They should not trade for DVC, and they can't. It is Supply and demand.
> 
> To interject london into the equation is inserting a red herring. My comments were and still are about South Africa weeks lack of demand, and the availability shows that I am correct. If you think it is such a hot location you need to reserve some of these high demand South Africa weeks at RCI's ridiculously low TPU requirements before they are all gone.


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## Carolinian (Mar 5, 2011)

Conan said:


> What can I say?  The above makes no sense to me.



Maybe you have not read some of the numerous posts by various Tuggers over the years that have discussed this.

Trading within a band or range means that various ranges of trading power numbers are established. Your specific trading power will fall into one of them. It can then trade for any week that is within that range of trading power numbers or into lower bands.  RCI reps have acknowledged what used to be called trading within a range in the old system.  Trade tests by Tuggers at one point pretty well established that there were 6 of what then came to be called bands on these boards, which are the same as what RCI reps had called ranges.  Using the same high of 60 in the new system, if those were spaced evenly, that would mean bands of 1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40, 41-50, and 51-60. So if your trading power was 35 you could get anything in that band, up to 40, or anything under that.

Trading within a band or range is more beneficial to the member than being restricted to an exact number.  Since it is hard to get exact numbers exactly right, it is also a more fair system.

Losing the ability to trade within a band or range was a bigger loss to members than anything gained in Points Lite.

But wait there is more.

In the old system, RCI always told us that each and every week was evaluated on its own as far as the trading power number given for deposit.  That is particularly important as seasons move from low to high or vice versa, as the value of weeks changes gradually and incrementally from week to week, either going up gradually or down gradually.  In the new system, if you go through all 52 weeks of the year, you will find RCI does not do this any more.  Now they have set bands for establishing trading power of deposits. Because values are averaged in a band valuation system during these times of incremental changes, it means that if you own at the high end of one of those deposit value bands, you are really getting screwed on deposit value, but if you own at the lower end, you make out like a bandit.  When they rolled out the system, for example they valued a mid-March OBX week exactly the same as the same unit in early June and that is absolute nonsense.  After I used that example several times, they did split this into two bands, but those at the high ends of both are still getting screwed, just not quite as much as they were when it was first rolled out.  The old system was much fairer is setting deposit values.  The new band valuation system is the same sort of overaveraging that plagues RCI Points and it has now been transported into the former Weeks system.

The member came out best by having their deposit valued based on the individual week and then being able to trade within a range.  That is the way the old system worked.  The new system reversed both aspects to the detriment of members.


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## tombo (Mar 5, 2011)

Once again comparing the SFX you love to the RCI you despise using my most recent exchange I will show you why SFX is not an option to replace RCI for most owners.

I deposited an independent week that SFX would not accept to RCI. That would make my week worthless for ever using to exchange for anything if I was SFX instead of RCI. However instead of SFX I used RCI and traded the week I own that SFX wouldn't take for a 3 bed room Cypress Point resort and a 2 bed room Wyndham Panama City resort with 6 TPU's left over. 

Cypress point is good enough in SFX's opinion to be an accepted SFX trader. If my week would have been acceptable to SFX (which it isn't) i could have traded for Cypress point ONLY, not Cypress Point and Wyndham PC with change left over. It would have been a one for one exchange with no trading power remaining. If I had used SFX to trade one for one for the 2 bed Wyndham I couldn't because Wyndham is not on SFX's list and neither is my deposit.

I don't have any loyalty to RCI and will gladly swap to a better company if it comes along. In fact before the change I had a lot of complaints about the secretive values assigned to weeks. Since the change the only complaint I have with RCI at all is that they rent out deposited inventory rather than exclusivelly offering it for exchange. 

Why is RCI so much better than SFX? Simple. Monday I took a week and deposited it with RCI that SFX wouldn't let me deposit with them, I traded for 2 weeks instead of the one SFX allows, and I traded for not only a week SFX accepts, but also a week not offered by SFX. I got 2 weeks in RCI for a deposit I couldn't have gotten anything anywhere for with SFX. That is a no brainer. RCI is without a doubt the better, in fact the only viable choice for most owners.


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## tombo (Mar 5, 2011)

Carolinian said:


> And since you have apparently never travelled to South Africa, you also seem unaware that the country is seasonal.  When I was in Capetown, I heard about their winters - lots of cold and wind and rain. .



That is another reason demand must be low, because of their long never ending winters. Since there is plenty of availability for April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, and January I assume those are the winter months. Since summer is apparently only February and March those must be really high demand months.


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## Carolinian (Mar 5, 2011)

tombo said:


> That is another reason demand must be low, because of their long never ending winters. Since there is plenty of availability for April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, and January I assume those are the winter months. Since summer is apparently only February and March those must be really high demand months.



Summer is the prime time on the beach, but not necessarily for the game areas. I was there in summer because I like the beach, but it turned out not to be the prime time to see animals although I was fairly fortunate in that in my drive through Kruger Park.  For different types of resorts, different weeks of the year are the prime weeks.  It's like in the US where the prime weeks of ski resorts and beach resorts happen at different times of the year.

And again, when you are looking at availibility, compare it with the other places I mentioned including Orlando!

To make your argument, I see you are now taking things out of context and applying what I said about one part, the Capetown area to the whole country, even though I pointed out the differences other places.


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## timeos2 (Mar 5, 2011)

*It's better - but you may or may not like it.*



tombo said:


> Of course RCI doesn't care that you love the OBX and they don't care that I love the Florida panhandle. RCI  rates weeks and locations like they want based on their criteria and let us  members decide if it is worth depositing or exchanging at the values they assign. To me it is worth it, to you it is not. I am happy about everything regarding the new system. I am not happy about RCI renting deposited weeks, but that is for another thread.
> 
> I suggest you dump RCI since they refuse to give proper respect to the aging resorts on the OBX and cheat you and all other owners out of the TPU's you deserve. Surelly they must know that an aging one bed room unit with no pool should be worth 50 or more TPU's since the old resort is in OBX for goodness sake. You show RCI and take your business to SFX. But if you do take your valuable OBX weeks to SFX I hope that you only own at the Outer Banks Beach Club 2 because that is the only OBX resort that SFX will accept on trade. For wonderful  top notch resorts in such a high demand location you would think that SFX and RCI would understand and beg for those coveted weeks to be deposited. Heck be mad at SFX too. RCI doesn't give OBX units enough TPU's in your opinion, but even worse is the fact that SFX doesn't want OBX weeks at all with the exception of one OBX resort. That has to be unacceptable!!! Just show them all. Cancel RCI, SFX, II, and keep your weeks because nobody but you realizes how valuable those OBX weeks really are. I also suggest that you take off the OBX blinders as you so kindly recommended that I remove my RCI blinders.



Of course RCI bases the TPU on the actual demand they have seen. To do anything else is insanity.  We may or may not agree with the numbers they arrive at but you can be sure they are using them because it represents the best chance to maximize utilization - thus income - which is why they are in business. 

Playing games beyond an extra credit or two makes no sense at all - they wold get killed with too many or total lack of requests if they stray very far from the known values within their rating system. Like it or not the TPU is their best guess of value - if it's wrong it will be adjusted. Thats the way it works. They aren't picking on any area(s) for preference or penalizing them - they are giving the value istory of use/requests support. If you don't like it don't use it. Very simple and now very open to all to see. MUCH better than the old backroom, unknown system of the past.


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## Carolinian (Mar 5, 2011)

I ignored your comments about the OBX because from my campaign experience it is was clear you were using that as bait to change the subject. I can recognize that when I see it.  However after an email from another Tugger asking why I did not respond, maybe I should.

First, I have NOT made comparisions of OBX and other areas so that is a red herring.  But to answer your comments, HHI is great for golf but not so much for its beach.  I have traded in there, am not a golfer, and thought the beach was no more than average.  If I were looking again for a trade in the general area, I would much prefer to trade into somewhere with a decent beach and right on the outskirts of an interesting historic city, either Tybee Island right on the outskirts of Savannah or Isle of Palms right on the outskirts of Charleston.  Both of those are much more difficult trades than HHI but are underpointed in the new RCI.

The key on supply and demand is not just the demand side but also the supply side, and that is the problem for places like overbuilt Orlando and overbuilt Canary Islands, both nice places but just too much timeshare.  You seem to overlook that little fact.

As to your statements on BIS Duck and its pool, they are no more factual than your comments on South Africa.  BIS Duck, in fact, has both an indoor and an outdoor pool.  It seems that I heard that one of those was recently renovated by the new management company.  As to the beach, a few years ago the famous ''Dr. Beach'' who does his annual report on the ten best beaches in the world named one of the OBX beaches as the world's top beach.  I suspect that he knows a little bit more about beaches than you do.

As to the Mississippi gulf coast, the one time I was there the beach stank, literally!  There were gobs of rotting seaweed all over the beach and in the water.  It made the beach unusable.  Oh, well, we enjoyed some good seafood and seeing President Jefferson Davis' retirement home, Beauvoir, at Biloxi.  That was some years ago, but it has put that area far down on my list of places to go back to.

Oh, and as to trading power, you mention in another post that your gulf coast 1BR gets 35 points lite from the new RCI.  That would not trade into a 1BR at my OBX resort in summer.  You would have to combine it with something else to get the extra points lite.  I have never given my summer OBX week to any exchange company and do not intend to.  Since I have worked in Europe, I either let family use it or rent it out.  It is easy to rent for a nice profit.

What is skewed though is that your gulf coast 1BR would trade into a 1BR summer week at my southern England resort with a fair amount of points lite left in change, and that does not square with supply and demand.  My UK resort and some others in the south of England are hard to trade into any time of year and especially in summer. But then again they have even underpointed Allen House, one of the hardest trades in timesharing period. I suspect that lots of the problem is that many resorts in that area, including Allen House are small sold-out resorts, so RCI does not have a developer to pander to.  The term ''sold out resort'' seems to have a sinister double meaning in the warped world of the new RCI.  But there is a work-around there.  SFX and DAE are very happy to get my southern England summer weeks.  Until recently there was no way to watch the inventory at SFX, but with RCI and DAE my summer England weeks never hit online inventory.  They were immediately snagged by ongoing searchs.  Most of the time RCI shows no weeks any time of the year availible at the resort.




tombo said:


> We know. You own OBX weeks and to you it is the best place in the world. We also know you hate Delta airlines.
> 
> Every comparison you have to complain about OBX being cheated. Well many of us don't want OBX. Florida is te number one tourist destination in the US, not the OBX. Many people want HHI and will drive right by the OBX to get there. You like it, good for you, but you need to realize the OBX is not a must do destination or even a dream destination like Hawaii or Aruba. Some people do not want to drive to the OBX when they have beaches as nice or nicer much closer to home.
> 
> ...


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## Carolinian (Mar 5, 2011)

Since RCI started renting inventory to the general public, what maximizes their profits is not always running a fair and honest exchange system.  That is a huge conflict of interest that skews everything they do.

Also one of the RCI surrogates who was on here during the rollout period of Points Lite made the very point I have often made.  He acknowledged that RCI did deals with developers for extra value, arguing that RCI came out ahead by getting new members from these developers and that justified their skewing the numbers.

When you see resorts that regularly cost less to trade into, in points lite, than the points lite RCI gives for a deposit, you know you have found a developer with an inside deal.  The Tugger that found the 1BR at Vacation VIllage at Parkway over New Years next year where they were giving 58 points lite for a deposit but at the very same time you could trade in to the very same week for 10 hit the bullseye on one such resort.  This is proof positive that RCI is playing fast and loose with its numbers.





timeos2 said:


> Of course RCI bases the TPU on the actual demand they have seen. To do anything else is insanity.  We may or may not agree with the numbers they arrive at but you can be sure they are using them because it represents the best chance to maximize utilization - thus income - which is why they are in business.
> 
> Playing games beyond an extra credit or two makes no sense at all - they wold get killed with too many or total lack of requests if they stray very far from the known values within their rating system. Like it or not the TPU is their best guess of value - if it's wrong it will be adjusted. Thats the way it works. They aren't picking on any area(s) for preference or penalizing them - they are giving the value istory of use/requests support. If you don't like it don't use it. Very simple and now very open to all to see. MUCH better than the old backroom, unknown system of the past.


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## timeos2 (Mar 5, 2011)

Carolinian said:


> Since RCI started renting inventory to the general public, what maximizes their profits is not always running a fair and honest exchange system.  That is a huge conflict of interest that skews everything they do.



Just to be clear I am 100% in agreement that the unfettered transfer of deposits MEANT BY OWNERS FOR EXCHANGE is unconscionable and should have been banned by the fantastically flawed class action lawsuit rather than blessed by it.  For that reason it is unlikely I will ever again deposit a week with RCI - I do take advantage of the often incredible deals (why shouldn't they be - they got them for virtually nothing!)  RCI offers in rentals while they exist.  Like RCI I have to do what is best for my bottom line. But there is a basic conflict in a system that purports to be an exchange venue but in reality feeds a money making activity that has negative value to the very membership they are supposed to serve.  Until that changes I can't recommend any deposits to RCI unless you are aware going in that you may be getting a raw deal and still feel you can obtain at least equal or better value out. 

But that does not change the TPU value (except that an easy to rent week may be even more valuable to RCI thus they raise the TPU given for those weeks in anticipation of a good rental fee on the other end).  As it is now out in the open rather than hidden as before at least the member has the ability to ascertain the value they will get and ecide for themselves if that makes it a good deal or not for them.  THAT is an improvement over the old way and gives members a fighting chance.  Again use it only if it benefits you at least as much as it does RCI.


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## Carolinian (Mar 6, 2011)

What is not out in the open is how RCI sets their numbers.  From many of the numbers we have seen, that system is clearly bent.  The half-way transparency they have now only creates more incentives for hanky panky in setting numbers.  If we are going to have transparency, we need FULL transparency, something Points Lite does not offer.

I agree that the class action was a flop, due to greedy and unethical lawyers selling their clients interests down the river in order to get a million dollar payday for themselves.  That is why I always have said the litigation needed to be by a state AG consumer protection lawsuit rather than a class action.




timeos2 said:


> Just to be clear I am 100% in agreement that the unfettered transfer of deposits MEANT BY OWNERS FOR EXCHANGE is unconscionable and should have been banned by the fantastically flawed class action lawsuit rather than blessed by it.  For that reason it is unlikely I will ever again deposit a week with RCI - I do take advantage of the often incredible deals (why shouldn't they be - they got them for virtually nothing!)  RCI offers in rentals while they exist.  Like RCI I have to do what is best for my bottom line. But there is a basic conflict in a system that purports to be an exchange venue but in reality feeds a money making activity that has negative value to the very membership they are supposed to serve.  Until that changes I can't recommend any deposits to RCI unless you are aware going in that you may be getting a raw deal and still feel you can obtain at least equal or better value out.
> 
> But that does not change the TPU value (except that an easy to rent week may be even more valuable to RCI thus they raise the TPU given for those weeks in anticipation of a good rental fee on the other end).  As it is now out in the open rather than hidden as before at least the member has the ability to ascertain the value they will get and ecide for themselves if that makes it a good deal or not for them.  THAT is an improvement over the old way and gives members a fighting chance.  Again use it only if it benefits you at least as much as it does RCI.


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## bogey21 (Mar 6, 2011)

Carolinian said:


> Since RCI started renting inventory to the general public, what maximizes their profits is not always running a fair and honest exchange system.  That is a huge conflict of interest that skews everything they do.



About 10 years ago when Marriott started devaluing their program by changing their rental and sales programs (among other things) I bailed on my four Marriott Weeks.  In light of what they are selling for today, that seems like it was a good call.

For similar reasons (changes that benefit them rather than me) I am going to follow the same route here; i.e. not renew my RCI Memberships when they expire.

George


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## tombo (Mar 6, 2011)

Carolinian said:


> I ignored your comments about the OBX because from my campaign experience it is was clear you were using that as bait to change the subject. I can recognize that when I see it.  However after an email asking why I did not respond, maybe I should.



To clarify, I never e-mailed you.




Carolinian said:


> The key on supply and demand is not just the demand side but also the supply side, and that is the problem for places like overbuilt Orlando and overbuilt Canary Islands, both nice places but just too much timeshare.  You seem to overlook that little fact.



Give me a break. When supply and demand is discussed, I do not overlook either. And the Canary Islands, who besides you gives a crap? Do a TUG poll and see how many people have been there, plan to go there, or even want to go there. Out of all of the locations in the world to vacation the Canary Islands have never entered my radar. In fact if there is one resort on the entire Canary slands and they need me to create demand by exchanging for it, then there is a huge oversupply of resorts on the Canary Islands. In fact I have never even read a thread one time on TUG where people were asking questions about a Canary Island resort they had traded for or were considering trading for. For some reason the Canary Islands and the UK are the most important things for you. They are you arguments as to why RCI is so bad and got it so wrong. Most TUGGERS and RCI members don't care about availability or trading power of either location.To extrapolate those feelings to others is delusional. Unlike yourself almost no one on TUG cares about the Canary islands, and few if any are so consumed with the UK. 



Carolinian said:


> As to your statements on BIS Duck and its pool, they are no more factual than your comments on South Africa.  BIS Duck, in fact, has both an indoor and an outdoor pool.  It seems that I heard that one of those was recently renovated by the new management company.  As to the beach, a few years ago the famous ''Dr. Beach'' who does his annual report on the ten best beaches in the world named one of the OBX beaches as the world's top beach.  I suspect that he knows a little bit more about beaches than you do.



Dr Beach does a top 10 every year and changes it up. The Gulf coast beaches have won NUMEROUS times through the years. Siests Beach (gulf coast beach) is number one on the list this year,Caladesi (Gulf coast) number one 2008, etc. In fact there are at least one and usually 2 or 3 Gulf coast beaches in the top 10 every year with one or zero OBX beaches listed. If the OBX and the Gulf coast were a few hours drive from each other, the OBX would see a drastic loss of tourists. Most unbiased travellers would prefer the soft white sand and the clear turquoise colored water of the Gulf to the brown sand and brown water on the Atlantic side.

FYI: Dr Beach resides in North Carolina. Bias and local peer pressure should be factored in when he chooses a home state beach. I am sure he has a special place in his heart for his home state's beaches.



Carolinian said:


> As to the Mississippi gulf coast, the one time I was there the beach stank, literally!  There were gobs of rotting seaweed all over the beach and in the water.  It made the beach unusable.  Oh, well, we enjoyed some good seafood and seeing President Jefferson Davis' retirement home, Beauvoir, at Biloxi.  That was some years ago, but it has put that area far down on my list of places to go back to.



Another red herring. I said Mississippi beaches are less than 3 hours from my home yet I drive 7 hours to the panhandle to vacation. Find one place  I bragged about beaches in my home state. You on the other hand only brag about the beaches where you live. Bias?



Carolinian said:


> Oh, and as to trading power, you mention in another post that your gulf coast 1BR gets 35 points lite from the new RCI.  That would not trade into a 1BR at my OBX resort in summer.  You would have to combine it with something else to get the extra points lite.  I have never given my summer OBX week to any exchange company and do not intend to.  Since I have worked in Europe, I either let family use it or rent it out.  It is easy to rent for a nice profit.



You say you don't bring up OBX trading power etc, yet in every thread you bring up demand, supply, how much OBX resorts are worth resale, how much they rent for, etc. UK, London, the OBX, and Delta are obsessions in your threads. Only Delta has yet to rear it's head in this discussion.



Carolinian said:


> What is skewed though is that your gulf coast 1BR would trade into a 1BR summer week at my southern England resort with a fair amount of points lite left in change, and that does not square with supply and demand.  My UK resort and some others in the south of England are hard to trade into any time of year and especially in summer. But then again they have even underpointed Allen House, one of the hardest trades in timesharing period. I suspect that lots of the problem is that many resorts in that area, including Allen House are small sold-out resorts, so RCI does not have a developer to pander to.  The term ''sold out resort'' seems to have a sinister double meaning in the warped world of the new RCI.  But there is a work-around there.  SFX and DAE are very happy to get my southern England summer weeks.  Until recently there was no way to watch the inventory at SFX, but with RCI and DAE my summer England weeks never hit online inventory.  They were immediately snagged by ongoing searchs.  Most of the time RCI shows no weeks any time of the year availible at the resort.



Most of the TUG members do not trade for Europe or London. I am glad you have a niche that you are so interested in but as I said if RCI dropped the Canary islands and the UK tomorrow it will not change my trades at all, nor would it change the trades or travel plans of the majority of RCI members or TUGGERS.

 I am not alone. The Europe forum is one of the smallest with threads on TUG where few people read, discuss or respond. Florida, Ski resorts in the western US, California, Hawaii, Mexico, Caribbean, that is where most of the travel, exchanges, interest, and discussions revolve around. I might go to England before I die, but if I don't it won't bother me. I will go to Hawaii again, Aruba again, St Maarten again, St Johns hopefully, Alaska, Australia hopefully, but England, France , Europe in general is not a big deal to me. In fact I could have gone to Paris this year on a company trip (next month) for a week but declined.

 I don't expect everyone to base their feelings on RCI on availability or trading power Florida or southeast mountains just because those areas are of interest to me personally, but a lot more RCI exchanges are done each year with Florida than any other state and more exchanges are made to Florida than most if not all European countries through RCI. 

If you want to talk timeshare exchange supply and demand, Florida is the RCI benchmark. UK and the Canary Islands are a very small unimportant niche market. If RCI keeps Florida and dumps the UK and the Canary islands, myself and the majority of RCI members would not quit RCI. If they dumped Florida most of the members would leave RCI and the company would cease to exist. That is supply and demand!


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## Carolinian (Mar 6, 2011)

tombo said:


> To clarify, I never e-mailed you.



Another red herring!  I never said YOU did.  It was a Tugger who owns there.


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## Carolinian (Mar 6, 2011)

tombo said:


> You say you don't bring up OBX trading power etc, yet in every thread you bring up demand, supply, how much OBX resorts are worth resale, how much they rent for, etc. UK, London, the OBX, and Delta are obsessions in your threads. Only Delta has yet to rear it's head in this discussion.



My comparisions on Points Lite issues that deal with the OBX have strictly been between different OBX resorts, not comparing it with anywhere else, until I compared it above with your precious week.  As to the rental and resale market, it is something I am familiar with and have therefore posted on threads on those subjects.  My resale information is facts straight off the Dare County website.  As to airlines, I have posted on timeshare boards recently on CO, AA, BMI, UA, and others.

London is hardly an ''obsession''.  Like Paris, I have been there so many times, I don't know if I personally would care to spend a whole week there.  My wife has not yet seen it, so for that reason, maybe.  But the fact is that it is the hardest trade in timeshare, so much so that it is the only place that RCI does not allow timeshare HOA board members and managers to trade into through the VIP program.  Do you even know what the VIP program is?


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## Carolinian (Mar 6, 2011)

Wow! What set you off on the Canary Islands?  It is merely another example of an overbuilt place like Orlando.  Maybe your sensibilities would have been better served if I had used Branson, Williamsburg, or Massanutten.

And I hardly think Tuggers are as provincial as you make them out to be!  Look at the top tourist destinations in the world and on that list you are going to find France, the UK, and South Africa whether you like it or not.

Like some of your other ''facts'' you obviously have not done a site search on Canary Islands. Personally I have not been there yet, but as I am running out of places I haven't been here in Europe, I am planning a trip there this Fall.  It was not at the top of my list either.

But then I guess, for some, kitsch Europe at Epcot is as close as they get to the real thing.  Sad.  And I would make the same comparision about kitsch Africa at Animal Kingdom compared to a drive through Kruger Park.

In fact, in looking at RCI's demand for Europe inventory, you are totally backward in your thinking.  RCI has a policy to hold back some of the better European inventory for its European members so that it won't be all gobbled up by Americans.  That clearly shows which direction the supply / demand curve runs.  A few years ago, they even gave Europeans 2 for 1 credits if they would deposit their European week and take their exchange in North America.





tombo said:


> Give me a break. When supply and demand is discussed, I do not overlook either. And the Canary Islands, who besides you gives a crap? Do a TUG poll and see how many people have been there, plan to go there, or even want to go there. Out of all of the locations in the world to vacation the Canary Islands have never entered my radar. In fact if there is one resort on the entire Canary slands and they need me to create demand by exchanging for it, then there is a huge oversupply of resorts on the Canary Islands. In fact I have never even read a thread one time on TUG where people were asking questions about a Canary Island resort they had traded for or were considering trading for. For some reason the Canary Islands and the UK are the most important things for you. They are you arguments as to why RCI is so bad and got it so wrong. Most TUGGERS and RCI members don't care about availability or trading power of either location.To extrapolate those feelings to others is delusional. Unlike yourself almost no one on TUG cares about the Canary islands, and few if any are so consumed with the UK.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## Carolinian (Mar 6, 2011)

Well, the reason you can only ''assume'' is because RCI plays hide the cheese with their methodology of compiling their numbers racket.  For the system to be transparent, that has to be transparent but it is not.

Personally, my own comparisions of the fairness of the numbers is based on looking at places that I am aware from my own searchs are darned difficult to trade into, some seasonally and some any time of the year.  Often that information was confirmed by Bootleg the RCI employee who used to post regularly here and helped out many Tuggers.

Lets start on one side with the resort that Bootleg told us regularly had the highest oversupply of any resort in the entire RCI system, Vacation Village at Parkway, an overbuilt mega resort in overbuilt Orlando.  A Tugger mentioned some time back that her 2BR week 6 there, a time when children are in school rather than able to visit the mouse, netted a total of 45 points lite if deposited as two sides of a lockoff and then recombined.  I have just checked the deposit calculator and that is still the case.

Lets compare that to what they give for a 2BR in some of those ultra high demand resorts in high season:

St. Johns, USVI: Sunset Ridge 2BR week 6, 23 points lite
Bermuda: St. Georges Club, 2BR week 30, 33 points lite
Charleston, SC: Church Street Inn, 2BR week 30, 31 points lite
Savannah / Tybee Island, GA: Tybrissa, 2BR week 30, 28 points lite
Nice, France / French Riviera: Residence Massena, 2BR week 30, 42 points lite
France: Chateau de Maulmont, 2BR week 30, 22 points lite
Venice, Italy: Perle Veneziane, 2BR week 30, 33 points lite
England: Stouts Hill, 2BR week 30, 35 points lite
England: Broome Park, 2BR, week 30, 29 points lite

And a nice, although not top week in the hardest place to trade into in the world:
London: Allen House, 2BR week 13, 44 points lite.

A dime a dozen week at a dime a dozen resort in overbuilt Orlando and it is given more points lite than 2BR weeks in these places that have always been extremely difficult to trade into, some during any time of the year.  That is just obscene and clearly shows that Points Lite is NOT based on supply and demand.

Oh, and if one has only a 1BR week in Monaco on the French Riviera for week 30, that is 23 points lite at Residence le Castel.





tombo said:


> Please re-read an earlier post of mine. I took a high demand one bed one and a half bath location I own and received 35 points from RCI. I think that is a fair amount of points for a 1 bed silver crown resort which is the only ocean front resort in a high demand area, and I can only assume they based it on demand. I traded for a late JUNE week in a 3 bed 3 bath Silver Crown ORLANDO resort which only cost me 12 TPU's. I assume they gave it 12 TPU's because it is in Orlando. I don't know of any other place in Florida where you can get a late June week in a Silver Crown 3 bed 3 bath unit for less than 30 or 40 TPU's other than Orlando. They have given Orlando lower TPU's tan it would get anywhere else because it is overbuilt. Just check the various resorts and see the assigned Orlando TPU's compared to similar resorts in other locations.
> 
> Perhaps you refuse to see the obvious, and that is that in virtually evey case the RCI TPU's assigned factor in resort rating, unit size, location, season, and demand. We discussed South Africa (they have higher TPU's than I think the should have) and they have medium to low TPU's assigned for the quality of the resorts based I assume on location, demand, and on RCI's idle unreserved SA inventory, but still lower than it would be in a high demand area. As you said OBX gets good values for the  quality of the resorts based on what we have to assume is demand. And Orlando resorts gets low TPU's overall for the quality resorts they have because as you said it is overbilt.
> 
> ...


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## timeos2 (Mar 6, 2011)

Carolinian said:


> Lets compare that to what they give for a 2BR in some of those ultra high demand resorts in high season:
> 
> St. Johns, USVI: Sunset Ridge 2BR week 6, 23 points lite
> Bermuda: St. Georges Club, 2BR week 30, 33 points lite
> ...



And as Tombo mentioned for the vast majority of trades made/desired not one of those locations / resorts holds any interest for me and many others. Maybe, once, just to see a location, I might consider a few days but never a week commitment to any of those places. But US locations have & will continue to be of great interest.  

As for the "transparency" stuff THAT is the true red herring.  Poll folks and I'll bet at least 90 of 100 people and they will say having the values shown is a big improvement and they could care less how the numbers came about - what matters is knowing the values being offered/required.  Like the far off locales how the values are created just doesn't matter to most US RCI members.


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## tombo (Mar 6, 2011)

Carolinian said:


> Well, the reason you can only ''assume'' is because RCI plays hide the cheese with their methodology of compiling their numbers racket.  For the system to be transparent, that has to be transparent but it is not.
> 
> Personally, my own comparisions of the fairness of the numbers is based on looking at places that I am aware from my own searchs are darned difficult to trade into, some seasonally and some any time of the year.  Often that information was confirmed by Bootleg the RCI employee who used to post regularly here and helped out many Tuggers.
> 
> ...



Well let's look closer at these resorts you feel are being shortchanged by RCI. Many of the RCI members who have stayed at these locations and reviewed them are less than thrilled with the resorts, their locations, and their amenities. Most of the resorts can't even provide the minimum quality of experience required to be awarded any RCI rating, much less Gold Crown status. The high demand for many of these is location, not the resort itself. 



Carolinian said:


> St. Johns, USVI: Sunset Ridge 2BR week 6, 23 points lite



There are 3 weeks available for 24 to 26 points. That is because St Johns has almost no resorts on the Island, not because of the resort or it's actual location on St John's island. It is an UNRATED RCI resort which is way up on top of a hill. No beach access, almost no amenities. RCI reviews only rate it a 3 out of 5. Your example show supply and demand.If this resort was in Orlando it would get less than 10 TPU's and no one would resrve it. Because it is on St John's it receives 26 TPU's.



Carolinian said:


> Bermuda: St. Georges Club, 2BR week 30, 33 points lite



Another UNRATED resort that get far too many TPU's for the resort itself and it's amenities, but instead receives a lot of TPU's based on low supply. The resort has a private beach ONE MILE AWAY. If there were a lot of resorts on Bermuda oceanfront the demand would fall and sowouldtheir TPU's. 


Carolinian said:


> Charleston, SC: Church Street Inn, 2BR week 30, 31 points lite


 A nice resort in a great location where there are only 2 resorts. A one bed unit where there is no pool, no free parking, virtually no amenities, yet it gets 30 to 31 points because it and Lodge Alley Inn are the only 2 RCI resorts in Charleston. High TPU due to supply and demand.


Carolinian said:


> Savannah / Tybee Island, GA: Tybrissa, 2BR week 30, 28 points lite


 A hospitality rated resort which get very good TPU's because it is the only RCI resort in the TybeeIsland/Savannah area. It would receive a lot more if it was not so close to HHI IMO, but the large supply of inventory on HHI hurts it. People are more than happy to visit Savannah from a HHI home base, and HHI has much more demand than Tybee Island (which many people have never even heard of). 28 points for an older hospitality rated resort is very good when you consider that I reserved a GOLD CROWN brand new Ocean front Labor Day week in Panama City for 17 TPU's. The PC resort is much newere, much nicer, higher rated, and it has a lot more amenities, but it gets less TPU's based on SUPPLY AND DEMAND. Your own examples show this time and time again!



Carolinian said:


> Nice, France / French Riviera: Residence Massena, 2BR week 30, 42 points lite


 Another UNRATED RESORT. You are showing resorts with high TPU's that don't even earn hospitality awards to show they are getting cheated? If not for high area demand and low area supply these would be 10 to 15 TPU resorts. Read the reviews. Exchanger complain about the rooms being small,no toaster, no soap,noisy,views of the street, no amenities, jeez the ONLY POSITIVE  espoused by exchangers for this resort is it's LOCATION. One reviewer said they had clean sheets in the room but had to make the bed up themselves when they arrived. I think I would be very mad to stay at a resort like this for 10 TPU's no matter how nice the location is.


Carolinian said:


> France: Chateau de Maulmont, 2BR week 30, 22 points lite


 Couldn't even find it in RCI


Carolinian said:


> Venice, Italy: Perle Veneziane, 2BR week 30, 33 points lite


 Yet another UNRATED resort. On site amenities listed-ZERO. Apts are spread outthroughout the city. The review said you have to check in-out at the exact time the resort tells you so they can march you to your unit. You meet them at the check out time the resort chooses and if you are not there you lose your 150 Euro deposit. Sounds lovely.


Carolinian said:


> England: Stouts Hill, 2BR week 30, 35 points lite


  Finally a RATED resort. A gold Crown with good reviews. This is located in a small villafe in the countryside so the demand might not be great for this area. UK has over 1000 resorts and I am not familiar with popular locations. 30 to 35 points for a Gold Crown resort in a quiet country setting seems reasonable.



Carolinian said:


> England: Broome Park, 2BR, week 30, 29 points lite


 Another Gold Crown with good reviews. 29 points doesn't seem bad. It is a gold crown resort on a Golf Course near some nice tourist areas. You can reserve hundreds of Gold Crown resorts on golf courses in the US for much less.



Carolinian said:


> And a nice, although not top week in the hardest place to trade into in the world:
> London: Allen House, 2BR week 13, 44 points lite.



There are over 1000 resorts in the small UK/Ireland area. Seems like overbuilding to me. 

None of your examples show that RCI ignores supply and demand, they help prove that they do base their values on supply and demand. Non rated resorts with no amenities and bad reviews are getting 30 or more TPU's. If not for their hard to get locations they would bet almost no RCI points.

 Please go to RCI if you are still a member and read the reviews of some of the locations you listed. I am kind of shocked some of them reqire so many TPU's even though they are located in high demand areas. In fact I think many exchangers would be upset to stay at some of those places for 5 TPU's. If I checked in and had to make my own bed I know I would.





Carolinian said:


> A dime a dozen week at a dime a dozen resort in overbuilt Orlando and it is given more points lite than 2BR weeks in these places that have always been extremely difficult to trade into, some during any time of the year.  That is just obscene and clearly shows that Points Lite is NOT based on supply and demand.
> 
> Oh, and if one has only a 1BR week in Monaco on the French Riviera for week 30, that is 23 points lite at Residence le Castel.



Vacation Village granted is a resort that baffles me.They get an obscene number of points in RCI points and what is IMO wayy too many TPU's in weeks.On this resort we are in agreement, but this resort is an anomoly, not the typical TPU assignment for Orlando resorts. 

Arguably the most in demand resorts in all of RCI are the DVC resorts. Disney is not my cup of tea and I don't even go to WDW when I am in Orlando personally, but as far as demand I don't know of another resort that gets TUGGERS so excited when there is a bulk deposit. You are not a Disney fan and neither am I, but there is a huge number of people that are and they drive the demand for the DVC resorts and Orlando in general.

In the last 2 weeks you could reserve all of the DVC 1 and 2 bed units you wanted for 25 TPU's. Post a sighting for any of your above resorts and see if you get the responses and exchange frenzy that occurs when DVC bulk deposits some of their inventory. It is the king for demand, and summer weeks in 2 bed units are only 25 TPU's. If DVC 2 bed units only require 25 TPU's, then the list of TPU's for your above resorts all seem too high. Of course the demand for DVC is higher than for your listed resorts, but the supply is also there at DVC and  many other area resorts. This allows your no rated resorts to trade for the luxurious, plush, amenity loaded Gold Crown DVC resorts and get change back.

The examples you gave show definetivelly that RCI has to account for supply and demand when assigning TPU points, otherwise those resorts that can't even get awarded a Hospitality rating would never get more TPU's than some of the nicest Gold Crown resorts there are anywhere in the world.


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## timeos2 (Mar 6, 2011)

*More insight*



tombo said:


> The examples you gave show definetivelly that RCI has to account for supply and demand when assigning TPU points, otherwise these resorts that can't even get awarded a Hospitality rating would never get more TPU's than some of the nicest Gold Crown resorts there are anywhere in the world.



While no one will ever change Carolinian's viewpoint as usual your observation is spot on.  Of course RCI uses supply/demand to establish the trade values - that we don't 100% agree is a sign of "cooked books" as much as our lack of the total picture they have to balance. 

At least we now know what those values are and that alone has made the fatally flawed weeks model usable again. If it weren't for the siphoning of inventory to rentals it might be the best system out there. As it is it remains third to the best of the large multi-resort systems such as Wyndham, RCI Points and probably tied with SFX for those resorts that are accepted by them.


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## Carolinian (Mar 6, 2011)

We have had threads on this site as well as on other timeshare sites as well as a poll on The TimeshareBeat on the location vs. award status thing, and award status ALWAYS comes way down in second place.  You seem to be one of the minority which put it first.  Timeshare is like other aspects of real estate in that the three important factors are location, location, and location.  For a beach area resort, that means with most people a resort on the beach will have more demand than one at which you have to drive to the beach, regardless of award status.  For a ski area, a ski-in, ski-out resort will beat one where you have to drive to the slopes.  For a major city resort, one in the center of the tourist area will beat one on the outskirts.

The real test is availibility.  These places virtually never show up online at these times and some of them never seem to.  St. John is the most desirable of the Virgin Islands, and is the hardest trade in the Caribbean when that is factored in with tiny supply.  According to Bootleg, who with access to RCI's computers should know, Charleston is the hardest to trade into area on the east coast and Savannah / Tybee Island is not far behind.  French Riviera in August?  We are talking about the height of the season in one of the most fashionable beach areas in the world.

You can't seem to see the forest for the trees.  You are so hung up on award status you seem to ignore location and supply, both of which are far more important factors.  Award status is only one driver of demand and only for a minority of timesharers.

Do you realize what it is that actually goes into setting your ballyhooed award status?  At least that is one area where RCI is transparent, unlike setting points lite numbers.  When I was on my timeshare HOA BOD, I sent a copy of the RCI standards to Steve Nelson at TUG who scanned them in and posted the whole brochure in the Advice section.  I think the link is now broken to where he posted in.  For Hospitality, it requires meeting numerical targets in two categories from the resort reportcards, Resort Hospitality and Check-In / Check-Out.  For Silver Crown, a resort has to meet numerical targers in five categories from those report cards; Resort Hospitality, Check-In / CHeck-out, Resort Maintenance, Unit Maintenance, and Housekeeping.  That is it.  So if a resort is friendly with exchangers, efficient in checking in and out, keeps up its maintenance and housekeeping, then it gets to be Silver Crown.  It really doesn't have a darn thing to do with amenities or being new or fancy.  For Gold Crown, a resort has to meet slightly higher numeric targets on the same five categories plus be able to check off enough boxes on a mix and match list of extras.  Those are not that difficult.  Since our resort was already above GC targets in 2 categories and close on a third, I went through the list to see how easy it would be to meet those extras, and found that it would not be terribly difficult for us if we chose to go that route.  The resort report card categories of unit amenities, resort amenities, and unit quality are NOT part of the standards for either Silver Crown or Gold Crown.  Sorry to burst your bubble, but award status is not what some of you hype it up to be.  Actually, when I was first elected to my HOA BOD, the Unit Quality category was part of the standards for both GC and what was then called Resort of International Distinction (now Silver Crown) but it has been some years since that category was dropped from both by RCI.

 Stouts Hill is the second to the last resort you mention.  It happens to be in the Cotswolds, a very popular tourist area in England, is quite small, and is the only timeshare in the Cotswolds.  The other, Broome Park, the one on the golf course, is one of two small timeshares in that very popular tourist area near Canterbury and Dover.  The golf course doesn't hurt but is not its primary draw.  It is also in a Grade I listed manor house from, as I recall, the 16th century.

The difference, is that one is not going to have any difficulty at all trading into Orlando in February or indeed into VV at Parkway in February, but it is an extreme rarity to find the French Riviera in August or St. John in winter or London any time, etc.

The resort with units scattered around its historic district was in Venice.  Apparently you have little appreciation of that beautiful, historic city which is a major tourist attraction where accomodations are sky high.  Anyone familar with Venice, I am sure, is rolling their eyes at your put down if they recognized what you were talking about.  .

Then there is Chateau de Maulmont, a historic chateau full of character that once belonged to a member of the French royal family.  The ambiance of a resort like that or others in historic chateaux, castles, and manor houses will always triumph anything in a modern building.  It is still in RCI.  My directory is at the office or I would cite the resort number.

A good example of how location trumps award status comes from the OBX.  For a period the resort farthest from the beach was the only GC in the area (it is now Hospitality as I recall), but on the rental market with the local timeshare specialist broker, it was the hardest to rent.  Owners there would set rental prices cheaper than the unrated resorts directly on the beach, but could not rent their weeks unless everything at those oceanfront unrated resorts was already rented.  Having award status did not mean doodly squat compared to location.  People going to a beach area understandably want to be ON the beach if they can.

1,000 timeshare ''resorts'' in the UK/Ireland?????  I guess I can't blame you for falling for RCI's flim flam on that one. Almost all of these are private cottages that may give a week or two a year, usually in deep off season to RCI for exchange.  At least DAE on its online directory tells you which are timeshare resorts and which are private cottages and at least DAE seems to get the cottage inventory at times one would want to go.  RCI tries to make you think those cottages are resorts.  For someone like yourself with a hangup on award status and bells and whistles, you would be in for a rude awakening if you traded into one of them!  When I can get to my directory at the office, I can tell you the number of actual resorts in the British Isles.  Here is a post on another site with a perspective on some of those UK ''resorts'':  http://www.timeshareforums.com/foru...e-out-how-work-new-rci-system.html#post432267

But then again, you would probably be happier with a Gold Crown in the middle of a corn field in Kansas than to be in one of these resorts in St. John or Bermuda or the French Riviera at prime time.  To each his own.






tombo said:


> Well let's look closer at these resorts you feel are being shortchanged by RCI. Many of the RCI members who have stayed at these locations and reviewed them are less than thrilled with the resorts, their locations, and their amenities. Most of the resorts can't even provide the minimum quality of experience required to be awarded any RCI rating, much less Gold Crown status. The high demand for many of these is location, not the resort itself.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## rickandcindy23 (Mar 6, 2011)

I am loving RCI again, so I won't be dropping out.  RCI seems to have ironed out some of the annoying trading power issues.  I know it's not better for everyone, and I can empathize with you, because RCI has hurt us more than once with their changes.  

The Points Lite numbers (TPU's) make no sense to me, either, I must admit.  I don't understand why my Colorado summer weeks couldn't see a single Disney week after 5/30/2009, then just before the changeover to the Points Lite, I could see the Disneys--all of them.  After the change, the values of the Disneys were 16-25 points for DVC's, and I could see every one with the 25 points Val Chatelle is worth in summer.  I couldn't see Bonnet Creek two-bedrooms with Val Chatelle, and now I can get TWO Bonnet Creek off-season, when we go, with one Val Chatelle.  I am very happy.  

I don't know of many people who are unhappy with RCI right now.  But, knock on wood, it could change at any time, and I will be lettin' y'all know what I think when it happens again, if'n it does.  

I actually have an inside scoop on possible future changes back to the old week-for-a-week system, because this transparency thing was just the result of that lawsuit.  People wanted to see what their weeks were actually worth, and then it goes back to secretive again after three years.  Yep, that's what I heard.  Could be just a rumor.


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## tombo (Mar 6, 2011)

Carolinian said:


> And I hardly think Tuggers are as provincial as you make them out to be!  Look at the top tourist destinations in the world and on that list you are going to find France, the UK, and South Africa whether you like it or not.



 For countries who have the most international tourist arrivals Wikipedia lists France as number one, the US is number 2, UK is 6th, and South Africa doesn't make the top 10 even though they have all those european travellers beating down the doors to get there.

When counting monetary receipts the US is number one, Spain number 2 , France number 3, UK 7th, and once again South Africa is nowhere in sight.

The biggest spenders are Grmans number one, US number 2 , UK number 3, france is 5th.

Top 10 most visited cities by estimated number of international visitors by selected year 

Paris  France 14.8 million 2009 (Excluding extra-muros visitors)[14] 
London  United Kingdom 14.1 million 2009[15] 
New York City  United States 8.7 million 2009




To put that in perspective compare overall tourists to just international tourists. France is number one for FOREIGN TOURISTS. The US has a built in tourist population of over 300 million which do not count on that chart. When you count total numbers of visitors the US cities trounce those european destinations.

 orlando:
 The number of visitors totaled 45.3 million in recession-scarred 2009, down 7.3% from 48.9 million 2008 and down 11% from a record 51 million guests in 2006, the Orlando/Orange County Convention & Visitors Bureau estimates. 

New York:
The number of visitors to New York dipped 3.9% in 2009 from 2008, when the city saw a record 47.1 million tourists, according to NYC & Co.

Vegas:
After 39.1 million visitors came to Vegas in 2007, visitor numbers dropped to 37.4 million in 2008 and 36.3 million last year


Paris receives around 27m tourists per year. 60% of visitors come from outside France, and about 1/3 of these are British or American.

London is a popular detination for tourists attracting 27 millon overnight-stay visitors every year.


If you count tourists as Interantional as many top lists do, france is number one. Since the US has 300 million residents when 30 million people drive to Orlando they don't show up on a lot of the lists. When you count total number of tourists Paris, London, and most other European  locations are not even close to New York, Vegas, Orlando, Los Angeles, and many other US cities.

Oh and not to forget South Africa:
By 2004, international arrivals to South Africa had more than doubled to 6.7-million. And in 2007 a total of 9.07-million foreigners visited South Africa - an 8.3% increase over 2006 - as the country broke its annual tourist arrivals record for the third year running.


9 million visitors to the entire country of South Africa in 2007 vs  48.9 million visitors to Orlando (which is not even the top tourist destination city in the US). No matter which way you count tourists, South Africe didn't make any top 10 tourist destination list, whether you like it or not.


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## Carolinian (Mar 6, 2011)

The changes that hurt members were the change to exact numbers instead of trading within a band or range and deposit valuation going the other direction.  When too many members do not understand these issues, they are behind much of the perception that trade power has been whacked, and for that matter they are behind the reality that trade power has been whacked for many.  Now if someone had a week positioned at the low end of one of the new valuation grids for deposits and was at the top of their trading range in the old system, then they would undoubtedly gain trading power from the change, as they would gain from the overaveraging on deposit values and they would not lose anything in the change to exact numbers if they were at the top of their old grid anyway.

I think the largest group of unhappy people right now, at least from what I hear from a resort manager, is the off season owners who bought in reliance on RCI's representations on the 45-day window.  This change has effectively ended the last vestiges of the 45-day window, and made it obvioius that this is the case, so resorts are hearing from those folks.  Of course, I don't think that there are many Tuggers who own off season to trade in the 45 day window, but there are lots of them out there on HOA member lists and that is going to be a financial headache for HOA's thanks to RCI.  I hear also that resorts are getting a lesser number of complaints from shoulder season owners, and having looked at the new system of banded valuations at deposit, I suspect that those are mainly people at the high end of the spring and fall bands who lose value from the overaveraging inherent in those valuation bands.

If they would bring back exchanging within bands or ranges and also valuation by individual weeks, then I would be very happy if the old system came back.  However, if RCI makes changes, it will probably be to the worst of both worlds.





rickandcindy23 said:


> I am loving RCI again, so I won't be dropping out.  RCI seems to have ironed out some of the annoying trading power issues.  I know it's not better for everyone, and I can empathize with you, because RCI has hurt us more than once with their changes.
> 
> The Points Lite numbers (TPU's) make no sense to me, either, I must admit.  I don't understand why my Colorado summer weeks couldn't see a single Disney week after 5/30/2009, then just before the changeover to the Points Lite, I could see the Disneys--all of them.  After the change, the values of the Disneys were 16-25 points for DVC's, and I could see every one with the 25 points Val Chatelle is worth in summer.  I couldn't see Bonnet Creek two-bedrooms with Val Chatelle, and now I can get TWO Bonnet Creek off-season, when we go, with one Val Chatelle.  I am very happy.
> 
> ...


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## tombo (Mar 6, 2011)

Carolinian said:


> We have had threads on this site as well as on other timeshare sites as well as a poll on The TimeshareBeat on the location vs. award status thing, and award status ALWAYS comes way down in second place.  You seem to be one of the minority which put it first.  Timeshare is like other aspects of real estate in that the three important factors are location, location, and location.  For a beach area resort, that means with most people a resort on the beach will have more demand than one at which you have to drive to the beach, regardless of award status.  For a ski area, a ski-in, ski-out resort will beat one where you have to drive to the slopes.  For a major city resort, one in the center of the tourist area will beat one on the outskirts.



You are twisting my words. I said the poor quality resorts got good trading values because of their locations and please post a quote where I said anything else. I would rather stay in a non rated ocean front resort than a gold crown a short drive from the beach myself, but if the Gold Crown is next door to the non rated resort I would almost always choose the Gold Crown. However if the non rated resort is a dump I might choose the gold crown resort away from the beach or just choose a different destination.



Carolinian said:


> The real test is availibility.  These places virtually never show up online at these times and some of them never seem to.  St. John is the most desirable of the Virgin Islands, and is the hardest trade in the Caribbean when that is factored in with tiny supply.  According to Bootleg, who with access to RCI's computers should know, Charleston is the hardest to trade into area on the east coast and Savannah / Tybee Island is not far behind.  French Riviera in August?  We are talking about the height of the season in one of the most fashionable beach areas in the world.


I might stay at the St John resort because it is all I could get on St John's island and I wanted that destination, but since the resort is situated a long distance from the beach I might just choose another Island to be ocean front. if I did stay there it would be because I could not find anything else on St Johns and felt like the island was worth the lesser accomodations.



Carolinian said:


> Do you realize what it is that actually goes into setting your ballyhooed award status?  .   Sorry to burst your bubble, but award status is not what some of you hype it up to be.



I too have been a board member. The details of what is required by RCI I have read before as a board member and the requirements change from year to year. Your customer reviews affect your rating, yes they do. Your amenities, your furnishings, your staff, many things affect them but as you said RCI will tell you what you need to do to make the next level.  The resort where I was on the board lost Silver crown status. We talked with RCI, found out what we needed to do to regain that staus, and did what was needed to regain it. It was important to us as a resort and to the owners at the resort to not lose that status.

Your non rated resorts you listed either don't have the facilities to qualify for an award. don't have the desire to work hard enough to acheive an award level, or some of both. if they don't care enough to work hard to receive an award, how hard will they work for their guests? I assume just as hard as they did for the award. If they do not have the facilities or amenities required to acheive an award,that must be factored into my decision on whether I want to stay there or not. I have stayed at numerous non rated resorts I enjoyed thoroughly, but I do read reviews closer on non rated resorts to try and figure out why they have not acheived any rating status.

I look at award status as one factor along with location, pictures of the resort, and customer reviews. I have never stayed in a poorly kept run down crappy Gold crown or Silver crown resort. I have never stayed in a Gold or Silver crown resort that I would not stay in again. I have stayed in several non rated resorts that I would absolutelly not stay in again. 

As I said one of the factors I use to determine where to stay is customer reviews. Please read some of the reviews for the resorts you listed. No glowing remarks. No reviewers who can't wait to stay there again. Simply posts by people who said the resorts were ok, in a good location, clean. Manty reviewers said things like well there is so mch to do in the area that you won't be in the room much anyway. 



Carolinian said:


> Stouts Hill is the second to the last resort you mention.  It happens to be in the Cotswolds, a very popular tourist area in England, is quite small, and is the only timeshare in the Cotswolds.  The other, Broome Park, the one on the golf course, is one of two small timeshares in that very popular tourist area near Canterbury and Dover.  The golf course doesn't hurt but is not its primary draw.  It is also in a Grade I listed manor house from, as I recall, the 16th century.


These 2 resorts were Gold crown and not surprisingly had great customer reviews. What a not at all surprising correllation between awards and reviews. You act like it doesn't matter, but not one glowing 5 star review for any of the unrated resorts you listed, yet almost universal 4 to 5 star revieews for the only two gold crown resorts you listed. Non rated resorts get 3 stars out of 5, Gold crown gets 4.5 to 5 out of 5. Yes the top resorts as rated by RCI are almost always the top resorts as rated by RCI exchangers. 



Carolinian said:


> The difference, is that one is not going to have any difficulty at all trading into Orlando in February or indeed into VV at Parkway in February, but it is an extreme rarity to find the French Riviera in August or St. John in winter or London any time, etc.


Which is why old resorts with no ratings and poor customer reviews in high demand areas get so many TPU's.Which is also why much nicer resorts in overbuilt areas receive less TPU's. I get it, you don't seem to.



Carolinian said:


> The resort with units scattered around its historic district was in Venice.  Apparently you have little appreciation of that beautiful, historic city which is a major tourist attraction where accomodations are sky high.  Anyone familar with Venice, I am sure, is rolling their eyes at your put down if they recognized what you were talking about.  .


The REVIEW I quoted from a RCI member who stayed there said that the resort made no allowances for late check-ins or check outs. They said you had to be there when the resort demands you to be. Not very customer friendly and not something most people want to put up with for a unit they have payed for or exchanged for. Also the resort (spread out apts) DOESN'T HAVE ANY AMENITIES. Jeez I never said it was not a hard to get location, I said it is only given high TP's because it is hard to get, not because of the resort itself or the friendliness of the staff.



Carolinian said:


> But then again, you would probably be happier with a Gold Crown in the middle of a corn field in Kansas than to be in one of these resorts in St. John or Bermuda or the French Riviera at prime time.  To each his own.



Since you like to assume I will say in a gold crown far away from the ocean just to be in a GC resort, you must converselly be willing stay in a barn in the south of france or a shack on St Johns just to be at these coveted locations. The french Riviera in a shed and the british countryside in a stable is apparently all that you require. Ratings, reviews, amenities, furnishings, nothing matters but location. Good for you.

I balance different needs to get what I want. I do want to stay on St Johns sometime in the future, but I want to stay at the Westin St johns, not in a run down motel or resort. If I can't get the Westin St Johns I don't have to settle for the top of the hill club just to stay on St Johns because there are only 2 RCI resorts on the island, I can go SOMEWHERE ELSE! The are many other nice carribbean islands with availability in nice ocean front resorts. I can go to Aruba, St maarten, St Thomas, St Kitts, etc,etc,etc. 

I would rather not go to a location where I have no choice but to stay in a dump when there are so many wonderful resorts in the world I haven't seen and many that I would love to see again. I do not have to go to Venice and be dictated a timetable that has no flexibility by the resort I PAID to visit. I WILL NOT MAKE MY OWN BED when I check into a resort no matter how hard the location is to come by. I do not want to settle for crappy accomodations and ZERO amenities because that is that is all that available in the area unless it is a must see location for me. My list of must see locations is vey small, and none of them are are your list.

You go to St Johns and be miles from the ocean on top of a hill. You make your own bed in france. You make sure to adjust your travel plans to accomodate the resort's timetable in Venice. You go to Bermuda and hitchike to the beach a mile away from your resort. You are willing to stay in resorts I wouldn't becase they are places that are hard to get. Good for you. I will make sure to not increase the demand for those locations making it easier for you to reserve a travel trailer at Stonehenge or a hovel in the French wine country.

To you the location is all that matters. To me if there are no acceptable accomodations at a particular location that I can rent or exchange for, then that makes the location unacceptable. As you said, to each his own.


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## rickandcindy23 (Mar 6, 2011)

> I have never stayed in a poorly kept run down crappy Gold crown or Silver crown resort. I have never stayed in a Gold or Silver crown resort that I would not stay in again.



Are you saying all Gold and Silver Crown resorts deserve those ratings?  There are two that absolutely don't deserve Gold Crown: Magic Tree (Orlando) and Orlando International Resort Club.  I don't want to make anyone angry when I say this, but both have those awards, and neither resort is anywhere near the quality of Cypress Pointe, which isn't Gold Crown.  

Those are the only two I have in my head without thinking, but I guarantee RCI has absolutely gotten some wrong.


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## tombo (Mar 6, 2011)

rickandcindy23 said:


> Are you saying all Gold and Silver Crown resorts deserve those ratings?  There are two that absolutely don't deserve Gold Crown: Magic Tree (Orlando) and Orlando International Resort Club.  I don't want to make anyone angry when I say this, but both have those awards, and neither resort is anywhere near the quality of Cypress Pointe, which isn't Gold Crown.
> 
> Those are the only two I have in my head without thinking, but I guarantee RCI has absolutely gotten some wrong.



I didn't say that I agreed 100% with every award. I have stayed at some Gold Crow resorts that i felt should have been Silver or hospitality, and I have stayed at some hospitality and Silver that I felt should be rated higher. I have never stayed at either resort you mentioned so I can't comment on whether I agreed with Gold Crown or not. 

What I did say is that I never stayed at one that was a dump or that I would not stay at again. I have been to a couple of non rated resorts that I left early, and a couple that I would have left early if I had another lodging option. 

I went on RCI and the Magic Tree only had a little over 3 average overall stars whcih is very low for a Gold crown. In addition there are no reviews since 2010, and only one in 2010, which is always a gamble because things can get much better or much worse in a year or two. This would have bothered me if I was exchanging and I would have chosen a different resort based on availability.  Now the Orlando International has a solid 4 overall rating which could fool you into a feeling that it was a great resort, but upon closer inspection there are zero reviews to read.

If these 2 resorts you are referencing are totally unacceptable then they would be my first Gold crowns that fell into that category and are resorts I will not exchange into thanks to your customer review and those on RCI which I factor into my decisions along with location, rating, and availability.


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## bnoble (Mar 6, 2011)

> I actually have an inside scoop on possible future changes back to the old week-for-a-week system, because this transparency thing was just the result of that lawsuit. People wanted to see what their weeks were actually worth, and then it goes back to secretive again after three years. Yep, that's what I heard. Could be just a rumor.


If the new system improves revenue (and I bet it does) there is no way they will ever go back.


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## bellesgirl (Mar 6, 2011)

tombo said:


> ... Now the Orlando International has a solid 4 overall rating which could fool you into a feeling that it was a great resort, but upon closer inspection there are zero reviews to read.


Look again - there are 20 reviews in RCI and most people really like it.  It is not a mega resort, but not everyone wants a mega resort.  Huge units, well maintained resort and very friendly, helpful staff.  Sometimes there is more to a resort than granite counter tops.


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## hsmamato2 (Mar 6, 2011)

Judy said:


> When you do your online search in RCI Weeks, click on the blue bar where it says, "click to change".  In the pop-up window, choose the bullet that says, "show all available RCI Vacations".  then click "update search".  Now your searches should show you everything and the TPU cost of each, not just what your TPU can buy at this moment.  With that information, you can make a better choice of how to proceed.



What blue bar? can't find this option


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## BevL (Mar 6, 2011)

hsmamato2 said:


> What blue bar? can't find this option



When you hit the initial search key, you will see a map of the world.  There is a blue bar above that map.  On the right hand side of that bar, it will likely say something like, "Show available deposits".  Click on that, and then change the option to "Show all inventory" or something similar.

Hope that helps.


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## timeos2 (Mar 6, 2011)

tombo said:


> I didn't say that I agreed 100% with every award. I have stayed at some Gold Crow resorts that i felt should have been Silver or hospitality, and I have stayed at some hospitality and Silver that I felt should be rated higher. I have never stayed at either resort you mentioned so I can't comment on whether I agreed with Gold Crown or not.
> 
> What I did say is that I never stayed at one that was a dump or that I would not stay at again. I have been to a couple of non rated resorts that I left early, and a couple that I would have left early if I had another lodging option.
> 
> ...



Believe me someone, somehow stuffed the ballot box when Magic Tree got a Gold Crown! I really thoight it was a funny rumor until I saw it on the site myself. That is one of the worst resorts we ever stayed at (it was actually our very first timeshare stay in 1992) and it is literally an old converted motel in the land of the largest, most amenity filled and grandest resorts in the world! It wouldn't be a good resort in an under served beach area yet somehow got GC in Orlando! I assume it will be downgraded soon, if it hasn't been already, as it makes a mockery of what had been a meaningful award designation.


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## timeos2 (Mar 6, 2011)

bnoble said:


> If the new system improves revenue (and I bet it does) there is no way they will ever go back.



The way they are promoting it they could never go back.  They cold combine the two systems which would now make much more sense.


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## Tommart (Mar 6, 2011)

*You have other options*



tiadeg said:


> Thanks for your feedback.  We were planning to look at colleges for my son, to be honest, the holiday didn't even cross my mind.  Last year, we got a place at Myrtle Beach last minute, but our spring break wasn't the same week as Easter - the holiday does make it a bit more difficult.
> 
> I guess we'll stay with the weeks - once our kids our older my husband and I will be able to travel off season.  We did this when the kids were younger and had some awesome vacations.  Guess I was wishing those days back again!
> 
> Next year I will plan ahead . . .



Tiadeg,

I'm another who prefers the new RCI system over the old.  I've looked into alternative systems, but they don't seem to work for me.

One option would be for you to buy another timeshare--preferably in an area you would like to go, but if you don't go, you'll have additional points to combine with your 11.  If you bought a week worth 30 points, you could now exchange for two weeks each year for units averaging 20 TPs.  Due to the economy, resale prices are at a low point.

There's also some very nice units for 11 TPs, or less.  For example, my Gold Crown home unit in Virginia, Woodstone, has 1100 sq. ft. two bedroom units for 7 TPs in April.


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## timeos2 (Mar 6, 2011)

For being so "unimportant" an awful lot of TUG posts ask for ranked resorts when they talk about where/what they want to visit.  I know it isn't the most important by any means but given two resorts in the same general area we'll usually take the rated one even if it is a mile or two further from a key area attraction.  And yes, even over on beach. We proved that more than once when we had unranked beach & high ranked off beach units at the same time - the whole family wanted the off beach as it was SO much nicer.  We did use the beach unit for day trips & free parking during the day.


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## Carolinian (Mar 7, 2011)

tombo said:


> There are over 1000 resorts in the small UK/Ireland area. Seems like overbuilding to me.
> .



There are 96 RCI timeshare resorts in that area, plus hundreds of vacation cottages that RCI apparently does not do a very good job of telling you are vacation cottages not resorts.  The owners of those vacation cottages give a week or two a year, usually deep offseason it appears, to RCI for exchange and rent the cottages by the week the rest of the year.

Some of the numbers showing on those cottages on the RCI Europe site (for some reason many of them apparently never make the RCI NA site) are in the low 20's.  That is overpointing compared to Broome Park summer at 29.  In the short days of November and early December in the UK, there is no reason they should be that close to a prime summer week at a real resort in a major vacation area that also has little other timeshare in the vacinity.  It is also overpointing of the cottages compared to Stouts Hill summer at 35 or Allen House spring at 44.  Most of RCI's overpointing is at resorts that are still in developer sales and the developer has a cozy relationship with RCI, like VV at Parkway, but that is not the case with the cottages and their overpointing compared to real resorts in the same country is a bit of a mystery.  VV at Parkway is not; the reason there is as plain as the nose on your face, and it is the absolute corruption of the point setting process at RCI.


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## Carolinian (Mar 7, 2011)

tombo said:


> Couldn't even find it in RCI



Chateau de Maulmont is RCI resort #3483, and is a historic chateau that  belonged to a member of France's Bourbon-Orleans royal family in the 19th century and was originally built by the Knights Templar.  It was long rated a Gold Crown, since that seems to be the main thing that matters to you.


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## Carolinian (Mar 7, 2011)

Most of them simply do not understand how award status is given out at RCI.  Thankfully that process is transparent, unlike the process for awarding either points or points lite.

For Hospitality status, it requires meeting the numerical targets in two RCI exchanger report card categories:
-Resort Hospitality
-Check-in / Check-out
That is it.  

For Silver Crown, it requires meeting the numerical targets in five RCI exchanger report card categories:
-Resort Hospitality
-Check-in / check-out
-Resort maintenance
-unit maintenance
-housekeeping
That is it!

For Gold Crown, it requires meeting higher numerical targers in the same five categories as Silver Crown, plus checking off the requisite number of boxes on the mix and match list of extras on RCI's list, which when I looked at it was not that hard to do if you met the numerical criteria.

For Hospitality and Silver Crown, those status awards are done from the RCI office based on the numbers and nobody even comes to the resort to check it out.  For GC, they do make a visit to be sure all the boxes checked on the mix and match list are correct.

Since you are on your HOA board, John, why don't you look at the brochure RCI sent your resort and give us the current numbers to qualify in each of these categories for award status?  Better yet, why don't you send the whole brochure to someone at TUG like I did some years back, and have it scanned in and added to the Advice section.  Understanding what award status really represents and what it does not would be vauable information to Tuggers.

What is really interesting, and I suspect most members don't know, is the exchanger report card categories that are NOT used in award status and have no bearing on it, like:
-unit quality
-unit amenities
-resort amenities
Some seem to beleive that these are the things that award status is about, and it simply is NOT.  They do not even get considered.



timeos2 said:


> For being so "unimportant" an awful lot of TUG posts ask for ranked resorts when they talk about where/what they want to visit.  I know it isn't the most important by any means but given two resorts in the same general area we'll usually take the rated one even if it is a mile or two further from a key area attraction.  And yes, even over on beach. We proved that more than once when we had unranked beach & high ranked off beach units at the same time - the whole family wanted the off beach as it was SO much nicer.  We did use the beach unit for day trips & free parking during the day.


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## tombo (Mar 7, 2011)

Carolinian said:


> Most of them simply do not understand how award status is given out at RCI.  Thankfully that process is transparent, unlike the process for awarding either points or points lite.
> 
> For Hospitality status, it requires meeting the numerical targets in two RCI exchanger report card categories:
> -Resort Hospitality
> ...



What you ignore is that every award is based on the most important thing, the exchanger report cards! If exchangers CONSISTENTLY rate a resort they exchanged for highly, then the resort can qualify for different awards. If exchangers send in poor reviews then the resort can't acheive any RCI status. The non rated resorts have POOR CUSTOMER REVIEWS FROM PEOPLE WHO EXCHANGED INTO THOSE RESORTS! That is a very good reason not to stay there. I can assure you whether specific amenities and upkeep are addressed on the scoring or not, travellers at resorts with few amenities, poor maintenance, and poor customer service will rate everything lower because their overall experience will not be a great one.

This is a system where unlike most other resort reviews where owners can't artificially inflate their own resort's reviews by repeatedly voting and giving their own resort top scores in everything. Owners can't rate their own resorts in the RCI system unless they exchange into them, and even then only once per stay. It is very simply unbiased travelers ratings of the resorts. What is fairer or more important than that?

Every TUGGER who has received a resort questionnaire on the internet after they returned home and rated the check-in check-out procedure, cleanliness of resort, friendliness/helpfullness of staff, housekeeping, maintenance, amenities, resort activities, basically everything at the resort has helped determine if that resort won an award or not. Resorts that provide good customer service, good amenities, good upkeep, and a good overall travel experience are rated higher on the reviews and win awards. Thos who do no provide above average experiences are downgraded in their awards or totally lose any status. 

It might not be perfect in every situation, but customer ratings are more important to me than the RCI staff doing it. I like the combination of the 2, but out of the 2 the best indicater of what my travel experience will be like is the travel experience of the majority of exchangers who stayed there before me.  

I was on the board of a resort several years ago. Now as for gold crown our resort did not have the granite counter tops, plush furnishings, amenities, etc to ever acheive Gold Crown staus no matter how hard we worked, and our owners would never have approved the renovations required to get us there, so for us Silver was the pinnacle. I was on the board when our resort dropped from Silver to hospitality. The owners called, sent letters, e-mails, loudly voiced their displeasure when they visited about how the resort was letting itself go and dropping in trading value by losing Silver status. It was not a fun time to be a board member (actually not sure there ever is a good time to be a board member lol). We met with the resort mgr, the staff and RCI to see what we had to do to return to Silver Crown, and through hard work by all we regained Silver Crown status. The resorts who never win an RCI award ARE NOT TRYING because any resort can qualify for some award with some good customer service and good upkeep of the resort and it's amenities. 

When I look at resorts that are or are not rated to trade into, I don't count on the award being perfect every time. Some are Gold and Silver on their way to being downgraded the following year. Some have worked hard and are better than their rating and will be upgraded the following year. However if a resort is non rated they IMO have a staff and a board that just don't care about customer service in most cases. If they did they could work hard and RCI would award them some level within a year or two. This is my feelings based on my personal experience as a board member who had a resort that dropped to Hospitality when the staff quit trying and regained their prior Silver award level when they once again focused on the most important thing, customer service for the owners and exchangers to the resort. 

Yes I strongly factor award level into my resort stays because I know their is validity to the awards from personal experience. If the resort doesn't care enough about awards to win one, they probably won't care about my overall experience during my one week's visit as an exchanger. And if they don't care about my stay as an exchanger I will give them reviews when I return home that will once again confirm that they do not deserve to receve any RCI award level. JMHO.


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## bellesgirl (Mar 7, 2011)

I am not sure how much award status has to do with TPU value.  I really think it comes down to demand, at least in certain areas at certain times.  If you look at Orlando for the Christmas/New Year time period (the highest TPU value) and 2BR+, which I would think most people would want, there are 43 units available in total and they break down:
1 - 10    [1]
24 - 32   [7]
33 +   [35] 

If you look at just those with award status (of any kind)
24 - 32    [3]
33 +   [29] 

This is just GC
24 - 32    [1] - Village Parkway, btw
33 +   [10]


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## Carolinian (Mar 7, 2011)

I beg to disagree with you on those scores.

First example is Canaltime, which has several resorts at different marinas.  They all have identical canalboats, and from having traded into three of them the levels of maintenance, housekeeping, etc. were similar.  Yet the award status rating of the different Canaltime resorts has varied, ranging from unrated to Gold Crown at the same time for different marinas.  And that is with identical boats all built to the same plans by the same boatbuilder and maintained to the same standards.  The fact that the averages come out differently for the same thing at different locations tells me that these numbers are not such a good indicator of anything.  Would I choose a Canaltime location by which one is Gold Crown?  Absolutely not.  I would choose the resort which to me looked like it had the most interesting canal to cruise on, and would my choice of the most interesting canal be the same as the next person?  Probably not.

The other is that a resort must past the treshold on all categories to be rated a particular way.  If a resort is slightly down on just one category then it fails to get award status.  Lets say a crabby manager causes the resort hospitality rating to not do as well as it should or some peculiarities in check-in / check-out cause low ratings there.  Does that mean that it is not a quality resort? Of course not!  Maybe RCI should publish the numbers in all 5 categories for all resorts on its website.  That would tell members the full story.  At my own resort, while I was president, we had two categories in which we exceeded GC numbers, and a third where we were 0.1 within the Gold Crown number, a fourth where we consistently exceeded the SC number and a 5th where we moved our number from 0.3 under the SC number to 0.1 under SC by the time I resigned to take my new job on this side of the pond.

I can also tell you the advice that RCI has given to resorts on the OBX to get their numbers up.  They have suggested making calls to exchangers soon after their return home to ask their resort experience, and to urge those who seemed to be happy campers to get their RCI report cards in.  The suggestion was further that those who were not happy campers would have gotten it off their chest to the HOA caller and thus might be less likely to send RCI a critical report card.  I suspect that this is their advice to others as well.  My own resort did not do that while I was president, BTW.

Your assumption that non-rated resorts have poor numbers across the board is just wrong.  Slightly missing in one category is all it takes for a resort to be non-rated, and that is NOT indicative of poor quality!

You also seem never to have looked at the RCI brochure for resorts on the criteria for Gold Crown status.  If you had, you would know that things like granite countertops and plush furnishings cited in your post are simply NOT requirements for GC, or to my recollection even mix or match check-off items that would help attain it.  Having a beach out your front door or a theme park nearby gives you one check off item for GC without doing anything.  Many are a take your pick choice from a list.  Hours of office operation are one, but for a small resort that cannot afford those opening hours, there are other alternatives that are much cheaper and easier to meet.

As to Silver Crown status, it is ALL numbers as you should know.




tombo said:


> What you ignore is that every award is based on the most important thing, the exchanger report cards! If exchangers CONSISTENTLY rate a resort they exchanged for highly, then the resort can qualify for different awards. If exchangers send in poor reviews then the resort can't acheive any RCI status. The non rated resorts have POOR CUSTOMER REVIEWS FROM PEOPLE WHO EXCHANGED INTO THOSE RESORTS! That is a very good reason not to stay there. I can assure you whether specific amenities and upkeep are addressed on the scoring or not, travellers at resorts with few amenities, poor maintenance, and poor customer service will rate everything lower because their overall experience will not be a great one.
> 
> This is a system where unlike most other resort reviews where owners can't artificially inflate their own resort's reviews by repeatedly voting and giving their own resort top scores in everything. Owners can't rate their own resorts in the RCI system unless they exchange into them, and even then only once per stay. It is very simply unbiased travelers ratings of the resorts. What is fairer or more important than that?
> 
> ...


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## Carolinian (Mar 7, 2011)

In its highest demand week, this area has 43 units availible?  The resorts I have cited are hard to find at all, and their resort areas are also hard to find at all during their entire high season, and some at any time of the year.

A resort or resort area with 43 units availible at peak time is one with a poor supply / demand curve.  One that has no units availible in high season or even more so, any season has a strong supply / demand curve.  Extraneous things like award status are drivers of demand, as that does impact some members preferences, but at the end of the day it comes down to just two factors:
Supply - how many unit/weeks are availible, and
Demand - how many people want to trade in.
The supply / demand curve is the relation between those two.  If trading power is based on supply and demand, then those resorts / resort areas with strong supply / demand curves will get good numbers and those with poor supply / demand curves will get poor numbers.  From the examples given, that is not happening in Points Lite.




bellesgirl said:


> I am not sure how much award status has to do with TPU value.  I really think it comes down to demand, at least in certain areas at certain times.  If you look at Orlando for the Christmas/New Year time period (the highest TPU value) and 2BR+, which I would think most people would want, there are 43 units available in total and they break down:
> 1 - 10    [1]
> 24 - 32   [7]
> 33 +   [35]
> ...


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## Laurie (Mar 7, 2011)

Carolinian said:


> Then there is Chateau de Maulmont, a historic chateau full of character that once belonged to a member of the French royal family. The ambiance of a resort like that or others in historic chateaux, castles, and manor houses will always triumph anything in a modern building. It is still in RCI. My directory is at the office or I would cite the resort number. ...
> 
> Chateau de Maulmont is RCI resort #3483, and is a historic chateau that  belonged to a member of France's Bourbon-Orleans royal family in the 19th century and was originally built by the Knights Templar.  It was long rated a Gold Crown, since that seems to be the main thing that matters to you.



Having been there, and as one who also enjoys historic properties, I'll chime in to add that this resort is _so_ far off the beaten track from major sights for Americans who might travel to France once or twice in a lifetime, that I wouldn't recommend it unless you're prepared to spend a _lot_ of time on the road. 

We enjoyed our stay, the unit and views were gorgeous, and we drove a lot so covered some of the ground we hoped to but not all due to distances. 
Therefore I didn't recommend this location to another TUGger who recently inquired, after our stay. Most other guests were French folks who checked in for a nice unit, a relaxing time around the pool, perhaps a few short local trips out, and meals at their very pricey onsite restaurant. Most Americans aren't looking for that. 

In light of this, the TPU's for American members don't seem that out of whack to me.


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## rickandcindy23 (Mar 7, 2011)

bellesgirl said:


> Look again - there are 20 reviews in RCI and most people really like it.  It is not a mega resort, but not everyone wants a mega resort.  Huge units, well maintained resort and very friendly, helpful staff.  Sometimes there is more to a resort than granite counter tops.


We actually own two weeks there, both converted to Wyndham points.  I went to see it and thought it was nice.  It's not the quality or location of Cypress Pointe, but they do some great activities there (a friend of ours stayed there, while we were at Disney's Old Key West, and they were so jealous).  The resort provides breakfast by the pool every morning, for example.  The resort tries very hard to please.  

Wyndham Cypress Palms is nicer than Orlando International Resort, has the whirlpool tubs, the more quaint resort, and it's just prettier, so as far as Wyndhams go, Orlando International is not as nice as the others.  I would stay at Cypress Palms in a heartbeat over OIR. 

The location is closer to Universal Studios, actually very close.   

I don't get the rating.  I am pretty miffed at the special assessment we had last year, too.  I believe RCI told them some things they could do to get Gold Crown back, they did them, and RCI awarded them the crown without really considering the resorts that do deserve it.  I saw the resort after the SA, and it wasn't that different.


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## tombo (Mar 7, 2011)

Carolinian said:


> I beg to disagree with you on those scores.



I am so shocked. You don't agree with RCI? I tire of debating you. Nothing RCI does will be ever good enough for you. 

You are no longer even an RCI member. Why should RCI or anyone else care what you think? I and most RCI MEMBERS love the new weeks program. You have no dog in the race yet spend hours debasing anything and everything RCI does good or bad. You love to describe RCI as biased company. You left RCI mad years ago.  What is more biased than an ex RCI member who quit mad and took his ball and went home? It is like asking an ex husband after a nasty divorce if they like their ex wife's new hair style. To expect an unbiased response would be unrealistic.

The scores are based on member's feeling about their vacation and the resort overall. If RCI went to every resort and scored the resorts themselves, that would not be acceptable to you because as you said so often RCI has back room deals. When the RCI members (us) score the resorts it shouldn't count according to you because there might have been a crabby front desk employee  or some other irrelevant complaint that caused them to give a low score. Well the score reflecting the crabby employee is important because the resort needs to retrain or fire that crabby employee. Front desk service and Mgt support is often an integral part of my satisfaction or disatisfaction with the resort. If you don't think the customer is king and their perception is reality then you have never been in a customer service based business, or if you have I assume you received low scores.




Carolinian said:


> Maybe RCI should publish the numbers in all 5 categories for all resorts on its website.  That would tell members the full story.



Other companies don't bother with that. Ford, GM, and Toyota have service reviews and customer satisfaction surveys after a sale or service visit at a dealership. If people are unhappy with one person or one aspect it destroys your overall score, and just a few of those will cost you any chance to receive an award. By requiring ALL aspects to impact the overall customer's score you have to concentrate on ALL areas of customer satisfaction, not just a few. That is best for the customer whether the custome is on vaction or servicing their vehicle. All the customer ever knows is whether the dealership won an award or not, whcih in the end is all that matters to the average customer.


Carolinian said:


> You also seem never to have looked at the RCI brochure for resorts on the criteria for Gold Crown status.  If you had, you would know that things like granite countertops and plush furnishings cited in your post are simply NOT requirements for GC, or to my recollection even mix or match check-off items that would help attain it.  Having a beach out your front door or a theme park nearby gives you one check off item for GC without doing anything.  Many are a take your pick choice from a list.  Hours of office operation are one, but for a small resort that cannot afford those opening hours, there are other alternatives that are much cheaper and easier to meet.



I saw the brochure years ago and they have a list of needed things to acheive GC status, a certain number of which the resort/rooms must have to acheive Gold Crown. I don't remember what was on the GC list because we were only trying to acheive Silver Crown. I remember you had to have a certain number of the listed amenities and the RCI rep had to approve the overall decor of the rooms/resort to even have the opportunity to qualify for GC. Our rep (rightfully or wrong) told us we would need to renovate and update with things LIKE granite counter tops, nicer curtains, new ceramic tile, etc. Whatever the criteria actually was, our RCI rep said our resort would have to make major changes to have a chance at Gold Crown, and yes we were on the ocean.  

The whole point you are dodging by picking out irrelevant details is that the crabby front desk guy deserves to lower the rating for the resort because the resort hired him and has him greeting the guests. If the maintennance guy is slow,inept, rude and impacts your stay negativelly, then that is the resort's fault for hiring him and retaining him. If the hot tub doesn't work, the pool is dirty, your bed is not made, those things will make people score a resort lower, and YES it is the resort's responsibility to ask customers as they check out and yes even after they get home if they enjoyed their stay and if they had any complaints. There is NOTHING wrong with asking people if they enjoyed their saty and if they did would they please givethe resort good reviews because they were really trying hard to present a great vacation experience. Heck my Olive Garden waitress did the exact same thing as she handed me my bill and circled the web site where I could go and rate my meal and my overall experience. She said if I and the restaurant did everything to meet or exceed your expectations please tell the company because that is how we are rated on our job, and if we did not please tell me so I can make it right. 

If a resort actually listens to the customer complaints and works to replace the grouchy front desk person, hires a new qualified maintenance man, cleans the pool, retrains housekeeping, and fixes the hot tub in response to previous customer complaints, then their scores will go up ON EVERYTHING, not just the specific area the resort was lacking. If they don't even bother to ask for feedback and try to solve previous guests complaints they will deservedly receive lower overall scores and lose an award status, if they ever even won one. 

The RCI awards are based on actual RCI members rating of the resort after they return home, and I can't thnk of any rating system that is more important than what exchangers feel about the resort and their stay.


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## Carolinian (Mar 7, 2011)

Points Lite are not just for American members; they are for all members.  Most of the timeshare owners at Chateau de Maulmont are British, not French, and most use their weeks as opposed to depositing them.  There are only two units that are timeshare, so the number deposited foer exchange is in the single digits each year.  It is an extremely hard to get resort especially in the summer.  From a supply / demand perspective, this is a classic case of underpointing.

Is it the ideal resort for someone making a ''trip of a lifetime'' to France? No, I would suggest they look to Paris, the Riviera, or Normandy / Brittany.  But for those of us who have already been all over France, it is great.  It is a new part of the country to explore.

For supply and demand it really does not matter where the demand comes from.  It just matters that demand significantly exceeds supply.  That test is met here, partly because it is a small resort, partly because it is one of only two opportunities within RCI to stay in a real French chateau, partly because it is the only resort in that part of France, and partly from its obvious appeal to Brits, who comprise most of the timeshare owners there.  Other than the two timeshare units, the rest of the chateau is run as a hotel, so I suppose that is where the other guests present when you were came from.




Laurie said:


> Having been there, and as one who also enjoys historic properties, I'll chime in to add that this resort is _so_ far off the beaten track from major sights for Americans who might travel to France once or twice in a lifetime, that I wouldn't recommend it unless you're prepared to spend a _lot_ of time on the road.
> 
> We enjoyed our stay, the unit and views were gorgeous, and we drove a lot so covered some of the ground we hoped to but not all due to distances.
> Therefore I didn't recommend this location to another TUGger who recently inquired, after our stay. Most other guests were French folks who checked in for a nice unit, a relaxing time around the pool, perhaps a few short local trips out, and meals at their very pricey onsite restaurant. Most Americans aren't looking for that.
> ...


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## Carolinian (Mar 7, 2011)

Actually, I still am a member, letting my membership run down while taking advantage of their ripping off members to rent exchange deposits cheaply.  I just don't give them my better weeks any more.

Having spent years reviewing the monthly reports that our resort received from RCI with the comment cards scores, and yes the actual comment cards so we saw specifically what each had to say and who it came from, I have to say that your notions of how RCI exchangers fill out comment cards is just plain wrong.  They do not give the same score on everything.  Most rate each item seperately and the same exchanger can give widely varying scores to different items on the same report card.

My point was that a slightly lower score than the target in one area while the others are well above target does not mean a bad resort, but it does mean the resort will be unrated, which to you seems to mean a shack or something.

I noticed you skated around the Canaltime example but it points out the fallacy of overreliance on award status.  Here you have widely differing averages for different groups of identical boats at the same point in time.  There is no rhime or reason why one set of boats is Gold Crown while in the same year another is unrated or Hospitality and another is Silver.

You complained about the Venice resort charging extra for a late check-out.  At least that is something you can do something about to avoid the fee.  You do not have that option at Manhattan Club with their junk fees.  Do you feel the same way about them?  Heck, I would much rather have a junk fee that I could avoid than one I could not!

At the end of the day, supply and demand still come down to just two bottom line factors - 1) how many unit/weeks are deposited, and 2) how many people are seeking them.  The degree to which 2 exceeds 1 is the only basis upon which trading power based on supply and demand can be determined.  Other factors, like your red herrings are nothing but a driver of demand for some people.

The facts from the RCI website that are relevant to this discussion are not those on award status but those on how much inventory is out there on offer with no takers.




tombo said:


> I am so shocked. You don't agree with RCI? I tire of debating you. Nothing RCI does will be ever good enough for you. You are no longer even a member, why should RCI or anone else care what you think?
> 
> The scores are based on member's feeling about their vacation and the resort overall. If RCI went to every resort and scored the resorts themselves, that would not be acceptable to you because as you said so often RCI has back room deals. When the RCI members (us) score the resorts it shouldn't count according to you because there might have been a crabby front desk employee  or some other irrelevant complaint that caused them to give a low score. Well the score reflecting the crabby employee is important because the resort needs to retrain or fire that crabby employee. Front desk service and Mgt support is often an integral part of my satisfaction or disatisfaction with the resort. If you don't think the customer is king and their perception is reality then you have never been in a customer service based business, or if you have I assume you received low scores.
> 
> ...


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## bellesgirl (Mar 7, 2011)

Carolinian said:


> In its highest demand week, this area has 43 units availible?



They will all be gone long before Xmas.  Most people do not plan 9 1/2 months ahead (unlike us TUGGERs).  If they are still there, RCI will drop the values - that is how you increase demand.  For example, there are no 2BR+ resorts available at all in June in Orlando.

We get caught up in the TPU value, but for RCI an exchange is an exchange.  They still get their $179, whether it goes for 60 TPU or 6 TPU.  As a matter of fact, at 6 they could probably get 3 or 4 of those $179 fees per deposit.  Their goal is to push the inventory, not to flatter us with big TPU values for our weeks.  That may be why they give a premium to Orlando - there are a lot of units, and most of them get taken, sooner or later.


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## tombo (Mar 7, 2011)

Carolinian said:


> Having spent years reviewing the monthly reports that our resort received from RCI with the comment cards scores, and yes the actual comment cards so we saw specifically what each had to say and who it came from, I have to say that your notions of how RCI exchangers fill out comment cards is just plain wrong.  They do not give the same score on everything.  Most rate each item seperately and the same exchanger can give widely varying scores to different items on the same report card.
> 
> My point was that a slightly lower score than the target in one area while the others are well above target does not mean a bad resort, but it does mean the resort will be unrated, which to you seems to mean a shack or something.


Every resort has the same questionnaire. When some resorts consistently receive customer ratings that allow those resorts to ALWAYS receive RCI awards while others consistently DO NOT qualify, then it is not how the customer fills out the comment card that is the problem, it is the resort, and/or their staff, and/or their amenites, etc.. I know they give different scores on everything, but what does that have to do with anything? The best resorts receive OVERALL good ratings on ALL areas. 

If your non rated resorts worked harder they could get customer satisfaction up and receive awards too. When the resort manager is told to get the standards up and acheive an RCI award level or get a new job, it is amazing how quickly customer survey scores and the overall customer satisfaction at your resort will rise. It took us one year to return to Silver Crown after we had the do it right or do it somehwere else meeting with the entire staff. Front desk attitude improved, the grounds had never looked better, maintenance was caught up on everything, housekeeping much improved, everything got better including our ratings from RCI exchange guests.

The RCI exchange survey is a measure which is uniform throughout RCI. Every member after every exchange receives the identical survey to fillout and return. If you resort can't get good reviews while others do using the exact same surveys and exact same criteria, your resort is considered inferior by the majority of travellers. I don't care why most people don't like your resort as well as the rated resorts, they simply didn't. if they didn't like their overall vacation or just certain areas of their vacation enough to give good ratings, there is a good chance that I won't either playing the odds.

I have seen customers cards at the resort and filled out many myself. It is a level playing field where all resorts compete with the same RCI exchangers filling out the same comment cards/ electronic survey. To complain that the surveys are not filled out correctly by exchangers is simply an excuse made by loser resorts and their staff. Our Mgt team tried those excuses too (it is just a few bad apples, happy people don't fill them out, one or 2 bad complaints kills us,etc, etc, etc). When we said if other resorts are doing it, we will too, or we will find someone who can do it, our staff suddenly found a way to make enough customers happy in ALL areas to regain Silver. Funny how those few impossible customers, hard to read survey cards, and unrealistic customer expectations ceased to be a problem after they understood we were going to be Silver Crown again with or without our current staff. 



Carolinian said:


> I noticed you skated around the Canaltime example but it points out the fallacy of overreliance on award status.  Here you have widely differing averages for different groups of identical boats at the same point in time.  There is no rhime or reason why one set of boats is Gold Crown while in the same year another is unrated or Hospitality and another is Silver.


No reason to argue an abberation. There will be some resorts with different ratings for unknown reasons. In a small exchange situation one or 2 negatives or positives can affect the overall average more. 2 negatives more adverselly affect 20 exchanges than 2 bad reviews will affect 100. Perhaps a couple of the boats had all good reviews while a couple of boats had a couple that killed them. One can only assume the number of annual exchanges on a boat would not be a large number. Who knows why for sure, and who cares? 

To show a few exceptions as reasons why RCI awards are worthless is ridiculous. Playing the odds the Gold Crown overall are much better than hospitality resorts and ALWAYS better in my experience than an unrated resort. If I find an exception to that rule tomorrow I will not assume that the many experiences I have had in the past are invalidated by one or two exceptions. I will continue to play the odds and assume in the majority of cases, the higher the award, the better the overall resort experience will be.


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## Carolinian (Mar 7, 2011)

tombo said:


> To show a few exceptions as reasons why RCI awards are worthless is ridiculous. Playing the odds the Gold Crown overall are much better than hospitality resorts and ALWAYS better in my experience than an unrated resort. If I find an exception to that rule tomorrow I will not assume that the many experiences I have had in the past are invalidated by one or two exceptions. I will continue to play the odds and assume in the majority of cases, the higher the award, the better the overall resort experience will be.



Canaltime actually has fleets of boats at each marina, maybe 50 or so at each marina.

You are hung up on things that are merely drivers of demand for some members.  The bottom line is supply and demand, and it is really irrelevent why members seek a particular resort or resort area.  The important fact is that they do.  The key is supply - the number of weeks deposited and availible - and demand - the number of members seeking to exchange into those weeks.

Before IRI even revealed the details of Points Lite, I posted that the key to its fairness would be comparing the overbuilt areas where weeks were a dime a dozen and the hard to trade into areas.  The resort areas I have cited above were some of the key ones I mentioned then as the test to whether the numbers would be fair.  Now we have seen the numbers and it is clear that they have stood supply and demand on its head in concocting their numbers.


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## Carolinian (Mar 7, 2011)

Well that shows a lot weaker supply and demand curve than resorts or resort areas where weeks are snapped up from ongoing searches and never even show up online.  And when there are 43 availibilities for the best week of the year, there are clearly even more for the less desirable times.




bellesgirl said:


> They will all be gone long before Xmas.  Most people do not plan 9 1/2 months ahead (unlike us TUGGERs).  If they are still there, RCI will drop the values - that is how you increase demand.  For example, there are no 2BR+ resorts available at all in June in Orlando.
> 
> We get caught up in the TPU value, but for RCI an exchange is an exchange.  They still get their $179, whether it goes for 60 TPU or 6 TPU.  As a matter of fact, at 6 they could probably get 3 or 4 of those $179 fees per deposit.  Their goal is to push the inventory, not to flatter us with big TPU values for our weeks.  That may be why they give a premium to Orlando - there are a lot of units, and most of them get taken, sooner or later.


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## tombo (Mar 7, 2011)

Carolinian said:


> Canaltime actually has fleets of boats at each marina, maybe 50 or so at each marina.
> 
> You are hung up on things that are merely drivers of demand for some members.  The bottom line is supply and demand, and it is really irrelevent why members seek a particular resort or resort area.  The important fact is that they do.  The key is supply - the number of weeks deposited and availible - and demand - the number of members seeking to exchange into those weeks.
> 
> Before IRI even revealed the details of Points Lite, I posted that the key to its fairness would be comparing the overbuilt areas where weeks were a dime a dozen and the hard to trade into areas.  The resort areas I have cited above were some of the key ones I mentioned then as the test to whether the numbers would be fair.  Now we have seen the numbers and it is clear that they have stood supply and demand on its head in concocting their numbers.



I stated that the new weeks program was great and that the TPU's assigned to most of the resorts (if not all) are based on supply and demand. You have argued they do not base it on supply and deamnd citing specific resorts, locations, scarcity,and every other thing to try and prove your point. Simple fact is that every resort you showed had a lot of TPU's based on supply and demand, not on the quality of the resort.

Your UK resorts where you show only 5 available for the year as opposed to 100 available at XYZ resort are Apples to Oranges . Some of those UK resorts have 10 total timeshare rooms for 50 weeks total. The XYZ resort has 500 units for 50 weeks total.The 5 available units at a UK resort with total pool of 500 owners is a larger percent of the total availability than  100 available units at XYZ resort which has 25000 weeks owned. 

In actuality some of those UK resorts might have less demand per available unit than some of the overbuilt areas you love to hate. If a resort only has 10units deposited in RCI each year and 5 remain available, that actually shows a remarkable lack of demand. Almost no inventory, but almost no people wanting the few weeks that are available. Perhaps there is an oversupply of inventory if there are 10 total deposits at some of your resorts. RCI needs to diminish the number of TPU's they assign since there is such a ridiculous lack of demand that 10 weeks deposited was more supply than the demand requires.

I assure you that one unit available at any of the UK, Italian, or French resorts (or boats) you listed is one more unt than I will ever attempt to exchange for. The fact that any show availability is oversupply as far as I am concerned.

The only thing that is clear is that you hate RCI. Every time it is shown that your examples receive high TPU's based on hard to get locations rather than the quality of the resorts, you subterfuge, spin it, throw in a new example which is a rare exception to the rule, anything but admit that RCI got it right this time. Well for every example you have given no one but you has agreed that RCI cheated those european resorts out of TPU's. Feel free to enjoy your delusions alone.

I am through debating it. Post whatever you want and I am not going to respond. I am however  going to enjoy my transparent RCI deposits and exchanges where I know in advance what a week I deposit will get me and what an exchange will cost me. I am going to enjoy my upcoming vacations I exchanged for using RCI weeks with my wife. I am going to continue to enjoy the new weeks program as long as I can. The new weeks program makes me very happy.

You feel free to continue bashing and hating an RCI program you don't even participate in. That apparently makes you happy. 

To each his own.


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## timeos2 (Mar 7, 2011)

Carolinian said:


> For Hospitality status, it requires meeting the numerical targets in two RCI exchanger report card categories:
> -Resort Hospitality
> -Check-in / Check-out
> That is it.
> ...



Here are the most recent thresholds for the three awards & which categories count:

RCI Ranking Thresholds 

So ALL rankings require minimum levels from report cards - not just two as suggested above. Those that are  blank don't count toward award levels.


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## Carolinian (Mar 8, 2011)

What you do not seem to comprehend is that ''Quality'' is merely one driver of demand, as is location, the latter being a much bigger driver of demand.  It is NOT a seperate factor in and of itself.  It all boils down to two factors - SUPPLY and DEMAND.  Period.  Quality is already part of the demand side and trying to count it again as a seperate factor is trying to double weight it.  If that is happening is setting Points Lite numbers and a private email I had from an RCI employee suggests it is, then that is one thing that is queering the system.

It is clear that you support RCI no matter what they do.  If I hated RCI I would do what you falsely accused me of and cancel my membership.  No, while I am not going to renew, I will still take advantage of the cheap rentals that are availible due to their ripping off exchange deposits.  Yes I do intensely dislike many RCI policies, due both to the impact on HOA's and the impact on members.  I posted during the point where we were all still guessing the final form of Points Lite that it may not be so bad if they preserved a trading mechanism like the old system that allowed members to trade within a range or band.  They didn't, and losing that makes the new system far worse than anything people think they might have gained from the partial transparency of the new system.  Some of those who look at everything RCI does through rose colored glasses cannot seem to comprehend that as long as the mechanism for setting numbers remains hidden, it is not really a transparent system, only an illusion of transparency.




tombo said:


> I stated that the new weeks program was great and that the TPU's assigned to most of the resorts (if not all) are based on supply and demand. You have argued they do not base it on supply and deamnd citing specific resorts, locations, scarcity,and every other thing to try and prove your point. Simple fact is that every resort you showed had a lot of TPU's based on supply and demand, not on the quality of the resort.
> 
> Your UK resorts where you show only 5 available for the year as opposed to 100 available at XYZ resort are Apples to Oranges . Some of those UK resorts have 10 total timeshare rooms for 50 weeks total. The XYZ resort has 500 units for 50 weeks total.The 5 available units at a UK resort with total pool of 500 owners is a larger percent of the total availability than  100 available units at XYZ resort which has 25000 weeks owned.
> 
> ...


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## Carolinian (Mar 8, 2011)

timeos2 said:


> Here are the most recent thresholds for the three awards & which categories count:
> 
> RCI Ranking Thresholds
> 
> So ALL rankings require minimum levels from report cards - not just two as suggested above. Those that are  blank don't count toward award levels.



Thank you, John!  Hopefully someone can add this to the Advice section. It would also be helpful to add the full content of requirements for GC status.

I see that RCI has added the other three categories to Hospitality status since I left my HOA board.  That makes sense.

The most significant thing for Tuggers is that many are under the illusion that those categories left blank which are not considered in setting award status are instead the main things they look at.


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## Carolinian (Mar 8, 2011)

*Florida*

Much has been made of Florida and its overall demand.  However, overbuilt Orlando is not an example of an area of low supply and high demand, and neither really is the panhandle, although in beach season it undoubtedly has a much better supply / demand curve than Orlando.  Our former resident RCI employee on these boards, Bootleg, used to use the initials of the main overbuilt areas in the US in his posts, standing for Orlando, Branson, Williamsburg, and Massanutten, places where RCI almost always had excess inventory.

If one really wants to look at very high demand, very low supply areas, I suggest a different part of Florida is where to look - 1) Sanibel and Captiva, and 2) Key West.  JLB, who used to be active on TUG and now mostly posts on another board, has searched SW Florida regularly for 12 years and can document from those saved searchs the changes in RCI availibility there.  He is appalled with what the new RCI has imposed there.  I wish I could post a link to a thread of his that deals just with SW Florida, but he discusses those changes at various junctures throught this thread (there is little real meat to the first two pages):  http://www.timeshareforums.com/forums/rci/93191-how-big-yours.html

I also did not respond to Tombo's post on tourism hot spots, largely due to it being sourced from Wikipedia, which even high school teachers mark as incorrect if cited in school papers.  Wikipedia was also busted for allowing a group of radicals to censor topics of interest to them in a particular policy area and even after that was exposed left those radicials in position to continue.  Some of us are also aware of the PCC's constantly editting the Timeshare topic on Wikipedia to add self-serving material particularly their ''timeshare trap'' crap.  No, Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information on anything.  The spin in trying to split hairs on ''international'' tourism was particularly humorous as in the US, most international tourists have to fly long distances at high expense, but many who would be counted as international tourists in Europe are going to drive to locations or at worst taking a $30 LCC flight.


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## baby che (Mar 8, 2011)

Forgive me if this topic has been covered elsewhere but I have yet another question about RCI TPU values. 
I own a 1 BD at Bougainvillea Beach Resort in Barbados, week 25. TPU assigned to my deposit is 24 or 25 points - actually 23 points for June, 2011 due to the ding for not depositing a full year out. Looking at current availability for BBR, I can trade into the same unit in a similar week (the week after or a few weeks out, not 4th of July, not that they care about that in Barbados!) but RCI is charging 36 or 38 TPUs to trade into the unit. How is that?? I could see a difference of a few points but a 13 point spread between what they give me and what they charge someone else?
Clearly I would not actually want to make that exchange, I was just looking at availability in general and saw the discrepancy.
In a similar vein, my 2BD week 26 unit at Orange Lake West got me 45 points a few months ago and 37 points more recently. Why the drop? And why so much for Orlando, even over a holiday week?

Overall I like the new TPU system. I can usually get 2 weeks or more for each week I own, so it is working to my advantage.


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## eal (Mar 8, 2011)

please don't post in more than one area!


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## baby che (Mar 8, 2011)

Yes, my bad, my first post as you can see. I realized after the fact that my question was not really in keeping with the direction of this thread.


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